Dinerotrader

Do all high performing athletes, astronauts, etc. extensively practice their craft in simulated environments to develop skills and habits for the real event. Yes they do, and they do it much more than they do the real thing because when the pressure is on, they want their trained habits to have already become instinctual reactions to whatever is placed before them. Is it possible to develop bad habits while training? Yes. Is it possible to develop good habits? Yes.

Oil long.

I'm not worthy to be even noted in the same post as Brownie and Bathrobe. Still have to SIM to work some things about. I dream of the day when I can join in. I think some great discussions will come from the competition if everyone can avoid talking about whether someone's account is real or not, etc.

Natural gas has been serving up some monster moves from these also but on an every other day basis. The big hammer candle just before the break was what I am starting to label the gambler's "tell". I like the TL break but the hammer just adds that extra umph. to my odds of success.

There was that lovely, false breakout at significant S/R with a down trendline. What a nice setup. Pretty good economic news to really make the move nice.

Way to come back strong. Oil and Gold got that same up move with different setups. I took the one on Gold.

Good to see you back Thales.

Their interface certainly sucks. Seems like some reputable platform should start something similar. it is a great idea but the execution isn't all there. I still plan on making it work because the idea makes too much sense to pass up. Risk free trading income. I have just realized I need probably another year of method work, strategy tweeking, trading in varying kinds of markets, etc. before I should expect to possibly be ready to be a consistent trader. I thought I was about there but I am not. I expected a shorter time horizon for profitability but that has been stressing my trading efforts to much. I thought if I skipped some of the time wasters profitable traders suggested I skip I would cut down the time it took to become profitable by enormous amounts but I think I overestimated this. While people are wasting time on buying systems and searching for the holy grail indicator, they are also getting in screen time and experience that can't be short cutted.

Funny because that is the same type of thing people start struggling with going from SIM to live trading. You have to do what makes sense to you at the time. Good luck.

If you are just looking at stocks, I like freestockcharts.com for getting started unless you are imploying some sort of fast scalping method. Very easy to customize, add indicators, and it is free. It is a great place to start learning the basics of support/resistance and easy to annotate charts. It also depends on what kind of strategy you will end up using which will constantly evolve over the next few years of your education. I use OEC for futures and have looked at stock on their platform a few times but don't have much experience with stocks on OEC.

Thought I was back but still need to work on my strategy. Good to see everyone's daily progress. Cory is killing it. Cory, look into collective2 to start an account there. Hopefully, I'll be back soon.

Nice false breakout before this last move up. I would have liked it much more if there hadn't been so much volatility on the swings just before it.

For those that trade oil, what types of strategies do you find most beneficial? I mostly trade reversals based on S/R, 123 setups, and lately been trying to work some trendlines into what I do. My usual problem is that some days I am raking it in and others, I get chopped to death with the small ranges. Overall, I am mostly working on getting my entry signals limited to 3-6 per day and upping my win rate on those. I started using a fixed stop loss of 12 ticks to limit my intervention in each trade and that has appeared to be good for me thus far. I think EnochBenjamin has a thread in the Candlestick section of TL explaining how he watches for tweezer and shooting star candle formations which breakout of the VWAP. I thought it would be good to get some general strategy ideas from those trading oil to include in this thread.

That was one fast sell off in the final minutes of oil today. Here is the 5 minute chart for the past 3 days. Morning gap fill was pretty textbook it seemed because of the strong S/R at 83.43 which helped pull price there and then send it on its way.

I have been experimenting with trendlines lately and am curious what your logical basis is for using them. In other words, what reality do you thing a trendline is showing that will have predictive value. Does it illustrate market psychology, is it just usefull becuase everyone else is also seeing it, does it just help you see the scoreboard of the game between bulls and bears? I was trying to determing which trendline I should favor, one drawn with contract volume based bars or one using time based charts. This lead me to considering much more about why I should really include them in my analysis. The more I use them, the more I realize I like them just because of the context they put price in. Just the same as the price and volume give me context, S/R and trendlines seem to give context at another level which makes other considerations easier. For example, price reactions to an S/R level feels easier to understand when it is at the end of an upward trend which hasn't been broken. Anyway, still playing around with them trying to see how and if they will fit into my strategy. Just thought I would continue this thread with a few thoughts in case anyone wants to discuss them more. Here is my SIM blotter I posted on the P/L forum Friday for my Gold trades. I was watching for trendline break along with some short term S/R to get an area to look for an entry. Once a major move starts on oil, gold, or gas I look at trendlines for pullback setups.

We alread hashed this out in prior posts on this thread in more detail than necessary.

As with anything, trying it out for a few weeks will let you know if you like it enough to continue using. It is also one of the few out there that is so cheap to try out, you don't have anything to lose. I always get responses to all my tech support questions very quickly. Lots of OEC threads to learn from here instead of a manual which is nice.

SIM +$754 (after commissions) 4 trades A failed breakout is starting to become one of my most valued indicators. Screwed up my 2nd gold trade and missed all that nice move down. I always trade poorly after I miss a big move so I am done for the day.

Thanks for all the discussion and responses. Hopefully, they continue. I am working to develop a trade strategy that lends itself to increasing my lot size as my account grows. Begin with the end in mind, as Stephen Covey would say. I'd like to end up a 50 lot trader but that will only happen if I have a strategy that can hold up to the various issues that arise with larger lot trading. I'd be interested to hear what trading method attributes you think are important to be successful at increasing your lot size over time.

IMO, Because the goal is always to make as much money as possible with the least amount of work. Scaling up requires no more work but makes you significantly more money if done correctly.

I don't have very much experience with it yet but I know if you are in a postion there is a small "close position" button on the order screen that you could quickly click and exit your order immediately at market. You would just need to keep that ticket screen open in the background. If you need to exit at limit you would have to prepare the order ticket for a limit close of position before you needed to quickly exit and manually enter the price once you were ready exit. You can use there system in test mode to make sure it is performing as expected before starting your track record. Like I said though, I have very little experience with it.

I wish they would make it so you could have multiple line tools with different defaults. I draw S/R levels that are color coded and trendlines that are color coded and it would be nice to just have 5 duplicate line tools with different defaults for thickness and color. That would save me a lot of chart drawing time.

Real Money +$112 2 entries SIM +$369 Had to quit trading early today and consequently missed the trade of the day on oil.

SIM +$1095 Okay, getting back to SIM to work out a new strategy. Worked really well today but I always do better on days with larger moves and natural gas went down big. I will be watching a couple other markets since the setups I am looking for occur for less frequently than my old method. I'm expecting 2-6 entries per day.

When I was trading soybeans I always used tick charts to get my entries. In fall last year, soybeans would really make some good trending moves so trading wasn't all that bad but they got much more choppier as time progressed and became harder for me to trade profitably. Throw up some charts if you can. I miss those charts with the crazy open ranges.