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Gold has been in a broader up trend most of the year. $1300 had been a key resistance level that broke through on the 3rd try, after many months of battling. Sellers carried GC from a 1360 climax all the way down back to that breakout level. I figured a lot of those shorts will take profits, fueling some buying support.
So as price breaks below 1300 and holds close to it for a couple days, I'm curious. I see a climax low followed by a Higher Low. Overnight Thursday it makes a solid run to retake 1300 and then makes a higher low around 1296. I entered at 1298 with a stop at 1288.
Risk on the trade was only about a hundred bucks. So that was another reason I was interested. Overnight the trade has given up most of the gains, but is still holding over 1300. I've adjusted my stop to 1292.5, which is a few ticks below most of the Sunday / Monday action. If it challenges that Sunday spike low , I don't want to be in the trade any more.
Made new highs yesterday and overnight nearly touched 52.50 before sliding back down. I don't think we crack the HOD today. I think we press a little lower or range sideways. Doesn't mean I won't keep an open mind and prepare for the longside in case we make another push. But I think a lot of medium-term traders holding long are going to be trying to exit in this 52 area. And most of the shorts from the 50.50 range are already squeezed out and covered.
Play the edges of this downward channel, and look for shorts anywhere they setup below 52.25. Favor longs if they set up near the bottom of this 51.50 - 51.75 cluster of support.
I had a giant green bubble on my chart that said I should be considering longs as the market moved lower. That bubble proved wrong today. My first trade, a short near the open, was on the right track. I had a suspicion that we would break LOD, but I had no idea by how much, and I didn't end up having enough moxy to stick with the trade. I've been trading a little bit quick lately - quick to pull off winners. Something to be mindful of.
Eventually, a bounce did come, but only after I had bled through a couple small losers. +5 +0 -4 -5 = -4. Though after commissions it will put me near scratch for the week.
I could feel the weakness today, but that green bubble I had drawn on the chart tricked me into pushing the countertrend longs. I guess coming away with just a small loss isn't too bad, but I would like a do-over.
For the record, this trade ended overnight in a loss. Womp womp.
I'm still standardizing my approach to swing trading ETFs and futures. I need a regular schedule of checking my markets and a regular format for logging the trades and posting them here so it is easy to follow. Something I will be working on.
I'm surprised to see the market continuing to leg up bit by bit. Rather than make any significant retracement, CL has been correcting with sideways ranges and then bumping higher. Last night's bump has hit resistance and the question for the open is do buyers press back to ONH or not?
Today I'm going to try and pay attention to the market's energy as much as the structure. Based on structure alone, I'd expect to look for shorts on any press into the ONH resistance. And if the buying is very one-sided into the 52.75 level, potentially look for a break higher to 53+. Moving down to yesterday's high, look for long bounces, and below 52.25 would be extremely week, dipping back into the prior consolidation area, so look for selling opportunities. But I want to keep my eyes on the PA and be open to shifting my allegiances if I see something else developing. Be just a little more fluid.
-4. Pretty off my game today. Had multiple orders placed too late and missed opportunities. My plan was a good one, but I didn't really trade it.
I think I tighten up when things start going well. Fear of going into a drawdown. I need to break through this and be agressive. I'm already starting to look forward to the next milestones (adding size, being able to scale in, taking days off from work to do "trial runs" with more screen time). But I need to focus on the current objective which is just to string more positive performance together in the current framework.
Last day of the month, last day of the quarter. CL's uptrend still very much in tact, despite taking a good beating yesterday. Let's see if the dip buyers come in today or if we continue to give up ground toward 50.
Basically, the immediate term is lower so I'll lean in that direction, but we are coming into some solid support in the 51 and 50.75 neighborhoods. If we see continued selling pressure, I'll be open to the idea that this thing is just itching to keep dropping. But keeping an eye out for a bounce as well.
I'm here, it's early, coffee is brewing, I'm ready. Let's do this thing.
Today was the first time in over a week that I really watched the premarket intently. I thought about entering a couple times, but mostly I was just watching. 5am to 6am pacific has been a problem for my PnL. Just watching and observing, today I am noticing a lot of pull-back setups that go the other way, only to come back later. The structures very quickly break apart and turn into blobs. This is just one day, but it seems to trade a little messier, and price gets pushed around a lot. This may be because there is not enough bias from the major players to create stable movement. There could be a way to adapt and anticipate this kind of action. For the moment, I'm just watching.
While I'm waiting here for the open, I wanted to comment on something that's been lurking in my brain a lot lately (again). Scaling in. I can't stop thinking about it. Trading one lot AIAO for the last 6 months, I've come to appreciate the simplicity of it. But it would be nice ... if I had some more granularlty on the entry side. Just to be able to relax the trigger finger a bit. It's only half a bullet. A third of a bullet. Pull it.
