I have been trading the CL market & enjoy trading it. But I have to improve on my methodology & looking for some suggestions please.

My Mistakes: The last few days have been very choppy with long spikes. Trailing stops / stop loss would not seem appropriate but waiting for the trend to develop while in the market is also not the option. I understand it is best to stay away from such a market, but then a trend is developed which seems amazing & I feel like a bummer missing out on it or being in the wrong side of it.

How do you identify a trend reversal on a 5 in time frame?
What kind of a stop loss or trailing stop have you had a success with?
How do you identify the market range before hand?

Please suggest

Its tough to define a trend because its a bit subjective and its always best to have your own parameters that define bullish , bearish or stay away conditions . Also , whatever you use to define the conditions - STICK WITH THE SAME DEFINITION for as long as possible and dont change it unless you have solid proof that its not strong . In other words define what you call a trend ( or bias , thats what I call it ) write it down and test it under all kinds of market conditions and when you have a lot of samples you can measure your results and then youll know exactly what to change and adjust .

What I have been using , and its good for a 5 min. , is just the 20 ema as a reference point . Then when an entire bar manages to trade above or below the ema without touching the ema then thats the direction I look to trade and enter after retracements occur . When an entire bar trades on the other side of the ema without touching it then ( to me ) the trend has changed direction . Its simple and effective and easy to repeat over and over again .

If I was trading CL though I would read and digest Jeffs AYN thread and adapt it to my tastes cause that guy kicks the CLs butt most days .

Sweet! Thanks Eric. Do you have a link to Jeff's page?

All you need To me simple is better..... I don't want to look at too many indicators. Besides, all indicators are doing is telling me is what the price is doing so.... why not learn to read price action? Some of the tools that help me do this are the 50 EMA and …

Jeffs CCI Jeff, Do u take the trade when the bar is taking shape (the one that sets the CCI (6) crossing the zero line)? U do not wait for the close? Is it possible u enter and it ends being a yellow bar?

All you need and his CCI thread are excellent . The important thing is the - DONT CHANGE EVERYTHING CONSTANTLY concept .

Additionally, the RSqueeze can be very useful for identifying a trend:

rSqueeze for strategy First, thanks to Roonius for this excellent indicator. I highly recommend it. Now, has anyone been able to use it successfully in a strat? I've added "using RSqueeze.Utility;" to declarations but any indicator condition I've tried …

TJ