Last week I started to take a look at the QM or Mini Crude Oil contract as an alternative to trading the CL or full size Crude Oil contract.  I am primarily a scalper/very short term trader and set out to trade the QM on Friday before the news as can be seen by the following trades.

My biggest concern trading the QM was execution speed and overall liquidity. The QM or mini contract represents 500 barrels of versus the 1000 barrels of oil in the full size CL contract. I was a bit more difficult to get fills when I would try to scratch a position. The CL contract although more leveraged still provides more “stopping places” with 100 ticks per point versus 40 in the QM. At the end of the day IMO the QM contract lacks liquidity and is only a more viable instrument for those trading small accounts and need a less leveraged contract in order to trade more contracts. For more information regarding contract specifics see:

Regular CL:

Light Sweet Crude Oil

E mini QM:

E mini Light Sweet Crude Oil

I am giving another long overdue update. January is finally over and I have been very busy with other non-trading business tasks as I am setting up a website and marketing material for our vacation rental business. Check back later at www.Cabinsof BlueRidge.net for updates. January was my third solid profitable month at 9.8%, lower than November and slightly higher than December. I am having difficulty compiling so many trades from three different brokers to extract needed statistical information. I have slowed trading equities futures and now almost solely trade the currency pair futures 6A, 6B, 6C, 6E, and 6J. I will occasionally trade NQ and rarely trade ES. This has been a pretty dramatic change and has been reflected in my results positively.

I have finished the Market Profile studies part of Joe Mertes mentoring program but still need to complete other aspects like refining my business and trading plans and completing detailed strength/weakness analysis. I am planning on spending another trading day with Joe live sometime over the next few weeks. I will post later on my progress with some thoughts on the use of Market Profile in general.

I realize that it has been quite a while since my last post. Many things have changed since that time frame. Even though I have neglected this site, I have not been neglecting my work trading. My hours have gotten longer and since increasing my 6E trading and in the market from 2:00-3:00 AM until 4:00 EST for 2-3 days per week and weekends get consumed quickly with family and rest.

I have continued with the eminiaddict subscription but not always listening to David’s webinar. I am usually in David’s chat room and also in Vlad’s chat room at esecfutures.com. for the most part during the trading day. In addition, I have also subscribed recently to Ben Lichtenstein’s squakbox broadcast of the live S&P pit. I have both going most of the time but slowly trying to use Ben’s service primarily. I trade only futures now and use the futures contracts to trade currencies. My current trading plan as follows, ES and 6E (Euro) trades constitute 8o% of my trades with the other 20% being of 6J (Japanese Yen) and 6B (British Pound).  I have become much more regimented and find myself sticking to my trading plan better. It has also shown in my results as I have had my best 3 weeks of the year in the past 7 weeks, ranging from 6.2% to 7.9% per week. In reality, I only expect to have one week like that every 6 to 8 weeks. I am trading on accounts totaling 60-70k total for now and is sufficient for my risk tolerance and position sizing. I am looking forward to doubling my trading account size in 6-12 months as I become more consistent.

My trading setup has changed a bit. Hardware wise, I am all Mac now and do not use any PCs. I am still using TOS and Tradestation for charting and have not been able to fully convert to Tradestation. I am using IB and Tradestation as brokers but still have accounts with Infinity, TOS, and MB Trading as well. I currently run Tradstation on Windows XP inside of VMware Fusion on the Mac. I am at the same time and on the same machine running TOS, IB, Market Internals spreadsheets, etc. on Mac OSX natively. I like this setup as it is very stable and also mobile on a 17 inch MacBook Pro with a secondary 22 inch Samsung T220 monitor, secondary Mac full keyboard and mouse. I still have a desktop PC with a Samsung T260 and a T220 in my upstairs office that is not currently being used.

I will be starting a one-on-one mentorship with Joe Mertes at Joseph James Consulting next week that should last into the holidays. Joe uses Market Profile data extensively in his trading so I will be learning something new. We will be refining my trading plan over the next few weeks and will post it here once it is refined. Our goals are not to overhaul my trading since I am already profitable and getting more consistent every week but to enhance my trading by working over the basics of planning, execution, tracking etc. inside of my existing plan. I will also post periodic updates of my training and hopefully some examples.

Well that’s enough for now. I am hoping to get back to posting on this site and get some fresh material posted. Thanks!

