December 30 2009 Prep Overlay and Commentary

No trades today. I was willing to execute had I seen a good opportunity.

I am working on some commentary. I want to discuss strategy a bit.

Check for posts over the next few days.

December 30 2009 ES Prep Posted

Good morning. Prep posted. Mid range today. A little better chance of a move but be cautious if tempo is complete grind after open.

December 29 2009 Overlay and Commentary

Another day of low volume grind as anticipated today. The volume of visits here has been very high in the past week. I wish there was more to comment on.

One thing that is notable to me is how accurate the visualization has been. I am going to work on focusing more on executing my visualization and trading my convictions when the market wakes up next week.

I think it is time. I believe my idea of trading was too restricted and mechanized from early on because I originally started out as a scalper using indicators.

I thought that was all that trading was. This made me think a good setup had to "qualify" and questionable trades had to be "filtered."

While consistency is important, it is not all about the prefect looking pattern. Trades come in all different shapes and sizes and the best trades usually do not look like anything at all.

If the market is showing too much of itself, it will quickly be put back in line by the participants.

I guess I am trying to say that conviction and premise are far more important than mechanical rules and thresholds if you understand how the structure works.

I think one of my biggest failures this year was not betting on my convictions often enough and allowing myself to get stopped out of trades that I knew where good (or not re-entering after a stop out).

This is a because I tend to focus on numbers and not concepts. A trade is a bet and it does not care if you only want to loose 2.5 points instead of 3.

While I have moved to a much tighter risk management style this year, I must also be willing to bet on my convictions often even after being stopped out once or twice.

I will discuss this topic more later this week.

December 29 2009 ES Prep Posted

Good morning. See comments on prep.

December 28 2009 Overlay and Commentary

The market continues to grind on very low volume.

I do not see any edge in this kind of action. Even though my visualization today could not have been more accurate I did not see an efficient way to trade it.

This kind of movement requires wider stops and provides less reward so I am not going to participate until volatility comes back.

I can "feel" what the market is doing most of the time and I have had a completely neutral bias and read for the past couple weeks.

I have a repeatable strategy to engage my visualization that works well and allows to to repeat my entries. However, someday I plan to trade my visualization only with no stops.

No stops until I am unquestionably proven wrong that is. I believe that is the best way to trade once you know what you are doing and have absolute confidence.

Until then, I will continue to improve my tight risk management style. I plan to see just how far this approach can go in the first quarter of 2010.

The key is confidence, aggressiveness, and consistency.

I am starting to realize that I have had the appropriate feel and read on the market going all the way back to a couple months after I started training with Pride Trading.

I have spent all the time between then and now proving to myself that I am correct in premise a vast majority of the time.

The key components to my plan moving forward will be attacking areas that I have conviction about and being ready to re-enter multiple times after being stopped out.

It is important to act before you are forced to react. This makes visualization extremely important.

December 28 2009 ES Prep Posted

Good morning. See comments on prep.

December 23 2009 Prep Overlay and Commentary

I had a good feel for what the market would do today and made a very accurate visualization on the prep.

I did not have any trades. There was nothing for me to do even though I had the premise correct.

We may see this type of action for the remainder of the year. I have a feeling there will be one surprise move but it will likely be costly to catch via many attempts in this ugly grind.

I suspect what is happening is that big market participants want to close out their books on a high so there is little chance of significant selling.

It is interesting because the blog is getting a very high level of traffic this week. More than on a busy trading week. I suspect everybody is bored do to slow price action and surfing the web more.

I wish I had more to comment on but absolutely nothing happened today. I will be onscreen tomorrow but will likely have no trades.

I could see the grind today after observing the tempo for 10 seconds after the open. If tomorrow goes the same way I will pack up by 11:00 AM EST.