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Adventures in Oil Futures Trading - Demo to Millions! $$$


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Adventures in Oil Futures Trading - Demo to Millions! $$$

  #81 (permalink)
 
Rrrracer's Avatar
 Rrrracer 
On the road
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Experience: Intermediate
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I also struggle with the greed/revenge/monkey brain aspects of trading, not taking profits and having winners turn to losers in an effort to knock one out of the park or get back what I've lost.

One thing that has really helped is setting a daily profit target. I know, it might sound weird, when I first started I thought "why on earth would I want to limit my upside potential?" But when you're against the ropes, setting a realistic, achievable goal is pretty darn crucial IMHO.

The simple fact is if you can grow your account by 3% a day, you will be a very wealthy man. Doesn't sound like much, right? It's not, but it does take time and patience. And I'm not saying that you don't shoot for the moon when the time is right, but for the time being maybe you should be looking for base hits. It really does wonders for the psyche.


Hang in there bro! There's no question you can trade, get this thing dialed in and come at the market with a pro mindset.

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  #82 (permalink)
naesm
Fort Collins Colorado
 
Posts: 144 since Nov 2016
Thanks Given: 26
Thanks Received: 137

After almost two and a half years after my most recent blowup I'm back. I have been trading again since March 19th. I am going to get this thread and journal caught back up again. So far things are going very well but with a lot of work still yet to do.

In 2018 I started a video journal on Youtube entitled "Adventures in Oil Trading", I will continue that and pick my journal back up here. My first go at trading oil futures began in 2016 and traded through the middle of 2017 with poor results, then again at the end of 2018 and early 2019 before surrendering. The last time I said I would never trade again, I accepted I couldn't turn the corner and quit. But here I am again, something always pulls me back to the market. I have been trying to trade for nearly 20 years, since the age of 17 in one capacity or another. A lot of growth along the way and feel I finally have the discipline and mindset to trade well. Trading is the purest form of mental competitive performance, 100% accountability, you can't fake it. At the end of the day you win or lose, no story or excuse will change the P&L and that's why I love it. I am competitive by nature, I get bored easily and trading is the perfect outlet to express my competitive spirit, drive for success, and creativity.

Thank you to Kelly Ray for inviting me to Ego Free Trading and reigniting my desire to trade. Kelly and I have known each other since 2015. We were both members of a Forex trading forum and I had reached out to him as I knew he had a novel approach to the market and I wanted to learn as much as I could from him. He was always very generous with his time and willing to help me whenever I asked. He introduced me to futures and the oil market and taught me a different way to look at trading and it just made sense. Ego-free trading is the best content and trading education program I have ever seen. I only wish the site and forum would have been around a decade ago. No gimmicks, indicators, or software to buy. No BS, just pure price action and a foundation of what makes the market tick.

Looking forward to the journey and process (once again).

Stay tuned for my journey from demo to live. I will cover the trades I take, how I view the market, my successes and struggles. I started trading again on March 19th and have been on demo on Sierra with positive results. My first month back I was up about 200 ticks. I have a funded small $5k account ready to go when the time comes. I will only be trading one CL contract to start.

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  #83 (permalink)
naesm
Fort Collins Colorado
 
Posts: 144 since Nov 2016
Thanks Given: 26
Thanks Received: 137


REFLECTIONS OF TRADING OIL IN 2016 & 2017 (FROM MY JOURNAL MAY 1ST 2021)

I started trading oil at the end of March 2016. I funded a $10k account with Gain and began trading live after studying but skipped demo trading completely.

My first week live I was down 46 ticks, the following week I was down another 50, then down 30, down 18, and down 20. The next week I had a +20, followed by a -1, then down 14. So after eight weeks of burning money I was down 159 ticks trading a one lot. I tired of the cash inferno so I switched to demo, my results the first week were -2, then -19, -11, and a +20. With a single positive week on demo, evidently I thought I had mastered the market and it was time to put risk back on live. The results of course were bad. This went on back and forth between demo and live through the end of the year with mixed but overall losing results. My total live for the year was a loss of 319 ticks, my demo results were slightly positive at +72. This was over a sample size of 602 total trades. This was an emotional and difficult year for me personally as well as professionally, I definitely had attached a lot of my self worth with my ability to succeed trading. I was very unhappy.

