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I agree. If you move to BE at +4, you may as well have your target at 4 ticks and be happy. Otherwise you are just wasting money on commissions. CL can and does move fast and often will hit large targets without a retrace but more often than not, 4 ticks to BE will get you a stopped out trade. Trade 2 lots, take one off at 4 ticks and move the other one to BE if you want to try for a larger target.....and that larger target should be at least twenty ticks especially if the trade is now free....just my two cents
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
The CL at 3 range: Seems like you would get a fast chart and it would be hard to get into trades / duplicate your visual backtesting. I just looked at the CL from today at 8:41AM eastern and some of these bars only last about 3 seconds. Yikes, that's too fast for me.
Wow, there must have been news at 11AM or something because there's about, well I'm not going to count. I'll just attach a screen shot. That's a lot of bars for 10 minutes.
Dude, I was trading the CL 3 Range today. Yikes! I just had to let all that go by during those times, and I can enter trades pretty fast since my entries are largely automated-ish. I always claim to be a mechanical trader, and try to take every signal, but today it was ridiculous, I went to have lunch instead..
I agree 3 range is so fast on any instrument let alone CL. I think I would become a nervous wreck if I decided that I needed to trade 3 range. Beth is your focus on such fast charts a symptom of wanting to keep individual trade risk low? (Mike has spoken a lot about this dynamic and how it is generally counterproductive) You seem to still be quite risk averse and with such fast charts I can see how it will challenge you a lot psychologically and as just mentioned there will be many many instances of hindsight setups on your charts that were just not possible in real time to trade-that adds to internal recriminations. Anyway Im just commenting on the 'environment' you find yourself in not wanting to sound negative!
I you like the 3 Range CL 3 movement, but you want to ride a little bit milder beast, I suggest you try the 3 Range GC (Gold). It moves very nicely but is not as wild as the CL. I think of the CL as a wild Bull, and the GC as a wild horse, they will both try to buck you off, but the horse will not try to impale you while you're flying through the air
Thanks Papa15, MetalTrade, Cory, Aztrader9, AR01, Monpere and Linds for the tips!
It's good news then not burning wood. Actually, a little secret here. It's quite challenging for me to bang on the round opening and add wood pieces every hour. Sometimes I forgot and got into trouble because only ashes left and the temperature dropped substantially upon UKNOWHO's return. Or sometimes I opened the woodstove's window too much and temperature rose to 85 .. really smoky then ..
Back to Range .. I tried to have a 5- or 6-Range chart on. Didn't really like either one of them. Guess I prefer a smaller SL. Yes, CL often moves fast .. sometimes crazily fast even for no reasons (no news). I would not try to catch them .. how can I?!! There're some (at least 1-3) "slow" enough for me to catch IF I did not hesitate for seconds.
For the coming week, I am seriously thinking of 4-5 pips PT (from 6-8) .. even 3 for 6E will be good. Green green green .. all add up. Then I will have a cushion for a trade to run. Doing 2-contract trades is a good idea too. I will start with 6E because it's slower and I often have a chance to exit early.
Big Big Thank You to all of you for your prompt suggestion and guidance.
Take care and enjoy a Lovely weekend.
Beth (We will be going to Organic Garage for our tri-weekly fruits' shopping .. smile ..)
@wgreenie, I've been quiet lately... watching, trying to understand a few things, but I just want to post. I want to try and share some of my experience to help you if I can.
I notice in your posts you are still changing a lot of things -- instruments, chart sizes, methodologies, indicators. This is my perception from the outside looking in, at least.
It scares me!
It's my belief that all these changes usually mean you are still struggling. It is ok to struggle, we are human, it's part of our life experience right!? But sometimes it is really hard for us to realize what we are putting ourselves thru, or what we are doing to ourselves.
Now you can feel free to tell me you aren't struggling and you are immensely profitable, and I will be very happy for you and glad that I am wrong.
But if that isn't the case, then I'd advise you to stop changing things because it is my experience that putting all the focus and effort on external things like methods/systems, indicators, even instruments, these are all ways to run away from the truth -- which is most likely that the change or the real focus needs to come from within yourself and not externally.
I am speaking from my own experiences. It is easy, and you can absolutely convince yourself it is logical to search for a better method, a new "filter" indicator, a different instrument, etc to explain away why your trading is not profitable. But it is my experience that rarely are these things nearly as important as just focusing on what I often summarize as "execution".
I've read your posts since the beginning and you seem like a very smart girl, very very smart. You put a lot of thought into everything you do. With trading I think it is very easy to "over think" things. You start to second guess yourself. The best way to get past this is to simplify. Make your "task" so simple that there is very little thought (low risk of 'over thinking') involved. Start simple, build up a solid track record of executing on those tasks very well, and then slowly -- very slowly -- add items to the 'task list' which will increase the complexity of the task.
I wrote a similar post about "simplicity" on Gordo's journal. Let me link it here:
Make a two week plan. Do not change anything over the period of 2 weeks. Pick one instrument, and one chart. Put the indicators you absolutely, positively, must must must have and no more. Less is more.
Take 3 …
It seems to have been well received so maybe it will give you some ideas. I just want to start reading posts where you share screen shots of your big trading weeks on your live account, and then slowly over time those disappear (as you become modest, hehe) and are replaced with pictures of exotic vacations now that you are living "the good life" lol!
I personally would not trade a strategy that is based on scalping 3 ticks. That's just....nothing. Not worth the effort of waiting for a setup. If you do only a few trades a day you cannot scalp for 3 ticks. If you would trade 200 trades a day that might work but not 1 or 2 or 3.
Many beginners in daytrading start thinking they can earn a living with scalping a few ticks. That's not going to work. It's a beginners error.
I would strongly urge you to question yourself is this really a good trading technique you are using because now you are forcing yourself to scalp for 3 ticks ? What will be your stop loss if you scalp for 3 ticks ? 2 ? I really don't think it's a good idea.
I shouldn't be giving you advise since you are way longer than me in this game and studied so much harder than me, but there seems to be another problem. If you only take a few trades a day, how come you are so scared to take them ? Is your account big enough ? Can you deal with losing days ? By reading your last posts I don't think your problem is the profit target but it's rather your confidence in trading style. Why did you added another indicator in the last months ? Why do you need again that 'extra' confirmation to make sure you are correct ? .
