Copper Trades 9/9 & Sim and Real-Money IB Trading Platforms

HG 5min

After confirming that I have wrapped up for the day, D asked what I was trading because the symbol looked awfully alien to him.

I said it was copper. D asked "Why copper?". I said it had the prettiest chart among the others that started trading in the 8 - 9am timeframe.



Oil was unexpectedly ugly before inventory report:

Nat gas' crazy as always:

Gold and currency futures were totally trapped in yesterday's range or today's OR:

I could have traded treasuries, except that I never quite know how to place an order (my brain is unable to process 1)numbers with 6 digits after a decimal point, 2) numbers that are fractions, and 3) fractions that don't make sense to me):

D asked for copper's year high and year low figures.

I said I don't know what they were.

D asked for copper's tick value.

I gave a blank stare, then took out my calculator and started computing the tick value for copper using the amount I lost in my minus-5-tick-loss scratched trade.

D was flabbergasted.

I told him I knew what he was thinking, and reminded him that what was important was that I had been watching copper, and that for all my entries, I had used hard stops for protection on top of soft mental stops for getting out with minimum damage.

Then I told him the tick value for copper - it's USD 2.50.

D almost instantaneously figured out that a one dollar move in copper would yield a profit of USD25k.

I am impressed beyond description.

I have been asked by a number of people if my trades were real money trades after I mentioned that I was going to be sim trading for a while. 

Yes, all my trades shown on this blog are real money trades, except for trades taken on Aug 19 to test the NT platform. 

A real money IB trading platform looks like this: 

A simulated IB trading platform looks like this (below the account number is that red "simulated trading" heading you can't miss):