Observations:
Starting to trade on a live account from day one guaranteed failure. I had not solidified my edge, I really didn't even know what it was, and I had no idea if I had an overall positive expectancy and the results reflected this. I was just winging it and hoping I would figured it out.
I was gambling, I was the sucker at the table, I was never the casino.

In early 2017, I was so desperate to make something work I purchased a "holy grail" futures indicator system based on Ninja Trader in April of 2017 for over $4k called "Dimension Trader". This was touted by two hucksters as a miracle squigly line system but also supposedly amazing at automated trading, this was really my draw to the system. I thought I would be able to set this automated trading software up, and it would just magically start printing money. Of course it didn't work, and not only did I burn all the money buying the software I lost another $5k trading the system live. The hucksters that sold this software guaranteed the results and told me they were personally making 10s of thousands a month, yet they provided no live trade proof, or verification of claimed results. I was initially told about this system from a member in a John Carter Simpler Options trading room. He supposedly was trading a 50 lot on oil with this system and was doing very well. In hindsight he was probably just a guy poaching members to get referrals to the snake oil software. This story sounds so ridiculous I can hardly believe it was me, it's embarrassing to put it out in public, but it's part of the journey. Writing about this is therapy, but also helps me to understand, reflect, and correct my mentality for the future.

My last attempt to make something work in this era was in May and June of 2017 where I joined another live trading room called "the Oil Trading Room" ran by Rob Mitchell. This is also a heavily indicator based room (which he sells of course). Several members and himself claim to be making big profits yet none of it verified. After several more months of frustration and no progress I threw in the towel.

A big regret I have is that Kelly and I stopped talking near the end of 2016, when I had a relapse of shiny object syndrome, I had convinced myself that there must be a better system out there and I left the concepts of pure price action and auction market theory he had mentored me in. Ironically when all of this was going on was right around the time when Ego Free Trading was born.

As they say a fool and his money are soon parted, and in this era of my trading I definitely was the fool. I learned a lot, many of my illusions around trading and life were shattered and I am grateful for the experience. This was my price of education. Much more unfortunate to me than the money lost was the time wasted, but this was my journey and what I needed to learn at the time. Today is my 40th birthday, almost exactly five years since I started trading futures, so an appropriate time for reflection.

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  #84 (permalink)
naesm
Fort Collins Colorado
 
Posts: 144 since Nov 2016
Thanks Given: 26
Thanks Received: 137

Reflections on my last trading attempt 2018-2019 (only 2 months)
From my journal on 5/2/21

A review of two months of trading in 2018. This experiment consisted of 41 trading days. I would like to do this exercise to look at past performance and see what insight I can gain.

2018

DEMO 11/27/18-1/4/19 demo trades found on a Google sheet.

26 Trading days

TOTAL TICKS +181

# TRADES 183
# WINS 53
# LOSSES 85
# BE 45
WINS / LOSS 38.41%
WINS / TOTAL 28.96%
BE / TOTAL 24.59%
AVE WIN 20.36
AVE LOSS 11.09
If this was live and with commissions this would be about a net of $900. Commissions would be nearly 50% of profit. Not a good long term strategy, but there was an edge here, and something to build on.

2019

LIVE 1/7/19-1/28/19 15 trading days before blowing up.
148 live trades and ended +9 ticks overall. But with commissions that’s about a $750 loss. On my final day I ended with a blowup, trading a three lot, averaging down, and completely losing control. Waved the white flag.

