A couipleof my new composite studies on the CL.

30 minute and 5 minute.

Still trying to figure out what it all means, but they are pretty cool to look at, if nothing else.

Ranch Dinero????????

Well, today was a down day, and i didnt take 1 short, unlike yesterday. I wasnt thinking we were going to keep going down and that the CL was oversold overnight. Boy, that was wrong.

All day long, I am trying to find a reversal, and finally, a wide range established price at around 97.50 to 98.50, on uncharacteristically big CL volume on a Friday, And a ton of volatility, 30 to 70 tick candles on the 5 minute. Today was a day not to watch the chart. A tiny small bodied doji was 20 ticks long!

Today, because of the fierce volatility, I tightened my stop...why you ask? Because I use a 15 ticks stop normally, and a 25 ticks stop wasnt enough, so my thinking is, if I am right, I will be right quick, and if i am wrong, my stop is hit in a blink.

Did it work, yeah, sortof. I stuck around way longer than I intended, only because i thought i was seeing history being made, and i want to be able to tell my grandchildren...I was trading the market the day crude went from 100.00 dollars a barrel to ____ (pick your number)

price went way farther than it should have, but thats the nature of investments...they always oversell at some point. The biggest up days in the market are historically after the biggest down days in the market. I thought today was going to be an up day, but now, its likely next week. CL has the weekend to think about where it wants to go from here.

10 trades

-10+16-12+15-12+18+32+8+15+24= +96

Monday 95
Tuesday 87
Wednesday 58
Thursday 113
Friday 96
--------------
Total 449
===========

29 trades this week. 68.97 % efficiency.

142 trades for last 4 weeks. 73.24% efficiency

This just goes to prove you can make money fighting the trend....hard way to make a living but very possible.....

Nice job going long in a very bearish market....

IF the trades were market profile driven, and I am not sure they were, days like yesterday remind me why I thought MP was the ultimate counter trend trading method.....support and resistance are supposed to hold except when they don't....and it seems like you can get run over on days like yesterday if you're not out quick if the trade stalls out..... this could be my unfamiliarity with MP speaking but I seem to remember wondering why the MP guy I was studying with didn't trade the trend that was very clearly unfolding and why he kept taking what appeared to me to be counter trend trades. Its why I bailed on MP......

Your thoughts????????????

First off, was the guy profitable? I assume he was, but just a lousy teacher. There are no bad students, only bad teachers.

Got a while? Keep in mind that as far as Market Profile is concerned, I am not nearly as experienced as many. But the concepts reverberate with me, because it attempts to quantify the market in terms of an auction process.

I think the best way to describe what I did yesterday is to call up my Time Price Opportunity chart. Each letter, if you are not familiar with it, coresponds to a different time on the chart divided into 1/2 hour increments. The purple highlight is the Value Point Of Control.

In Mind Over Markets, Jim Dalton describes 2 big questions that we want to answer so that we can trade profitable. they are.

1.Which way is the market trying to go?

2. Is it doing a good job in its attempt to get there?

On Thursday and Friday,the range was extended down in the early going, and then balanced on a tighter range after that. Firday was characterized by much more volatility and more volume than is generally. I missed the big range extention down, because the previous sessions market profiles didnt indicate price would collapse as it did, but the poor economic numbers on Friday likley had the effect of increasing the downward pressure that was residual from Thursday. Overnight we dropped 200 ticks. Thats a lot, and the market can run farther and faster than we can anticipate. I felt that after the open, I was anticipating a move to fill the overnight gap closer to Thursdays close. Thats why I was long on the first 3 trades, and I was not expecting the selloff.

Therefore, after 10.30 on, I beleived there was support. And as the session went on, it held. So I was long 97.70 to 98.20, when the price action on the 5 minute warranted. But if you look at the 5 minute, you will see, my 15 tick stop was bellow the support I had drawn, or the DB of the signal bar, and was taken right on that support. But if it moved up 5 ticks initially, then I would close to -10. I was trying to keep a 15 tick trail stop, and if I hit a 15 initial target, I moved to BE. I managed the trade manually from there.

It was an actively intense day of trading, not like Thursday where it was 2 trades and finished. I hung around a lot longer than I intended because I wanted to gain the experience of all markets, and no 2 days are identical.

I dont know if you have read it, but Mind Over Markets is a good book for understanding the method. Its seems to be working for me, but I come back to the fact that I havent been using it very long, nonetheless, I find it extremely helpful. Used in conjunction with PA on the 5 minute for entries, I am growing more and more comfortable with the technique.

It also have provided me the confidence to trade less, because now i am more confident of my entries and exits. Less anxiety there as well.

And i am liking the new Rancho Dinero suite.

