jonbig04

I should also mention that I lost 3 ticks on a another short try.

Double bottom failure in a downtrend for +40 ticks. Had to go all in/all out with this one.

Thanks for the responses guys. I'm still searching around for brokers. I don't need volume while I'm trading, I just miss it because I hate using time based charts. I've been watching a few pairs for the last couple days and am trying to get into the groove of them.

Got owned try to play the long. Level got chopped up. I would still like to play a breakdown below 71.64 though.

Just a quick look at crude. Given the lower highs, I would like to play a break down below 71.64, but I will play a break up above 72.95 too, albeit much less aggressively.

Thought I'd post a try from last night. I was looking forward to this trade for days. Funny the ones you always expect to do well end up being lame. Anyway I had my sell stop and it was getting closer and closer to breaking down, then all of the sudden my zenfire craps out. Apparently it happened to everyone. So I was in the trade but couldn't see anything. When I finally got everything up and running, i couldnt tell what the hell was going on with the trade. I just closed the whole thing out. The trade was executed fine, it just didn't scale out at my first 1/3 target of +20. Weird. So I ended up bailing out for around +8 ticks. Then tried again later, but it didn't want to keep dropping and I lost 3 ticks, so I ended up up a few ticks on the trade, which isn't bad for a trade that didn't do at all what I expected haha.

Some of us who trade futures are thinking of also looking into spot forex for various reasons (small position sizes, volatility, flexible trading hours etc). However there seem to be a lot of horror stories surrounding spot fx and I'm a little tentative about just picking a broker out of thin air. I'm hoping some of you spot traders can chime in with some general tips for us futures guys. My biggest question is what to look for in a broker? There are a million of them out there. Any other tips about trading spot that us futures traders wouldn't know are appreciated. :beer:

When you're like me, managing your huge positions takes an immense amount of hardware... As was mentioned before, security is a major concern. My secret super strategy must always be under the most lethal and efficient of guards. It's also imperative that I keep my workspace super clean and organized...

And so ends my best trading month ever. I'm not happy just because it's a good month, good months come and go, But rather because I managed to also reduce my risk by 2/3 while increasing, or at least keeping the same, reward and accuracy level. I usually convert everything to ES points because I traded ES for so long that my mind tends to think in ES points, in this case I would be up around +35 ES. But maybe it would be more accurate to say I'm up 140 6E ticks. Whatever. Either way it's almost double my monthly goal. I know that it was due to the volatility of the Euro. But strangely, while I had more 6E setups, I had far less crude setups than usual. I just had the one that didn't work out. Usually I trade more breakouts on CL than anything else. That being said, this was my first month trading strictly breakouts, but right now I will consider this month to be an anomaly and shoot for my +20ES goal next month.

Yeah I don't like the idea of an every day gap.

It makes sense that it would fluctuate, but even when it's at it's lower end of the volatility spectrum, how does it compare to, say, ES? I've always assumed in trumped ES all the time, but I've never been able to watch it.

Ah I Got it. Thanks.

Thanks Simple. I'm kind of a computer idiot though, how do I go about using it?

So basically IB is the only real option for trading the HSI. E signal offers the data, but IB appears to be the only broker around who supports HSI trading. I'm thinking of buying the data from esignal to see how much I like HSI. If I like it a lot I guess I can always open an IB account. I hate to switch brokers just for one stupid reason though. Bah.

Volatility, or lack thereof, is definitely a concern. I'm not really worried about getting chopped up as I am the setups simply not happening often enough in lower volatility. Crude and 6E are definitely the two best instruments I've found so far. I would really, really, really like to at least be able to watch HSI. So far it looks like I have to open an account with IB though. I don't want to move to FX either. Any suggestions on volatile instruments would be appreciated.

Haha yea it was lame. I didn't expect it to be that ugly, but shit happens. I took 3 shots at it too

Took that CL long. Was able to get a few tries in but it was rejected instead of breaking out. -6 ticks on all which was in line with my 70 tick target.

I've made my hatred of trailing stops, scaling, moving your stop to BE etc pretty clear. To me these are just psychological feel-goods. But I've learned that peace of mind does have some value to it, thus I have started scaling recently. I do it a little differently. For example, instead of having an all out target of 40 ticks, I would have 3 targets. One at 20, one at 40, and one at 60. That way my expectancy can't go down. One thing I've always hated with a passion is a trailing stop. I hate them because they always give up profit. Sure every once in a while trend doesn't retrace and your trailer does get to do its job, but it never seems to make up for all the times it made you exit a position prematurely. However since I only trade breaks outs....it got me thinking. Trailing stops only work well in swift trends and swift trends are all I'm taking (ideally). So I'm gonna give them a try. It's not gonna be anything crazy. I'm gonna put the stop 3 or 4 ticks back when price gets to its usual target and have it move up every 4 ticks of profit. It's a tough thing to backtest, but with some of the swift movement in 6E lately it may make a large difference every once in a while. This isn't so much of a log anymore than it is just a journal. I may or may not post my trades in here, unless it's a really good trade or a really bad one haha.

I had the same wedge marked. Buyers sure got hammered after it finally broke down.

Potential next trades: Short 6E at 1.2138 Long 6E at 1.2602 Short 6B at 1.4224 Long CL at 71.26

shorted 6E last night. Took two tries and I got slipped quite bit on my first try when I bailed out. cost me a full 5 ticks, my biggest loss of the month. Caught it the second try for +40 ticks avg.

I'm not sure why the other axis didn't show up on that chart above, but its CL and the line is at 71.20.

I second the crude oil futures. Unless the euro stayed this volatile forever, then it would have to be EUR.USD futures.

I don't even know how to use skype. i thought it was a video thing. I'm assuming I just DL it and go from there. The Euro is crazy active in the middle of EST night. It moves in a minute what ES moves in like two days haha.

Anyone in the chat at night? More than half of my trades have been at night lately.