I Made $51,843 Day Trading this strategy...

I made $50,000 shorting crude oil with just four contracts in 10 days. Here's what most people don't talk about when it comes to trades like these. One, holding for 10 days is a difficult thing to do. So, I want to walk you guys through the pullbacks, how price kind of ebbs and flows, and how I had to give some profits back just in order to see this whole trade play out. Another thing people don't talk about is how much money did I risk in order to make 50,000, and how much does four contracts of crude oil cost me to get into a position. So, let's do a full trade breakdown. Let's get into it. All right. So, these are my stats for the year so far. I have only traded crude [music] oil. February made 40,000, March made 18, April made seven, and May I made 28. But, let's talk about the $50,000 trade that I just closed. Okay, so let's talk about how much it cost to actually buy a contract of crude oil. Now, if you wanted to short four contracts, that is a total of $50,000. I made 100% of my investment on this trade. One of the coolest things. So, it cost me 50,000 to hold, and I made 50,000. Made 100% return on this trade. Crazy cool. Now, one thing that I want to keep in mind that most people confuse is the cost of a position in the risk. How much I was willing to lose is not the same as the cost of the position. How much I was willing to lose is how much I was willing to risk in this position. So, it's never the 50,000 that I'm willing to risk every time. If I was to trade another four contracts, I would not be willing to lose my entire investment. So, how much was I willing to risk on this trade? In order to calculate that, I want to walk you guys through my chart analysis here. So, I use something called a safety line to help me manage or mitigate my risk, and it is essentially the current trend. As long as price respects the current trend, I'm safe. [music] I'm in on the trend. If price violates the trend, that is my risk, and it is dynamic because as price moves along and respects that trend line, my risk will go from an initial risk to break even, to then in profit, to then continuing to push it even more in profit depending on how long or how far the price respects this trend line. So, this is why it's dynamic. The risk will always change as price continues to progress or respect a trend line. Let me walk you guys through to some of the stats here. This was a short position. I traded four contracts. Now, this net ROI is not correct because I'm trading on a margin account. So, this net ROI is based on the standardized contract for crude oil. I am trading a margin account, so that gives me leverage. So, actual cash required to get into this position was $50,000, not $408,000. Keep in mind. >> [snorts] >> The maximum amount of money that I was losing in this trade was 11,000 and the most that I was making was 59,000, almost $60,000. So, I had to give some profit back before closing this trade. But, my realized profit is $51,850. Okay, now let's do our chart analysis. What got me into this trade? How did I hang on to it? How did I stay in and what got me out? I do something called a top-down analysis every time I'm trading something new. You only need to do it one time, but if you don't know what top-down analysis is, I've done a full YouTube video breakdown here where you can check out how to do a top-down analysis. If you want to pause this, learn about it, come back so that you can kind of follow along, or you can watch this now and then come back and save that for later. But, a top-down analysis requires you to go to a higher time frame, looking at an instrument from the highest time frame that you can from the top, and then analyzing price action all the way down. So, that's top-down analysis. Starting at the top, working your way down. Monthly time frame, weekly time frame, daily time frame, 4-hour, and then 1-hour. The 1-hour time frame is where I've been executing all of my trades this year. I have shifted from the 4-hour to the 1-hour specifically because of market conditions. The current state of the market and how snappy things are, I have noticed that while swing trading, I have given up profits that I have held days and days and days for, where the 1-hour time frame will allow allow to get in a little bit sooner and get out a little bit sooner as well. All right, so this is what my chart markup looked like before I entered my position. I had my bullish trend lines and my bearish trend lines and I'm just simply allowing price to show me which one of these trends it's actually going to respect and which one it's going to violate. That is my strategy in a nutshell is which lines get violated, which lines get respected. As we're presented with new highs and new lows, I'm drawing new trend lines, I'm finding new trends, and then I'm reacting to price as it breaks or as it [music] bounces. So, in this scenario, I'm not in any positions. As soon as price broke, I entered my short position here. I went short three contracts of crude right here. Got into my position and immediately in drawdown. Never a fun thing to experience. Most traders would think this is a fake out and that's normally what they would look like. They'd get into a short position and then price continues to just take off in the opposite direction. So, what kept me in this trade even though as soon as I got in, price immediately reversed and [music] was in drawdown as soon as I got in or shortly after I got in. One because of this downward trend line that it was respecting. Two was because the current state that we were in as far as negotiation goes with Iran and the US and the straight opening back up. So, we had very positive talks. Lots of headlines talking about how