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  #85 (permalink)
naesm
Fort Collins Colorado
 
Posts: 144 since Nov 2016
Thanks Given: 26
Thanks Received: 137

FROM MY TRADE JOURNAL 4/29/21

Trades from today 4/29. I ended +9 with 4 losses and 2 wins. Not happy with how I'm trading. My context and read continues to be good but my trade management is poor. Not having a good week with two loss limit days on Monday and Wednesday. This isn't just about the outcome of losses, but rather my tendency to try to get risk off and not executing my edge. This creates trades where I am derisking early, not letting the trades play out, but often still taking my full losses. The irony of course is that trying not to lose results in just that and negative expectancy.

Here's a video of a short trade I took and my last trade of the day. In hindsight it didn't make much sense and I entered long where it was a better short to continue down to test the top of yesterday's range. I knew this immediately after I was stopped out when I went back and reviewed the trade. It's a strange situation where I get focused on the short term PA and lose sight of the overall context. Things as simple as rejections of previous ranges I overlook for low tick or high tick failures on insignificant increases in volume.

https://www.screencast.com/t/ILS6tX411E

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  #86 (permalink)
naesm
Fort Collins Colorado
 
Posts: 144 since Nov 2016
Thanks Given: 26
Thanks Received: 137

Trades from 04/30/21(from trade journal)
4 trades - 1 loss 1 win 2 breakevens +11 DEMO

Today is my first day back doing video journals. I recorded this very late, it's long, and boring, and I was tired, but I wanted to get it done, if you are brave enough to watch it I would recommend putting it on 2x speed. I'm still trading not to lose and my trades and results reflect that. Three of my trades would go on to to hit my targets of around +70 ticks. Then I had some missed fills. The silver lining is, I am identifying solid opportunities in the market, I need to continue to refine my trade management, especially my derisk strategy, this is killing me.

This was my first losing week since starting again since March 19th 2021. I had two max loss days and my profitable days were not even close to offsetting the losses.


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  #87 (permalink)
naesm
Fort Collins Colorado
 
Posts: 144 since Nov 2016
Thanks Given: 26
Thanks Received: 137

Trades from 05/03/21

7 trades - 5 losses 0 wins 1 breakeven -24 DEMO

Couldn't get anything right today. Read and context was good but entries were poor. I kept getting spiked out or derisked early and didn't allow my trades to play out. Taking losses and then having the trades work out and move to targets is frustrating, but the silver lining is that my general read and context was solid.

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  #88 (permalink)
naesm
Fort Collins Colorado
 
Posts: 144 since Nov 2016
Thanks Given: 26
Thanks Received: 137

Trades from 05/04/21

7 trades - 2 losses 3 wins 2 breakevens +42 DEMO
Great day, I feel my read was really dialed in. I missed some fills and some of my trades missed targets by thin margins.



*** I also play poker 3-4 nights a week so I thought I would throw some of those results in my journal as well. Tonight was a 5-10 No Limit Holdem game, I played for 4 hours and made $1350. Makes the journal a little more interesting to throw some additional gambling in the mix.

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  #89 (permalink)
naesm
Fort Collins Colorado
 
Posts: 144 since Nov 2016
Thanks Given: 26
Thanks Received: 137

Trades from 05/05/21 (TAKEN FROM TRADE JOURNAL)

4 trades - 2 losses 2 wins 0 breakevens +16 DEMO
Any profitable day is a good day. Always looking forward to trading as soon as the day is done. Can't wait for tomorrow, to see if I can do better than the day before.


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  #90 (permalink)
naesm
Fort Collins Colorado
 
Posts: 144 since Nov 2016
Thanks Given: 26
Thanks Received: 137


Trades from 05/06/21

3 trades - 1 loss 1 win 1 breakeven +5 DEMO

A Big day today! +5
I changed up how I did my videos today. Instead of waiting until later in the day or late at night when I'm already very tired, I did the video live during the day. I prefer this, it helped keep me accountable and mindful of how I was trading knowing that I needed to discuss my trades as they were setting up, as the market context was changing, and shortly after the trades did or didn't play out.* (THE AUDIO IS BAD AND REALLY QUIET IN THE BEGINNING AND AGAIN ABOUT 2 MINUTES IN BUT IS FIXED AROUND 3:45 IN)

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Last Updated on August 24, 2021


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