I am new to futures.io (formerly BMT) but am impressed with the information and advice. Thanks to Mike, you are doing a great job.
Reading through the threads there is a theme by Mike that one has to do a journal. I have made various attempts before but never kept it going. Given Mike is likely to keep harping; and he guarantees it will make me a better trader, I'll give it a go again.
I trade CL between 5:30 and 11:30 PST. So when looking at my charts note the time is 3 hours early vs EST.
I will trade at other times if I see a move I like. CL can trend quite nicely (but slowly) during the other hours.
My goal is to
1 be profitable every day; and
2 beat the market.
3 Follow my plan
Each day I will compare the price at 5:30 and 11:30 and see if I beat a buy and hold strategy. The idea is that I am no genius, if I make a 100 ticks in the day, if the market went up 200.
The metric to judge how well I did is; did I take the trades I should have and vice versa did I take trades I should not have.
The scoring will be the following from 0 to 10.
0 Lost money and took trades I should not have and missed trades I should have taken.
2 Lost money and took some trades I should not have and missed some trades I should have taken.
4 Lost money and took trades I should have taken.
5 Made money but took trades I should not have.
7 Made money and beat the market and took some trades I should not have and missed some trades I should have taken.
10 Made money and beat the market and took only trades I should have and no trades I should not have taken.
(There probably will be few days with a 10)
No matter how much money I made in a day, if I did not follow my plan, I can score no better than a 5.
But even if I took all the trades I should have, if I lost money, something is wrong and I did not meet my goal to be profitable, so a 4 is the best I can score that day.
I know one should focus on one chart and few set-ups. However I find I get different information from different charts and I enjoy trading different ideas. So I use a 10 second; 3 min; 15 min and 6 ; 10 and 20 range chart. My main trading chart is the 10 range.
I do both trend and counter trend. I mostly take the counter trend; so that is one area I must work on, is to get in tune with the market and get those trend trades.
Typically my target is 40 ticks and my stop 20 -30.
I have seen some rooms that have a 10 tick target and move balance to BE and then claim a 10 tick profit is a win. I feel that is just a break even from the toss of a coin. Even today, which seemed like a slow day, there were approximately 350 ten-range bars between 5:30 and 11:30. Getting 3 or 4 10 tick wins does not count as a successful day to me. One may as well flip a coin here and there during the day and you will get more than 3 or 4 10 tick wins.
My goal is to trade a winning strategy; not just take 10 ticks here and there as a fluke.
I will average into a position sometimes if the market goes against me but I have reason to believe the trade is still right.
Advice is welcome and I look forward to improving my trading.