Northernlimit 

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.

@Northernlimit

You mention overtrading and I may be inclined to agree (15-20 attempts on an average day) but I really have no basis to know then what is a more adequate number of trades. Is there a way to I assess this?

Again with trading too many hours, how does a person assess what is right? I'm having breaks etc. so not sat at my desk the whole time

The plan I have - I became wayward today due to frustration but took notice way too late.

When you say crude is a large contract I don't really understand what you mean, could you possibly elaborate.

kab0000 

@Northernlimit You mention overtrading and I may be inclined to agree (15-20 attempts on an average day) but I really have no basis to know then what is a more adequate number of trades. Is there a way to I assess this? Again with trading too many hours, how does a person assess what is right? I'm having breaks etc. so not sat at my desk the whole time The plan I have - I became wayward today due to frustration but took notice way too late. When you say crude is a large contract I don't really understand what you mean, could you possibly elaborate.

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You are correct this is subjective. It's only my opinion and everyone has to try to see what works for them, however the positions you are taking don't seem to be catching trend, which the primary objective.

- If you can pick 1 or 2 good moves to capture you are doing great. That is all you need. Everything else is a cost.
- Crude has a big tick and it can be violent. This means each tick is $10 and due to the volatility any reasonable stop can use up more capital than you might wish to risk. A small contract like YM is $5 per tick, has lots of liquidity and exhibits good patterns, so it might be more capital friendly.

This is just my opinion, others might disagree, but I hope this helps.

Everyone gets frustrated now and then.

Best wishes.

Today was tough. Especially the morning session. I think I need to run some numbers on my morning trading. I get the feeling that I lose the most money in the morning and spend the rest of the day clawing back the losses. I am yet to work out why, if this is correct. If my initial observation is corroborated by the investigation then I will either trade very light in the mornings before the US sessions or not at all if the problem persists.

I believe I am still finding myself in terms of what I am good at and what I need to work on (notice I did not say "not no so good at" - framing). Scalping seems to be my natural inclination - probably due to being a very risk averse individual or its due to my lack of present practice at understanding the bigger moves. Plus I don't like being exposed to the market for too long and the risk limits I have are tight so I don't want to have big stops.

Potential Solution: Only enter at the very best locations (where ever that may be, lol) and try not to get FOMO since you will likely miss many trades.

I still need to persevere on reducing my daily commissions cost by being more selective on trades.

The time of day can make a big difference to your results. I tracked all my trades for a year in 15 minute increments to breakdown the best times to trade.

Northernlimit 

The time of day can make a big difference to your results. I tracked all my trades for a year in 15 minute increments to breakdown the best times to trade.

@Northernlimit

I was not thinking of anything that granular but I like the idea. I will probably take the time stamps for the trades and bucket them into appropriate intervals and see if there are any patterns that become apparent. I don't have much data to work with at present but this could turn into and ongoing thing.

kab0000 

@Northernlimit I was not thinking of anything that granular but I like the idea. I will probably take the time stamps for the trades and bucket them into appropriate intervals and see if there are any patterns that become apparent. I don't have much data to work with at present but this could turn into and ongoing thing.

For me I recognize that I'm creating extremely valuable data with my trades. If I don't record it I'm doing myself and my hard-earned money a disservice. This is after all the purpose of a journal which is to document it, so what I do is record as many variables as possible, not just PL.

All of my variables are: entry and exit time (hold period), initial stoploss price (for capital-at-risk..which important for a drawdown assessment), theme or strategy (break-out, trend, countertrend, scalp), position size, commodity, contract month, trade date, expected target, actual target (i.e. is target reached), stoploss type (trailing, pattern, moving average, etc.). All of this I record for every trade so I can do an assessment on how things change and what is optimum under different market conditions.

Good luck to you in your Combine!

BoltTrader 

Good luck to you in your Combine!

Thanks @BoltTrader. I am beyond the 10 day mark which is great but well down on the account from some very bad days chasing losses (mistake). I feel I am taking steps forward with each attempt and learning so that objective is being fulfilled at the very least. Process, process, process. Just need to remind myself to be more selective. Like today - I'm aiming to save ammunition till after oil inventories. What has been happening in the past is I use up much of my daily risk in the morning and have next to nothing to use in the afternoon. I should start a site called https://www.SittingOnHandsIsHard.com

Actually saying that I will go to the gym and come back for afternoon session.

No much to report. Thing were a bit different today. In a quest to be more selective with my trading I chose to sit out the morning session (which would be the overnight for the US guys). The main reasons for doing this was to save some risk for the more volatile post crude oil data period as I expected the morning to be quiet. For this reason there were some setups* I let go.

After the data I did not get the move I was looking for but I tried one lonely trade and ended up scratching it since it did not do what I envisioned. I have to tell myself it is ok. Live to fight another day.

* = I'm not the biggest fan of that word as I don't think it correctly illustrates how I view opportunities

My thought for today was the we would go lower in the morning session but increment slowly lower. I am not sure the best way to play days like this. I would have thought short on pullbacks but I am not the best at seeing where these pullback are ready to turn. Even with being partially right about the market and direction as for the best way to engage and execute ... well that is a different story.

I really need to understand these turning points better. Hmmmm ... All in all not a great day.

Note to self: Trade what you understand.