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When I got in this morning and fired up my platform, 6E had just formed a nice pullback entry. Since I hadn't gone through my morning ritual yet of checking the news, marking up my charts with S/R lines, and reading my plan over, I opted to pass on the trade. 10 minutes later when I was ready to trade, 6E had just made the last red candle for the next 75 ticks.
By the time the next pullback occurred, price had made a new HOD and volume was dropping off, so I opted to not trade. Same story on the next two pullback opportunities: new HOD and decreasing volume. No 6E trades today.
CL was whipping around all morning. The 5 min bars were about 20 ticks each, so I went to the 1 minute chart.
Trade #1
When CL was poking down at the overnight low pivot low of 91.42, the 1 minute chart had a nice pullback to the EMA. I placed a sell stop at 91.40 and was filled. Since I was on the 1 min chart, I scaled my target back to 13 ticks and it hit easily on that 20 tick bar. +13 ticks.
I wasn't very comfortable on the 1 min chart, but kept watching and made 2 more trades for +14 ticks, but in sim.
1) I can't fault your initial short, it seems OK to me and you can't win them all.
2) Your long was very late however, you missed three key areas where price was showing strength and you didn't get long on any of them. When you did get long, you did so after a huge bearish candle (a candle with a big wick and closed near the low).
3) You should have been considering shorts after that bearish candle, and once it broke down that would be a good place to enter short. You were a few bars late.
Of course this is all in hindsight. The danger of course is making sure you are avoiding chop if you are going to take break out or break down trades. The market is not always trending, so those trade styles will fail miserably if the market is range bound. But today was not range bound, we had some nice movement.
Buy stop above the quad top. As soon as it broke the quad top it seemed like a good breakout buy to me. Unfortunately it didn't go too far -- what 30 or 40 ticks -- because it hit a brick wall on yesterday's high.
Inspired by over 2 months of winning sim and the success of my Passed Trades log, I decided to take each pullback trade today regardless how marginal. Picked a bad day to grow a pair, 'cause my first 3 trades were losers.
Made 2 mistakes: Got a little confused switching back and forth between the 5 and 3 minute charts. Usually I only trade off the 5 unless the bars are big and whippy, which was not the case today. It's painful to look where those trades were placed on a 5 minute chart.
My other mistake was a lack of concentration. This being Friday, I was trying to get some office paperwork done while trading. There are some very obvious pullbacks on CL that I didn't even see until way too late.
I was watching CL make a slow, painful ascent. The 05:35 bar failed to make a LL, and the 05:40 and 05:50 bars formed a double bottom, so I'm thinking there's some support here. The 06:10 bar confirmed that.
Trade #1
The 06:35 bar was the 2nd push down in the pullback, and broke the previous pivot low and broke the previous double bottom by 1 tick (false break out), then found lots of buyers that pushed price back up. So far so good, but here's were I screwed up the entry. I waited too long to switch to the lower time frame and missed a survivable entry by a bar. Ironically, I was filled at the exact high of the next bar and stopped out. Got 1 tick of slip. -12 ticks.
I got sidetracked and missed the next entry, but that probably would have been a BE+1 trade.
Price started pushing up hard again, and this time I switched to the 3 minute chart right away. A double top formed at 07:06 and I was waiting for one more bar down to enter, but never got the chance.
Trade #2
After the 07:12 bar closed down, I started trailing a buy stop 1 tick above. I was filled and stopped out on the next bar, ironically at the highest tick again. -11 ticks.
Similar thing happened on 6E, although I was filled on the next to the highest tick of a bar. My stop was tighter, so I only lost 9 ticks.
Since I hit my daily loss limit, I switched to sim and had 5 BE+1 trades on 6E and 1 BE+1 trade on CL. Today was my single largest 1 day loss ever, and my worst week ever. The weird thing is I don't really care. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Going to go home and smoke a cigar. This weekend I'll spend reviewing my journal, the trades I took, and studying my Passed Trades log. And sim, of course.
At the risk of sounding like I know what the heck I am talking about.....not so much usually....The first trade you took today was a good trade....trouble was you entered at the top of a large red candle....still ok but the stop was the bottom of the red candle. In my mind....foggy though it is sometimes, the better trade is wait for a MUCH smaller green candle with a decent size bullish wick and enter at the break of the body of the green candle. Just a thought....this way you get in at the bottom of the pull back instead of half way up it. Your EMA even confirmed it by the way I see it.
So if the stop had been placed properly, the trade would have worked.
I attached my markup of the exact same trade but the way I see it. I like the little tiny candles at the bottom of a pull back. That tells me there is consolidation happening and getting ready to make a move one way or the other....the larget candles, I just ignore. What happens next is really a crap shoot. In fact, those are usually a good place to stand down unless you are profitable in a trade already and its on its way to your profit target. Otherwise, buying at the top of a run like that in a narrow day is suicide.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Thanks Az, I see your way as being the better way, smarter way. I think today I was trading as a frustrated trader. There have been so may trades I've passed up that have been winners, I just through caution to the wind - and paid for it.