Good call closing your short cl yesterday. It bounced off pretty important tl support Should be heading to 8800 from here
I was loaded to the gills with FXP, SDS, and SKF. Thank god i closed those when the market was down on Tuesday. I would have taken an absolute beating. Broke even on crude today. Kinda lame after a monster day yesterday. I did not respect the trend today. Was lucky not to take any damage.
Seems the fisher method never works on Wednesday. Or you could look at it as a tight opening range means a countertrend move after the inital move
My particular implementation has been getting crushed for the last couple of weeks. I stopped running it temporarily. I know what needs to be changed. It was funny - a couple of times it opened trades that were just obvious to me were going to be losers. Breakouts when the market had already moved 2% in a particular direction, etc. Anyway, a couple of simple modifications should fix the issues i've seen. Now i just need to find the time...
CL has been a tough market the past 1.5 months. I think everyone has been trading the weekly support, resistance tl ranges You finish reading that book?
Yes....i got a little disillusioned with the later sections, in that his rules seemed so hard and fast (e.g. "if price does this twice, but not thrice, then it is likely a key reversal....") I guess i subscribe to the thought that if its printed and specific, it aint gonna work (generally speaking). Now with that said, i do believe having read this book as well as the original rules you gave me, it has given me the insight i needed to become consistently profitable. Mind you, its a bit early to say that with certainty, but I am definitely considering some things in my trading that are clearly critical factors in market behavior that I had no clue of before. (at least, intraday behavior). Its like i was trading blind before. To not know where the opening range is or prior day key support levels...just silly. Now, i just need to stop my inherent contrarian leanings and im pretty sure i could go massively improve my performance.
Well your profitable now, thats a good thing. Its not bad to go with the trend, it works more times than looking for a reversal every day. The thing to keep in mind is that time is the most important factor. If they price hovers at a level for more than 25-35 minutes than it lets everyone and their mother get in on the action. When you metion the price does it twice but not 3times than its a failed retest of the high or low. Look at 5minute cl chart on 4/13 at 10:25 and 10:40. The 10:40 was a failed retest of the 10:25 low. The 11:25 candle was the final nail in the coffin that the low was not going to get taken out. Look at other days and you will see that its nothing more than higher highs and lower lows. If its doesn't put in a higher high or lower low then it goes the opposite direction for a little while. In the end time frame is everything, bias is nothing.
Decided to take a look at my longer term trading record this evening, given current standings and performance in 2010. My detailed records go back only to 1/1/2008. I am particularly happy to report that I have achieved, over that entire period (2.4 years or so), a form of modest profitability. I dont have the exact stats, but i've certainly exceeded 10,000 trades during that period with all of the attendant commissions and slippage that entails. Between that and the craziness of the market during that period, being profitable is no easy achievement. I have made in profit exactly 10% since 1/1/2008, after all fees, commissions, etc. A paltry sum no doubt, given that Ive made thousands of trades and spent hundreds if not thousands of hours. Certainly, i could have exceeded such a sum with a part time job mowing lawns. Of course, this trading period includes some of the most grotesque, stomach churning trades and drawdowns imaginable. I don't celebrate the performance above, but i do celebrate making any previously lost monies back. I am hopeful and reasonably confident that my performance will be substantially better going forward (as it has been for the most part of the last six months). Most of my problems over the last 3 - 10 years has been an unwillingness to focus on one trading mechanism and a desire to learn and practice many different forms and methods of trading. I've traded, quite actively, everything from options to equities to futures, in all timeframes, in mass scale. Without ever mastering or even becoming proficient (e.g. profitable) in any of them. Terrible and costly path, but i do feel the education it provided is valuable.
End of week update: Had probably the single best week trading at scale i've ever had. Made around 11% net on my total portfolio. This brings me out of drawdown and 9% above my previous high (i was at 2% below my former high). This also puts me up 35% or so for the year. My performance lately is probably mostly attributable to luck. Profits have come almost solely from intraday CL and ES trading. Win/Loss rate has been extraordinarily high (need to do my logs this weekend, but i would guess > 75%). I have not been using fixed stops, but have been using effective discipline to close losing positions when either necessary or when the pain seems too great. My plan is to stop intraday trading, recent success and luck aside, and move to focus solely on swing trading several futures markets. I like the intraday trading and certainly it seems to be working lately, but its largely incompatible with my full time job and i'm definitely not convinced I can stay consistently profitable yet (and i know i can't continue at my recent pace). As a sidenote, today would have been a MONSTER BLOWOUT day, except the exchange rejected a CL trade I had that would have netted me 8% additional on top of everything else. I know it sounds kind of ludicrous but it was one of those trades where i could sense it was ridiculously oversold, put in an order for 15 contracts, and watched it immediately bounce for 90 cents within about 30 seconds. Freaking order went into a "suspend" state and I had to call the broker to have them unlock the whole thing. Anyway, water under the bridge i guess. Those type of trades don't come along very often, so i'm disappointed to have missed it (or that they forced me to miss it, more correctly stated.)
Another completely monster week, up 10% on my total portfolio. I'm up somewhere in the area of 50% on the year, and up around 75% from my drawdown in January. Yesterday I hit my profit goal FOR THE YEAR. Didn't expect that to happen. Funny thing is at least half my gains, and probably more, have come on the short side (thats right, against the trend). Anyway, definitely a major string of luck even if I'm doing something right. Win rate has been way too high for several weeks now. I am out of commission Monday and Tuesday, so there are at least two days where Im guaranteed not to give any profits back. As for the remainder of the year, my goals are thus: - significantly reduce position size - focus on protecting profit - be far more judicious/selective about trades - wait wait and wait for a really good opportunity (there are none now) Bottom line is, having hit my goal for the year, I plan to ensure i don't backtrack much and will hold out for really good R/R situations. This will be quite a personal test as its damn hard to do when you are killing it... Main goals over the next few days are to completely update my tradelogs. I'm way, way behind and need to become more disciplined in keeping up to date. Good weekend all....