clm outlined at the start of this journal precisely the problems faced by every trader who has defined an edge and developed a plan, and then struggles with it at the hard right edge, often for such a long time that s/he doubts hir sanity. CL can be a bit volatile. This is why it's attractive to day traders/scalpers. However, volatile trading instruments have a tendency to bring out the worst in traders. We look at the charts at the end of the day and see all this potential for easy profits. But, as I stated earlier in this journal, "it has an uncanny way of getting you to violate your plan", because in real time there is a lot of noise in the smaller time frames that reside within your chosen trading time frame. If you trade a 5-min TF, you have to deal with 1-min noise; if you trade a 60-min TF, you have to deal with 5- or 15-min noise; and so on. clm has very recently acquired Skype buddies for the pit hours. He'd benefit from having Skype buddies during the London session because that's his main trading time. The best assistance he can get at this time is help taking a lot more trades, as he states clearly in his opening post to this thread. When we pick and choose (in other words, when we're the gambler instead of the casino), we have an amazing tendency to choose the losers and skip the winners, because the market (and life in general) rewards what is difficult, and as discretionary traders we are often attracted to what "feels" easy. A good example is from my days as a counter-trend fader. I'd form an opinion that price had gone too high and I'd short and I'd hold without a stop until it either reverted to the mean at some point or I cried uncle and bailed for a nasty loss (very rare, but nasty nonetheless). Usually there'd be a point in a strong move up where I'd literally become afraid to short and entertained thoughts of joining the crowd and just buying. That was the ideal short signal every time. (This led me to post here on ET that when you wanted to fade a trending move, place a limit order at the price level where you planned to place your disaster stop and that's where you'd get an ideal entry for the reversion to mean. It's quite a solid strategy to this day.) Keeping a public journal has benefits (experienced traders offer solid advice), and disadvantages (knowing you'll be posting trades/results may negatively influence your trading, and frustrated traders may post useless negative comments). My suggestion to clm is to place on Ignore anyone who posts useless negative comments.
This is morbidly horrifying. First you all love bomb the guy so he doesn't feel like an idiot for jacking away his money without having a clue, and now you invite him into your little circle so that instead of doing the work he needs to do in isolation his mind is polluted with other peoples trading concepts, opinions, etc. So now the market hours when one should be working become instead an opportunity to socialise. He is 4 for 25 and you think he should trade more frequently? You really are out to wreck people, aren't you? Every time he trades he pays commission and crosses the spread. A high strike rate is vital for a daytrader. Here is my take on whether my advice is negative. If crude light marathon (or will it be sprint?) had followed my advice yesterday and not gambled today he would be $400 better off. That is a fact. How about being honest about the situation: "follow Blotto's advice and you will not jack away your beer money". Maybe we should call his own behaviour and anyone who encouraged him "negative" as it cost him $400. Or perhaps the entertainment value was worth it. I tell people to evaluate the statements made by others, you expect people to take what you say as fact and you tell them to ignore opposing positions. Interesting. What else from someone who has produced (count them) 7,000 posts and can't stop giving advice to newbies. The only time I venture out now is to try and stop newbies being corrupted. In the end analysis though, they are responsible for their fate. CLM won't make it, and depending on his own stubbornness may lose more than he can afford. Hopefully he reports it here as a cautionary tale for others, but of course everyone thinks that they are special and exempt from years of study and hard work. In the end everyone gets what they deserve in the market.
we all think that way and have to go thru the change,in other walks of life,say an artist,those personal touches make the piece,in trading,its just math,the truth ,2 + 2=4,and those personal thoughts must be put aside,you can consciously do it,(knowing what the problem is,is half of solving it), or have the market beat it out of you,as you morph into a trader
Since the dipshits most likely have me on ignore for the time being, I'm going to post a prediction of some places where I think CLM will have traded today. Lets hope he is on time with his results so we can see if it was accurate. How to evaluate my guesses? Well I'm having five goes, I'd expect at least one of them to match closely one of his trades. 1/5 right is still slightly better strike rate than CLM's track record. More general prediction. Another net losing day for CLM as there was no obvious "trend" and he will have been influenced by the price action between 09.00 and 09.30 EST to look for shorts. Breakout longs will have been taken late and scratched or taken out at a loss on lack of follow through. Basically another day of lagging the market. We shall see.
Instead of buy low, stoploss lower ; sell high, stoploss higher ; enter - panic and get out for a wash - one could replace with calm methodical trading to take net gains from the session. How about, setting a range of 15 points from the high or low as the "optimum" range for this market, and play with continuous reversals. This generates the following signals. 09.12: $93.58 sell short 09.45: $92.74 reverse long 10.20: $93.24 reverse short 10.34: $92.68 reverse long 11.42: $93.29 reverse short 12:02: $93.26 reverse long 12.23: $93.51 reverse short 12.58: $92.94 reverse long 13.14: $93.65 reverse short 13.27: $93.37 reverse long 14:06: $94.05 reverse short 14.12: $93.68 reverse long 14:30: $94.01 go flat This gives the following net results: 0.84, 0.50, 0.56, 0.61, 0.03, 0.25, 0.57, 0.71, 0.28, 0.68, 0.37, 0.33. Your net total is $5.73, or $5,730 per contract less commissions. You are continuously in the market for the whole session, open to close, 09.00 to 14.30. Now an aspiring trader could get real about what is actually happening in the market, and make a detailed plan to extract net gains from the daily session. Or she could disengage entirely from the market and go off looking for something called a "trend", and chatting all day in a skype room with others who have also failed to carry off truckloads of cash from the market daily. This is an example of using 15 cent distances to time turns. A more proficient trader could use a tighter tolerance, or come up with something closer to "optimum" from extensive testing. In addition, a serious player could use any of the following plans (or a combination) to give signals to watch for buy or sell reversals: - knowledge of the likely price levels and time windows (clock time) where reversals are likely to occur - template for the type of day - whether an up day, down day, range bound day, which levels are important, likely range etc - pattern recognition skills from looking at thousands of CL trading days - multiple timeframe analysis to drill down into entries, including very fast charts, volume or tick based charts etc - on chart lines and indicators - volume analysis There are some good clues in posts by Cheese and other members, here and elsewhere, and some other clues in between your own two ears, but one has to do the work to find them. Happy hunting!
Posted for the benefit of gaining approval in a thread where it has already been made clear that your presence is not desired. The only benefit I can see here is that you are gaining some perverse sense of validation by expressing your seemingly endless wisdom dressed up with clever words and snide remarks in order to impress an anonymous crowd. You sir, are nothing but a joke. I suspected it already, but you removed all doubt with these last two posts of yours. And annotating a chart after the fact? Really? Everyone who`s been around here for a while very well know that you just tried to regurgitate the teachings of Cheese without mentioning his name. Thanks for the laugh. Really. I needed it.