Dinerotrader

This has been a great thread for ideas about this. Thanks for all the help guys. I've been setting up some milestones with my wife recently to lay out a clear path to transitioning my career to trading. Health insurance is definitely one aspect I have to have nailed down to make sure she is on board.

Why? Chart? Analysis?

I am a CPA but unfortunately I do not do taxes at all anymore and I have never done small bus. accounting, only large corporate stuff. IMO you need to focus on getting someone who will help you avoid or manage the largest risks you face as a trader (related to the risk of losing money and time) , ie. law suits and tax audits. Having someone as part of your business team that can confidently and knowledgably help you through the most difficult times is worth a lot. I would focus on those credentials when you start interviewing and looking for someone. This is part of my overall philosophy though. For example, I don't get the cheapest car insurance so that I have the lowest monthly premium possible. I use USAA even though they aren't the cheapest because they are most often the highest rated in satisfacton for handling claims and my own experiences with them have been great. I don't want to pay an insurance company a low premium only to end up screwed when an accident happens because they treat me unfairly when I need my car replaced or medical bills paid. My NOTE: Brownsfan, are you saying we should nickname DugDug "double D's".

SIM +$655 Should have made like 60 more ticks on natural gas if i'd have managed the exits better. Good day.

Being able to adapt to the market and change which futures you are trading or how you are trading what you usually trade sounds like a valuable part of a trader's business model. My Dad is constantly reminding me about how many great traders were good for a certain number of years and then couldn't make the same returns anymore. I wonder sometimes if much of the difficulty of being successful for the long run is related to being able to adapt to the market as it changes.

SIM +280 Crazy day. I was down $500, then up $720, then down, then up. I amount of selling pressure pushing prices on the CL kept taking me by surprise. Luckily it was inventory day on natural gas so I rode a couple moves about a minute after inventory came out. I had to exit a natural gas trade 30 seconds before inventory came out which is annoying but necessary. Shouldn't have traded the RLM but I did. If you stop trading because you have made a certain amount of profit does that just mean you think your setups have a significant degree of luck to them. It would seem like if I trusted my setup, I would just keep on trading it during the hours I thought is was effective since statistically, I will make money. I can't decide if the quiting while you are ahead is a good idea or if it is just the best you can do with an average trading strategy.

Depends how you trade I guess. Oil often will make moves exactly in line with a trendline. This post was mostly just an interesting observation. You'll see a few posts before that oil traded in an obvious channel for a long period and provided many a good trade.

Might be about that time to look for opportunities to take long term oil positions if this shows some strength off the December low. We'll see how it plays the next few days.

These are the kind of days I do well on. We'll see if I can cut my losses short when the trend days come in the future. Best SIM day for me ever. Just 1 contract. SIM

Welcome to the oil family Thales. It seems like before BF started posting about oil I never really heard much discussion about it on the forum but it seems to have seduced many. Of course, you are no stranger to crude. I know you posted about having very long term positions on oil as it came down from its highs.

All my trades are based around S/R levels so here are the rules I am considering implementing for regulating when to shut'er down. I am also only looking to trade reversals as I don't feel competent enough to trade breakouts yet. 1. Only 2 entries are allowed at each S/R level to catch a move. After 2 tries, only watching is allowed. (my stops are normally ~5 ticks away from entry so 2 stop outs would be ~10 ticks on oil or natural gas) 2. Stop trading all together for the day if I have been stopped out 4 times in a row or if a closed trade makes my loss greater than $200. Let me know if these make any sense or if you have found a more logical basis for these types of rules.

Yea, there might be lots of support to hit in this area. I'll probably keep the stop closer than ususal on the short I am in.

Got stopped out and had to switch things up.

Oil Looking for a reversal breakout above #2

I took it because of the exactness of the DB like you said. When price reverses at such an exact point it seems like that it is an even greater confirmation that you are going to get a better reversal but I am not sure if that is in fact true, just seems like it though.

Not to bother your thread log but I thought of you when I saw this double bottom on the 6E. Got a good piece of it on SIM so doesn't count for much. I really enjoy your thread.

FORM Trendline and support level reversal is the play here. I'll buy in if the index futures look like they are rallying up of the support levels they hit today.

The tabs on the charting screen. I suppose am incorrectly assuming other people's layouts are similar to mine. I breakout my charts in a seperate window and have all my charts on that screen so flipping from future to future is just about tab selection. I only use one monitor right now.

Several things: 1. I still suck at trading 2. I have never traded the YM or NQ so I am unfamiliar with how they move bar by bar 3. YM/NQ/ES all move in similar ways so switching between them when they are all setting up or beginning to move from news is tricky. I'm not used to watching multiple futures that move often in tandom. I almost never trade bonds right now. What got me interested in oil and grains was that they can move quickly and often without a whole lot of choppiness. Of course, that changes over time. I trade far too many markets right now and I am currently figuring out how to scale back. My plan right now is trade 2 futures on smaller time frames and keep an eye out on the others with larger time frame charts. I hate to look at some future in retrospect and see that there was an obvious reversal opportunity if I had only noted the S/R level that was obvious and then kept an eye out for its approach to that price. I'd also like to get so I can hold some positions for many days if I got primo position on a large time frame chart without having to use a 50 tick stop. I've heard this many times and am realizing it more now, that many trading methods are good in a trending or a choppy market but not both. This leads me to think you have to do one of the following: 1. find a way to determine what each day is going to be before trading and then use the matching method (not sure anyone has a good way to predict if the days action will be trending or nontrending) 2. find a method of trading that works in both 3. trade your method on both types of days but try to set rules to limit losses on a day that is not ideal for your method 4. give up and play the lotto That is more than you asked but I had a few more things on my mind.

Sometimes I just can't communicate properly. Hopefully the pic below makes sense of my comments. Excel has this feature that I use constantly so I included a pic below as an example.

It would really be helpful if you could change the color of the tabs on the charts so you could make your oil charts all black and your indicies red and so on. That way with just a glance you can select what you want. Seems like it would be an easy upgrade.

I have to agree. Land Rover has some ongoing problems especially with their electrical system reliability. They make nice looking stuff but you will see that it depreciates very fast and that is because they break quite often.

I think most people would just see an old man's vet even if it were a ZR1 which is why I think Chevy/Porshe should make some changes to their higher end versions of their models or make them into a new model line. They are sweet though. The EVOs are definitely in the "teenager cool car" category but they are amazingly fast. I don't think most people realize how fast the newer EVOs are because is looks like a regular old mitsubishi with a few body kit differences.

I love Audis. You gotta have your daily driver, your weekend driver, the family car, the truck for work stuff, ..etc. We were just talking weekend drivers mostly. The headlights on the new models are so sweet. Audi makes the R8 which would be a great weekend driver. I am partial to the A8 though for a commuter car. I am not as big on Mercedes styling for some reason. If I went with Mercedes it would probably be the CLS. A8 R8

OKSB I've been looking around for stocks with nice hammers that touch support on their daily chart. If I find that, then I want to see that when price touched support, volume kicked in, and the buying began because the bulls now had enough reason to go long at such a discount price. Here is good example except the support level is not as clear as I would like.