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)
Rules are simple, only trade in direction of trend. Histogram will make that obvious. From there, look for good entries, and set stops and targets per the bands.
Like many guys on this forum, you display a beautiful chart but little explanation of how you are actually trading (or if you are actually making trades off of this chart). If you have a detailed post of this somewhere else then I'm sorry for complaining or not being aware of it. But if you don't then when I see this post and this chart these are some of the questions that go through my head.
Histogram: How is it obvious? Buy when it's rising and sell when it's falling? At what point do you decide that a) it is a trend and b) you want to follow/get in? What are the red and blue horizontal lines? I'm guessing if the histogram is inside this range you're considering it to be chop? Do you buy once it penetrates past the red line? Or are you using those lines as support and resistance lines and are trading it like a channel? Since I don't know what that indicator is I don't know how you use it.
EMA (or line that looks like an EMA) - How are you using this? Buying/selling on the cross? On bar close or intra-bar? On the first cross, or after a cross, retracement and re-cross? Or are you using it at all?
Fib extensions: How are you using the fib extensions? Are those targets? Are you scaling out/in as each fib line is reached, and moving your stop as well? Or just moving your stop every time you reach a new fib line? Are you using limit orders for your stops or looking for bar closes retraced from the previous fib extension? Are you using the fib lines as they move WithTrend, or targeting the fib lines as they were at the point you entered the trade?
Mike, you're the last guy I should pick on. I love the site and you have done so much for it. Nobody has contributed more to this site than you. So I guess I'm targeting all traders on this forum who don't disclose their trades, just their pretty charts. I'm just a little frustrated with posts that show an ambiguous chart and say things like "it's obvious" and I don't even know what your trades were, or if you even made any trades and, if so, if you're having any success with it.
Anybody that follows my journal knows I'm wide open with my trades. Winners, losers, number of contracts I swing, entry and exit points, the reasons I entered and exited, I'm an open book. ALL of my trades get posted there, with charts, even the ones I passed on or missed because of some stupid reason. I don't hide any embarrassing losers. I discuss new things I've learned or observed, what books I'm reading, what I'm experimenting with, etc. I find it very helpful.
Occasionally I get responses from other traders on my losers like "what were you thinking?" or "man you gotta try something else!" and it makes me feel stupid or a little embarrassed but it challenges me to be more disciplined because success is the greatest revenge. Plus, I don't see them posting their trades, just pretty charts that makes me think they are really smart with technical analysis, know lots of math, statistics, digital signal processing and some things that I don't understand very well. However, I don't see any trades on their charts that show me they know how to trade.
I just wish more traders on this forum were as open and not so opaque about their trading strategies. I know, I used to be kind of the same way. I thought I had a strategy that was unique, I didn't want others to copy me, I worked hard on it so why should they benefit for free from my hard work and cleverness? I'm not sure why or when but I got over myself and just want to make money and if I can help people along the way then even better. The transparency and feedback helps me become a better trader. I invite all traders reading this to open up and let us follow along with you in your journey by providing more details.
With that said, I understand the "proprietary" feelings we get when we create something unique, clever and especially profitable. My "normal" job is writing software so I create proprietary things for people all of the time that can often make them a lot of money. And I haven't uploaded any of my code I've written so maybe I need to "get over" that as well. But I usually explain how it works with enough details that someone else that knows Ninjascript could create it.
Histogram: Shows what side price is relative to mid line. Only trade with trend, don't make it more complicated.
EMA: Is the mid line representation. Only trade with trend. Read the Brooks book for more on EMA taps, 2HM's, etc.
Bands w/fib: I use them to get a good entry. You can use them as a target or stop if you want, many people have told me they want to use it this way. Personally I was trading without the bands and created the bands to just help me gauge (I am very visual) price extremes, so I look to them for that.
Yes I appreciate people who post detailed entries, etc. I used to do that, as I used to make videos, blog posts, etc. Lately I am very busy running the forum, doing programming, and many things in personal life. Still, I want to help people. The purpose of the chart was not to say "Hey, I made a killing today". The purpose of the chart was to let you, the reader, visualize how you could trade a very simple chart. You can't just follow someone elses trades, you have to create your own method, and sure you can adapt others into yours, but in the end, it must be your method.
Given its lack of liquidity and participants can one make a good case for support and resistance in CL? I think not, but am interested in hearing from others who agree or disagree.
What do you mean by 'lack of liquidity'? Last time I looked (I don't trade it) CL has high volume. Not like TN or ES, but I just threw up a 1 min chart and during the day-session period it seems to average about 500+ per minute, almost a tick a second.
It is spikey, though, or used to be when I followed it a while back, and I suspect it still is. A very 'real' futures market.
PS (sunday): reading through the post I realise that the tone of the 'what do you mean' reads different than it sounded internally, which was in conversational rather than confrontational manner as in 'what do you mean the weather's been lousy this month, we only had three days of rain the past few weeks?' So apologies if any offense given which was not intended.
Only you can answer that. You've seen what I use, now it is up to you to decide what you want to use.
I enjoy trading CL much more than ES. Liquidity is not a problem unless you are trading more than 20 cars or so and trying to scalp for very, very small gains.