Man, I hate counter trend trades. But I had only those signals for the 4 legs up. I need to do more testing to relax the with trend signals a bit, so I don't miss these fast trends. Trade #1: +0.14 May be it was a bit brave since the breakout just happened, but there was yesterdays high, so breakout could've failed. The trade went 19 tick in favor and as it was coming back I closed it at +0.14. That was the price where others (like Visaria) opened their longs for a nice 200 tick run. Well, I will learn it too... Trade #2: -0.15 Same signal . Stopped out. Did not feel much, which is good. I just hated taking the counter trend signals. Trade #3: +0.20 Same counter trend signal , R2 resistance above. I had to take it, if I took the previous 2 , so I did. Reached target. Actually, if I would have survived the initial shakeout the trade reached its natural targets too. Well, could've, would've .... Trade #4: +0.01 Well, I did it again. Finally, a with trend signal and I micromanage it. But on the positive side, I held it much longer than usually. That 7 min. seemed like an eternity. I was thinking it is usually done by this time, so no hope for another swing. And of course, almost as I closed it, it broke up. So 3 out of 4 executed flawlessly and all signals were taken in this time period. I finished trading after #4. I will put up a summary of the first week during the weekend.
You should hate counter-trend signals because even if confirmed, they rarely produce as much profit potential as with-trend setups. That said, counter-trend trades can add to a day's profit with low risk IF you wait patiently for some kind of confirmation of the initial signal. Your Trade #2 was a counter-trend signal, but at no time did the signal confirm. Or to use other common terminology, there was a setup but no price action follow through to trigger a counter-trend trade. I'm a price swing scalper, so I look to trade moves in pieces, staying with the prevailing trend until a reversal signal/setup confirms in some way through the price action that follows. I start trading near the pit open (9:00am ET). Prior to the open, the trend was a well-defined uptrend with 2 solid legs, followed by consolidation from 8:00am to 8:45am ET. When price consolidates in a well-defined trend, always think continuation until price proves you wrong. Notice how the last big bull bar of the 2nd leg up (the 7:50am ET bar) contains the price action during consolidation. I refer to this as a containment bar. If price consolidates within the confines of this bar it's an indication that the trend is strong and healthy and a measured move similar to the previous move is likely. So I'm only looking for long entries. The question is where to enter. I have max risk parameters and so I want some nice confirmation of renewed strength to get long with. I immediately place a buy stop above the previous swing high because if the price action in consolidation is too uncertain for me, I want to be sure I end up long if there's a breakout. That's my final confirmation of strength and I don't want to miss an explosive move because I was hemming and hawing over the "ugly" with-trend entry. I always prefer to get positioned earlier though, so I watch price drifting down to test the containment range low near the round number 87.00. An early anticipatory entry is to get long anywhere near that round number, which is support. A more confirmed early entry is to buy the break of a 5-min pullback bar as long as the range support holds. This would trigger a long around @ 87.24 and that's the entry I choose. The fully confirmed entry is the breakout of the previous swing high, but if you get in early and you like adding to winners, that breakout level is a solid "add" point. The first thing resembling a short signal occurs when the 9:20am ET swing high is taken out by just a tick or two during the 9:44 1-min bar. This looks like where your trade #2 took place. I was long at that point and that "apparent" failed breakout shook me right out of my long @ 88.20. But the first thing I do is place a brand new buy stop above that high in case price tries again, which is very common. CL has a way of sucking in early counter-trend traders who are trying to pick tops/bottoms and then give them a good ass...uh...yeah, what Sp89 said Well that failed breakout failed rather quickly, there was NO short entry triggered by price action, and I was long again @ 88.28 with a profit target zone around 88.86 (a level from the 60-min chart that I had noted before I began trading). I scalped .20 on the move back down through .50, but got right back in long again on the move back up through .50 and attained profit target. The trend is your friend until it ends. Al Brooks says, there is no bad entry in a strong trending move. Just use the 1-min chart to get in on the small pullbacks. Sometimes I get in anywhere and use the 1-min chart to place a tighter stop loss. When you're trading a strong trending move there's comes a point where that last trade or that last "add" to a winner is a scratch or a loser. It finally gets to a point where no one's interested in paying that much and profit-taking sets in. This usually occurs after 3 or 4 pushes in a trend, or after a strong measured move, and a lower high (or higher low in a downtrend) at that point gets you on watch for a reversal or at least a strong pullback. I hope this all helps you enjoy the easy money during a trending move. If you think price is to high to buy or too low to sell, there's probably a lot of upside or downside left, so give it a go. Worst thing that can happen is you lose .15 and start watching for a reversal setup.
