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First I want to say I'm thankful this group is here. I've been lurking for a while. I'm all about camaraderie and love. I think being connected with other people who love trading is awesome.
I'm just getting started with trying to day trade CL. But I've been doing stock market stuff for about 4 years.
I spent the last 2 years developing automated trading systems for ES. I'm running a live portfolio of swing strategies that consist of a number of different long and short strategies.
I put everything I've got into those, so much time and effort, and they're in the midst of an enormous drawdown. It could wipe me out. They're designed to be high-risk aggressive trades, but this is definitely tough on me.
It's been a great learning experience though. At this point, I am done trying to adapt those ES automated strategies. I've done so much statistical analysis on them. The 20 years of back testing either gives me an edge or it doesn't, and I'm not going to tinker with it at this point. Maybe in another half year I'll re-visit the idea of editing the strategies if my account hasn't blown up.
In the meantime, I've been trying to find other things to do in the stock market. I love this stuff. I wake up every morning excited about the market. It's like a game to me.
I want to day trade and I have really enjoyed trying to trade CL (all on SIM for the day trading right now). Right now I'm using price action and a "feel" for the volume/momentum as my sole basis for making trades. I have a vwap line on the screen too. I trade off a 1-min chart and keep a daily chart open.
The big problem for me is that my mind has really been geared toward rules/automation, so every time I try to do an intraday trade I feel like I am going in blind because I don't know what the historical stats show about the probabilities of the trade outcome.
I think I might be different than most people learning to day trade because I already am very good at following trading rules and managing my emotions. I practice mindfulness regularly.
So my big challenge at the moment might just be finding trade setups that have edge on a 1-min CL chart. I'm probably going to run some form of back tests I guess just in order to get a starting point on some setups with some basic edge, but ultimately I'd love to develop an instinct for market and momentum conditions.
I'll journal stuff here. I plan to be pretty real and vulnerable and just put it out there with how it's going for me.
I'd really love to hear any feedback, tips, or questions from you guys.
Could you please elaborate on what platform/automation language you are familiar with? CL is great and many times nasty - so question will be how much of order flow automaton can you do for outright directional day trading?
Now just adding my penny but you can get your manual trading strategy components tested for "probabilities", even if you have to do it individually for each component do it, then run different simulations of those components with each other, then work on eliminating on what you don't need by trading them on sim for extended periods.
As you have already found out, manual trading is little different from automation as psychology plays in here, so to just comfort yourself better have those stats on back of your mind.
I must also add one famous quote here; "Past success does not guarantee future success", this applies to trading a great deal. So don't always look at the stats, you might find something horribly improbable working better for you in manual trading than on auto. Because here you are the main component of your strategy, not anything else.
I have been using TradeStation for all my back testing. I've only back tested the ES thus far though, and 95% of it has been on daily charts. I haven't incorporated order flow into any of my tests, just price action type of stuff.
So day trading is like a whole new world to me. I'm used to daily charts and slow-moving plays and patience.
I'm training my eye to look at order flow and all that. Haven't even thought about how to back test order flow yet. It's a whole new exciting world for me to learn and explore.
I started using Ninja about a month ago because the prices are so much better. I am planning to do all my trades manually for day trading, but if I end up doing automation I might set up the strategy in Tradestation and have someone convert it to Ninja for me (I don't know Java).
I traded from 6am PST to 8am PST (9am EST to 11am EST). From this last couple months of watching CL, it seems like that's the hot zone. I also trade from 11am PST to 1130am PST since there's juice during that time.
Today in the morning session (all on SIM right now for day trading) I lost $506. I traded 2 contracts per entry (mainly so that I can have one contract that locks in a short target profit and one for a longer target profit). As far as ticks, I lost 18 ticks per contract.
I did 23 total trades during that two hours. I was kind of flying all over the place. It was really fun! But also felt inconsistent and not systematic and like it might have all just been tomfoolery.
In general I was just looking for trends and trying to make entries that supported the trend. I always try to have a level of s/r between my entry and stoploss.
In my mind one key problem is that I am not consistent with the setups I look for (since I don't know yet which setups have a proven edge). So I'm trying really tight stoplosses in some situations and in others I'm putting two swing levels between my entry and stoploss. And sometimes I just go for a 5-tick scalp and other times I go for the 30-tick victory.
So I feel unsettled because it's like I'm in here blind and inconsistent. I truly believe that I'm the type of guy who could handle the emotion of trading a system that only wins 20% of the time but has a nice positive expectancy, but since I'm not sure that any given strategy I've tried actually has edge, I end up having a lot of doubt. I know there will be plenty of losing days even with good strategies, but were my losses today due to poor strategies? I really have no idea.
I'm trying to trust the process though, and trust that if I keep accumulating screen time that it'll start to become more clear to me where high-probability opportunities lie.
In the 11-1130 PST session I made 5.5 ticks per contract of profit, about $100 net.
I played the bounce off a prior swing high at 57.33. I entered at 57.31 with a stoploss at 57.36. Got one tick away from my stoploss then went down.
Was hoping there might be more juice in this one from an end-of-day volume push.
Once it hit 1130, I wanted to try to get 10 ticks out of it but it started going in reverse, so I locked it in, and then it proceeded to immediately go to my original 10-tick target.
That's what I mean about wishing I had clear day trading rules in place already. If I honor my rules, I have little problem missing extra ticks. I've trained my mind for it. But since I don't have rules, I end up questioning everything I'm doing. We'll see how this all unfolds.
Well I got annihilated today. Lost $1172. That's a whopping 54 ticks per contract!
I use 2 contracts per trade, so that I can have one lock in a short gain and one lock in a long gain (which ideally smooths out results). Well for the first 6 trades, I didn't get a single win! Not even on one contract...
I've been going with just gut on these day trades, based on the look and feel of the chart, always using s/r to protect my stoploss. So I haven't been looking for specific setups. I just look at the chart and if it "speaks" to me and says "this is a long", then I go long and set up a stoploss below nearest s/r.
It certainly feels like I'm spinning my wheels. I need setups that have edge, and it seems very inefficient to try to find those setups by just discretionarily trading each day. One good day or one bad day mean virtually nothing, so I'd have find something and do it over and over to see if it really works over time and yet that could prove to be a huge waste if I go down the wrong rabbit hole.
So I might start doing some back testing again to try to find some basic setups I can use, and then fine-tune them over time. In the past I've had trouble finding anything with edge on short term charts through back testing though.
Not sure how this is all going to unfold. I'm going to keep sim trading each day on CL though regardless with the hope that I'll get a better feel and train my eye. Over time I hope to have specific setups I use though.
That's my trades for the day. If anyone wants to give critical feedback, I'd love it. When I look back at it now, I think I probably need to stay out of the way of the open. Also, I obviously went short repeatedly on that really strong opening drive, but that thing just kept drilling through layer after layer of resistance. Didn't seem probable that it would do that and I got diced up. Would love to hear from anyone who feels they have input.
