Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
I'm going to watch, but leaning towards being done. I was thinking this weekend that I can nail scalps almost every day, so why not hit that? I still want to catch a swing, and will now watch for that to setup.
I'll bet you $1.00 you will trade again in the a.m.
Prove me wrong!
Ever thought of 1K per day goal {you can always go into sim mode after that}.
Can you live on 10K a month (50% of your daily goal for the 1st 2 months or so with that 1K goal per day)?
That would still leave you with your fade swingtrades (either going with the price towards your fade/reverse level or triangulating your entry w/hard stop).
One of the 1st larger goals for consistent traders (in my experience) is the 1K per day consistency goal. It is a round number; makes it worth getting up in the morning and is do-able with such deep liquidity in CL and price movement.
How you go about it with either 2 or 4 or 6 contracts or ?? as your base is your business.
1 and 2 lot traders with this 1K per day goal will 95% of the time fall short.
Build your business slow and steady is what I say.
Down the road you can be a 10 lot or 20 lot trader; CL will absorb your 'pebble in a pond' and your slippage will go up a bit but at that point you negotiate 'ultra-low' commissions.
You're starting to make me paranoid. How do you know what I did over the weekend?
When we moved back into this house, the pool was a disaster. The house had been rented for 2 years and I never came over to look, but it has taken me about a month to get it back
I was cleaning the pool this weekend, thinking about what I wanted form trading. "To trade full time". Right, but what does that mean, really? "To be able to support myself with no additional source of income, and to build wealth over time". OK, but that is still just pointless talk. HOW MUCH?
And so I thought about it. "Maybe $60k a year? That should not be too hard?" I realized that number was not the real one. "OK, $250k per year". No, I did not believe that one, and it had me shooting for the stars.
So I debated back and forth, feeling out various numbers, what that meant from a win/loss ratio, from a probability aspect, from a trade frequency perspective, from a personal knowledge of what I believe I can and cannot do, and from a risk percentage prioritization...
I decided $100k minimum is what it should be worth to be a trader, after 5 years of study as I have had. I assumed roughly 200 trading days, so an average of $500.00 per day. I assumed max risk of 1.5% per trade, prefered risk 1% or less. So I spelled out in my trading plan this weekend what the rules were regarding that.
I believe there are really 3 good opportunities per day; 1) The open, 2) The 10am window, 3) the afternoon 1pm - 2:30pm. If I can hit one of those 3, I am good. So today I went in 2 at a time, first a buy, then an average down about 10 ticks, then average IN when I hit green again to get to 6, stop tightened to 10 ticks. Target 25 ticks, done. I would have re-entered long, but saw a lot of selling overhead. Not that they won't blow the roof off into the close, who knows, but I saw less favorable conditions that what made me enter.
Now, to stick to the plan, seeing nothing that exciting, I went flat and cleaned my pool some more. It is not just that it still needs some cleaning, it is also that I wanted to get back to my discussion and being in the same place doing the same thing helped bring me back quickly, like the same debate was still going on.
Do I need the PM trade today, no. Am I going to watch it, I can't stop myself lol!
But, if I take it, 1 contract, something light and fun. Sim just irritates me anymore, because I don't need practice in simulation, I need practice with EMOTION. I can trade sim and see everything, but turn to live and I get tunnelvision.
Either I see something or I don't, and either way there is no guarantee. So if there is a trade worth simming, it is worth taking. But so far I have not been interested, because I am now weighing the trade against having made my day.
Obviously, I was long this morning, bought the pullback when I saw volume try to catch it, using the overnight move as the trend, and faded my other indicators. While I no longer liked the momentum up, I also knew not to short. And how I knew; I used to try to short days like this.
Price will return to a prior high, look like it will turn, then grind slightly higher, then look like it will turn, then grind higher... But the whole time, it appears to be pushing higher into sellers... And it is. But this is a condition where I will not go against my indicators. I don't think I want to be long again unless we break 93.25 on heavy volume, but I know for certain I don't want to be short right here right now. A 6-range reversal is the only short signal I will take right now, and even then not sure.