It does not take very much size to make dollars with the NQ. And even at IB where the margin requirements are higher than many of these $500 brokers, you can trade 5 contracts with less than $9000 margin. And 5 contracts means you are winning (and losing) at $100 per point. I've been watching the CL some lately, but not to trade it. And I agree with Niko - it is a difficult instrument to define context for trades when compared to the NQ. I think it probably would require a long period of learning.
FT Day 2 Aug 23rd Unusual volume at premarket resulting in strong rise with shallow rets. Trend is up and no reason for it not to continue. R: 3144 R: 3133 (mp of congestion from the 14th) S: 3121 (SL of current upwave) S: 3112 (mp from 97 to current high and congestion point from 14th ON) S: 3097 Review: Right now my only criteria for taking a trade is going with the LOLR off a well established S/R zone. However, I do not have any set markers to determine that 'now' the LOLR has changed or that 'now' S/R has been established. As such, I do experience considerably anxiety during the first few moments after a trade is stopped in. I could start defining markers for tactical rules. But I will continue just with the broad guidelines for now. Perhaps in the future, if my results from FT are positive, confidence will increase and entry will not seem so tentative.
you wont find those set markers,exact,precise,perfect are all concepts,if you are ocd,you have to let go of these, at least learn how to turn these off while trading,as a substitute,you could look at correlating markets, i picture you in a room with about 20 gauges to watch and adjust,thats why i mentioned ocd and possibly add,those traits, the 1st you have to turn off the perfect part,the 2nd is evident in your analysis in the several pages of nq breakdowns,shows you can juggle several gauges at once....so back to the original suggestion of watching the bigger picture and dialing down to the smaller,watching several charts you could have had a little less anxiety ,thinking of these charts all playing as a team,and each member currently doing his job well
heres a 3m 3day spy chart, bouncing off of the 164 nip and leaving a cleave at / just under 167 from wed,so on wed you are thinking the upside target ,one strong possibility is that it goes from the wide nip support at 64,back up to fill that cleave at 67
on friday with the market making higher high and higher low on thurs.you have this smaller spy pic, its a 3 mo daily instead of 3 mo 3 day.3 mo 3day was easier to look at after the whiplash we had,it put it all into less bars and made it easier to read, you see a wider cleave area,guessing from experience ,any part of a cleave fill is good enough to call res/supp and a possible reversal could result
your low in nq was hard to find on a chart, its here on a 90 day 2 hr, but its hard to place a bet on such a small piece of evidence
you know how the day ended,this was just an example of how you could apply s/r analysis to several markets in search of a trend that you could place a bet on,instead of watching a solo market and waiting for the perfect setup, and scratching your head why that became supp or res,and wondering it if was more or less likely to hold