Hi Hooti, Thanks for sharing your process. It's really great to hear from you and know you're still trading. I have alot of charts with my PA observations that are filed under my various set up tabs in a binder. I like your hard right edge approach. I used to print a chart of every trade along with my trade review worksheet and file in a different binder. Winners in front, losers in back. Also helpful but i haven't done that for awhile. Review has just been EOD on the screen. As i mentioned recently i'm doing a complete re-write of my plan. I need this for my peace of mind/confidence and so that i don't miss trades or mismanage them. My set ups are still the same but now i have the experience and knowledge to be very specific. I've wanted this type of plan for quite awhile so i'm very pleased it's coming together. I also added "PA clues to pass on trade" . I still have several more set ups to spell out. This weekend i've spent several hours marking trades on some past days charts with the stats i want to keep track of. Later today i'll start with the excel worksheets. This is the direction i'm now going in and will add more data each day. Ideally, i would have done this a long while back but oh well. Good trading to you ! It sounds like you are definitely on the right track and no doubt you're results likely reflect that. Bravo !
Every aspiring trader should take note of this. This is the sort of work that leads to consistently profitable trading, with less and less stress as time goes on. I remember once I was ready to implement a filter on a certain setup that had trapped me into losing trades a couple times. I remembered the pain of being a trapped trader off that setup and it stood out in my mind as a setup that should be totally avoided (pure bias). Before writing that filter into my trading plan, I did a manual backtest to get an idea of the actual stats, because I want hard stats backing up my decisions before I lock them into my plan. Well, what a surprise when I discovered that a) taking every appearance of that setup without even looking at the price action context resulted in a 56% win rate and, b) there was a contextual filter I could apply that would weed out most of the traps! So I did add a filter to my plan, but only when that setup occurred in the context of certain previous price action. What I thought was a sure losing setup is now one of my core setups as long as the overall price environment complies. This is why when you read posts here along the lines of "TA doesn't work", "most breakouts fail", you never see these people post any hard statistical data to back up these blanket statements. I imagine these people try Method X without doing any research to develop a positive expectancy process, without taking into account the price action context, then they lose money and conclude Method X doesn't work.
Hi Jas, While trading CL, there is a order flow that many feeds don't provide. Its called block trades. CME has a free feature online for this feed. You can also get a feed from them for few bucks. As a test you can scan this feed and tie it to big breaks in CL. block orders over 500 would move the market instantaneously and usually are sustained moves. keep an eye especially on big option trades. Reading the strike price on them is easy once you get used to them. I have attached the link below, do some analysis on you own and get comfortable. tie the chart to times these big trades are reported and you will see. http://www.cmegroup.com/clearing/tr...PD&exchanges=XCBT,XCME,XCEC,XNYM&assetclass=7 Remmeber that these trades happen OFF the exchange and then get reported to CME, by rule within 5 minutes so the reactions are usually swift but reliable. Happy hunting.
Thanks for the post NoD. JP, Great to see you're still here ! Thanks for the cme info. I'll spend some time with it. Here's a chart from today. Been awhile since i've put one up. 1st trade was a failed b/o of a swing hi and at prior resistance area. I tightened my stop too quickly so got out at -3 ticks. 2nd trade was a play off the failed LOD breakout. I did not have the channel drawn in at the time which if i had would likely have kept me out. tight stop 'cause it should work quickly if it's going to. -4 ticks 3rd trade still in buy mode from lod failed b/o. Now i've got the channel . buy the TL break and break of box. not the best box i've seen but took it nonetheless. Tighten stop after failure of price to move through 100 ema (5 min 20 ema) and resistance. If this trade is going to work shorts will be covering faster than they were. + 6 took another trade not shown -5 so ended -6 on day. I pretty much backed off after that. PA looked choppy and my set ups are not yet specific enough to trade the last 1.5 hr drop. I spent a fair number of hours over the weekend writing up some set ups, reviewing charts and writing an excel w/s. This will take alot more time but i have a clear idea of what i want to accomplish which i think is the hard part.
I think he can use an higher ema/sma in the same chart instead, to replace higher time frame chart. just less distraction at this point. just a thought.
JP, Thanks for the chart. Nkhoi, Good to hear from you. I have a 5 min chart on another monitor and look at 5000 vol and some higher time frames also. I recently added the second monitor. I was hesitant because i don't want info overload. But i'm liking it and actually do less flipping from chart to chart now. Took me a long while to realize if i just focus on the 1 min chart i can read price better than trying to go back and forth between a 30 sec or a fast tick chart then back to 1 minute. So mostly it's 1 minute on one screen, 5 min with some channels , ema on the other.
nkhoi, You seem to feed me info right when i'm ready for it. The majority of my time has been spent watching the 1 minute chart or faster tick charts in fast markets. In the past week or so i've been re thinking this and am starting to spend more time to find set ups off the 5 minute and fine tune entries off the 1 minute. I think this slightly bigger TF will keep me on the right side of mkt and simplify my analysis. Thanks ! Last week results: gave back prior two weeks gains. I'll be in Sim for awhile until i adjust to CL and finish the revision of my trading plan. Nothing to add that won't sound cliched 'i can do this' trader optimism.