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Adventures in Oil Futures Trading - Demo to Millions! $$$
Tough day man, it was difficult to watch and listen to your video because we have all had days like you did today. Kudos for putting it out there, it takes some sack to wear your heart on your sleeve for everyone to see.
Here is where your resiliency and determination come in. Take some time to lick your wounds, get back on an even keel and once you are a little more level headed, recognize that you have a great opportunity here. If days like this are what's holding you back, then spend some quality time objectively going over what happened, without beating yourself up, so that you can figure out a plan to first recognize and then avoid these situations in the future.
It's a long and difficult process, figuring this whole thing out, but if you are diligent about applying yourself to improvement, you will simply get better and the mistakes will become smaller and smaller.
The market owes us nothing and will take everything if we let it. Seeing your results from the last few weeks, no question you can do this. I know it's hard to be positive after a day like today, but collect yourself, give yourself a break and an opportunity to learn from your mistakes, and then come back improved and ready to fight for your slice of the pie. Best of luck bro
Yes I am still profitable. I agree I probably should have skipped the day entirely. But aside from that I lost my mind and if I was trading my plan I would have had very few setups. I traded outside of my plan, took setups that were against my context read. I do have a $500 loss limit on the day which I am setting back to $300 which is what it has been in the past.
1/22/19 LIVE
TOTAL = -28 TRADES = 7 WIN % = 16.7%
WINS: 1 WINS TOTAL = 5 *AVE WIN = 5
LOSSES = 5 LOSSES TOTAL = 34 AVE LOSER = 6.8
BE = 1
I have given back all of the gains I have made since starting live again. No amount of screen time or setups are going to improve what's going on with me. I need to reevaluate. I know that I can trade profitably and well, but my FOMO and lack of patience is creating problems. Will be doing a very serious review to see objectively how I can work through this. I know everyday that if I stay patient and follow my plan there will be setups, but still I over trade, go against my own read. My short term identification of setups is conflicting with my overall plan for the day. After the past two days performance I am tempted to go back to demo. I know this isn't a good solution, as staying on a live account is the only path to lonterm success but it's also a fine line if I am going to continue to blowup.
Premarket Read:
We have pushed into 54.50 supply and have rejected. Sitting on top of previous major consolidation zone at 53 and have filled in Friday 1/17 double distribution profile and tested lower HVN at 52.90. If we break below this area likely to test previous HVN balance zone to 52.
Price did very close to what I wrote on my premarket read. Same as yesterday having a very good context read on the PA and still have many losses. I need to make a rule that if price is above or below a certain level I can't take the fade trade until a specific criteria happens. For example no fading HOD or LOD where trading into space. This already was a rule but I have not been following it, which results in full stop outs on break out and trending trade. After my first trade long couldn't break higher I should have been looking for short setups to test ONL and then once we broke that level and held I should have been only trying to get short for the imbalance move down. Instead I was stuck again trying to catch the lows, which makes no sense. We were in a fairly tight trading range so it was likely to break in a direction and continue. I am always thinking that the larger TF players are just flushing stops and are going to reverse. But assumption continues to create losses and be on the wrong side even when my larger TF context doesn't agree with what I am looking at short term. It's really a different brain when I am trading versus when I am analyzing what I am looking at.
So I think there are a couple of things here. First, if you cannot follow your rules you really have no business playing with real money. I think this is critical. On thing that I have done in the past and have taken do doing once more is to track my actual trades versus what my plan says I should be trading. I track potential trades (trades that fit my plan), actual trades taken, trade management and proper exit. I have very specific rules for each of these. I also do not take a trade that is outside of my plan - this is not something that I am ever tempted to do. I think it's just how I'm wired. I do have a strong urge and tendency to skip trades that do fit into my plan. So my goal is to get into trades when I should, and that's my struggle. Measuring your performance in this way might be helpful. I measure P/L but I place more importance on my trade accuracy percentage. I know that if I can hit 100% that over the course of a few weeks or a month I'll be green.
That part that I labeled "2" above is something else that might be a problem. It's very easy to say I should have done this or that with hindsight but really hard to impossible to do so in the moment. I've tried trading bias, using stats with ONH, ONL, IB, opening range, etc. Impossible for me. I think unless you have very specific rules for these things then you can set yourself up for a trap. Maybe this isn't really an issue for you but I thought I'd at least mention it. It does seem that sitting on your hands when you're supposed to is the main issue but this might be something else to get straight if it's not.
I would also caution you to not over blow what has happened. You did trade for profit for a period and then lost your head for 2 days, but you still didn't really lose much if any money. I think you should treat this as a success. You've put yourself under pressure and have many positives. You were able to uncover some problems that are correctable and it was basically free, or of very low cost. This is a good thing. I know that it sucks ass now; I've definitely been there and will probably be there again. But this is a two steps forward one or two steps back kind of thing. The important part is that you have learned something from this. You have more information and have found holes in your trading. Now you can use that information to plug the holes. This won't happen in a day, a week or probably not even a month. But if you are persistent and wise, you can plug these holes and keep going. Maybe you then find new holes and start again. But eventually the big holes will be plugged and then you're left to tinker and tweak. Maybe that's a few years away, but however long, they potential payoff is surely worth the struggle.
