1st trade was error short market entry on DOM. I was trying to right click on DOM to set an order type. Instead it got me in on market short and of course I got stopped out. Figured out I needed to right click on the blank side of the DOM not where you see price information. So 2nd order was set correctly. I went from negative (P20) to positive (P18) today. Where P = x10 so P18 = $ 180. Thoughts and issues. I am only able to do 2 contracts at a time on DOM, but of course work around would be to have a 2nd 2 or 1 contract order set. In real money trading, my commissions are much lower than what they show here. Maybe, they make a ton of money from their live trades on commissions which is still fine since they are trading with company money however it does lower my results. Other thoughts, I like that I am doing the combine since it is improving my order management skills. Hard thing to overcome is trying to trade with more contracts than I do in real money trading which I need to work on to pass the combine. Also, issue is to fine tune how many contracts I use so that I am able to at least do 2 trades and not getting maxed stopped out on 1 trade. I think its possible to trade 3 - 4 contracts but obviously not 5 contracts. I am probably done trading for the day, but will look to add more contracts on Friday, but maybe not on my 1st trade which seems this week to always be a losing trade. I did take time to draw my lines, but issue today was sensitivity of Sierra Charts vs Ninja Trader or maybe my not understanding where to click on DOM.
When I started trading CL had bounced down off of a resistance level and started to chop around. I was doing long trades and getting stopped out. 1 of my stops was too close to where I wanted to go long, but was away from the computer and it got hit. So was down around 40 p. Finally, was able to work my way back up to positive 7p using just long trades. I need to better identify sideways chop movement and wait for a better trade at start. Summary of week. All days were positive by end of day except for Monday when I was trying to figure out the new trading platform. Still need to work on better trading at the start and/or reduce contract size for starting trades and increase them later in the day. Plan for next week. 1st trade only 1 contract. 2nd trade 2 contracts. Yes, I should have traded just 1 contract at start of today but wanted to try to maintain even contract sizes for each trade.
If anyone wants me to provide some instructions on how to get Sierra Charts up and running for trading, please reply, and I will summarize what I learned from e-mailing Sierra Chart support.
Well, a week into trading and finally got my custom NT indicator to function correctly in Sierra Charts. I also got the correct time and days of the week to show at bottom of chart. I also got a price alert sound to work in case I am not looking at the chart. Also, after spending an hour or so, got the Zig Zag indicator to work nicely displaying price labels how I want them to look. I still think manually labeling a little is helpful.
So totally agree. If you mean the charts. Its trading platform is too crude for me. I use Bracket Trader for trading. That's the best combo I have found. Also in terms of overall costs.
If you are doing 1-2 contracts, Sierra Charts does come with 3 preset trade management functions in the DOM. So you can select 1 of them and then manually change the targets and stops. Then on the DOM, you can select limit, stop and even market orders by right clicking on the side. The difference in Ninja Trader is that there are no preset trade management functions, but you can learn to create your own and name them and have as many different ones that you want. Now that I got everything working, I like both charting packages equally. Also, the difference with Sierra Charts and Ninja Trader is that Sierra Charts has all off its indicators already installed and you just need to spend time on the settings of the ones you like to make them work. Whereas, Ninja Trader has custom indicators that others have written so you need to find them on the Internet, make changes and download them to your computer then install them in Ninja Trader.
Oraclewizard77 Whats your trading background? If you look carefully at the TST funded traders, most have at least 3 years prior professional trading experience, most have financial backgrounds, most have been funded elsewhere before, most have blown out accounts before, etc etc.
Finally did not lose money on 1st trade. I went long 2 contracts. Market went my way, then started to go against me. I 1st moved my stop up. Then as market moved against me, I moved stop back down to give trade room to breath. I was going to add a 3rd contract with a tight stop but it missed getting filled by 1 tick. As price moved back up, I decided to take 1 contract off at 1 tick under BE. I left original target alone, and still had add set if market went back down but at 1 tick higher. Price moved up some more so I instead canceled add and moved stop a little bit higher. Target got filled and I am at 8 p right now. I have some price alerts set, and will continue to watch the market to see if I can get some more trades but don't want to force it.
If you need instructions how to post the TST daily blotter, let me know. I mean come on, one week and we haven't seen those nice green numbers yet... I can't even tell where you are currently, and I am an accountant. (on the internet)