Trader P/L 2010

[Trader P/L 2010]

Any day I find myself down by a nearly 2 grand and finish positive is hardly what I would call a "crappy" day. Be a "half full," not a "half empty" kind of guy, dinero.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

 

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.

[Trader P/L 2010]

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.

 

[Trader P/L 2010]

Personally, I'm ok w/ shutting it down at +$500 or higher.

 

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.

[Trader P/L 2010]

Like we've talked about dinero, that's the beauty of trading - if you want to make more money, just trade more contracts.

 

As a side note - I know you are getting comfortable trading multiple markets, just make sure you are also watching your margins so that in real-time trading you can take all these trades.

 

For example:

 

GCL is $2700

GNG is $3375

So just those 2 markets will require an account of $6075 if you put on simultaneous trades. I have no idea what you will be trading with, but just keep this in mind. If you opened an account for $5k and expected to get into it, you'd get rejected orders and that could be very frustrating.

 

The only way to mimic this in sim is to have OEC set your sim account size to the same as your real one. I think the default is $50k. If you want to make it realistic, send a support ticket asking to reset it based on what you think you will start with.

 

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.

[Trader P/L 2010]

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.

 

[Trading Oil and Gold]

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.

 

[Overlaying an Indicator from a Different Timeframe]

This may be of use to those that want to overlay an indicator of a certain timeframe on a different timeframe

 

Great stuff BF. Thanks for posting.

[Trader P/L 2010]

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.

 

[Trader P/L 2010]

 

Also, I'm going to try my best to post all of my trades on the real-time charts thread, as close to real-time as possible/reasonable/convenient. I figure it's a good way to keep track of my trades, get feedback on my trading, and to help anyone who could benefit from my posts.

 

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.

[Range Bar Errors in OEC?]

If OEC's improper charting is given priority over other issues reported to them earlier, then they will never fix their data feed.

 

I hope OEC give priority to fixing their data feed first so that traders who use professional third party charting software could trade via them.

 

If the data is fixed they might focus on fixing their charting, which sucks indeed not only when it comes to range or tick bars.

 

Regards

 

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.

[Trader P/L 2010]

Good day considering all my a.m. computer problems and watching the CL tank without me....at least I earn a living.

I have to give some credit to my autobot....thanks.

 

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.

[Where to Find Web Based Futures Charts?]

Does anyone know of a way I can watch the futures charts at work on a website?

 

I am unable to watch futures at work because I can't download software on my work computer and the data feed would certainly annoy the IT people's concern over bandwidth usage.

 

I use freestockcharts.com for stocks and it would seem like you could find something similar for futures but maybe not. My searches haven't turned up much up to now so maybe there is a larger issue at work which keeps such a valuable service from being offered.

 

:bang head:

 

Cheers.

 

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

 

[Reading Charts in Real Time]

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

 

[Trader P/L 2010]

+$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.

 

[Reading Charts in Real Time]

Dinero, do you not see the bar atth etop of his charts that says "click to enlarge"?

 

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:

[Reading Charts in Real Time]

When you find yourself drawing lots of tcl's that price keeps pushing thru forcing you to redraw increasing more steep tcl's than your probably looking too hard for a ct trade and should be thinking trend trades.Also when price strongly goes thru S/R levels without even pausing then think trend trades.HTH

 

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.

[Reading Charts in Real Time]

Excellent post.On 2/2 price was in a strong trend and just pausing for a few bars before continuing up thru any minor resistance that formed.When wedges are failing this is a heads up that you should be thinking strong trend and trade with trend.On 2/3 price is in trading range and bouncing from top to bottom of range.Wedges were working better especially when they formed near the top of the trading range.Selling the top and buying the bottom until price breaks out of the trading range and starts trending again would be advised or just stay flat.

 

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.

[Reading Charts in Real Time]

Good eye but don't forget to draw your support lines

 

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.

 

[Trader P/L 2010]

SIM

 

+$105

 

Can't seem to filter out the bad trades right now.

+$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.

 

[Reading Charts in Real Time]

Yes. But today would likely have traded as it has with or without that news item, don't you think?

 

I was posing the question based on the two shaded areas of the chart, which represent the pit traded hours from yesterday and today respectively.

 

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.

[Reading Charts in Real Time]

Crude Oil - Yesterday and Today ...

 

 

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.

[Trader P/L 2010]

SIM

 

+$105

 

Can't seem to filter out the bad trades right now.

 

[Reading Charts in Real Time]

the current natural gas chart.

 

Would you call this the "3 dives to the bottom" formation?

 

[Trader P/L 2010]

The overnight was pretty good. Letting my robot do the trading for me while I sleep.

 

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.

[Trader P/L 2010]

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.