So just before the open, we hit the low at 79 that I already pointed out, we got to 86 which is from the apex of the hinge yesterday from the premarket which also provided support for the drop after the open, so that is pretty significant, and the mean of this is at 83, which is also significant, the low from a few days ago. So at the moment, we are bound by these significant levels and its just a matter of what will break first. Will have to really watch the opening range...
Don't worry.. my attached chart didn't look like this while trading... and I know you can barely see price, but I feel like talking a bit so I wanted to have something to talk about so I drew in lots of pictures! Ok... here we go. A - Watching the open very closely, and although I have marked in the first official long, I don't take it. I am in a short bias, and it does look somewhat sluggish. Clearly I am seeing only what I want to see. This bar below the up arrow shows a REJ of 84.50, which you can say is roughly the mean of the previous 1 1/2 hours. I'm not sure if I'm micro managing too much here, looking at every little nuance, looking for bunnies in the clouds as it were, but the REJ is obvious given that the close of the bar is on the high. B - So now here comes a second opportunity to go long, still not taken. Of importance though is that this one would more than likely be stopped out 4 minutes later with the dip down. In fact, if I was adding to contracts on the way up, something I would like to do once I stop freaking out about every tick against me, I can imagine exiting all the contracts because of this dip. So although in hindsight this looks like a strong trend up, I doubt I would have still been holding, and the exit would have prevented me from getting back in. This might also be a good a time as any to point out that in the macro sense, the SL from the overnight down move is clearly broken by now, and we have a RET to go long, and the higher low at 83. Can't be hard on myself though.. didn't see this in real time. C - Really considering going short here. I see the stall in going up, and since I am looking for a short, I want to pull the trigger. Seems to quickly reverse on the next bar. Hmmm.... D - So here is another opportunity to go long. Had I already scratched before, I wouldn't take it. Perhaps we can't fan the DL until we go higher mind you. But here is the big but, which didn't hit me until way later. This quick move and reversal down to 87 is a dog. I expected it to go down, but it didn't, it quickly reversed. So when something that you expect doesn't happen, going in the opposite direction is a solid move. Here the long is a zero risk trade in that price only comes back to your entry for a few minutes, but you're never in the negative. I just couldn't see all this in real time, and my short bias had my judgement clouded. E - Yes another opportunity for a long, also quite good. F - And long again right here. By this point I'm thinking we are too far into the move, deep RETs are possible that don't exactly negate the trend, but would negate my profit if an entry is made anywhere around here. And sure enough, after only 4 or 5 minutes, price comes down. G - Will talk more about these lows later. H - This bar is interesting to me. The way it formed was a quick rise up, and a quick drop down. It opens and closes on the low, screaming to go short! But on the very next bar, it doesn't drop. I find it interesting that trades can one minute REJ a price level, and the next buy it all up. Perhaps in the first instance it was just stops being run, and in the second, traders really wanted to buy, but my short would clearly be a loss. I think that if these knee-jerk trades were all taken, I might do not too badly, but the secret would be getting out right away, and to keep taking them without letting a couple of losses dissuade me... which is a tall order. So for now, I will keep tracking them and hope that my brain is processing all of this while I sleep! I - Here we start forming a hinge. We haven't quite hit 3803 yet, the level I am closely watching for a juicy trade, but hey, is 6 tick away close enough?? I follow the hinge, plot in the apex at 99, and just watch. It appears to be fizzling out into a range, which happens often, but then we get a bounce up. J - We are so close to 3803 now... the bar beside J hits 3802.50 and I'm itching for a short. Here is my rationale, we are slowing down, to be expected given a major resistance level, but I figure a short is more likely, and my cost to find out is very well defined. If I went short at 82, I could place a stop at 84, only 2 points away. The loss is small, and the benefit to be short already at the most extreme level I find juicy! Now its clear I have no confirmation yet. I could perhaps use the tick chart, but we really weren't at this level for long, and in the next few minutes, price is already dropping fast, going right through the apex I pointed out. K - So here is my first official short I see. We have a DL break by now, and here