Dinerotrader

I agree with that. Just wanted to make sure there wasn't some hidden icon you can click on and it will show you where price will be 1 minute into the future. That would be helpful. I don't know why I like the right margin. I always think I need more screen space but when I don't use it I feel like my mind doesn't have "room" to "see" where price is going. When I start using lots of quotes it normally means its an emotional thing.

Thanks. I think I somehow didn't realize you could right click things and get specific properties for that item you clicked on. It makes sense with since everything in Windows does this but the other items that show up on the "right-click" box are not item specific so I got confused. This is the key I was missing. Thanks.

The more I look at Oil charts and contemplate your ideas above the more I think I really need a rule system to decide when I will trail my profit or when I will leave my stop alone to wait for the 150-300 tick move. Today, I remember getting into 2 of the positions based on a longer term S/R consideration and I thought, this could be a huge move. Both ended up being huges but I have a habit right now of trailing so I didn't consider just letting it ride without trailing it. There are however many trades to be taken which are not based on such good S/R levels so those I would take what I can get and probably trail 10-15 ticks behind or at each natural stop point. If price is at a range extreme (from a larger scale chart) and looking to reverse, that seems like a point at which you don't trail and see if you can make that homerun. What is the worst that can happen, you take a ~breakeven trade. Thales demonstrated this on a USDCAD trade recently in his thread and it made sense to me. You probably saw his post about this trade. Of course even with a home run trade you have to decide when to pull the trigger and take your boat load of money out of the unrealized column.

Okay here is how my chart window looks now. Do you have any suggestions? Did you ever figure something out to change your chart appearance that was really useful that I haven't incorporated? Question 3 I haven't been able to figure out how to change the text I write on the chart. I click on the text tool and I can't change the font or size of the text.

Thanks garak. I couldn't seem to get this figured out.

Great, now you went and let the cat out of the bag to everyone.

ZS What was that spike! Is the chart correct?

I like the top one best. I guess my current avatar could pass as something oil related. My avatar is actually my logo I designed for my photography business.

Holy Freaking Oil trades. Today was and probably will continue to be a great day to trade oil. I am really busy at work so I can't keep trading it. I should have had a record day but I am still struggling with trailing my stops too close on the big oil moves. Check out how much of the move I missed on this one. I arrowed my entry and exit. All the move between the circles was lost for me. About 120 ticks lost on a trail that was 5 ticks too close. I did better later on and kept my stop at breakeven though I was up 20 ticks and got stopped out at breakeven. The 3rd move I was in, I thought a 15 tick trail would be reasonable and once again I got stopped out only to miss out on more of the move. I am still working on this. I will be shocked if Brownsfan's P/L isn't amazing today. So far 3 oil moves, each giving a possible 100 ticks each. What a day. I couldn't even watch the ZS I was so focused on oil. SIM +$380

You might need to start putting in longer days with those numbers. Nice work.

SIM The day started alright. I was up $300 on Oil. There were 2 large oil moves today that I got a piece of but I was frustrated that I didn't get more since the retracement was manageable with trailing stop. The frustration motivated some more careless trades on Oil which shouldn't have happened. I tried the QM today and it just didn't feel the same as the CL contract. Not sure exactly why. The ZS worked me. Once price got back into a channel it had established recently, and the whipping began. I should have help off on any trade once it moved to that range. BF, it is interesting how some days the ZS seems easy to trade and some days oil seems easy. There could be numerous reasons for this but I was curious of your thoughts. Do you think you can anticipate to any degree if one or the other will be harder to trade based on where price is at? The late oil short was certainly worth a try even late in the day. Wish I could have been watching it at that time.

Question 1 I am trying to mark S/R lines from prior days so I can have them noted on the current chart but my scale gets messed up so everything is tiny. How can I make the chart NOT try to fit all my S/R lines on the screen but still adjust to price as it moves? Question 2 I haven't been able to figure out how to change the X axis and associated grid lines to show the time intervals I want. For example I would like to change the chart below to just show vertical grid lines at each 30 minutes and have those grid lines labled with the time.