EDIT: I just thought of this that might be helpful. I have and continue to track the "almost" trades. These are trades that don't quite meet the criteria in my plan but still look pretty good. As I said, I'm not tempted at all to take these but I mark them on my charts with the appropriate note. I also track their outcome. I did this while I was developing my plan and continue now. I think that tracking these for the amount of time I did maybe removed any temptation I would have of taking these types of trades because I could clearly see I would not make money over time. Sometimes these "almost" trades would have worked out great, but most of the time they suck. I suppose that after a while I was able to convince myself that I am not smarter than the market and I'm not smarter than my plan. My plan has been tested and revised and has lots of math behind it. My impulses have math also, but the numbers at the end are red and not green. Maybe if you did something like this you could logically see how trading outside your plan is a bad thing. Maybe that would tap into the part of your brain that is making you take impulse trades.
1/23/19 LIVE
TOTAL = +45 TRADES = 6 WIN % = 50%
WINS: 2 WINS TOTAL = 62 *AVE WIN = 31
LOSSES = 2 LOSSES TOTAL = 17 *AVE LOSER = 8.5
BE = 2
Premarket Read:
Current price 53.47 @ 6:30. We are inside yesterdays stretched out profile but above value area high of 53.28. Likely upside is to 54 to test Mon 1/21 VPOC. Below to YVPOC at 53 and again below to 52 at Micro composite HVN and 1/17 naked VPOC at 51.85 . Stretch numbers below would be to 51.50 HVN.
1/24/19 LIVE
TOTAL = -22 TRADES = 10 WIN % = 30%
WINS: 3 WINS TOTAL = 23 *AVE WIN = 7.67
LOSSES = 7 LOSSES TOTAL = 45 *AVE LOSER = 6.4
BE = 0
Premarket Read:
6:30 52.30 right above ONL and at POC and sitting right at YVAL. We have failed back into major previous consolidation zone after testing two major supply zones from December. Upside test likely at 53.15 YPVOC. If we can get a decent move down below 52, there is space down to 50 to 1/8 POC and lower side of major consolidation. Most likely trade with inventories today is choppy trade around 52 into the numbers at 11am EST.
Youtube Journal:
Another difficult day for me. I took 7 trades in less than 20 minutes and the valid setup I passed on was 20 minutes before. Clearly this is FOMO. After it was over, I looked back on it and couldn't believe what happened. Like it was a dream.
I agree with what you said about if I can't follow my own rules I have no business trading. My plan is to finish out the week and reevaluate. But again today after another session of impulsive trading it's not looking good. But the question is if I stop trading live, then what? I don't see that going back to demo is of much value. Would love to hear your thoughts on if I do stop what is my exact course of action?
I also have the issue of passing on trades that fit my plan. For me there are worse repercussions than only missing out on the setup. When I miss my valid setups this I believe is what makes me go on tilt and start trading impulsively. This I see as the main issue holding me back, if I get my impulse trade under control I will be profitable and scalable.
I also do track potential setups. For me though, I am concerned with continuing to add too much writing during the session. I am trying to stay focused on the auction. I think sometimes this can be a distraction. Maybe possible to make a quick note and then go back and expand on it later.
And yes I am grateful that after these three bad days this week I am still in the black. This is a great opportunity to learn from my mistakes and well worth the price paid if I can get under control. Tonight I am writing, as well as adding some needed clarification to my trading plan.
For #1, I suppose the two options are either going back to demo and working out the kinks there or continue trading live and doing it there. The answer really depends on personal preference and your account balance. I would think that it would be more beneficial to work on these issues while trading live but what's the risk of blowing your account up while doing it? What's the risk of longer term psychological damage by doing so? Those are personal questions and I think the answers would be different for everyone. I'm very conservative by nature, and I've hit quite a few brick walls trading with real money so I lean toward working things out in sim, getting as routine and robotic as I can there before live trading. But I've gotta be me and you've gotta be you :-)
For #2, I find that doing this helps keep me focused on my charts. There are days when I have very few entry opportunities and I begin to drift which has caused me to completely miss an opportunity. With CL being a completely different animal I could see how that would be distracting, depending on your time frame. I'm a big fan of trying to eliminate distractions.
I'm not sure if you have seen the thread but if not you might want to check out The Crude Dude's thread (below). It's long but it's also a good look at someone who had invested a lot into trading and was able to make it work. I found it to be pretty helpful just from a mindset standpoint, seeing what it took for him to make the turn.
Hi everyone. I'm new on here, but I thought I would make a post about my Trading style, since I feel it's fairly different than what I usually see out there. I have been trading about 6 years, mostly Forex, but have transitioned to Futures a few …
1/25/19 LIVE
TOTAL = -30 TRADES = 7 WIN % = 0%
WINS: 0 WINS TOTAL = 0 *AVE WIN = 0
LOSSES = 4 LOSSES TOTAL = 32 *AVE LOSER = 8
BE = 3
Premarket Read: Current price 53.04 5:45 am. Overnight session traded to 54 and sold off. Yesterday's VPOC at 52.71 Below there likely to retest 51.83 lows. This is harder to read because we are back in highly traded value area. Yesterday's VAH at 53.02