I have finished up a busy week. I traded half days only on Tuesday and Friday (Today) and full days on Wednesday and Thursday and managed to pull 29 points out of ES Emini for the week. This was definitely my best week of this year so far. I have been working diligently on discipline and trying to avoid over trading. I believe that focusing on setting up most of my trades around the 15 minute chart has also increased my performance. I am taking less than one half of the trades that I was two months ago. I also traded two contracts instead of one a few times in the past two days scaling out with two profit targets. The goal is to increase no. of contracts as my consistency increases. I did get my Infinity account funded today. I can now say that I have test driven a total of five brokers in the past 10 months of trading. (IB, Etrade, MB Trading, Think or Swim, and now Infinity)

I finished the day with a gain of +197 USD and holding only a small position long in DZZ with an entry of  22.52. I scalped the ES a few times for a gain. I accidentally added to my DUG position when trying to put a sell limit order in that cost me some change. I later closed the entire position at 19.20 (P&L above not correct). I tried scalping the E7 Euro mini contract a couple of times and stopped out. It is looking like I will use the currency futures over spot FX going forward. Tonight to take a short position in the ES if we move up near the daily pivot.

I have finished the day with a loss -140 USD holding a position long in DUG. We opened up above previous days highs and still managed to get a full gap fill on the ES. The gap fill is a great play but my bias was too bullish to jump on. I got stopped a couple times in the morning, once after lunch and hit my max loss for day and sat out afterward.

I finished the day flat with a gain of +168 USD (the 500+ above on DUG is misleading, read on). I only traded between 8:00 and 10:00 this morning and then had to leave to run errands. I scalped the ES a couple of times and closed the one long DUG futures contract at 20.05 for +146 (0.15×1000-4 comm). I would normally hold DUG for more but was a bit anxious to close as it as it was tying up a bit more than I like to carry in one trade and I was about to leave for the day. Too bad for me as it ended up retracing up to 50% of the move down from Friday afternoon (see chart above). It would have been a gain of +600 USD in that one trade exiting at 20.50.  Oh well, you know what is said about hindsight.

I finished the day holding only 1 futures contract long DUG with a loss of +18 USD (-56 today and +74 last night) I did not trade FX today as I was focused on scalping the ES. I missed the morning move up and got chopped up afterward. I was not thinking when I went long with the DUG futures contract and thought that I was securing control of 100 shares when in reality I secured 1000 (a bit more leverage than I wanted) I will usually scale into a DUG 50-100 at a time for a swing trade.

Today is my last trading day of the week as we head for a 4 day family weekend in the morning. FOMC days are usually light volume and very erratic trading days as many people stay out of the markets. I traded little and carefully and finished day flat with a gain of +9 USD. I had +52 FX from last night, -96 FX today, closed my AMR and DXO positions for gains and scalped the ES a few times with a loss of 40. My countertrend plays on the EUR/USD got killed. It was NOT a good day to trade. I think that I overtraded due to me not being able trade for the next two days. The next FOMC day I will take the day off. Oh well, I live to fight another day…

For a +.09 pont gain an hour ago…

For a +0.12 point gain, 4.7%.

I was up too early this morning and now I am done for the day. I finished the day holding only a position in DXO and AMR with a gain of +142 USD. I had total FX gains for $12 of which $31 was from last night. I did finish negative FX during the day today and was beat up on EUR/USD but had a good trade on a short USD/JPY before the cash market opened (see chart above) running into 200 EMA and a 50% retracement. I successfully scalped ES several times during the “chop” for $130 and also added to my DXO position and started a small position in AMR.

Started a postition.

Adding to position.

Well after a week of illness, a death in my immediate family and having to help my wife 2 days with an open house, I can say that I am glad to be back trading. I finished the day holding only a small position in DXO with a gain of +446 USD. I had total FX gains for $296 of which $64 were from last night. I was “plugged” in today and scalped the ES several times in the morning and shorted once coming off 865 area after lunch (see chart above). My new trading computer comes in later this week and I will be relieved as it has been a bit challenging trading on two notebooks.

I did not really have a chance to trade as I was in bed sick most of the morning. I did set up a nice ambush short on the EUR/USD before going to bed last night with a limit buy right at the 50% retracement at 1.3007 and set a stop just above the 61.8% retracement. The order kicked off, price moved to the 61.8% to the pip. It hit its -23.8 target perfect for 50+ pips. I tried a couple more scalps and stopped out to finish with a gain of +36 USD. I am not sure exactly why you can not click on my charts and expand. I just noticed this problem and hope to figure it out tonight.

I was out of pocket for most of the day and I finished the day flat with a gain of +38 USD. I traded 3 scalps around 8:00 only . I was stopped out of a EUR/USD trade and had 2 shorts on the GBP/USD around the same time after the 6-7 AM run up to 1.5036 (see chart above). The bulls were out there but I still played countertrend for 2 plays 40+ pips. I should have been using 2-3 mini but was only using one as I had been away for a few days. I was only around a couple of hours pre cash market. It looks like the market was a bit choppy and uneventful overall so I didn’t miss much.

I need to purchase a new desktop as the mother board in my main pc is dead.  In a couple of days I will be set back up and fully operational and also testing the AT platform from Infinity.