we're getting closer to a negotiation, we're getting closer to signing the peace treaty, and we're getting closer to having that straight opened. So, that gave me confidence in my position. Now, I just needed to wait for price action to align with what the headlines were saying. But, what's cool about my strategy is regardless of headlines contradict or they're in line with price action, this downward trend is going to keep me safe. If price violates this downward trend line, then that is my indication to close my position. The price is no longer respecting this downward trend and that we may be violating it and shifting to a new trend. But, that's not the end. So, this was short three contracts. I did add to my position when we got a second break coming into here. Price came up to my downward trend line, respected it. That's a great sign, gave me more confidence that it got right to this downward trend line, acted as a version of resistance, completely fell off. As soon as we got this second break, I added one more contract to my position. So, this totaled my four contracts in my short position here. It gave me a lot of confidence knowing that we got one, two, three, four touch points on this downward trend line and price had respected it. It also lined up with what headlines were saying and that we were getting closer and closer to an agreement. Now, after that, feels like the rest is history. We got a beautiful move down. Now, there was some hesitation here. Price got all the way down to this higher time frame upward trend line. This could be an area to close your position and take your profits. If it did something very similar to what it did up here, got to this higher time frame trend line and rejected, it very well could do it to this higher time frame trend line as well. The price of crude got to this higher time frame trend line and already has started to reject. Now, the reason that I felt comfortable holding through this instead of closing at this higher time frame trend line is because of the political standpoint. So, there were more headlines, it was more promising, there was more talks of the straight opening up and an agreement being made. So, it gave me confidence in this short position here. But, holding through this pullback is not an easy thing to do. One of the hardest parts about having a trend line based strategy is, in order to see if this is the new trend and hold a position out through the entirety of the trend, you have to experience the pullbacks. You've got to experience those lower highs, those higher lows in order to see if it respects or violates the line and then pushes further, either in your favor or you have to give your profits back. So, this is one of the hardest parts and it scares a lot of traders out to where they're up and then they watch this profit disappear. They have to give back some of these gains here. I had confidence in holding my position based on the news, based on the promises that we were hearing getting closer to an agreement. Now, let's keep going. Price respected it for a second time. So, that is one, two, three, four, five touch points on this upward trend line. One, it's just crazy to see crude oil specifically respect these trendlines so many times. Most people are like, trendlines don't work. That's silly. It's just liquidity. What the is crude oil doing hitting this same trendline five times? It's crazy. Now, I will say at this point, definitely a little bit more nervous. This was where price action was contradicting what we were hearing on the news and the headlines. So, it did make me sweat a little bit here where it wasn't in line. This is how I felt whenever we had one of the other pullbacks. >> Yesterday it seemed like we had this fall off. Like everybody's thinking, oh my god, we're finally going to come to some sort of agreement, peace treaty in the works, amazing. And then we pull right back. So, this was last night's pullback and this morning's pullback. Right, but I mean recovered and retraced all of the drop or most of the dip that it made yesterday. So, overall, we're really just not going anywhere. Sure, we made some highs, we came back down, and we're back up. So, really we're just not going anywhere. We're bouncing in between this higher timeframe upward trendline and this even higher timeframe downward trendline. Now, what keeps me comfortable though is knowing that as long as price can respect this downward trend, I'm still comfortable in my position. Even if the headlines are saying something opposite of what price action is doing, I'm still comfortable holding my position until price breaks this downward trend. So, right now I'm in it for this higher timeframe trend, this overall higher timeframe trend. I need to see this rollover and respect. So, holding through this profit, holding through this pullback, not an easy thing to do, especially when headlines are contradicting. It scares people out. It starts to give you a bias, but most of my decision-making is done purely through price action and technical analysis. The headlines just give me some added confirmation or added confidence. Then we saw price violate. Felt great to finally see price break this five touchpoint upward trendline >> We were still seeing headlines, and we were still seeing Trump talk about a promising move forward with an agreement. So, I felt comfortable holding my position through the weekend. Also, because it has created enough of a separation or enough of a distance between my safety line, I was comfortable either with a gap up happening or a gap down. Now, obviously, we want the gap down, but it had created enough distance and had moved enough in my favor or enough profit that I was comfortable holding through the weekend in case