Good idea. I will do the same on my trade screen to watch volumes. I think I am also going to try to set up some reminders. I had the stomach thing over thanksgiving. Not fun.

Thanks for the heads up. I don't trade corn very often. I need to set up some reminders for myself to go off when I need to start becoming aware of contract rolling. Here is the volume split today. Littlefish, feel free to join this thread. BF and I are all alone on the grain trades. I am still just SIM trading.

Not a lot of time today to focus and trade. Oil just kept on faking me out until I finally got a hold of a reasonable move. Lots of software freezing up today. I caught most of the big down move (offset by some bad trades) on the ZS which I was expecting to happen (see grains thread) so nice call on that one Dinero. Oh, why thank you, it was a good anticipatory conjecture. I must be tired.

It seems like there should be some good options through some type of collaboration of self employed people or small business assocations.

My chart is currently set to 100 ticks. I only noticed the R for this trade when price started stalling. I probably need to draw more S/R levels before hand so I am ready and mark them in some way so that I know how significant I expect them to be. This would have been a level I would have given low probability of becoming tradeable but when it started stalling I would have been ready. This is making more sense as I write this.

Do you have any recommendations for finding a "broker you trust". My natural inclination is to not trust a broker and assume they are just trying to make some money off me. I used a broker many years ago when I was self employed and it worked out okay but I really had no idea if should trust them. I had to because I didn't know what else to do. Price isn't my biggest issue. I just want something reasonable that covers the things you expect insurance to cover for a competitive price. I can earn enough to cover the monthly premium on a quick 20 second oil trade.

Here is where we stand on the ZS. A valiant effort to break higher today only to come right back before close. Just about the same thing happened yesterday except today the bulls had a little more gusto during the 1st hour of trading but they subsequently got beaten down the rest of the day. 2 tries at new highs and both tries failed. I will be looking for a breakdown tomorrow especially since today's close was ended in a drop off. I wish I could see a multi year chart of this so I could tell if seaonality affects the larger picture. If anyone has a larger scale chart, please share.

This morning I just got this virus on my computer and as I am finding out, many others I know that use ant-virus software have also gotten it. I have always taken measures to prevent viruses and have never gotten one until today. We are still trying to remove it. I am not exactly sure of the best prevention but make sure your anti-virus software is up to date and look into getting a program called MalwareBytes Anti-Malware to prevent getting it. The bare bones version of this program is free. The virus specifically prevents you from installing this software once you already have the virus. Most of the fixes for this virus involve using this software which is the only reason I mention it. The virus is called Security Tool. Do a search on google and you will find loads of people trying to deal with this virus. I wish one of my family members that dealt with it had told me so here is your warning to get prepared. It got right through my Mcafee anti-virus software.

Here is a SIM trade I took this morning on Oil. There was some R at the top level back on the 23rd when Oil was there last. Stop was only 3 ticks back. I ended up getting 15 ticks on this, stop got a little too tight, otherwise I'd still be in it. Hopefully, you can see my entry and exit triangles on the 1st pic. This is the type of trade I am having a hard time building rules around. It worked but I bet against the trend on a reversal because of the R and the 5 bars that got stuck in that area. Maybe this isn't a trade a should have taken because of the trend but maybe my risk was low enough that it was okay to take. How would you form some rules around this?

LOL. I bet you would really like the warm weather. No intervention for me. I won't be going through the indicators. I do trust you guys. That is why I hang around your threads and post my novice ideas so I can get set straight when I stray from the path to success.

Yea, I probably shouldn't have posted that last post. It came across the wrong way. I won't be using indicators because I do trust you and others that have helped me so much thus far. I might use an indicator if it clearly showed me some of the things I look for in price movement but I have so much more research and trade analysis to do before I can start that search. I'll try to keep posting some charts that look like reasonable setups based on the signals I noted above.

Reliable signals.... Since I have never looked at indicators, all I have in my arsenal to consider is S/R levels, trendlines, candles, and price action, if you can call that a signal. Maybe I should look into moving averages a little since so many traders are using them to decide on trades also.

Got a nice hammer on this stock today right at a possible support level. We'll see if tomorrow brings "confirmation" PA to validate the reversal trend.