The teacher was profitable. He was a straight scalper using MP and I think a volume or tick chart. I can't really remember. I gave up when I could see a well defined intra day trend move in the direction of the extreme IB levels. He would limit order those levels and simply wait for price to get there. Some days he got filled and others he didn't. On the days he got filled, he sometimes got stopped out. Small stops to be sure because he was at the extremes but he also got ran over sometimes and slippage on his stops would be more than he was bargained for. On the days he got filled and made a profit, I can only remember on day where he held a trade further than 5 ticks on ES. That day he got like 40 ticks.....it was a pretty trendy day he happened to get lucky on I think.

On the other hand, I could see "signals" to follow a trend that ended up at his IB levels and a trader could be out of the trade by the time he was in it. I just couldn't see the logic.... Perhaps it was the teacher.

I've read Mind Over Markets twice. I get what he's talking about and I find the MP chart to be beneficial on the 30M chart for overall larger picture type stuff. I know Jim talked about trend days, rotation days, etc and how to identify them on the MP chart and how to take advantage of them. So far, I've not seen anyone make a good case for trend days on MP. Rotation days make a ton of sense from an auction market theory but these last two days seem to perform outside the auction theory at least in the smaller time frames.

Secondly, I agree with your support areas. I had them drawn as well and I even took a trade late in the day off one of those areas.....However, those areas look more like break down trend continuation areas than places to buy against the trend to me....I saw a HH/HL combination only once........however, if you made money, who cares what it looks like.... someone once said, do you want to be right or do you want to make money? In the end, who cares how it ended up in the account, only that its there.

I think I've been conditioned for so long to "trade the trend" that when something appears to contradict that thinking, I have a hard time seeing the logic or rational behind it.

The teacher was profitable. He was a straight scalper using MP and I think a volume or tick chart. I can't really remember. I gave up when I could see a well defined intra day trend move in the direction of the extreme IB levels. He would limit order those levels and simply wait for price to get there. Some days he got filled and others he didn't. On the days he got filled, he sometimes got stopped out. Small stops to be sure because he was at the extremes but he also got ran over sometimes and slippage on his stops would be more than he was bargained for. On the days he got filled and made a profit, I can only remember on day where he held a trade further than 5 ticks on ES. That day he got like 40 ticks.....it was a pretty trendy day he happened to get lucky on I think.

On the other hand, I could see "signals" to follow a trend that ended up at his IB levels and a trader could be out of the trade by the time he was in it. I just couldn't see the logic.... Perhaps it was the teacher.

I've read Mind Over Markets twice. I get what he's talking about and I find the MP chart to be beneficial on the 30M chart for overall larger picture type stuff. I know Jim talked about trend days, rotation days, etc and how to identify them on the MP chart and how to take advantage of them. So far, I've not seen anyone make a good case for trend days on MP. Rotation days make a ton of sense from an auction market theory but these last two days seem to perform outside the auction theory at least in the smaller time frames.

Secondly, I agree with your support areas. I had them drawn as well and I even took a trade late in the day off one of those areas.....However, those areas look more like break down trend continuation areas than places to buy against the trend to me....I saw a HH/HL combination only once........however, if you made money, who cares what it looks like.... someone once said, do you want to be right or do you want to make money? In the end, who cares how it ended up in the account, only that its there.

I think I've been conditioned for so long to "trade the trend" that when something appears to contradict that thinking, I have a hard time seeing the logic or rational behind it.

Large gap down and huge overnight selloff, at least for the overnight sessions. Continuation of Friday? Are we going to test the lows of this year? Where is the bottom?

i have to admit, that much of my analysis is really out the window, because the last few days really dont conform to anything I have traded in the CL. Black September 1986...( I wasnt around in investments back then, but I read about it) All theat merger aquisition collapse...Michael Milken, junk Bond Financing and the insider trader stuff with Ivan Boskey, and the RJR Nabisco merger with KKR, Ted Forstman, Greenmail...blah blah.

Well, i think oil isnt going to 0...or even 50 anytime soon. The world runs on oil...30% of ouredaily living expendetures are directly tied to the price of pertroleum. (I had a introductory seminar that I gave to prospective clients where I used that line...Surviving in Todays Economy)

Anyway...I took 9 trades. First 2 failed...a long and a short. -30 on those 2. If my 3rd one failed, i was going to call it aday and wait till tommorrow.

it didnt, and I survived to trade again.

8 trades, the later session trades off a S/R level that I viewed as 96.90 - 97.50.

-15-15+16+47+27+9-12+14= +71

No chart marked with entries today. I had it drawn, but I erased teh thing after I had it all ready to go...hit the wrong icon, and poof. I wasnt about to redraw the thig from scratch. Not the first time it has happenned, just didnt feel like redoing it today.