a gap happened against me. And also, we had promising headlines and tweets coming into the weekend. I also documented my thoughts during this open trade right here. Crude oil just opened and gapped down. We got a small gap and then a big push to the downside. So, it looks like market conditions are in sync with what the headlines say. Currently up 40,000 on my position here. We are short four contracts in crude oil. But, I'm stoked to see this. So, price action is in line with what the headlines are saying. And price action finally did start to realign with the headlines. We got that gap down. Trump is like, "Get ready. We got the pen and paper out. The strait getting ready to open. Here we go." Price got to this trend line, respected only for a few hours, but then ended up violating very shortly after. All right, yet another scenario where I'm up $40,000 and had to watch half of that disappear. Had to give up about 15 to 20,000 in this pullback. I'm still confident in my position and my original idea, and we have still respected this higher time frame downward trend line. Update on crude position here. I have given back about $15,000 in this position here. So, we're up 30,000 right now. Very interesting news though, interesting update. So, this is what just happened. Oil futures are recovering some of yesterday's steep losses after the US strikes against Iranian boats and missile launchers. Movement is still happening through the strait. The US strikes against the Iranian boats and missile launchers. So, this actually happened. This isn't speculation. This isn't a tweet. So, it's very interesting to see as soon as price is reacting to technical analysis, we get some political news or some political to go down. Very interesting timing, to say the least. Am I right or am I right? But, at this point, since I am up such a significant amount of money, what can I do to help capitalize on these profits and to not have to give all of them back just to see price violate this downward trend line. Well, what I can see already is that through all of these pullbacks that price has created, I can see a steeper downward trend line that I can draw to help me not only trail my risk, but move it in profit and capitalize on the price as it's continuing to move steeper in my favor. So, instead of just allowing price to come all the way up to then break this line to get me out of my trade, since it has moved so much so in my favor, remember I talked about this dynamic risk, when price progresses or respects a trend line, you can do one or two things depending on how aggressively it respects the trend line and how aggressively it moves, you can come in with a steeper trend line and capitalize on more and more profit as it's moving steeper and steeper in your favor, or you can stick to your original line. You've got to be a little bit more comfortable and you've got to be willing to give up most of your profits in order to see this bigger move happen. I was up a significant amount of profit. I'm happy coming in with a steeper trend line to capitalize on as much of this move as I possibly can without having to give all of it back here. Connected to the last year and then capture these new highs. So, now instead of allowing price to come all the way back up and give all of my profits back, I came in with a steeper downward trend line to where now price only has to come halfway back. So, I would only have to give up half of the profits in order to see this entire move play out. But, let's continue to see price move. Beautiful move down here. And yet another pullback. We've got pullbacks, then a continuation, then pullbacks, and then are we going to get another continuation? And yes. So, I closed on this candle right here at 89.07. Why did I close? We didn't have a safety line getting crossed. I could have come in with a steeper downward trend line, try to continue to just capitalize on as much profit as possible, but there was one thing that I noticed. One, we're coming up on Friday. This is Thursday afternoon. Two, we'd also just got news that we're actually not coming to an agreement and we're going to do yet another ceasefire. One, that removed a lot of confidence in my position, a lot. The second thing that allowed me to close my position was this 8685, this area of resistance here. Now, I want to zoom out and give you guys a bigger perspective on how important this line is. So, we can at least see over here the price of crude got directly to this 8685 and completely rejected. Now, I want to show you guys how many times it did it in the past. It did it again, March 24th, 2026, and again over here, March 25th, 2026. [music] Two, three, four times in the past that the price of crude got directly to this area of resistance and then completely rejected. Almost got to it over here, completely rejected. The fact that price was already turning around after getting to this 8685 was like my final straw. The fact that we'd had another ceasefire, we were already turning around, rejecting this 8685, I was happy with $50,000, closed my position, I'm done. >> [music] >> That was the full trade as a whole. 