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)
Yes, splitting up the contracts is certainly an option and one that I looked at using in my plan for this combine. In my testing I found that more often than not ... .I do not have the exact statistics on this .... price would hit 15 ticks almost as often as if it were hitting that 7-10 tick targets. So I decided for this combine to do T1 @ 15 ticks. In my plan once I have a +$1,000 pillow I will add another car which will be a runner for a T2 target of at least 25 ticks. ( T2 target will go to the next 6 range zone area ). Stops will still be moved to b/e for this combine to protect profits and keep me inching closer to hitting the overall targets for being funded. Once hitting a $2,500 profit, I will be adding a 4th contract which will be a big runner for at least 75 ticks or the next 60 min zone level. Stop for T3 runner will be moved as a trailing stop...... leaving plenty of room to breathe and will be tucking in behind at lest two 6 range zones away from price.
This is how I tested this plan and it worked well during testing. Will it continue to work?? Heh, I will let you know after 8 more trading days
Thanks for the questions and suggestions .. appreciate them!
Day #3 is in the books. After what started out as a lil rough for me this morning, I was able to turn a Red day into a Green day.
I started realizing how long some of my posts were getting and will try to start trimming them down a bit by adding perhaps more screenshots with notations on them. I hear that a picture is worth a thousand words. So I will try that today and see how it flies .... comments are welcome on that too
I started off by hitting the snooze button a few too many times. The little kiddo (3 month old) had me up late, and oh how I love that snooze button. Anyhoots, jumped into the chair just as CL pit opened. No coffee and not a good early morning analysis got me off to a poor start, see pics for explanations. #2 was able to get some of that #1 back. but then had to give that back with #3. That one hurt as I was stopped by one tick only to see price go and hit my target of 15 ticks! Oh I hate that.
#4 turned into a scratch and then I had redemption with #5. I did however deviate from the original plan a little bit, and being honest with myself .... I would prolly do it again and again if this were to set up again. It also has me wrestling with the original plan of taking two cars off at T1 when only trading 2 cars. Something to be said about runners. But I will try to stick to plan as best I can and know that I better than halfway to the point where I can add that 3rd car to run a lil bit
I am still not seeing the Daily Averages I would like to be seeing .... but am really not too far off, especially with how things started off in the Red. Should not be too hard to get back on track there.
Thanks for following along ... comments are always welcome j/k really they are
Sometimes the best thing to do is get out of the way and let the market run. Your exit was very well handled as well, locking in the 50 ticks. Smart trading all the way through.
Thanks mykee!! I have been looking at range bars for at 2 years I think?? maybe 3?? I choose range bars for the simple reason that I can easily see or calculate in my head how far price has moved or needs to move by knowing how big those range bars are set to. I like the 6 range as I feel that it gives me enough information to see how Price Action is happening and can help me drill down the Risk needed to jump into a trade when price gets into an area of interest. For me the 6 Range seems to flow well and fits within my Risk tolerance levels.
Please note that I am also looking at minute bars as well for context and levels. I have just been posting my trades off the 6 Range chart.
An example of using Range bars would be how I know that with the 3 bar engulfing pattern that I am looking for as a set up/signal or this TST combine, using a 6 range bar I know that my max stop or Risk needed will never be more than 25 ticks. Yes 25 is a bit heavy for me, but as a Max Risk, if the Reward or Target has been assessed and appears to be a minimum 1:1 or better, I would consider taking that trade.
If I were to be using a Tick or Minute bar, the size or Range of that candle/bar could easily exceed 25 ticks, especially in CL. That could be too late for me to respond or enter a trade as the Risk at that point would be way to big for me.
Check out the pics for a little more detail on what I am talking about.
So I am most likely done for the day early as I already had 2 wins and am up $700. This brings my TST balance up to +1,200 or Combine account balance of $51,200. Also getting my daily averages closer to where they need to be (+350/day) to hit the $3500 target that TST wants to see.
I can also add a 3rd contract per plan now that I am +1,000. Hopefully get some runners and start to have some real fun here
Here are some pics of today trades. If I do any more I will update later.
bc
Update: Definitely DFTD. Added the last pic that shows some thoughts on how I would "Like to think" that I would have traded today had I been trading 4 cars and having 3 Targets. That would be a great day if so
So I totally overslept today as my alarm did not go off. I might have been lucky that happened. I am not sure I would have caught the move up. I most likely would have bucked the trend and gone short at Globex High when my pattern/signal showed up .. and not sure if I would have covered stop to b/e after seeing price waffle and coil up around the Globex Level for quite some time before exploding to the upside. see pics for notes and thoughts I have running thru my head. I will most likely sit the rest of the day out as price obviously made it's major move and is likely to just range out where it currently is??? I will update later if that changes.
At this point I have 11 days left to trade 6, so I should be ok as far as making sure I get in the 10 days of trading the combine. No sense pushing it and making some stupid trades just to trade eh?!
So totally blew my rules today on my first trade which ended up costing me not only a win but gave me a red day in the end. See pics for details.
CL was a hard one today with inventories and FOMC happening, it was kinda grindy and was hard to read, at least for me it was. I saw a few places that I would liked to have gotten in on, but these set ups are not in this TST plan. Sooo, I passed on some pretty clear entries. Oh well, once funded or worst case, combine rollover, I can revise the trade plan to include some additional set up and signals to enter. But for now and this Combine, I will keep to the plan the best I can.
As I am posting here, it looks like it will be a Red day for me, which will bring my overall balance back under the $1,000 profit and bump me back to trading two cars. btw .. while trading today, I thought I was bucking the trend and actually did not add the 3rd car .. decided to reduce risk, especially with inventories and FOMC stuff happening, and went with 2 cars but split them up for a T1 for 15 ticks and a T2 placed near the next APA Zone. (not sure if that constitutes breaking rules/plan or not as technically with 3 cars I would be having two targets anyways). I am also wondering if I should be splitting up a 2 car trade from here on out? Chewing on that this afternoon and tonight ... comments are welcome please.