brownsfan019

1: Very difficult to know in advance, based on past movements, whether a trending or non-trending day is going to show up tomorrow IMO. Let's scratch this option. 2: Trending day - play breakouts, moving average pullbacks. Non-Trending - play candle reversals @ bollinger bands. It's that easy IF you know which one to use that day. Let's scratch this option as well. 3: This is my preferred choice of the 4. Why? B/c I don't think #1 is possible to do w/ consistency and in order to do #2 I think you need #1 so by default if nothing else, we are on to option #3. 4: Tempting, but I think you'll get better odds heading to Vegas and having a hell of a time at the craps tables. So option #3 appears to be the best choice at this point. So the key Dinero is simple (yet hard) - knowing when to shut your system down for the day and when to keep it running. As Thales said - you may want to refine your entries as well using some sort of filter to keep you out of as many bad trades as possible. The L, LL, HL method, the 2B method, using some volatility bands/indicators, whatever.

I think dae gave you a great synopsis there. Trading w/o stops or trading w/ huge stops and going for small gains is great until you get a loser. Then it takes a massive amount of wins to get back that 1 loss.

Open ECry has a great sim trading platform.

I've come to appreciate the beauty of markets that are non-indexes. While the indexes get much of the talk, I've come to appreciate markets such as oil and grains much more than in the past.

I agree w/ the above post. I was (no longer) a stock jockey (now referred to as financial advisors) and I wouldn't even consider LTC unless the client was around 50 yrs or older. Along w/ the above post, you also run the risk of picking a policy out that might make sense now but when you actually need it, might be archaic and useless; assuming the insurance company you bought it from is even still around.

Just a FYI for anyone that is interested in trading stocks on the OEC platform - they are now beta testing this.

OEC can handle most easylanguage programming so if what Tams referred you to is in EL, try to compile it in OEC.

I'm a little behind here but that's no reason for this thread to die off. I've been very busy lately so I may not be posting daily but will try to keep it going. 1-14-10: -$190.00 Took a nice hit on the RLM that day. Not fun. 1-15-10: +$210.00 Thanks oil! 1-20-10: +580.00 Much better all around today.

I think the issue at hand is that you are saying just ask a question and you will be glad to help; but when a few have asked for charts you say you can't do that. The TL servers run just fine the majority of the time so the issue is taking a screenshot and then uploading. If you use something like snagit, this process takes about 2-3 minutes from start to finish. A little longer if you really want to detail your screenshot. So I would suggest you either: 1) Tell people that you have no desire to help out other than the numbers you post 2) Tell people you are willing to help and then do it, which includes screenshots Maybe you didn't notice, but the requests so far have pretty much been - post screenshots. That is what your audience is asking for, your choice if you want to oblige.

1-11-10: +$150.00 Not a great day on oil but a profit. 1-12-10: NA as TimeWarner decided we were due for an internet outage. 1-13-10: +$840.00 Better day today on oil. Caught a couple moves there.

In theory dinero, if someone knew that you had a 100 lot stop loss order sitting somewhere they could gun for you. In theory. I think this discussion is heading into way off left field and it's not something any of us, myself included, need to be concerned about. When you start making consistent profits with 1 contract and then 2 and then maybe 3 you'll see what I mean. It's going to take years (if ever) for any of us little guys to be pushing 100 CL's at a time. So it's an interesting discussion about theories and guesstimates, but I think we should nip it now. If you want to open your own thread and run with it there, please do. I just don't want the p/l thread to get way off track. I can move these posts to the thread if you start one.

I disagree. As I said you cannot simply take a fixed % of overall volume to find what size you can trade. That makes the assumption that the volume being traded is fixed and WHEN you trade is irrelevant, which we know is false. How many contracts you can max out on is 100% a function of WHEN that trade is being put on, regardless of the overall daily volume. Trade during high volume times = more you can trade w/ no influence on the market Trade during low volume times = the easier your hand is shown to those looking for someone to exploit Not only does it need to be taken into account, it's the primary reason of determining when you can trade size or not. It's the ONLY thing that matters if you are looking to max out size if you want to hide your hand as the original question asked.

IMO the daily volume is only a part of the equation as that volume includes overnight trading. It also is a function of WHEN you are trading - if you trade during high volume times, then you can trade size accordingly. If you trade when it's slow and dead, you can't push too much. During the high volume times, I think you could do the following: Oil: 100 Soybeans: 50 Russel: 100-200 ES: 250-1000 6E: 100 And those are ballparks - so while I think you could trade a 100 in the CL, during high volume moves you could probably push that more. Also this is a function of HOW you enter. If you are all-in at one price and one price only, then you might have to come down a bit on those numbers. But if you can stagger in, then I think you could do that. For example, if the goal is to get long 100 CL, you could buy 25 ct's @ 4 levels or send a mkt order for 25, wait, send a 15 lot order, then a 30, etc. The good news is that you can literally make a good living trading 1-2 ct's if you wanted. I know it's nice to think about 50 or 100 lot orders but it is nice to know that you do not have to do that.

I'm just leaving it at 1-2 contracts being traded for purposes here. I thought about doing some adjustments but I just don't have the time right now to do it the right way. Whatever you see me post, you can just multiple good or bad on how many contracts you might be trading if you were mimicking my results. For example, a 10 lot account would have made $5k today.

This was being discussed when the announcement was made. There's at least 1 thread talking about this on here, try the search feature.

1-7-10: +$510.00 Missed a few nice ones on oil. I was a little preoccupied with stuff breaking around here (when it rain it pours) and lost concentration.

Less than 6 trades per YEAR and you want to pay like you trade 6 times per DAY. For 6 trades per year, any online discount broker is fine. Will they meet all your requirements? Probably not. So either suck it up or start your own brokerage firm that caters to your niche.

1-6-10: +$562.50 Per day profit target reached, but could have been better on oil. Bought the LOD around 1045am at the time, made some money but proceeded to watch it skyrocket.

Oil inventory today as well. That's important if trading oil.

1-5-10 Update: +$1489.96 Oil just said - hey, easy money here - and luckily I was around to take it. That was some great trading in the PM on oil.

1-5-10: +$310.00 Feel weird typing 10 as the year. Not great but not bad. Easing my way back in.

This thread shows you how to post the image in your post. Or you can just attach it to your post.

http://www.977music.com/ For mainstream music, that site has some good 'stations' that you can listen to for free. And if you sign up for an account and log in before listening you earn points on the site that you can redeem for free stuff. There are commercials but it's limited.

2009 is in the books. I'll leave this thread open for a bit, but move all 2010 discussions HERE. Thanks for making our first run of a p/l thread one of the most popular threads on TL. I hope it was as useful for many here as it was for me.

Sounds good! We will be moving to this thread in 2010.