Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
Wow...I didn't think I'd have any response to my post. Yah you guys are all right I was sitting here figuring out that I can still trade 4 contracts, and if the CL drops to that long over due gap...etc...etc...death!
I'm really glad I checked back here. Because I was going to trade tomorrow. Even though I knew intellectually that would be the worst thing to do. It still stings, but I know it would be so much worse if I lost another 3000, or more tomorrow. I know now I'm not going to do it, trade live tomorrow that is.
Thanks to all who responded. You all gave me some much need mental relief, and options...which I was blind to see at the time.
I went through your journal and charts. There is no a reason for you to fail. You received excellent advice from several traders. Towards the end of May and early June, PandaWarrior and iTradeToGolf, gave you great recommendations. Pandawarrior even re-drew the areas where you should have entered on YOUR own charts.
You trade about on the average of 10 trades a day (3 days to trade/week per your plan) and want to make $500/week. Here we have a bad situation, Bad math or lack of vision. If you trade 30 trades per week and pull only 3 cents of each CL trade, that is that should be maling $900 per week (30 x $30) (excluding commissions).
Think about this for a moment. How many times could you have made a 3 cent profit in a day ?? What is the probability to make 3 cents in crude oil on simple pull back trades? Now what is the probability of getting 10 to 30 cents out of a trade / or a swing in the direction of the trend? Obviously much lower.
Now, you have been trading multiple contracts without any clear exit strategy. With 3 cents fixed profit target, and trading only 2 contracts you will make $1800 weekly. What is wrong with that? With 3 contracts that should gross you $2700. And on and on and on…
Getting 3 cents in much easier, less stressful. Like itradetogolf said, money management is key.
There is also something missing on your charts. You need to get some arrows plotted automatically on your chart with a sound alarm, to draw your attention to the trade. Something like Perry’s indicators here on futures.io (formerly BMT). Only trade in the direction of the trend. Practice, practice and practice. Wnen you are comfortable, then look for countertrend trades.
GO back to trading and never give up. You have gone through half the battle. Re-write clear rules, AND put them on an index card next to your screen, then get some arrows and alarms plotted on the chart, take consistent SMALL profits. STOP Telling the market where it needs to go. GET your act together.
I do not mean to be harsh, but someone must tell you.
Also, Stay away from the opening GAPS and early session trading. There are lots of opportunities, the market will be there for another day to trade.
Best of luck.
Thank you Avall it's not harsh...and I feel that same way to, that I've fought a long way. I think in some werid way that makes me feel entitled to something?? Who knows but...I hear you, thanks for the post
Most beginners are only good enough to get 30-50% winners yet they want to pick methods of trading and contract management which demand 50-70% winning pcts in order to succeed. It's counter-intuitive to emotionally and intellectually accept that for you to be in a better position to "win" the game overall in your formative years, you can and should pick a method with a high recovery rate. Go to any forum, any website, any book and they all have a strong bias to show you a scalping system where the win rate is high and the gain per trade is low.
On your CL 150t chart, you *can* trade 3-6 contracts for 20-50 tick targets (from the initial entry) without ever risking more than $120 per attempt, never trading more than 1 contract per entry and never adding to a losing position. In fact, you can make 2K in less than 15 mins on occassion with still, only $120 of initial capital risk.
Your first step is an obvious one. You want too much confirmation to enter a trade and the cost in ticks you're willing to pay for this is too high. You're demonstrating trade after trade fading on you because you're consistently late. You have to get your average stop loss down to 7 ticks. Sometimes you will risk 10 ticks or 5 ticks but you should have it converging around 7 in the long-term.
With a 7 tick avg loss, you can clearly see from a plain 150t chart that there are 15 to 20 tick moves all over the place. However, right now, the majority of those moves are not possible for you to experience because you delay entry decisions.
What the problem is NOT is your decision to trade the CL. You have chosen the best contract on the planet to trade and for that you should be commended. You can recover from your mistakes more easily due to the wonderful moves it has with much more freedom of movement than the volatile yet much choppier TF e-mini.
This post is food for thought. It comes from a person who also trades the CL, yet expects to lose and lose often. Just ask yourself this question though:
If you had to accept that you were no better than picking 40% winners long-term, how can you still trade with a positive expectancy? Isn't this closer to the reality of your trading profile? And if it is, doesn't it make more sense to accept this and figure out a way to trade successfully in spite of it?
It is easy to say the methodology was to blame, and you need a different methodology in order to be successful.
