Are you trading Reversals in Ranges, Breakouts from ranges or Retracements in trends or all of the above? Do you take into account Support and Resistance to enter (because of the odd short entry at 10:20 today)
The 10:20 short was b/c we were at a X.50 level and CL tends to stop and reverse around x.oo and x.50 numbers. Also that level was a support for a few days lately. In general I want to trade continuations after retracements and not reversals or breakouts but occasionally I will trade reversals at key levels. It may not look like that from the charts but that is the general idea. Another point is that since I use Ninja Trader, the only way to show entry and exit points of trades - connected with lines - is to show them on a 1 min chart, the reason for entry and exit may not always be visible (my trades are based on 3, 5, 10 and 15 min bars)
The last trade was out of boredom. Not by any rule. Just the mere fact that CL had it's 3rd largest daily range for the past 1 1/2 months and a retracement was a high possibility.
Gabe, if your system doesnt allow you to get an entry in a trend day like today, you should probably rethink it. They were printing money and giving it for free, bur your rules did not allow you to grab any of it. Think of something that allows you to get in retracements like the one at 9:40.