I finished the day flat with a gain of +124 USD. I managed two short scalps before lunch on the EUR/USD after its extended move yesterday, above the 200 EMA and into the 61.8 retracement from last Monday (see above). I also took one short at 12:00 the GBP/USD for a scalp. I have not traded for the past several days as I have been busy winding down a work related task. That said, I am hoping to focus a bit more in the near future on trading. Since this obligation has been lifted, I will likely start back trading E-mini futures next week and try to Swing trade spot  FX. I need to work on consolidating broker accounts, currently across four, and considering opening an account with Infinity for futures trading. Their commisions are competitive and they offer excellent leverage. I have download their AT platform and opened a demo account. I will do an update to the blog after I have had time to evaluate.

The EUR/USD has been consolidating. I think in part due to the fact everyone is trying to figure out if we are in a bear market rally or not. Thursday and Friday were low volume across the board as Friday was a holiday. The EUR/USD did not quite touch the -23.6% on Friday from the move down on Thursday but precisely hit previous S/R at price level 3 seen on the chart. It’s also worth noting that we bounced of 200 EMA on Thursday. We will likely trade up into area indicated by yellow oval on chart (50% retrace from Thursday). Above this we have a strong S/R level indicated by price level 2 and also the 200 EMA.

I expect that there will be continued overall pressure downward on the EUR due to all of the comments that came out of ECB last week about quantities easing. Essentially, this not much more than printing and injecting cash.

I only scapled the Cable 2 times during lunch from 11:00-12:30 and finished flat with a gain of +76 USD. The second scalp was short at 1.3451 2 mini contracts and reloaded with 2 more after 50% from the bounce off the 61.8% of the larger move up on the 1 minute chart.

I finished the day flat with a gain of +458 USD. I am exhausted from lack of sleep and ready for a break. I primarily traded the EUR/USD until lunch and took one USD/JPY Short at 99.18. See top image. I don’t normally trade the USD/JPY as I find it less predictable to my methods than the Cable but someone mentioned in a group that it was bouncing on its 200 EMA so I took a look. I don’t usually plot MAs and if I do, I do not pay them much attention. I noticed it hitting or about to 61.8% of the big move on the daily and had just hit highs just over S/R on the hourly. I got in a bit late but took a short 1 mini contract at 99.18 to 98.97. I also scalped one other time 2 mini contracts short for less than 10 pips.

It was not my best day performance wise by any means but was my best day trading FX so far. I have been using very small positions and learning as much as possible. I looking forward to pushing a bit harder and increasing my position size slowly. I have not mentioned in this blog but the primary reason for my interest switch from the S&P Emini ES was in because over the next few months I may have some non-trading related activity that will tie me up during the day hours EST. During those times, trading the EUR/USD and Cable, will offer me an instrument with many of the same price action characteristics and the liquidity needed to trade during the hours of around 4:00 AM to 11:00 AM. The S&P Emini ES only has liquidity during the cash market hours for the US.

We broke through the previous S/R at the pivot. It’s possible but not likely that they run this thing up to 50% fill from Fridays highs on the 1 hour chart. I will set up a bracket short before going to bed for that area.

Profit targets were hit after bouncing back from 1.3200 previous support/pivot area.

I finished the day with a gain of +201 USD. I made 2 trades on the Cable yesterday evening and several in the AM today. Not much happened after lunch until it broke out of channel (blue on 15 min.) and just took a 2 mini contract short position at 1.32 with a tight stop a previous swing high/low off the 15 min. chart. If it breaks above that price level and stops me out, it could easily run up near 1.3350 range (50% retacement from Friday’s high). Note: we moved down into ambush long today on the daily from lows in March and barely touched the 50%. I would expect this t o retested before looking long. This is a bit of a risky very short term trade with a tight stop. If it stops out I will be looking at next ambush short on the 1 hour chart.

I finished the day flat with a gain of +45 USD. I did not really trade today. I only had a 1 mini contract short on the Cable from last night w/ a 20 pip target. I should have widened the target out. The bad news out of Europe coupled with weakness in the US futures helped fuel driving down the Euro hard to a 50% retracement from the run up last week. I also scalped SKF once for a gain.

For a +2.8 point gain.

I finished the day flat with a gain of +152 USD. I only made one trade on the Cable today. I scaled into a short position (total 3 mini contracts) right after the run up after Geitner spoke at 10:00 and covered just before the 50% pullback.

For a gain of +1.17 points.

I finished the day with a gain of +252 USD. I scalped FAZ in the AM for +0.45 points and I am still holding DZZ. I scalped the Cable several times between 10:15 and 11:30 for 42 pips using 2-3 mini contracts. All of these scalps were on the long side. I have been in fear of a retracement from the move up late last week but the fact that ES was strong today helped maintain overall “long” bias. Unfortunately, I did not trade after lunch and missed some good ambush longs on the Cable…