10 days of price pushing in your favor, retracing, giving profits back, continuing to move in your favor even farther, but then still creating pullbacks, still giving away some profit all the way up to this 8685 area of rejection where I saw we are rejecting it, we're moving away, we got right to it. Along with the headlines, I was happy closing my position. I got a Friday off and then spent the rest of the weekend just hanging out. Okay, so this was the trade breakdown. That's really about it. So, let's get out of replay mode, see where the price is at now, leave. Let's get rid of all of these steeper lines that have already been crossed that are no longer useful to us now, and here we are. We have settled at the current price that crude oil is trading at right now. Now, I will say it did continue to push lower. There was a moment in time where I was up almost 60,000 in my trade, and then after closing, it still continued to push even lower, maybe 60-65,000, but then ended up respecting this 86-85 after all. So, it was very satisfying to see price completely reject right after I got out of my position, >> and to push higher. The amount of stress that I would have had to go through to hold through yet another pullback. Now, do I still think we're we're moving and respecting this original downward trend line? Yes, I do. I've got a lot of confidence in this downward trend line, but we're just not there yet. The fact that we had another ceasefire, we may consolidate for a bit longer until we do finally roll over. What's going to give me even more confidence is if I can get double confirmation, if price can break this frame upward trend line. Would give me more confidence in re-entering another short position. But, this was my full trade breakdown of the $50,000 short position in crude oil trading four contracts for 10 days. It was a combination of technical analysis along with fundamental analysis utilizing the current standpoint or the current political state that we were in. Now, let's see how much was I willing to risk on this position. Remember, not the original investment that it took me to place this trade. Never am I willing to lose my full investment on a position. But, in this specific setup, I was willing to risk $13,250 in this position. One thing that you'll never see on my charts is a profit target or an anticipated amount of money that I'm looking to make before I get into a trade. Now, I've got great suggestions. I'll use support and resistance for some areas to close trades if I'm not willing to hold through the entirety of the trend. But, along with my risk, which is dynamic, so is my profits. So, I don't know how long price is going to respect this current trend that I'm ready to get in, but this is the cool part about the strategy is my take profits are just as dynamic as my stop loss. And as price moves along the trend line, my take profit my stop loss is one in the same and trails along the trend line that it's currently following along. But, a little bit more of the nitty-gritty here. So, you won't see an initial target here, but you will see my initial trade risk. So, it started at 13,250, but then what you don't know is as price continued to push lower and lower and lower, that risk went from 13,000 to then break even, to then in profit as price created these lower highs. That's the coolest part about the strategy is the risk is dynamic, but there is always initial risk. If I get into this position and it immediately reverses against me, that is my initial risk. How much I'm willing to lose right then and there if I'm wrong as soon as I get in. But, as price progresses, as it moves along the trend line, I get to move that risk to then break even, to then in profit. So, I was able to do a 3.9R on this trade here. So, before we end tonight's video, I want to use the new Zella AI feature that Trade Zella has come out with to see if there is any criticism or anything that I could have done differently or a little bit better on this trade here. So, I'm going to have Zella AI roast my trade. Roast my most recent 50K trade in [music] crude oil. Let's see what we get. All right, this is the kind of trade that makes bad habits feel like a skill. Oh, okay, what are my bad habits here? Let's see. Roast. You made 51K and still logged no strategy, no target, and no rating. All right, touche. I didn't attach a playbook to it. I didn't I don't ever put profit targets, so that Zella AI is just going to have to get used to. Um, and I guess I could have rated it, so I didn't I didn't do that. Your realized R multiple is 3.9, which means you actually had structure in the trade, but you didn't document it. All right, fair enough. You had stop losses logged at 105.51 and 104.85 at 75% and 25%. So, you clearly weren't just freelancing, but leaving the rest of the process undocumented. This is a classic trader trap. Excellent P&L, weak process capture. All right, touché. So, essentially, my verdict is A+ trade, B- risk framing, D journaling. I'll [music] take it. I didn't do much journaling on this trade. I could do better. Um okay, cool. The last thing that I want to see if Zella AI can calculate is how would this trade have played out if I was trading the micros? If you had traded the micros instead of the minis, you would have been able to make about 1/10 the size. The same four contracts, your crude oil trade was at 51,000 from blah blah blah blah blah. Okay, so for micro crude oil, the multiplier is $100 per $1 move. So, with four micro contracts, you would have had a profit of $5,000. So, it would have cost you 1/10 the price of getting in four contracts, and you would have been able to come out with $5,034. Pretty cool. So, I hope this is helpful for you guys. This was my full trade breakdown, even the the thoughts, what it was like to hold for 10 days, the pullbacks that I had to go through, but the satisfaction of seeing price after you close completely reject. Very nice feeling there. But thank you guys for hanging out. Don't forget to hit the like button. Drop a comment if you took any short positions during this entire 10 days. If you were also following along with the headlines, or if you just used purely price action. Would love to know. Don't forget to hit the bell for notifications so that you know every time I post a new video, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye guys.