Dinerotrader

Got a nice move from that support level. I wonder if the combination of a horizontal and trendline support level give a higher probability of a reversal becoming profitable.

I am not sure what is best but I just started by reading 4 hours a day for 2 weeks through posts on this site and it really gave me a good flavor for what area was the most natural/compatible with my own personality and ideas. There isn't much that hasn't been discussed so my suggestion is to just get reading for a while. All the best.

Right at a trend line as well as a support level. Seems like a pretty low risk area to go long with a stop just below trend and support.

No P/L for me today. I realized that I need to develop more rules for my trading. I thought I could develop confidence based on just P/L from SIM but I realized that the my confidence needs to be based in the rules I follow for entry/exits. Once my confidence is based in those rules and my P/L shows I am consistant, then I think I could try trading real money again. My rules for when to enter are not well defined so I am trying to determine how detailed I need to make them. I wanted to just watch price and enter accordingly but I think I need to define more precisely when to consider entering based on PA. There is some balance I need to strike between setups that anyone could trade and setups only I can trade because of reading PA. Does that make sense? Anyone can see a breakout set up on a chart but not everyone can read how price is reacting to that area. I tend to get large runners so having more loser trades than winners works out for the P/L but it makes it hard to keep confidence after multiple losers even though a large winner is just around the corner. I guess I have to end up with a win/loss ratio that doesn't wipe out my confidence before I get to a winner.

Well, after a long night of considering my plan I decided the primary reason for my poor trading yesterday is that when simming, I would trade 3-4 types of entry setups. Once I started with the real money, my first thought was, "I need to just take more reliable entries and not overtrade". Of course, since I didn't have enough confidence in what my best setups were, it got hard to know when to pull the trigger. So, I am back to simming to build the confidence I need in whichever setup proves to be most profitable. I caught 2 big moves today and along with a group of some other crap trades (which were on Oil so I netted to ~0). I was down $300 at one point which would have probably kept me from trading if it were real. The best setups occured after I was down. I did throw another contract on the ZS trade as it progressed so that really helped the P/L. SIM results

I am surprised you can watch soybeans on a 1 minute chart with the 1st minute being so fast. Don't you just end up with 1 big ol' candle?

We got our breakout and it was good.

Quick look at Oil right now. Lots of reversal points to play. A break above could get moving with how much resistance it will have to break through.

Just so there is a specific example of this inventory craziness here on this thread I took a couple pics of the before and after the inventory comes out. I am going to watch the DOM more often just before this release because on this one it seemed obvious that everyone was betting heavily on a great upward move which made some people a lot of money. Have you looked into this BF? Here is the DOM right before it.

The Silver Lining. I've been looking for something to brighten my day after the losses and I realized that the commissions I am paying per trade are lower than I expected. I was always figuring $5 round trip but they are much less than that. :thumbs up:

i have been putting a plan together to move from my corporate job to full time trader and one of the things on my list is to find health insurance. Does anyone have a good idea of where to look for health insurance for someone that is self-employed and get reasonable rates for a family?

Okay. We are now at the low end of the channel which has served up some great trades so far. Price chopped around the bottom of the range for the end of the day which is suspect in my eyes. In the past, it reversed quite quickly from that area. The most likely scenario would be a break to the upside tomorrow but we could finally break out of the trading channel. The biggest problem is that volume might be lower tomorrow due to the holidays. I can't imagine oil just sitting around between 75.5 and 76.5 but who knows. Here is a closer look at some levels I will be watching. Inventory comes out tomorrow at 10:30 I believe with quite a few more numbers before that. I forgot about oil inventory last week and I was in a SIM trade at the time. It was like a friggin' candlestick firework show. Glad I learned that lesson on SIM.

It doesn't help you to see where things are at on a larger scale? I always feel like my better trades occur at the range extremes so the larger time frames help me identify those. What is the largest time frame you look at or thing is useful for you?

Gabe, Your charts are looking much better lately. That was a choppy area to be getting into a trade. I should know since I did that a bunch today and lost. Would you qualify your entry point as one of your most profitable setups. If not, why not wait for a better one. BTW, I am mostly writing to mysefl here as therapy for taking bad trades today.

Here is a quick look at the ZS with some timer perspective. I made the mistake of trading the movement in the danger zone today (see chart 2). The ZS can provide home run moves as well as some nice daily moves but they usually occur, IMO, once you've gotten the extremes of the range we are in. The middle chop area provides much less statistically sound trade setups so I always come back to the idea that I should just trade the best setups and not just any setups. You'll also notice that the speed of movement and volatility are much less exciting the days were are sitting in the middle of this zone. Look at some of the moves on the first chart where price broke out of the zone it was in. Those could be days you make 3 month's worth of money if you can manage your risk appropriately with some additional contracts. If you have some similar analysis on any of the other grains or a different perspective on trading the ZS please post something.

