Yukoner, I do not trade oil so I do not want to say much about same, as different markets can behave in different ways. Some say a chart is a chart, and yes it is up to a point, in that it shows price movement in relation to buyers v.s sellers, but the reasons as to why the traders buy and sell can be totally different in the oil market than other markets like stocks or index futures. Some also say that there is no need to know why traders are buying / selling, all you need is the chart, and that is fine for them if they can generate consistent profits. Every traders is different and must work out what is best for oneself. I do think however that a little bit of knowledge can be a very dangerous thing, and can also be very costly, so I do not want to say much about things that I know very little about, which is nearly everything! J_S
I LOVE trading failures. Fail to make higher highs/lower lows, make 10/50 ticks in CL and call it a day. Then trade ES which chops around most of the time, lost track of time......normally only put on trades first 75 minutes.
Handle... I wonder if you don't mind providing a legend for me as I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out exactly what you're trying to show with the orange/green lines and yellow/purple arrows. I just want to make sure I'm understanding properly where you are taking your entries and exits, and if some of these lines also mean where your stop would go, etc. or if these are just used to track the previous swing high or low. On the first chart you also mark "loss", but I'm not following where this trade came from. Thanks! (I remember when you first showed your charts to me, I was a little lost then as well so I want to make sure to ask this time so that I'm able to fully understand everything you're trying to show)
looks like stuff right out of my bible book TA of stock trends by Edwards and Magee, for us older folks
Half of my signals comes out of John Hills manuals of late 70s and am sure he read Edwards and Magee as well, but I am added little tricks to better define for myself how to trade them.
Two tick breakouts for entries, lowest high or highest low, so arrows are entry bars. Purple arrows are trend trades, entries see above, slope of ema define trend. Orange lines help me with other trend on trades not on chart as I have three other signals. Green horizontal lines shows resistance and support.
My week is over. You all get away from the screen, big money generally in morning, enjoy Spring. Handle
Day # ??? - Took the rest of the week off, and tried not to think about trading. (Didn't read my journal) For some reason, I felt pretty discouraged about where I was at in this trading journey. (Probably the stupid X thing on Monday) Even though I know that I have lots of people pulling for me, and am getting excellent advice in this journal. I found myself questioning my methodology, questioning my commitment, questioning if I really wanted this. The day of questioning... So I decided that today I was going to trade today with one focus. I just wanted to trade my methodology and let it work out and see if I really had an edge. I went into the day with the plan on taking the trades, but once there I wasn't making any adjustments... either I was getting stopped out, or I was exiting with profit. I continued to write in my journal, checkmark! I have also been thinking a lot about the last 60 days of trading, and realizing that even with all the mistakes, if I had simply stopped trading each day at my newly established $400 daily loss limit, it is realistic to expect I would have a profit each month. Not huge, but that is a turnaround from where I was. So my plan is to restart next week, most likely on Tuesday. Today was an interesting day. I was calm. Relaxed. Focused on sticking to the plan. So many times I just wanted to make an adjustment or close a winning trade before the profit target or stop loss was hit... but that wasn't in my plan. I had decided to set and forget each trade, and just let it work. Make widgets. Do what is supposed to be done. Only take trades where my reward was at least double my risk. Today taught me a lot.... +574