Notice how I've been in a single trade since 12:37 eastern time. It's still technically chop and there's no reason to do anything else here.
If the people who are questioning the authenticity of other traders who share their ideas about trading would just do the work and see if there is some value there, instead of caring about how many contracts are traded, how many ticks per contract, etc... Reality check: If you are serious about becoming a consistently profitable trader, focus your energy in the proper place, start doing the work. If you don't have any ideas of your own, try some of the ones given freely on this site.
lol it seems like the latest pullback on the indices has everyone on edge. Absolute hatred towards anyone who seems profitable.
Piker size. I love that phrase. As if 99% of the members here have a true grasp of the leverage they're playing with when they trade a single futures contract. CL is a highly leveraged and often volatile contract with a fraction of the liquidity of the S&P futures. To put it into perspective: Trading a single contract of CL controls 1000 barrels of oil. Trading a single contract of CL is similar to trading 3000 shares of USO. Trading a single contract of CL is similar to trading 8-10 contracts of NQ. There's nothing wrong with trading "piker size" CL, no matter who you are. I trade piker size because I'm able to maintain a trader's mindset at a certain level of leverage. When I want to play with more significant leverage, I swing trade options, and my downside is fixed. And since we've brought Big Mike's into the thread, I'll tell you it's refreshing to have a forum where excellent moderation allows traders to maintain threads where pertinent information doesn't have to be meticulously mined out of pages of garbage.
In an effort to siphon off some of the bile from an otherwise excellent thread, I've initiated a new one in this forum called Trading Rooms/Chat Rooms. Have at it. Actually it was moved to Educational Resources: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?t=281769 Quick work, moderators.