Hello
I am from India and search for crude oil forums and TA led me to this.
Seems a similar experience as yours with losing money ( in other asset classes) to finding crude and being consistently profitable to be about to make a living trading only this commodity.
Would study your thread in greater detail.
Regards

One thing I did more of this week that I think helped a lot was basically not interfering much on my trades. I would basically take a setup, have my target and stop in place..and then basically let it do its thing. In the past, I have exited a lot of trades or prematurely broke even because 'I didn't like" the way it was moving...or after enduring 10 ticks or so of heat..getting out when I was back to even.

The bottom line is price can do a lot of crazy things on it's way to a target. In fact, a couple of trades this week came within 2 ticks of hitting my stop, but I let them go and didn't touch them. They ended up being 30 to 40 tick winners. So, the bottom line is, it is very hard to predict some of the "noise" on the way to the target. Some trades hit my 30 tick target in 5 to 10 minutes. Others might take an hour to make 30 or so.

I came to this conclusion after scrolling through months of charts and looking at setups and then how price acted on it's way to it's target. The twist and turns on some moves would have psyched me out and made me want to get out of the trades. And of course, real money is even more nerve wracking than Sim trades. But after looking at all these charts, I came to the conclusion that just holding the trade and not interfering yielded the best results.

Since I have implemented this non-interference principle, I have had better results. A while back, I wrote on this thread that I was trying to make 60 ticks a week consistently on CL and I showed the math of what that would yield on 2 contracts..then 5..and up to 10 contracts etc. A very good living could be had from those results. Now, I have been achieving weeks of 90 to 120 ticks ...just on CL. Much of his is from not messing with my trades. However, there are some things to keep in mind.

First of all, the majority of my targets are 20 to 30 ticks. I also pick areas that are easy to hit. In other words, I target areas where there is some form of support and resistance. As I have repeatedly shown in my videos, these areas can result in a substantial bounce..sometimes 20 to 40 ticks in a countertrend movement. Some people get very frustrated who are going for 50 to 100 tick moves to see a winning trade now taking 20 ticks of heat. I believe in setting up the game in a way that makes it easier to win. Why make things harder? This game is hard enough as it is. In other words, pick targets that are easier to be hit and not one's where you have to rely on price bouncing around while it's trying to breakthrough an area.

Now once it finally gets through an area, there is often more 20 to 30 tick opportunities..or you can get back in on a pullback. Then your next target is another small area of resistance or support. Again, much easier than holding a Cl trade for 100 ticks or so. We have all seen Cl move up 100 ticks, then suddenly turn around and go 150 in the opposite direction. Hard to predict that and just sit there waiting for 50 to 75 ticks in one direction on moves like that. It can be done, but you need an enormous stop loss.

Anyhow, looking forward to next week .

Hey Lancelot, thanks for your journal, I read through the whole thing(!) this weekend, very helpful.