OP,

your commission is high. in this short 7 trading days, you have ~$1400 in commission. That's average of $200 in commission. That's why too much. Maybe you should change your strategy and trade less.

gordo,

Nice guitar cake

You are in control of what happens next. Markets aren't going to make you do anything.

In my experience, the best way to deal with this is to simply identify your top two or three problems objectively, then create a very specific plan of attack to address those two problems.

First, I would recommend trading only 1 contract at a time, and recommend limiting your trading to three trades a day. This will minimize losses, and will force you to focus your attention on execution, which is where the money is. You don't make money by trading a lot, you make money by trading better (more efficient) than others.

Go back and re-read your journal posts. What do you think your two biggest problems are?

Mike

The definition of insanity that I subscribe to is: “Doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results.”

So I considered the comments I received [thank you for the input guys! It really does help.] and after some thinking, I am re-looking at my trading system. I am trading too much and with too many contracts. So I backed down to one contract. I have my stop at 10 and my target at 15 with a 10 tick trailing stop. I am still trading the CL for the same reasons I stated earlier. Based on this setting, I can still make as much (or little) money as before, just not as much risk. I settled on a Renko 2 chart.

I am also re-looking at the order I have my indicators displayed. I did some juggling with those. I think that is enough changes to see what happens. I can change too many things and not know which way to turn next.

Today was certainly a day of over-trading, but that was by design. I want to test out my new wheels and see what I have. The numbers aren’t all that good and will certainly not impress anyone, but I like the feel of what I have. Here’s the stats for the day:

21 Trades Total – Yes I know that is a lot, but I was working on how to make the system work.
3 - Full profit trades (15 ticks)
2 – Partial profit trades (less than 15 ticks)
2 – Break Even trades. I have always counted these as losers. They aren’t winners and I have to pay commission, so they are losers in my book. I think calling them anything else just waters down the reality of the situation.
9 – Partial stops (less than 10 ticks)
5 – Full stops (10 ticks)

Those numbers in and of themselves, don’t lead one to believe that my system is very good. It is, just have to follow it. On top of that I had six errors in my trading (another HUGE contributor to my lack of trading success). At one time I was up six ticks. I finished down for the day.

I went back and looked at all of the trades for the day and my numbers should have been:

3 – Winners
3 – Partial losers.

Something to work on.

Until tomorrow.
G

I believe cutting position size and trading less are wise decisions.

I also would like to mention that a common mistake many traders make is they come up with rules that are impossible to follow. When a trade goes bad, there is quickly a reason for why that trade was bad "if only I had seen that <xyz> indicator was doing <abc>, then I wouldn't have made that trade", etc. It's counted as an "error".

Trading is simple, not easy. It's simple to click a button, ok now you've made a trade. Long term profitability is obviously not easy.

Looking at your proposed rules, I do like the target is bigger than the stop. I don't like the hard target or hard stop, however. I also think that for a hard stop, on CL, 10 ticks is not enough. Stops should be based on when you accept that your initial position was incorrect. If you decide long, at what point will you accept the market is in fact not going up? That answer simply cannot be "10 ticks" in my definition of things.

By deciding up front a reasonable area to target as stop and profit target, it forces you to better read price action. It also forces you to realize that some trades will have a terrible risk/reward, so don't take them, at least not 'now'. Wait for a better return, and then if the trade still looks good, take it. Patience. This will help you avoid over trading.

My goal is not to tell you the method won't work. My goal is not to tell you to copy me. That kind of advice doesn't help anyone, because trading is much more personal than that. You have to completely own what you are doing, but I think you've got to position yourself for success up front. Just like the importance of being properly capitalized, it is important to firmly understand price action and understand the when and when not to trade.

Hope you find something useful in what I've said.

Mike

More sleep. More contemplation. More input from my futures.io (formerly BMT) trading friends (thank you very much Mike!). More futures.io (formerly BMT) research. Then I get up this morning and my internet is down. Off to the church to work out of the spare office. So much for working from home… I traded very well today. I followed the rules. I only made three trades. I did not make any trading errors. I am pleased with my trading results. I will not recoup the money I lost earlier this week by stupid trading, but I can hold my head up very high in that I did trade well.

My hard stops and targets will need some work. Today, I went with the hard numbers I spoke about yesterday. I understand these are not the best, but they will keep me from doing nothing until I can decide what my method is.

I know that changing things constantly is not good either, because you never know what your system is, but I did add a couple of things. First I only take trades that are after the first retrace that then subsequently break the previous high/low of the retrace. Secondly, I have adapted Big Mike’s Collective Moving Average program to include pretty line colors and background flooding. It works great! My chart today shows the number of trades I stayed out of because of my rule refinement that I would have traded yesterday. Adding the rule to only trade the first retracement trade really helped me.

Thanks guys for your support and encouragement.

G

It is nice to end the week on an up note. Why is it up? Because I am getting better. “Better at what?” you may ask. Better at trading. This is two days that I followed my rules…100%. Now two days doesn’t seem like much, but for me, that is a major breakthrough. And what is better is that my rules are straight forward, simple, easy to follow and for a large part attributable to the fine folks on futures.io (formerly BMT)! I am using Big Mike’s Collective MA. Yes I fiddled with it (too much engineer in my blood, I just can’t leave ANYTHING alone). Nevertheless, I like the colors and they help keep me honest. If the background is green…long, red…short, blue…stay out! This is a Big Mike rule and it just saves me from all sorts of chop and bad trades. Next is the Triple CCI. Once again, green…long, red…short. My MACD, DSZL and OBV confirm the same. Now here is the great part. I wait for the first pull back (retrace). I place a buy or sell stop above/below the last high/low and wait. No fill, no problem. I will just wait. Three trades again today and I am done. There were more, but I have been advised that I am trading too much. Only take the good trades. It has been an emotional relief for me not having to trade as much. The screen shot is from my three trades of the day. So I am counting the chickens and heading to the barn.

Speaking of barn, I have a nephew that is turning one and I am going to make a topsy turvey barn cake with caricature animals. It will be fun!

G

gordo 

Speaking of barn, I have a nephew that is turning one and I am going to make a topsy turvey barn cake with caricature animals. It will be fun! G

Glad to hear you are trading well. Please, post pictures? It does sound fun.

Gordo,

I have enjoyed reading your thread. Good to see you in charge again. Last week I thought about telling you that maybe you should just stick with making cakes!! I didn't though because I thought that would be unkind and possibly too harsh. I'm glad to see you getting some things figured out. You've got several high quality entries each day. That's how I think it should be.

Good trading,

Mahlon

Gordo,
Good job, CL is fast paced and challenging. If you can become consistently profitable, you can probably trade most anything. I also have to improve my discipline with journals and spreadsheets, as others who do seem the most successful.

mahlonhersh 

Last week I thought about telling you that maybe you should just stick with making cakes!! I didn't though because I thought that would be unkind and possibly too harsh.

Mahlon

You have to start reading between the lines in my posts. I have a VERY dry sense of humor, and I would have laughed for hours with your comment! I raised 6 kids and you can't survive that without laughing every day. I loved your comments. Keep em coming.

Now on a serious note [kinda] ... making cakes pays about $1.50/hour after expenses. That being said, I still would have made more money baking cakes than I have so far in trading.

But there is still hope!!!!

Gordo