CL Redux
- Thread starter schizo
- Start date
I prefer to treat a swing trade using the daily chart much as I would an intraday swing using the 5-min chart. You went long on 3/10, but I'm not sure what time you took the position. In the 3/10 overnight session, price broke the key near-term support level of 103.33, then continued to break down pretty hard. I wouldn't consider swinging a long until either a previous day's high was taken out (confirmed entry) or price pulled back to the 20-day EMA (anticipatory entry). Price in fact found immediate support at the 20-day EMA (99.00 zone) on 3/11 during the overnight sell off. So a limit order in that area would've taken you into a swing long, that you could still be holding if you didn't move the stop to b/e at any point.
I think the place where you entered long was based on news momentum. In that case, I'd be using a very tight stop in case the momentum fizzled.
Some thoughts.
I like the idea of not overtrading. And as riskaddict pointed out the other day, sometimes when we just let things go and don't mess with them we get the best results.
And I'm sure we've all observed this. I know when I've done SIM trades and even when it moved slightly against me or showed a smaller profit and I let it go to see what it would do, more often times then not it yields much larger profits. Now on the other hand I've let some of those go without a stop and was just hammered.
So we do need some control. I know you've limited this to only 5 trades a week and that's okay as we don't want this experiment to just turn into another day trading example as we already are doing that anyway. The main way I would change this, and this ties into everything I've been saying on this thread all along, is I'd make sure I'm on the right side of the trade to begin with and even then as NoDoji has said below, I'd use a fairly tight stop to assure this.
This may take a few tries to get the best entry, but that's okay. So the 5 trade limitation may have to be expanded. But once you are on the right side, then you can hold it longer. I talked about all of this before and I myself really do want to work at finding ways to hold positions longer once I'm on the right side of the trade. Anyone observing my trading results, although I don't post all of my trades here, would see that sometimes I've been too impatient to take a smaller profit on maybe a shallow reversal. But on the other hand, in support of that is the fact that there are more major reversals and as we've mentioned in the last few pages, we don't want to let a 100 tick profit turn into a 10 tick profit. And quite often it's not easy to figure out which is which.
I had several previous posts in which I mentioned that letting winners run more is the way to bigger profits. And from some of the posts I've read evidently schizo helped NoDoji with this. Is that correct? Now this is providing we can discern an underlying trend and I agree with NoDoji that daily charts are more useful to find these.
It's not that easy to swing trade CL right now as it has found some congestion around this level after the initial move out of the 80's and 90's. And there are so many cross currents as your posts point out.
I like your experiment. Let's see what we can all learn.
ADD Just wanted to add this post from NoDoji from Matcha's journal which is relevant to some of my comments above maybe.
Quote from NoDoji:
When you say you exited too soon, do you mean you exited before your profit target (or target zone) was hit, or that you exited based on your trading plan and then price moved further in your favor without you? There's a difference. If you hold for target and price then keeps going without you, then in retrospect it's always "too soon", but in terms of trading your plan, your exit would be fine.
Just wanted to share this quote from darkhorse from the "Books that have significantly influenced your trading perspective" thread. This is the thread, not the quote, which isn't on the thread itself.
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=212857
It's from this link, and I'm not promoting the book as I haven't read it or even looked into it yet. But I have mentioned darkhorse and his website. But I like the quote which made me chuckle.
Here's the link.
http://www.mercenarytrader.com/2011/01/weekender-diary-of-a-professional-commodity-trader-review/
Here's the quote. So true.
"There is an old saying among professional racetrack handicappers: The losing player is the one who tells you he breaks even; the breakeven player is the one who tells you he is a consistent winner; and the winning player is the one who tells you itâs a tough, tough game, with great dedication required for success."
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=212857
It's from this link, and I'm not promoting the book as I haven't read it or even looked into it yet. But I have mentioned darkhorse and his website. But I like the quote which made me chuckle.
Here's the link.
http://www.mercenarytrader.com/2011/01/weekender-diary-of-a-professional-commodity-trader-review/
Here's the quote. So true.
"There is an old saying among professional racetrack handicappers: The losing player is the one who tells you he breaks even; the breakeven player is the one who tells you he is a consistent winner; and the winning player is the one who tells you itâs a tough, tough game, with great dedication required for success."
I couldn't agree more 
"There is an old saying among professional racetrack handicappers:
- The losing player is the one who tells you he breaks even;
- the breakeven player is the one who tells you he is a consistent winner;
- and the winning player is the one who tells you itâs a tough, tough game, with great dedication required for success."
"There is an old saying among professional racetrack handicappers:
- The losing player is the one who tells you he breaks even;
- the breakeven player is the one who tells you he is a consistent winner;
- and the winning player is the one who tells you itâs a tough, tough game, with great dedication required for success."
Schizo...JMO it could be fear of economic meltdown which would collapse the demand for energy. If Japan falls into the economic abyss....perhaps it will take us with it. Remember our recovery is very fragile and it is a world economy. Nuclear disaster anywhere in the world affects the entire world. If disaster is averted then a positive rebuilding energy happens and we re-focus on the mid-East and energy goes up.
The best place right now is probably the sidelines....both energy and ES. I'm holding a couple of long ES contracts and will do so thru the nite at least as some of this could just be media (options exp) hype. If we are down 50 ES in the AM I'll start building a fall out shelter!
Go back and look at 08 when we went from 140-35 in 7 months...because of the recession
The best place right now is probably the sidelines....both energy and ES. I'm holding a couple of long ES contracts and will do so thru the nite at least as some of this could just be media (options exp) hype. If we are down 50 ES in the AM I'll start building a fall out shelter!
Go back and look at 08 when we went from 140-35 in 7 months...because of the recession