I’m a VERY naive newbie who’s so eager to learn but it looks like I’m VERY confused now. I’ve never been profitable trading any currency. I was wondering if I will ever be profitable. I’ve tried quite a few Systems and tried as much as I can to stick to a single pair but still I’ve seen myself as not being able to maintain some level of profitability both in demo and live accounts until recently when I discover Crude. I’ve been trading crude for some weeks and I’ve maintained a level of profitability as never before. I scalp basically on this crude and I came to find out this particular commodity retraces like no other (I don’t know if I’m wrong) so that gives me the idea that price will always retrace back to my direction and it has been working for me.
Hey! But my confusion now is that this method is too simple to last or is too mundane to rely on.
So my beloved seniors in the house I need ADVICE. Who else there trade crude and how do you trade?
What system works for you and (please) why do you think I should stop this my childish strategy?
Do you think I’m stupid to believe I can be profitable for a long time trading like this?
How do you analyse this crude and do you know where I can be reading about it daily cause babypips doesn’t dedicate much to this particular market.
I use MACD, Ichimoko and Parabolic SAR as leading indicators.
I’m loving this crude and I wanna KNOW anything I could lay my eye about it. I can’t possibly ask all the questions that’s bordering me but I know you know basically what I want cause you were once like me.
My DM is open for ANYTHING!
THANKS!
Joseph
Nigeria.
Hi Joseph,
I think you may overestimate the success of other members on the forum. First, if you feel more in control of your decisions to trade crude oil than your previous underlying (stocks, forex, commodities) you may have stumbled on a potential successful future. Theory goes that the markets behave in the same way regardless of the underlying, but traders do tend to find their favourites. If you are not already doing so, writing stuff down that you can analyze at leisure after the event is something I found very sobering (when I screwed up) and comforting (when the trades went the same way as my plan). Unfortunately, the former outweighed the latter, but was able to determine, after a nine month stretch of maintaining records, what my “edge” was. It was negative, but if I took out 5 gross errors from just under 250 trades, it was around zero. Those five errors cost me around £1,300 on a theoretical £10K trading portfolio. It could have been much worse, but having identified those largest of errors (where my actions taken were directly against my own rules that I had set up to trade in the first place) I was able to determine how to change my plan with a current short term goal of “being profitable from the start”. Life gets in the way of plans, and for the past four or so years, I have not traded. I am back on this forum to ensure I reuse my historical plans, the error analysis I performed the last time I left active trading, and I am in no hurry. So my recommendation, write down all your thoughts, actions before entry, during open trade, and and after close, and you may be able to reverse engineer a robust trading plan that improves slowly. For the short term, I would not try to over-analyze it with “indicators”. You can get so far buried that you can’t see the “wood for the trees”. And crude is, after all, just a collection of very old trees. 
A highly skilled and profitable trader would adapt to any situation or instrument,the pegs dont always fit into the same holes
This year crude is unstable
How much are you risking per trade? From the post it sounds like the whole account and you’re wating for it to retrace, is that right?
Thank you @Mondeoman Sir for all the insight in this your reply. It really means a lot to me.
And believe me Sir I haven’t overestimated the success of any body because I’m fully aware nobody can perfect it all. There’ll always be some bad trade to reinforce the fact that we’re playing on a ‘no level ground field’ with the market and bookies
Yes I’m finding some comfort trading oil now.
I haven’t been doing this but I’m going to start. I have heard alot having a trading journal and I believe this’s what you referring to here.
Okay.
And why do you think I should follow suit Sir?
I’d love to know the bad (if there’s)side of this indicators
More light here Sir🤔
Overall, I thank you Sir @Mondeoman and I’m sorry for taking so long to acknowledge this reply just saw the notification now.
Joseph
Hi @greenscorpio
I’m not yet skilled and I won’t say I have been really profitable. I’m a newbie like I said.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Joseph
Hi @tradeforex077
I’m not risking the whole account. I risk 3-7% of my bankroll (I know is very inappropriate considering the fact that I could blow the account in less than 12 bad trades).
I think I’m seriously having problem with where to place stops and TP. I use 1-4 hour TF and I don’t really know if that’s too large or small for an intraday/scalper trader like me.
It kinda looks like I don’t know anything atall. Lol.
But I wanna KNOW.
Any advice?
Joseph.
Hi @zzsys
Considering this fact, do you think is really bad to trade this period? Will there be a time X when it will be? And what’s really happening and is there a way I can use it to my advantage?
Joseph
It’s ok Joseph I will leave others to answer your question regarding crude I tend to not get involve, all I can say I guess trading not so much about winning a sprint race but about gathering as much knowledge and experience as possible ,over a period of time .There is a quote that good traders actually lack confidence,been over confident can back fire , a successful strategy or positive outcome has to be tested for a sufficient length of time or trades.Remember too if your trading something highly volatile with bigs swings the losses as well as the gains can be great without money management.
Thank you very much @greenscorpio for your advice.
Risk less. Start at 1% and when you do well and account builds go to 2%.
It all depends how you trade. You can have your stop loss at the parabolic SAR, previous high/low etc.
Hi there,
Thank you for the vote of confidence in my replies. It is a pleasure.
Yes, I was referring to a trading journal. The one I was using circa 2011 now looks “not joined up”. I am creating a completely new template for this that aligns with my trading strategy and trading plan.
I’d love to know the bad (if there’s)side of this indicators
I am not saying whether indicators are good or bad. What I am saying is that if you try to line up too many criteria for entry, you will never decide on an entry. Keeping the position size very small (eg 1% of your capital at risk), you will be able to determine after you exit whether that trade was a “good trade” meaning that you followed your plan, or if it were a “bad trade” in that you changed your mind somewhere between writing down what you were going to do, and when you actually took action. You can make a loss with a good plan, and you can make a profit with a bad plan. It’s important to know how often the results go the way of your plan. If it is anything like 50% and your take profit level is more than your risk level (entry minus stop loss), you know you are going to make money. conversely, if you lose nine trades out of ten, and your take profit is less than your risk, you know you are losing money and have to figure out what part of your trade plan needs to change. If you are patient you can do all this with a dummy account. But it will not capture slippage properly.
If you like trading crude so much maybe you could look at when the oil trade currency pairs are correlating. The oil pairs are USDCAD (negative correlation) USDJPY and CADJPY. You may also want to keep an eye on news about hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico which could cause crude to rally. And other major events in the news relating to oil. For example if many places all around the world need to go back in to lock down due to Covid19 that could see oil drop again.
You should trade crude as per the latest market analysis and trading signals. Keep in mind the risks involved with it and your capacity to handle such risks.
Hi @BAD14214
Please I’d love to know what happens when ever they correlate.
Thanks.
Joseph