December 22 2009 Overlay, Trades. and Commentary

I posted overlays from the past two days above along with today's trades. Visualization from yesterday did not play out as the market did not test inside support prior to moving up but the zones were excellent as they often are.

My trading in the past 2 weeks has been a little random due to the slow action and randomness always leads to a draw down for me.

I have been asking a lot of this end of year market by playing for breakouts of tight ranges. Maybe too much. However, I can not ignore the fact that all of my attempts have been at key areas with very large risk/reward.

There was an excellent long right at the open yesterday. Very tight micro congestion sitting on a major resistance zone. I was distracted and not onscreen due my schedule Monday morning.

This was a mistake because it was the probably the best setup we will see this week. There was an opportunity to hit it with a 1.5 point stop.

It would have been hard to exit with less than 7 points according to my plan. This is were randomness can do damage.

I was ready to execute today and the setup did not work out. It was a good short attempt. Had the trade worked, it would have been good for 4 points with a kicker for a potential major selloff.

I lost 3.5 points on the bet. It was a good trade.

The only thing for me to contemplate about my trading right now is should I be trading in this grinding mess of a market.

There is less liquidity and tight ranges which makes entries much more prone to get stopped out. There is absolutely no flow of things.

However, I want to engage. I do not care how difficult it is. I need to hit my setups. Period. I am not going to get in the habit of standing aside because I think trading will be tough.

This will lead to further questioning of setups when the market goes back to normal in a couple weeks.

So I am going to press on and yuck it up if I have to. I am in the midst of one of the worst 20 trade samples I have in a while. The the impact is much lower because my average loss is less than half what it used to be.

I am not surprised by this in this type of price action.

It is not phasing me one bit this time around because I know what I am capable of now. If I do indeed have a losing streak I will come back and make a new equity high as long as I keep pressing.

I will be trading my AM setup tomorrow and Thursday as well as Mon-Wed of next week. My only goal for these days is to hit the setup win or lose.