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Catching Big Waves - a trader's journal of surfing the the markets
Never did take another trade. I lost interest today, being a Friday and realizing I was playing with fire. The fact that I was scalping told me I was not comfortable.
Summary;
+31 long
+6 long
+12 long
-10 short
+9 short (posted earlier as +10)
+7 short
+13 long
I wanted to short this move most of the day after the big volume push out of resistance, but the ES stayed pegged to the ceiling, and there were plenty of new short positions in CL to blow the market up. Meanwhile, the W4 resistance shadow hung over price action until the final minutes before the pit close, and at that point I was not interested in risking my day's gains when there was not sufficient time to make up for losses, just before going into a weekend. That would be a stupid move for me from a psychological standpoint.
Good week overall. Stayed sharp, no major losses. No major wins either, but wins exceeded losses in both frequency and size. But, for a journal called "Big Wave", I watched them a lot more than I rode them. I'm not really sure where all this week's scalping came from. It started last Friday I believe, or maybe last Thursday. I had not traded crude oil for about a month and thought it was like a rebound relationship. But I traded very similar today, though not as many attempts as before. I'm going to try to get the answer out of my head this weekend.
Nice going Gary....notice the confluences here, tagging round numbers and RI, PDH, break of P to the upside, retrace and perfect abc corrections between the two bull moves.
I only wish I had gone much much heavier. But that can be a double edged sword. All in all, not bad day to resume trading CL.
Over and over again I spend hours and days marking my charts, then erase a few days later and start over. As the maket moves forward it leaves new points of interest behind. The higher the timeframe analysis, the longer the markings have significance. Those attempts at analysis may last for weeks or months. Shorter timeframe chart markings, like 30 minute, can lose their meaning in a day's time. It's like building sand castles too close to the surf, having them washed away by the rising tide. The tide goes back out, and I start building again.
I don't know why, but I enjoy the whole process. Typing this, it doesn't sound like any fun. But it's almost like an artist with a new canvas, and I get lost in the process until the next painting is completed. There was a discussion recently about which chart background color was best, and I think I prefer black because it lets all of the other items stand out with such vibrant contrast.
I'll start with a single line somewhere, and soon there are lines everywhere. Then I will increase the time range and do it again, then decrease the time range and do it again. Lines everywhere. Then, I zoom back out and start to remove them again, making tough decisions about which really have to go, which have the most strength. And it's really somewhat of a guessing game that improves over time.
I feel my chart analysis is stronger than my trading ability, and it has been my main source of frustration in my trading over the past year or more. As much as I believe in the power of chart patterns I almost refuse to trade them to their full potential. Even though that seems to work for me, I feel like I am failing somehow by not improving my risk to reward. I still dream of making 10 to 1 trades and being right with a lot less frequency, and I don't exactly know why.
I know some reasons that might be it, like the saying "let your winners run and keep your losers small", for example. Or, the studies I have done that show that the risk to reward ratio by itself could in fact be the holy grail. Maybe that is my obsession. Maybe I imagine that if I just set the stop and the profit target and let whatever happens, happen, that I would be in a more peaceful state. Zen. My trading the past few days has been the opposite of peaceful, but maybe in some ways still "Zen".
One definition of zen teaching says, "contemplation of one's essential nature to the exclusion of all else..." I was certainly feeling every pulse of the market to the point where nothing else existed at that moment. Isn't that being "one with the market"?
I studied meditation for several years, and the goal back then was to clear the mind of everything. There was a saying, you can't stop the birds from flying over your head, but you can stop them from resting in your hair. Let the thoughts flow though but don't hold onto them.
In one method, I used to sit in a dark room with a candle and stare at the flicker of light until all else faded to black. Nothing but the candle existed at that moment. Replacing the candle with computer monitors, and the flicker with price action, couldn't that be a type of meditation?
I ran an extremely stressful business years ago, and I would go mountain biking or skiing as a form of meditation. In those higher risk activities the rest of the world seemed to disappear, and if I kept the intensity up, the only thing I could think about was staying focused on what I was doing at the time. Trading crude oil sometimes feel similar.
Maybe the whole chart drawing thing is just another form as well. I start with nothing but a black screen and a white flickering price pattern, and study it until nothing else exists. I draw until I can't draw anymore, and it becomes complex. Then contemplate, and finally go back to remove the noise until it becomes simple again.
I don't know really what the point of this post is, other than it is Friday, and I just wiped my charts clean again, ready to do it all over again next week.
Yep, pretty rudimentary really, not even close to the level of VSA study, or Price Histogram Analysis or MArket Delta or TFlow, But Ensign does the SR automatically, NT does it too. Much more relevant is the concept, I think, of price magnetism.
You know, those could be my words. My mind has been going a million miles a minute all this week with stuff I have been reading - about volume analysis, active trade management, price magnetism, inter - market correlation (and why I hate inter - market BS that everyone and their dog talks about). And about the difference between my thoughts and my actual actions. And about platforms, and servers and colocation, and about solitude and the power of silence and creative introspection, and of family and laughter and of children giggling in the garden outside and how my cat seems to look at me as if to say...I know the secret of life, and you still don't get it. And the damn smugness on her face
And....I am ranting again. I would like to write a million things, but alas - not sure how useful or pertinent they they are in the first place. My first motto, taught well to me in my time in the oil and gas industry - was/is - "shut your trap and get her done". And so we must try.
And now the Glenmorangie awaits, at least the damn cat can't have that pleasure in life
Cleaning up my office today, I just found a spot on the bookshelves for my latest completed book related to trading and/or investing in the markets. That brings the count to 22 books so far, and I have my eye on a few more already.
You have a excellent writing style with clear insight and observation. Plus it is always enjoyable to read your posts. At some point during your trading journey you should consider writing a book yourself. You probably could write the first couple of chapters based on your posts on futures.io (formerly BMT).
