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Zooming out, it's clear 50.50 to 50.75 is a key area to watch today.
Overnight path is upward into key resistance. We are over yesterday's highs, over last week's highs, and it's Friday. If this market is feeling anything like they way I feel, it's ready for the weekend and is looking forward to a glass of whiskey at the end of the day. I have a sneaky suspicion the market won't make a decision on either direction in any significant way today, but I've got my levels lined up and will be ready to take action no matter what.
I missed quite a few good opportunities because I was too cautious and waiting for confrimation. By the time I got more aggressive, at first it was for the wrong reasons and so I had one poor trade for a quick small loss as I jumped out of it very fast. My next trade was better, but still countertrend, and it didn't work out. -16 for the day.
+10 for the week. It was close to being a better-than-decent week, but in the end I'll just call it an OK+ week. Made some good progress and my mistakes are getting less severe, although they are still present. If time permits this weekend I will try to work on some ideas on replay. I'd like to be more aggressive and less cautious on the entry side, at least under a certain set of criteria. I'm missing quite a few good spots because I will wait until the level is reached, and then observe action to see how it behaves, often waiting for that couple more ticks to pounce on, that mystical little spike and reverse. While I'm observing, I often miss the entry. I have a similar issue on my swing trade ideas that I need to look at also. Can't catch every entry, but I believe I am missing more than I should.
Up, up, where she'll stop, nobody knows? 52 seems a likely rest stop.
As we head into the open nicely above last week's highs, I will do my best not to fight the trend too much today. But I do think a retest of last week's high would be appropriate. I will keep an eye out for a change in direction at the open.
Interesting action today. A few quick moves at the open, and then went back into the chop zone from overnight. I missed maybe one or two opportunities early on but not sweating it today. +8 after one win and one loss.
I was completely exhausted after work yesterday, feel like I might have a minor stomach bug, and ended up oversleeping this morning. 30 minutes until the CL open.
The news is "risk on" with another terror attack in a western nation, this time in the UK. Best wishes to all affected by this attack, or any terror attack across the world, east or west. May the perpetrators face a fate worse than death.
CL dipped below last week's high and came back up. It's trying to break out of this retracement channel with resistance in the 51.15 to 51.25 area. I feel a little disappointed that I missed the run up while I was sleeping. That could cloud my judgement, so I need to wash that out of my head before taking any trades. Focus on the process.
In the first hour there is a FOMC member public speaking engagement, followed by some manufacturing data, and capped off by new home sales. None of this should push CL around much but you never know for sure.
Coming away with one small win at +7. Since rolling out this +7 ATM as an option, I've used it a few times but both the winners left a lot on the table. Need to make sure I stick with larger targets when the prevailing momentum warrants it.
I am still happy with this trade because this represents an entry that historically I might not have been aggressive enough to take. There wasn't much pull-back but the action looked strong and was holding the level it had just broken. I was able to come up with enough justification to enter the trade.
What do I win? Oh, nothing? So, being right doesn't actually get you anything? You have to DO something? OK, I guess.
I am sick. Tried to sleep in yesterday and today to knock it out, but I'm still sick. I could try to trade . . . I really want to. But my 4:45am wakeup wasn't happening, so my routine is out the window. Haven't gone through my prep and the family will be up soon... There are still 3 more trading days left in the month after today. Instead of forcing the day-trading, I will use this time to work on my nice relaxing swing charts.
Update on my swing long in 20 yr treasuries: I hung tough trying to milk out another couple R on this trade. Unfortunately it started to melt down, and so I somewhat gracefully closed half the position yesterday, locking in 1 R of profit. I still have the remaining half on which, if I closed today I'd grab another 1R, but will try to hold this for another leg up if it comes.
I've also just entered a NEW position... A short in Oil, using the double short ETF SCO. I have an entry at 35.90, which equates to a price of roughly 51.20 in the current CL contract. I have put in a good size buffer on this trade, given that last time I traded Oil I got smoked pretty good. I may end up exiting for a less than 1R loss if it doesn't stick with the program. And I could withstand a gap up to 52.50 without going over my 1R loss size. The technicals aren't as beautiful as they have been on some of my other entries - but the spike from 52, with enough levels nearby to lean against, made it seem worth the risk.
I spent the better part of the long weekend trapped in a carbonite shell. I am slowly peeling off the broken pieces and emerging from my hibernation prison. What I thought I'd do today as we come rounding the final bend of the month is sum up the results of my now 2-month embarkation upon swing trading. One more reminder before getting into it, if you feel like dropping a "thanks" in my entry to the May journal contest, or for any of the other fantastic journals representing there, go over there and do it. The journals are my favorite part of nexusfi.com and a strong journaling community I feel is the life blood of the site.
Hey there FIO. Here's my journal. You'll find me doing a bit of early morning CL trading, as well as some ETF swing trading if opportunities arise. Thank you Big Mike for the opportunity to participate.
I did get stopped out on my OIL short today for a gain of 1R. It's gonna suck watching it tank from here, but it retraced back up far enough where I just said "look I gotta get something outta this one" so I pulled the plug on it. Whatever, we'll see.
On to the recap of the past 2 months, My goal was to trade 4 different instruments on multi-day timeframes. US Equities, Long Term Treasuries, Gold, and Oil. For a variety of reasons, I decided at the onset to use leveraged ETFs, rather than futures, for this phase of the project. Aside from the first "test" trade, where I only risked a third of a percent, I have been position sizing for 1R = approximately 1.1% of account at risk per trade.
