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It felt like every single tick was fought to the death over today. Sheesh.....and just when I am to stinkin tired to do it anymore, it breaks out.
I had a couple of shorts this morning early, then the rest were longs, however, nothing seemed to follow through and so most were BE or small losers.
I ended the day up +9 ticks in my live account and -6 ticks in the combine. It moved to fast for me on the last trade and so missed getting the order in for the combine.
I had a long play in mind early, and price eventually went to those target areas but not before violating nearly every swing low, getting rejected multiple times at swing highs.....what an exhausting morning.
Nevertheless, other than the missed trade at the end on the combine, I'm reasonably happy with my performance today. Not in terms of ticks but in terms of how I managed my emotional and mental energy as well as risk. I was completely risk averse this morning, willing to trade but not willing to take larger risks simply due to the fact there was no follow through on most things.
I've reached the end of the maximum period of time I have allotted myself each day to trade. Time to move on to other things.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Its funny how your eye can deceive you. You think you see something but its really not there. I've noticed over the last few weeks how my shorter time frame can convince me a full on short trend is in effect and then you glance at a higher time frame chart and you realize, nope, just a pull back.
Slowly each day, I am feeling better and better. I am not tiring quite as easily now, been sleeping like a baby all night which I never did before. I would always wake up at least once in the night. Gotta say, thats really nice.
Time for some food, then some paperwork related to the hospital stay....I hate that stuff....
Cheers.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Well it was a complete bust today. The first trade was long into resistance and I had my target a couple of ticks below it. It was about 20-23 ticks away. Enough to justify the trade. It went about 4 ticks my way and failed. I bailed instantly but still lost 10 ticks on it. At that point, I thought, its gonna take out the lows. But I failed to act out of disbelief. I should have acted. It would have been enough to cover the loser and make me enough money to quit for the day.
Then I went into the second guessing phase of the day. V bottoms and tops are not my favorite in any trading environment. I just dont like them. But thats what I got. And so I took the short at the top of the pull back thinking it would take out the lows. I trailed aggressively this time and ended up with 10 ticks. The only winner of the day.
The rest were attempts to get a feel for direction and see if one would run out.
Trouble is, when I see a huge opening range like today, it almost always spells trouble for me in terms of how I like to trade. A 50 tick opening range seems to signal a range bound day and so far, thats what we are seeing. I don't know how to trade that way or at least how to see it in real time. Combine this with a narrow overnight range and I am in trouble.
I need to work on responding to these kinds of scenarios. Either dont trade or learn how to trade it. Reduce targets and stick with the set ups. This could work I suppose, change the way I see structure? If I do that, do I run the risk of losing what I have? I am a somewhat linear thinker. Unfortunately I tend to see things one way at a time. I am getting better at holding two opposing ideas in my head but acting on it does give me trouble.
Something to think about.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Oh man, can crude be a beast or what? I'm looking at the daily chart thinking its time to rollover and play dead. Looking for it all day but it wont roll over. In fact, it keeps looking like its gonna go up again. Higher highs and higher lows and all that business. So some losers, a few break evens, including a couple that had at least 15+ ticks and one that was +31 ticks....all added up to a really frustrating day....still expecting it to fail and roll over though....and if it did, to really take a dive quickly.
After the frustration levels reached their peak, I decided to talk to @Gary on the phone. Talked for about an hour....and as we're talking, price broke through the lower support levels, and I jumped on it. Rode it for 57 ticks. Enough to take care of the crap from earlier and make a decent profit as well. I had a secondary target I was holding for once it broke through the first target level but it came back and hit my trail. Of course it went straight to the secondary target right away for another 25 ticks or so.....but it was already past my first target, was willing to give the second one a chance but not a lot of room so those are the choices we make and live with.
Red line is the trail....there was a lot of room between the price and trend line, was not willing to let it come back all the way to the trend line.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
When you "jump on" a break of a range, do you keep a tight stop?
What is your defense on "fake out's"
I can't tell you how much money I have left on the table by "waiting for the PB" that. sometimes
never really comes. Then, when price is about 2/3's to an intended target, it's the old, "don't chase" or
"too late to the party" gag.....
I have been starting to look at order flow and find that if no serious selling comes in
at the break out, the move is fairly safe.
What I do with CL once a trend line breaks is gauge the strength of the break, then watch the initial pullback. If there's a S/R level to "catch" the break, such as the round number (93.00) Friday, I'd expect price to pull back to the trend line breakout level (93.10-ish).
You can immediately place a sell stop below 93.00 in case there's no significant pullback.
If price pulls back to the breakout level, you can enter there with a limit order, or trail a sell stop below the low of the pullback bars on a small time frame (1-min or 70-tick chart).
My defense on fake outs is to use a small stop, usually 10 ticks for straight up breakouts.
With symmetrical triangles around a flat 20EMA (like Friday's pre-break formation), the initial breakout almost always revisits the trend line break, so better to play it safe and get in on a second entry after evaluating the reaction.
I prefer the trailing stop trade entries to the anticipatory limit entries because I like the market to grab my hand and take me along as all the counter-trend traders' stops get triggered to market.
One more thing, if price is trending hard (making new highs or low on the day) without you, you can use the same "trail a sell stop below the low of the pullback bars on a small time frame (1-min or 70-tick chart)" method to get in on the trend mid-stream. So Friday, after the LTL breakout you would, for example use a 1-min chart to enter a new short or add to a winner during the 11:31, 11:35 or 11:39 eastern time bars. This is one of various methods of entering a strong trend, the other common one being to simply place a buy or sell stop a tick or two outside the last new HOD or LOD that printed.
