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Do you actually trade CL? Today's CL breakouts from NYMEX pit open to pit close off the 5-min chart, all with an initial 20-tick stop, exits based on trailing 5-min bars to keep it simple, included seven trades and captured $880/contract before commissions/slippage. These include the pit...

You need to work on your entries and exits, man! I shorted 107.82 and covered @ 106.32! I'd post my time & sales blotter but, uh...ummm...I'm having technical difficulties. :p

One more thing, in keeping with the topic of this thread: If you're trading CL with a $5000 account and your first 5 trades of the of day fail and you're down $1000 (20% of your account), can you easily trade the next five setups according to your rules? Probably not. You're very likely to...

I trade crude oil futures (CL). I'm not sure exactly, but I believe you only need $5000 in your account to day trade 1 contract (maybe less). Each day common price patterns offer at the very least 10 solid trading opportunities between 8:00am and 2:30pm eastern time. If 50% of these...

Consistency is the ability to choose a setup or basket of setups you plan to trade whenever they appear, trade them every time they appear, and manage them according to your trading rules. Today CL put in a pattern from my basket of setups. I saw the setup, I saw the best price at which to...

Not too strange. Crude closed almost at its high today and was so close to its last major pivot high high deep into the leg of a technically perfect uptrend, that the high becomes like a magnet for price. 107.08 was a key level for counter-trend traders to place stops. So all it took to trigger...

So I'm a few hours off. Some day I'll hold a position "long term" :p

With CL anything can happen. It wouldn't shock me if we saw 107.12 by the close. P.S. I'm stepping away from my desk for a while.

That ascending triangle break was worthy. I didn't trade it because of the bearishness of the range retrace leading into it. I assumed the b/o would fail. That's what I get for assuming.

I just noticed the ES range...do you think the ES traders have chewed off their legs yet :p

When I trade counter to a strong trend for a pullback to a key level, I often have a hard target. With the trend I target each next support or resistance level in line to be tested, always expecting at least one new high or low from the previous one. This morning I took a re-entry long @ 106.02...

If it's clear that a move has some momentum behind it I sometimes use the 1-min chart to trail my stop until my profit target zone is reached at which point I tighten it up. Using the 1-min chart to trail, my rule of thumb is if a good strong move (like the pit open breakout this morning, or the...

LMAO! I've done that a lot! Sure will piss you off though when you do that and the trade runs 40 more ticks without you :p

I cross-reference the 1-min chart to try and get better entries with tighter survivable stops. Unless you're chasing momentum where you expect a next level to break right away, or playing a breakout that you want to run and not fail and reverse, I suggest always leaving your initial stop in...

I agree with Douglas totally on that one. I taught my trading method to someone who simply couldn't trade it. It wasn't comfortable for him and he didn't trade all the setups and didn't manage the ones he traded according to the rules. I realized, though, that I had to learn to trust certain...

Why did you pay three commissions to capture 2.5 pts when your initial entry and target gave you 3 pts with one commission? I know I sound snotty with this post, but when you put on a trade with a target and there's no reason to exit the trade, why not hold for your target (or better)...

FWIW, I agree 100% and I believe there's a great living to be made trading a very narrow universe that you know intimately. The more narrow my universe became, the more consistent my results became. I now trade one thing day after day. At the end of the day I can tell you every minor and...

CIEN, DWA, DNR, GME, PCX, TOL, TSL, URBN, ZION (OK, compared to trading crude oil futures, they're smooth, slow and quiet :p )

How do you determine when to begin fading a move?

Thanks for your kind words and excellent post! Here's something else to chew on: I found that my comfort zone was centered around price patterns that allowed me to feel I had little at risk (small bars at extremes that allowed me to have tight stops, for example). However, I found that...