Dinerotrader

Well, the "crappines" was derived not from the P/L but from my trade executions. Do you ever find yourself getting into trades and sitting there thinking, "what was I thinking entering into this trade?" That happened several times today. I haven't yet had time to nail down why. I would hope I could say I had a good trading day even if my P/L was in the red because of the way I executed my trades. That all being said, being a complaining, "half empty" person is not my goal.

SIM +$212 What a crappy day. I was down $1,700 at one point, then got stopped out of long positions before the rally by 2 ticks on the 6E and the Russel. Caught the rally on oil and natural gas. Overall, poor entry selection. The gap up this morning threw a lot of confusion into my analysis. I was playing for strength because of the gap and buying support reversals and they just kept stopping me out. Once I got back to the positive zone I had lost my nerve from fear of going negative again so I had to stop trading.

The ability to stop trading early and go enjoy the day knowing you already made your money is a feeling of freedom/success like few others. When I used to buy and sell cars at big dealer auctions, if my friend and I did well in the morning, we'd call it a day and go to the movies.

Good points! A few weeks ago I actually sent in a ticket to have them lower my fake money to a more reasonable level since I am not planning on trading $50k to start. I'll start trading with an amount that can handle simulaneous positions or orders. The only problem with stopping at $620 profit is that I need to have some better days to offset the loss days. If the number and extent of my loss days is low enough that won't matter as much. Quick note: I've started almost exclusively using sell or buy stops in the direction of my trade which seems to be helping me stay out some bad trades. It is so nice when you see a good setup, put in a stop order to get you in when price starts moving your way and then price just moves opposite the way your setup was indicating but you never get in the trade because of that stop order.

SIM +$620 Calling it a day after 45 minutes of trading. Maybe Paul Tudor Jones would say start increasing your position size at this point while you are hot but I don't think I am there as a trader yet.

What a day for oil. I'll remember this day for a long time. This chart emphasizes the reason S/R is the foundation for my trading. Large moves based on predetermined S/R levels.

Great stuff BF. Thanks for posting.

SIM +$2,020 Record SIM trading for me. Obviously because of the great moves on Oil and natural gas. Tried a few trades on Silver. Calling it a day before my profits get below $2,000.

Just a suggestion, take it or leave it, you could start your own log thread if you want to post every trade. You sound like you have an organized plan that would facilitate your own thread we could follow.

I am not sure why you would bother dealing at all with OEC if you weren't satisfied with their service/charts/etc. If the current value I find in using OEC wasn't there, I would go find one of the other many brokers out there. No reason to waste time fighting with a broker when there is money to be made. Brownsfan, you are consistently willing to provide feedback and help with people's OEC issues including my own. Thanks for the free help.

Yeah, my autobot was sitting the couch this morning eating cheese nips saying how it wasn't going to be a trend day since we just had one...yada yada. Then he turned into a camaro and drove off. Luckily, I didn't believe him and had a good trading day. Sorry, the robot comments just flow everytime you talk about it. I'll try to resist the urge.

Well, finviz got futures. Pretty useful. Several time frames and the weekly charts go back quite a way. Impressive for free. How long until all the futures data becomes free like stocks? Finviz.com link

We'll see how this "3 pushes down" performs at this big support level.

+$1,670 Yea! Best SIM day ever. Oil was acting weird in the morning so I gambled on it being a big down morning and just trailed my stop at pullbacks. Keeping a trailing stop 30 ticks back is hard on SIM, I can't imagine doing it with real money. 6E was bad. For some reason I just couldn't get my head around the fact that I should be short the Euro. Calling it a day now before I go blow my profits on bad setups thinking I'm supertrader.

My Bad. All this time on TL and I always use the thumbnails and didn't ever use the yellow "click to enlarge" bar. Sorry about that. :crap:

FYI patrader, I can never read your charts because there is no attached thumbnail for me to use to enlarge the picture. See Thales' post above as example of thumbnail.

patrader, Could you post a quick chart of showing the wedge failures/successes from yesterday and today's oil you are talking about. I learn better with visuals.

Sorry about that. I was trying to get a clean chart for posting before price went anywhere so i didn't put my S/R in. For those interested here is how it turned out. I exited at circle for ~40 ticks making up for the losses I had trying to catch the reversal on each of the 3 indianpushdrives to the bottom.

+$595 Thought I was done but then oil started moving right before close. Here is the new P/L. Nice little 40 tick, 30 second trade.

Thank goodness for inventory today. I made most my ticks right after it came out. Today has been a pretty slow oil day otherwise. Tight range. Things just finally started moving a little more a couple minutes ago which is a little late for me. Wow, what happened. 12,500 contracts in 1 minute. News? I guess I wasn't done for the day.

I normally do better on consolidation/range days than trending days. Trending days are hard for me because price looks overextended the entire day making reversals look attractive over and over again but they just stop you out over and over again. Being able to trade either day profitably or know how to stay flat on the one you can't trade profitably truly is one of the greatest hurdles to becoming a good trader. It took me a while to realize that.

SIM +$105 Can't seem to filter out the bad trades right now.

the current natural gas chart. Would you call this the "3 dives to the bottom" formation?

My robot was up all night trading and he started off well but then lost a couple big ones, got emotional, and revenge traded till morning. Not good p/l in the end.

SIM +$22 Oil worked me over today. Like I posted before, trending days are not for me. A few reasonable trades on the other futures saved me from annihilation.