But the truth is, you shouldn't be trading futures as a beginner. You shouldn't be trading oil as a beginner. And you shouldn't be trading multiple contracts.
Futures is the wrong instrument class to cut your teeth on. You cannot simply start trading futures and expect to find your way along the way unless you have incredibly deep pockets, and even then, you are just throwing money away.
You can hone your methodology skills, psychology, risk management and more on a smaller account elsewhere first. Then once you've proven you can successfully manage a small account, you can increase it to a larger account. Over time, you could move to futures - probably a few years after you start trading other products.
I wouldn't say worthless, but before you feel the 'stress' of trading cash, you aren't even halfway to consistent success in my opinion.
SIM trading is good for testing ideas, and for helping to create habits which are beneficial when you begin to trade cash. Of course, most people abandon everything they learned on SIM, and fail to execute their setup which they spent so much time perfecting on SIM. Instead blaming the failure on everything but themselves. So, then they change indicators, charts, time frames, etc, and essentially throw away most of the hours spent on their system which worked great on SIM, but somehow failed to work on cash.
Once you are good trading SIM for a while, you should only focus on your execution of that system; and most of all, don't change anything. What are the odds you system worked on SIM for months, and then suddenly fails miserably when you trade live? Can't you see the only thing that changed was you? Work on finding out how you can better deal with the physiological changes that take place when you are now put under 'stress'. This is what is holding you back; your system is still good.
Of course, I generalize a bit, but you get the idea. Or do you?
Gary
As consistently profitable traders.. "We get paid to wait, and we wait to get paid."
I post similar things all the time. In my eyes, sim is next to worthless. It is for learning how to place orders in your platform more than anything else. Of course I always tell people to backtest and forward test their methodology. But the emphasis I was placing is on getting skin in the game, even at 10 cents a pip, because only once something is on the line will you start to develop the skills necessary as a trader to survive.
Not to pick on this guy, but he has done everything wrong in the eyes of positioning himself for success, instead of failure. In my view, 90% of this game is simply surviving. You need to be around long enough (years) in order to learn enough to have a shot at being successful.
What I see on an almost daily basis, is people who start by trading way too big, and then they are never willing to shift to a smaller instrument class or product or trade smaller size because they just focus on making back the money they've lost, instead of focusing on protecting the money they have left.
Rookies ask how much money they can make, veterans ask how much money they can lose.
Can you post the chart you lost the money on along with the trades and the size of those trades?
As to the size, trading 4 lots on CL is madness with a sub $50,000 account. Can it be done. Of course, but not for a beginner.
I both agree and disagree with @Big Mike on his forex recommendation. CL is the best instrument in the world to trade. But at $10 a tick, you'd better be good with 4 lots. Otherwise, head over to forex.
I will say this, looking at your charts, I sometimes wonder if you are thinking about risk management.
I do believe sim is valuable. Its valuable for one thing in my opinion, developing confidence in your method. IF you do the same thing over and over in sim and prove to yourself it works, then implementing live on a forex account or perhaps on YM at $5 a tick will prove easier. Not easy, but easier.
But you have not developed confidence, you've not developed money management skills you can depend on day in and day out and you've demonstrated you do trade against the method that appears to be clear to everyone reading the thread.
This means you must stop trading live money. Take some time off, get your head straight, lay out a money management plan you will never deviate from. This money management plan should take into account a max risk of 2% of your account PER DAY and then choose an instrument that allows you to have correct stop placement in the context of risking a percentage of the 2% per trade. Then go to sim for a couple of weeks with the sole purpose of trading the method without deviation. If short below X MA, then never trade long in that context, etc....and abiding by your money management plan ruthlessly. If you can do that honestly, post it here every day, prove it to yourself....then go live on the chosen instrument. If you have an 8% drawdown for the month, stop trading. Start again next month with a 6% max monthly draw down and the same 2% per day stop.
It appears that you have $4000. That means you can risk $80 a day. If you risk 25% of that per trade, then you get to risk $20 per trade. You need to trade forex with that kind of risk available.
Look to make a percentage on your risk capital every day. Say 25-50%. So you risk up to $80 a day, try to make $20-40 a day at that point. Fifty percent return on your daily risk is good right? I think so. You do that consistently for a month, end of the month you made $800 risking only $80 a day. End of the month, you increase your risk to 2% of the new balance and start over.
I know its harsh but its something I wish I had heard at the beginning of my trading journey.
Good luck.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