BF, Do you watch wheat or corn very much. I have only been watching soybeans but I took a look at the corn chart today and found the movements pretty tradable. I might have to take a few days to watch the corn charts and see how they trade on SIM.

Why is it so common for daytraders to trade the ES since most of them aren't trading it with large size (the major reason for trading it) that I am aware of. My guess is that the required margin is so small. We need some kind of poll here on TL so we can see of all the active traders, what futures they are trading. It sometimes feels like we are the only ones watching/trading oil and soybeans but I would think others must be also.

I tried it in SIM a few times but stopped because the fills weren't realistic at all. You are correct of course. I haven't yet developed any good approach to trade the ES yet so I shouldn't have tried it. I looked back at my charts zoomed at a little and I was just way to focused on the tiny moves. The CL short was such an obvious breakout. I got into some of it because of the momentum but I didn't have my eye on that level, which is unbelieveable since I watch those levels constantly. Plus, the CL went right down to the bottom of the channel I noted on the Oil thread and bounced right off that support area.

Well for my first day with real money, it was a crappy day. Many lessons learned. I want to say that I picked a bad day to start but trading is full of days where you don't get the setups you want so you just have to sit on your hands. I should have been a little smarter and waited until we got out of the choppy areas before taking some trades. I shouldn't have traded the ES at all but I thought I should at least get a few trades in on it so I could tell how it traded live. A little disheartening but I know losses occur and I know I traded in many spots where the danger level was too high. At least now I can start writing a draft of my market wizard chapter where I talk about my first loss in futures before I became the greatest trader of all time.

Does OEC have a way to set some risk management controls to your account. For example, setting a maximum loss your account can have in one day so that if something goes wrong....like your DOM freezing and price drops and your stop doesn't trigger for some reason, your account will liquidate all positions if a certain loss level is reached. I want to make sure I never have a loss larger than my stop loss so that ultimately I am in complete control of how much I am risking on every trade. I am reviewing my risk management controls and I want to make sure I have utilized what OEC has to offer.

Today was going to turn out well and then the computer froze up while I was in a ZS trade and it went downhill from there. My 1st trade on Oil this morning got me in a great move up and I was up $250 or so. After the computer rebooted, I got out at a loss on the ZS and decided to just scrap the day and spent the rest of the day taking lots of trades on really short term signals. I am planning on taking my first live futures trade tomorrow (if I can find a good setup) so I can get a feel for what my commissions should be and get started playing with real money. I have been simming for a while now and it is time to get some skin in the game. I am pretty excited to finally take some real trades. I guess that will make a journey of about 6 months from knowing nothing about futures to finally trying a live trade. Stocks were fun but so far I enjoy futures much more. I was thinking and my "back of the napkin" calculation shows I have spent around 1,100 hours so far studying and SIM trading so far so I still have a long ways to go if hours count for anything.

I only had 30 minutes to trade and luckily some reasonable opportunities presented themself. Thanks for the tip on the oil contract BF.

11/19/09 +447.48 I missed the big oil move of the day which I had fully anticipated but I was on the road while it happened. Is there a way to make OEC generate a commissions expense so you have a net number at the end of the day. I am still overtrading so I need to get better at waiting for the moves. A big reduction in my P/L might help me with that.

Well, we got that drop I was looking for. Too bad I was on the road while it happened. I love it when the trend channel just keeps showing you where price might be headed.

Just another look at this Euro setup since apparently we were all watching it trying to determine if trend would reverse at support. I have been experimenting with trend lines lately and when I saw support get broken and quickly reverse back above it, my gaze turned to the trend line. Price came back from support and found resistance at the trend line again which kept me on the sidelines. Then price broke the trend line which got price to jump a little but I don't trust trend lines breaks enough to jump in. I wanted a HH made after the first move up to feel like odds were in my favor for a full trend reversal off of that support. It never made that HH so I never got in. Just a quick note on trend lines. I am still experimenting with them. When I began trading I thought they were simply the mere tendency of a chart watcher to find order out of chaos when no real order existed. I have seen their accuracy in providing such great entries so many times that I can't help but use them right now. I should probably read some trendline books at this point to see what great minds have said on the subject. Up to now, I watch and use them and just take notes from my own PA observations. Good night.