If you are reading this, welcome. This is my futures trading journey from the ground up. I am new to this arena and have no previous background in futures trading - probably a bad idea to get into this right? Oh well. I have for some time had an interest in the markets and have wanted to learn to trade. I anticipate the hard work and effort it will require to become competent but for some reason I still want to do this.

What I have done to get to this point is read (this site has been immeasurably helpful) and watch webinars.

Below are some other things I have completed or plan to do going forward:

1. Open a brokerage account

2. Learn the following:
- Platform (How it works etc)
- How to correctly read the charts
- Place an order, place stop and manage orders
- How your instrument trades (provisionally my long term goals: ES and 6E) - screen time
- Terminology (Comprehension of others)
- Domain Skills (General understanding)

I will be sim trading to start with but will move to cash in 2-3 months (when I feel comfortable with the platform, price action and volume)

Q: Which less risky/ volatile products are there similar to ES and 6E so I can trade cash sooner rather than later. I am doing this as an engagement exercise more than anything although the plan is not to lose money - happy with breaking even for this period. I don't have any high expectation to begin with. I just want to understand what is going on with price and volume to keep engaged long enough to "get it".

3. PLAN: Pick a product and develop a strategy (initially one product, one method). Test strategy by either paper trading or backtesting (to be honest I don't even know if this will be possible or how to do it at this stage but have seen talk on this subject on threads).

4. DO: Execute the strategy (Live)

5. REVIEW: Is the outcome as expected? Every time something goes wrong:
- Analyse it
- Ask why?
- What did I do wrong?
- What can I do better next time?
- Learn your craft
- Practice practice practice

6. Develop more varied strategies for different situations environments (follow steps 3-5)


Going forward I am reading through another users journal (tderrick - known to some as AJ) to help me gain insight as to how he progressed and hopefully shorten my learning curve.

What I did today:

- Reviewed a few working details of the Ninja Platform
- Placed an order and took it off. There seem to be multiple ways to do the same thing ... hmmm. Which is best? Not sure how to place a stop yet - will investigate that tomorrow.
- Started to look into how to correctly read the doji charts

Q: Which time intervals are best for the charts and why?

Although the above is very basic I need to start from somewhere, right?

The rest of the day was spend watching the market and how ES moved over the course of the day.

So its been two years since I posted here way back when I first started looking into trading (c. Feb 2015). Since then I have been on courses, read books, blogs, watched videos and tried to take on board as many lessons as I could about this thing we call trading. Its been painful at times but I am still here trying to improve a little everyday and now I feel it is time I make myself accountable. This is to help me rid myself of any bad habits I still have and get others views on what I am doing and how I may be able to improve as well as help anyone else who is on this journey.

Its a bit daunting to put it all out there but I am more scared of not improving and becoming better. At the very least this will act as a diary of progress (or lack there of).

To begin with I will just post my chart of the trades I have taken on that day and any short thoughts. I am still not sure the best way to approach this journal so will be muddling my way through till I have something beneficial for all.

Please note this is a 30k TST Combine (so there may be lots of busted accounts to come).

I have my own personal account but I don't believe it best to trade that until I am consistently doing the right things and it is reflecting in my daily, weekly and monthly outcomes.

I hope posting my daily trades doesn't cause me to have a melt down and gets me more consistent with my process and actions. I want to become as focused as possible on taking the right steps over and over again so it becomes routine. Everything else to me is secondary to me for now.

Daily Objective: Deliberate focused practice.

I trade CL as my main product (although I will look at other products from time to time but I will not be posting that here). I am sticking to one product especially at this stage because there are so many things to learn that I don't think it wise to further complicate things by including extra variables. These are my trades today.



Three no go trades in the morning so I decided to take a step back and have a break.

Continued trading later in the day with more success and finished the day in positive territory which is always good on a Friday.

Any questions or thoughts welcome.

It looked like you were shorting around 9:00?? if so, you definitely had the right idea. Maybe you were stopped too soon?? Maybe look at your reasons for entering there, and try to see what you were thinking. This was the trade of the day IMHO.

Be careful shorting that move down into 11:00. Al Brooks talks about 2nd push failure (I think that is how he describes it) and oil is notorious for it. Big second leg, and then the move is over. There was also a lot of volume on those last 2 5 min bars. I have found watching a 1 min chart for large volume spikes to be helpful.

This is intended to be helpful. If not, just totally disregard it. I know trading is something that everyone has to find their own way.

Danny

Ddawg 

It looked like you were shorting around 9:00?? if so, you definitely had the right idea. Maybe you were stopped too soon?? Maybe look at your reasons for entering there, and try to see what you were thinking. This was the trade of the day IMHO. Be careful shorting that move down into 11:00. Al Brooks talks about 2nd push failure (I think that is how he describes it) and oil is notorious for it. Big second leg, and then the move is over. There was also a lot of volume on those last 2 5 min bars. I have found watching a 1 min chart for large volume spikes to be helpful. This is intended to be helpful. If not, just totally disregard it. I know trading is something that everyone has to find their own way. Danny

Thanks @Ddawg

I welcome the response, its the whole reason I am journaling, so we can learn as a community. In regard to 11:00 I was looking to initiate a long position at that time (green arrow). Well it might have been a little after 11:00 after what looked like an exhaustive second push (like you mentioned). I felt a need to bail on a portion of my position thinking that I might have been too early, so I decreased my position size (so as to give myself a little more breathing space on the position).

I normally do actually watch the shorter time frames for entry signs but for the sake of space I uploaded the 5 min chart since it was quite hard to see the bars and entries clearly.

So its a US holiday today (Presidents Day) so was not expecting much but was present for the day up until the holiday close. If this doesn't exercise my ability to be disciplined and patient then nothing will.



Thoughts:

Position 1: Feel I had the opportunity to get out of this long position before it hit my stop (likely error on my part)

Position 2: Got long based on observation of volume push down that seemed to absorbed, plus I felt the bulls were somewhat in control at the time.

Position 3: Got long again higher but position seemed to be struggling and I felt I was seeing sellers step up so I bailed on the position.

Position 4: I thought the market wanted to explore lower but if that was the case I saw not urgency so I bailed.

NB: You want to spend as little emotional capital as possible ... per trade, per day, per month, per year.

Comments on chart. All in all, I lost my focus today and let my composure go. Need to stick to the plan.



So much of this game is in the mind and I really need to keep my mind on the things that matter. More is not better and being selective is very important. Staying away when you feel you don't understand what is happening.

1. I think you are over-trading, trading too much. Only your broker can love this approach. Be patient, pick your spots more carefully and trade less often. (see item 3)
2. Also you are trading too many hours in the day. You might have the energy now but over the long haul you need to manage stress. Get outside go for a workout at some point.
3. You need to develop a pre-defined plan of entry and exit. Ask yourself "What am I trying to capture?" You want to find a trend and wait for an opportunity to buy on weakness in a bullish trend (or sell when bearish, of course).
4. Crude is a large contract, you might want to try something smaller like YM.

Just some thoughts.

Good luck. Keep it up.