I'm intentionally removing detail for presentation purposes here:
So the account is up about 5R, or 5.5% in 2 months. Without going too deep into it, when it comes to "R" and position sizing, I like to be able to do the calculations in my head so I'm keeping that R $ value semi-fixed but scaling it up in tiers. As my account crosses certain thresholds I go ahead and bump the R up to the next level, say 1.25%, and then wait for the account to grow up to a size where that R amount is back close to 1%. So if I had an 8K account, I might say "OK I'm going to risk $100 per trade until the account hits $10K, and then I'll risk $125 per trade until the account hits 12.5K." And so on. This process will be revisited as I continue to hone my method.
I didn't have a solid goal going into this, but if I can keep up this pace for over 6R per quarter and improve upon it that would be fantastic. I made some mistakes, didn't get the best exits, flubbed the stop on the big OIL loss, missed some good opportunities, but this is a better start than I had hoped for. 4 out of 5 could be a fluke or dumb luck. Just have to keep at it and follow the rules. I'm trying not to get too far head of myself here, but basically if I can keep this up for another few quarters, the idea is to craft a business plan to size up and move this to futures.
For detail, below are 3 charts containing all of the positions entered. Green = long entry. Red = short entry. Blue = profitable long exit. Pink = profitable short exit. Grey = loss.
Today was one last day of sleeping in. Definitely aiming to come back at it for June starting tomorrow.
Thought I'd drop a summary here of my now 2-month-long excursion getting back into live daytrading CL futures.
Some key summary stats:
So in May I set out to go for larger targets, wider trailing stops, and a more hands off approach to managing trades. About midway through May, I really started to feel things clicking on a personal comfort-level with pulling the trigger on trades. I was able to focus on the process, and started to make less mistakes. Although the resulting profits don't even begin to justify the amount of time I'm putting into this, it's still infinitely better than previous results and I can see the potential of getting to a good place if I keep on this path. In this sense, I'm a growth stock with a shitty P/E but tons of gusto and a great PR team. Win % is up, Number of trades is down. Winners are bigger, and Losers are bigger also. % of winning days a lot better. One major issue is my average losing day is significantly larger than my average winning day.
In June, I hope to trade more days, and really press the average winning day up so it's higher than the average losing day. That means taking more good opportunities and making less mistakes. It means hitting my max loss less often, and stringing solid winners together. Easier said than done! We shall see.
Here's the day by day breakdown since March 30. Last time, I promise: If you have any desire to do so, drop me a vote by thanking this thread for this month's Journal contest.
Hey there FIO. Here's my journal. You'll find me doing a bit of early morning CL trading, as well as some ETF swing trading if opportunities arise. Thank you Big Mike for the opportunity to participate.
5:40 AM pacific. Still in down channel but 48 holding tough with a last stand at Y_Low 47.75. This thing should pick a direction today, maybe after inventory numbers.
Zooming in a bit, I'm tracking the action since yesterday as a correction channel upward. After hours saw us test 49 and then dump back to Last Weeks Low. We are currently within yesterday's range, and at the very bottom of last week's range. My hunch is this A-B-C is complete at 49 and the report will push it down for a nother impulse. My hunch is no crystal ball.
Oil finally picked a direction after hours. Direction is down.
NFP just hit. We have some pretty tight channels after hours. Finaly we are below last week's low and below yesterday's range. Let's see if this sell off wants to continue. If so I'll be looking for direction to confirm with a turn lower around the open. If sellers aren't agressive, expect chop or a retrace back to 48+.
Came away with +7 after 3 trades. There was a lot to work with here, so a little disappointed, but up so OK. Action was a little challenging for my "structural" approach, as can be seen by the number of crazy channels I drew all over the place. One of these days I'm going to press it and get some winners, but so far I just seem to spin the wheels when taking 3+ trades.
Not much new. Intensity of the downslide is easing up. Expect a bounce soon.
This level at 47.50, Friday's vwap, is the first challenge for buyers. Currently smack in the middle of Friday's range. Bottom end of last week's range.
-14 on 1 mistaken trade. I was reluctant to take shorts today because "oversold" and I thought a bounce was coming. A bounce did come, but I was impatient with my long entry.
Little changed and sideways movevement overnight. At least one of these lines must blow out in the next day or two.
Nothing particularly mindblowing zooming in. Oscillating around vwap. Sitting above last week's low, lower third of yesterday's range. Again. 47.50 and then 47.75 are key levels for bulls to take. 47 even and 46.75 for the sellers.
Yesterday I got the sense I was overcomplicating things by hesitating on shorts for "reasons". Reasons are a good thing to have - they are ideally the result of many hours of screen time. But reasons need to be layered on top of each other, in order of priority. And, generally speaking, channels and trends hold until they don't hold. There should be at least one more reason layered above "it's just gone too far now".
...OK, here's how it turned out. -19 for me today. I'm beginning to sort of form an idea of what I can try to do to improve on this going forward. What am I doing wrong? Maybe the problem is I'm approaching every day the same way, trying to trade the little channels on the 1000-volume chart. Today was pretty clearly sideways going into the open, and the 1000-volume chart looked like slop. But I traded it the same way I traded last week's nice directional action. So the next step is to add some kind of assessment as to how clean is the market moving on this time frame. It requires a lot of patience, but the right thing to do today would have been to zoom out and try to trade the higher timeframe, the edges of that range - the key is to ignore the smaller channels that just abort themselves and change direction, until we get a break. Honestly, I might not have ended up with a single entry using that approach today... but that would have been better than today's results.