NoDoji, first of all, thanks for the analysis and the nuggets you gave here. I hate to cut up your quote into pieces but it is easier to reflect on the ideas. If you mean confirmation the moment when the low of the setup bar breaks, than you are right there was no confirmation. But this is how my signal is, both the counter trend and the fast trend entry. There is no confirmation in those types of signals. The problem with my second trade in hindsight was the doji (and the fact that the trend was strong and so there was no retrace to the ema.) I am thinking that the coming pullback has more than 1 leg and try to get in at the end of the first leg. No time to wait for confirmation. The stop confirmed that there was only 1 leg. That was my way of thinking when I placed or place counter trend trades. I also think that the main trend will continue, just we get back a little bit to the mean (in this case the MA) Buying and selling the breakout is a sure way to get into the trend, and it is not in my toolbox yet. It is painful to watch the big not overlapping candles and wait for the pullback or retrace (sometimes never-coming). But sometimes the waviness of the moves are such that breakout entries are soon stopped out. Right now I am much more tuned to entering on pullback, retrace into the trend even if I will miss some trends some days. Yes, that is my prefferred entry too. But I filter my signals may be too heavily, so even valid (in hindsight) pullbacks will not be traded. Yes. sounds easy . And your ideas already helping me. I see your motorcycle, and I would like to try it, but I am still falling off my bicycle quite frequently. In other words, now I have a simple framework, with 3 signals, and I can use it to get consistent and clear the mental blocks. This way I can easily pinpoint and correct problems. If I stop micromanaging trades and become more consistent, I can add other ideas and variables which will help getting into the trend and staying in the trend.
Ok. So first week of the journal is finished. Here is the PnL in ticks: The blue is the âtheoreticalâ if I followed the exit rules properly. it is just too early to comment on the PnL. # of trades: 17 # of winners: 7 (3 CT; 4 fast) # of scratch: 5 (3 fast, 2slow) # of losers: 5 (2 CT, 1 fast, 2 slow) The results of the first week show me that there are signs of improvement compared to previous weeks, although I had a bit better PnL in terms of tick value, but not by much. I felt much more confident in taking more trades, and keeping them longer. My main focus for the coming week will be the reduction of trade micromanagement: the picking and choosing from valid signals moving stop to BE too early closing trade before profit target reached My goal is not to move stop to break even before profit reaches 14-15 ticks. And I know that I will have to get rid of the fixed profit targets, so I will be working on this too. I will try to exit based on price action, especially, if I got in early into the trend. If it is the 3rd or even higher numbered pullback, I might keep the profit target fixed. Of course this assumes an increased objectivity , so even if I am in the trade I can still observe PA objectively.
As I said in the first post , it is a marathon, so I write down my training log as well, even if only briefly, since I think my trading results correlate with my disciplined training schedule So I am still collecting km's and the real 18 week training schedule starts next Sunday. This week I managed to run 4 times as I planned. 3 shorter runs and 1 longer today (80 min). The total was 3h:52m. If I am running a weekly 4-5 hours with a longer run during the weekend for few months, and a few weeks before the race I run a 30km distance then I have a good chance to get to the finish line alive. (I was told ) I started a bit late to train for this race, but with a little luck (no injury, or sickness lasting more than a week) it is possible.
Daaamn.... CL went up $4 and I managed to lose 0.14. I was closely watching breakouts today as NoDoji described it. Well, all of them worked. I don't mind missing them, since trading them was not in the plan. I had 3 trades today 2 scratches and 1 loser. #1 and # 2 were both with trend entries and were executed properly according to the plan. Both went in favor about 17-18 cents and then came back to BE and slightly to the negative and were closed at BE. I was kind of satisfied with the execution, that I held it as I planned, but still I did not enter the following two with trend signals. #3 was a counter trend signal and it got stopped out. -0.14 ---------------------------------------------------------------- I have to go back again and check my data what happens if I don't touch the stop during the trade. Just leave it as it is. But it is rather difficult to let an almost winner trade to go back to the negative side. I hope everybody else killed it today in CL.
When trading in the direction of a well-defined trend, I suggest leaving the initial stop in place and trailing the 5-min bars if you're concerned about taking a full loss once it's moved in your favor. Counter-trend, I almost always move my stop to b/e after more than 10 ticks, UNLESS the b/e stop level makes no sense. So let's say I put on a counter-trend trade for a pullback to the 5-min 20 EMA, it moves .11 ticks in my favor, but a b/e stop is a tick or two beneath the 1-min 20 EMA. This in fact happened to me on a trade Friday. I'm not moving my stop to b/e in that case IF the key level is still in play and the trade hasn't been invalidated. So if the 20 EMA on the 5-min or a trend/channel line is in play, I hold my position even if it reverses back into the red. If a reversal setup appears, then I'll stop and reverse, but if moving to b/e makes no sense (other than to make me feel "safe"), then I leave everything as is until it makes sense to move the stop. As for today, I couldn't bring myself to short at all. Not even the LH setup for a pullback to the 20 EMA setup during 12:30pm ET bar could lure me in. From the time the regular market opened, the pullbacks were pitiful. No one was selling. No near term overhead resistance except levels from the daily chart: 88.89, 89.69, 90.14, 90.45, 90.72, 90.96. Every few ticks lower was an excuse for buyers to step in. When pullbacks are shallow no matter how strong the push in the trend, and when there's not a lot of near term overhead resistance where trapped longs are waiting to get out (those old longs were put out of their misery back in early October), that tells you the easy money will be in the direction of the up trend. The hardest thing in the world is to keep buying when you think it can't keep going higher, but once you get enough crude time under your belt, you'll get to where you can hardly wait to get positioned for the next leg in the trend, even if the pullback's so shallow all you can "safely" do is buy the new high (or sell the new low if it's a down day). The more you think it can't go any higher, the more pent up energy there will be to the long side.