The pit was even messier than the premarket. I tried to avoid the meat grinder, but it was too hypnotic. There was a siren call coming from within. It sucked me in. For some reason I kept thinking the market wanted to DO something. But it just wanted to grind. There were a couple opportunities for decent trades today, which I did recognize in real time, but I did not successfully execute them. -11.
First trade wasn't horrible. Second trade was the first largely impulsive trade I can remember taking in quite a while. I forgot to put the car in "range-bound" gear, and then reacted when I finally switched to Fade-Mode and my tentative entries did not get filled. Reacted by placing a bone-head pull-back entry on impulse. Now we are breaking LOD, and I'm off to work.
9 -4 -4 -11 = -10 for the week. Aiming to do a 6-month recap this weekend.
6 Months of live trading one lot, finishing net positive. Victory? Not really. Improvement? Absolutely.
First, the data dump. Here's the day-by-day and cumulative PNL in CL Ticks including commissions.
Here are some month-by-month metrics:
Some comments,starting with the negatives:
1. My expectancy is too low. There's an edge there, but the commissions are eating it all up. One look at the Net Gain line vs the After Commission line makes that clear.
2. My winning days are still not larger than my losing days.
3. Primary reason for 1 and 2 above? I either need a higher hit rate or I need to hit larger targets.
4. Strong performance followed by weak performance and drawdowns. Finished this month off with another dip. This is partially law of averages, but there's no question there's still bad habits / techniques to improve at the root of this.
5. Still showing signs of being risk averse and not pushing opportunities to their limit.
6. Doesn't show above, but my time-of-day analysis indicates I have negative expectancy in the pre-open hour.
Positives:
1. I made it this far. 143 trades later and I'm still floating.
2. I habitualized an approach, stuck with it and evolved it. Pre-market analysis has evolved for the better. So has execution.
3. When I'm trading well, I have a pretty healthy ratio of winning days to losing days. I've settled into a method that supports this, and it feels good to walk away green more days than not.
4. In the first couple months I had some larger losing days, and resolved to make losing days more proportional. I have shown improvement on this.
5. I maintained a healthy gap between average winning trade and average losing trade. The average MFE > MAE results show the root of the edge. Overall, the entries are decent.
6. I showed some resiliency, came back strong from a drawdown starting in July. Isolating performance during that stretch, the metrics started to look really good. I finished this month off weak, but aside from that, things were starting to come together well.
This post is long enough and I have to run, so I'll cut it here for now. More to come. I'll dig deeper on into some other metrics I started keeping recently, not shown above. Finally, I need to state my approach for the coming months, what changes I might make, alongside my overall objectives. Obviously I'll never get where I want to go by trading 1 hour per day 4 days per week with a infinitisseimal expectancy. This is a phased approach. The plan is a work in progress, but there is a plan.
Nice job FM, In my opinion,there is alot to be said about being active and afloat after 6 months in.With that many trades, I would love to see on a 30min chart(that identifies rth session),and where your trades were.Or, if you are trading long range charts already, a 60 min chart.Just to see where your entries and exits are in the swings.You mentioned that sometimes your losses are disproportionate to your gains.Its good to recognize that.When you take a trade, do you have a stop/target in mind?is it static?Heres a thought.Say you are interested to to enter a trade , and your risk is too high.You can place the trade, and risk a larger stop,or, only take trades that you have identified as having an acceptable stop.One other thought.I have a predetermined stop amount that I am comfortable with.The opportunity i have now puts my risk at higher than that...With 1 lot, I can either pass ,or take trade with higher risk....or, place my order at the level of risk that is acceptable to me.Im willing to bet some of those trades will reach a little farther for your entry, thus, giving you the risk you are content with...We all know having a realistic r:r is sensible.Its great to say that we might have a 1:2. Some even say higher still.With that said, to get the larger targets, we need to sit tight through a swing or two, and that can get tenses.Especially when you hit your typical target, then it comes back to break even.Even worse, take a loss.I think this is indicative of trading 1 lot, which for now , I do as well.Lastly,When I go to 2 contracts, the first off will only be for my risk.That way , if it comes back to a full stop, its scratch.The second off for me is a destination that makes sense....Since I am still in sim, I feel abit funny offering comments about risk/reward,but I think it makes sense.Besides, you might be alot closer than you think to consistent profits than you think!Hope this helps
Bob
I started my journal for this exact reason and it has made a big difference to my trading.
I have a list of markets that I review once a week to identify a shortlist of potential trade setups for the coming week. I then review the markets on the shortlist after the close each day to see if any of the setups have completed.
Love seeing these stats, I think just out of sheer curiosity.
Something interesting I heard recently about a PATs price action trader is that he suspects MACK doesn't really make his money from his scalp, but from his runner. You might be in a similar situation, where you've identified at technique with a tiny edge, but really need that occasional runner to make it viable. Whatever it is, looks like you're on your way. Keep up the good fight!
"It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop." Confucius
