That's it. The "second half" must be played more agressively. I make this mistake all the time. You can't catch big if you are not in. I missed several friday for being too tight with the "second half". Call it quirks, noise, or whatever, it seems very hard to play CL with tight stops. I need more experience that's for sure.
CL Redux
- Thread starter schizo
- Start date
That's it. The "second half" must be played more agressively. I make this mistake all the time. You can't catch big if you are not in. I missed several friday for being too tight with the "second half". Call it quirks, noise, or whatever, it seems very hard to play CL with tight stops. I need more experience that's for sure.
When I moved into live trading CL, I did that with QM using two contracts for scaled trading. If your personal approach includes trading multiple contracts in or out, chart the CL symbol and fill the QM symbol for trades.
It's half the size, so two QM = one CL. The occasional slippage by a tick or rare instances where CL holds a stop by one tick while QM gets hit to the exact tick are not an issue: your primary objective is learning under live fire while preserving capital. QM is more liquid than TF and still $500 per contract on a $1 CL move.
I still trade the eminis, when they are tradable. The CL has quickly become my go-to market. Sal, don't you miss sitting thru those 2pt ES chop channels for three hours straight these days? Or are those $500 per CL swings scattered like condoms at a frat-house beer party across our charts consolation enough? lol
Always a sound advice to go it slowly, but I think a chart is a chart and a setup is a setup. I don't think it takes more than a week to get a "feel" for a "new" market an experienced trader wants to trade. And going from aapl/es to cl is not like going to trade lumber. Don't think there's so much difference there day to day other than leverage.
3 CL seems roughly as volatile as 10 ES, maybe a tad more (equity fluctuation wise), and the intrabar volatility and speed feel much faster. If a large trader wants to push around the CL, hunt stops, etc, it is easier to do than in the ES for sure.
The smaller commission % that one pays for more action is overwhelmed by the slippage in stops, etc.
All in all, they are very different markets in my opinion. But yes, they are markets.
I've been sim trading CL for months now, net profitably, so it's not like I just started working with it. The problem is, my sim trading was always sporadic because I've been trading stocks. The other problem is that as a result of sim trading CL in this cavalier manner (rather than focusing on it completely which I did Friday as well as the previous Thursday and Friday), I tested a lot of strategies including a couple of average-down strategies. Only once did an average-down strategy result in a loss for me.
After a while I realized that although this was very easy to do in sim emotionally, it was not a safe way to trade CL because so often there are these "bars of doom" that appear out of nowhere and if my very large stop was hit on one of those moves, I would not be in a very good state of mind.
So what I've been doing over the past week is focusing on well-timed technical trading with tight stops placed at invalidation points.
Thanks, Austin, for the QM idea. I will check that out.
After a while I realized that although this was very easy to do in sim emotionally, it was not a safe way to trade CL because so often there are these "bars of doom" that appear out of nowhere and if my very large stop was hit on one of those moves, I would not be in a very good state of mind.
So what I've been doing over the past week is focusing on well-timed technical trading with tight stops placed at invalidation points.
Thanks, Austin, for the QM idea. I will check that out.
Quote from NoDoji:
Why'd you have to print that analogy in my brain? I was really confident until now...
There's gotta be an ETF for crude oil in addition to QM, but what I posted is nothing you didn't know. It's very easy to a have a $2,000 plus or minus day trading just a couple of CL, and very hard trading just a couple of ES.
Just getting one 5' bar correct per day...and you can be done trading CL. Imagine that...I have been.
Quote from F112358:
Just getting one 5' bar correct per day...and you can be done trading CL. Imagine that...I have been.
Well aware of that and that's how I got hooked. I learned the power of trend-following not all that long ago, and had a CL sim day of $13K+ recently trading 5 lots, pure "buy every dip" trend-following.
Ya, ES can truly be a dog, also why it's the hardest market to trade profitably. On second thought, I stand corrected on my opinion. I can see how someone can be profitable trading one market but not another executing the same method/trading plan. I think that has more to do with the trader's proficiency with his/her method than differences in the markets tho. But who cares what you trade to be profitable as long as you are.
It's a great place to "cut teeth" IMHO 'cause if you can become CP w/ ES then the others are easier. I am gonna try my hand at oil and Natty to squeeze more juice. Maybe you guys can just PM your account numbers so I can just wire my funds directly to yours. Less slippage for you instead of thru my broker and yours plus the exchange commish?