is our RET. So I plot it in.. and actually take it as well! Heart naturally starts pumping, and I'm looking for excuses to take the trade off before its even filled! LOL... but it fills two minutes later. I am in a red for a bit, but eventually we drop so I can breathe again. As we come down, I start looking for areas to watch and notice those pesky lows around G, just a point or two below. I expect some hesitation here, but as you can see, I didn't last long and exited at 95... for a profit of $21! Looks like this was a smart move as price went higher. L and M - This I find interesting here. Once again, I don't want to be micro analyzing, but I guess I will! The line at L tracks the fact that we can't go any higher... each bar has a slightly lower high. The line above M shows that we just can't break below 95... for over 5 minutes! This is why time charts I think I will stick with even though some guys are playing around with tick charts. They say the swings are easier to see, but as Db says, he wants to see the time element, how long it takes to make a certain move, and this makes sense to me. A parabolic move for example is just too quick so often these retrace, but if the move is more steady, chances are great that it will hold and not retrace so far. N - So we eventually drop below M. I find this behavior is what is more likely. When price pushes up against a level and can't cross, yet is squeezed from the other side, it more often breaks through. Of course you can have a bounce as well from the resistance level, so you have to be prepared for anything, but at least watching this behavior shows you that something should happen. At N here now, even though we dropped below, each subsequent minute shows that we are making higher lows, and sure enough, we break to the up side. O - Here I start plotting in a hinge, and we break out below. P - At P here I draw in the apex, but I know this is a micro hinge so I'm not going to be putting too much emphasis on it. What is interesting though is that price does come to P to test the apex again and drops once more. Q - This low happens to form a double bottom with N, and although we have all of these little hinge and apexes, its looking very much like a trading range now. After this we bounce around some more, and when you compress the chart enough, its starting to look like one big hinge with an apex of roughly 98. CONCLUSIONS Not a bad day, but its unfortunate that I didn't monopolize on it. Being stuck in my short bias was unfortunate, especially when now I see the higher low at the bottom and broken SL. Add to this the dog that reverses shortly after the open, and that should have been plenty confirmation to go long. I wish I also took the short right below 3803. It really is a low risk trade. I am that type of person that wants to know, that wants confirmation, but I do see how in trading, this need for confirmation and information will only cost me money. Perhaps a short before there is even an ounce of weakness isn't the smartest idea, but I'm fascinated by it. In fact, I find all of this fascinating. Sometimes I can't sleep at night because I am too excited about the next morning. Yesterday I was definitely tired, so this was a factor with not being able to act but just watch. Just as I'm about to post this, the hinge is looking more like a wedge now. We have difficulty crossing 3801 several times, but we have a serious of higher lows. Will we break... or should I take the short??? Hmmmm
We clearly broke through just as I took my screenshot of the chart... but it looks to be coming down... buyers didn't really want it, it was just stops getting run from everyone who shorted like I wanted to!
Given how interesting the afternoon was, I would like to do a further analysis. I was watching some of this in real time, saw most of the drop, and was scared to get in. What was on my mind was that I missed the first and best entry, which perhaps was any of the rejections higher up, or perhaps once it started to fall through various levels, depending of course on how I define these levels. For a good while, it all still looked like chop, but I am sure at some point, that view point had to be abandoned given how swift the drop was. My last update ended with penetration of the ultimate high at 3803, only getting to just under 3805, and then I drew in price unable to go lower, but also unable to make new highs. This should really be a clue, that for right now, nobody wants to pay more, in fact, as the minutes ticked, the transactions were all at subsequently less. I think I get myself into trouble because when buyers show up, I assume that I was wrong. But perhaps the better way to think about this is that at the time, buyers weren't willing to pay higher, as evidenced by the falling SL. If buyers all of a sudden show up, it had nothing to do with my reading of price... who is to know they were getting ready to buy? Perhaps they decided to buy just because they see price isn't going lower, and none of this should really be my concern. So lets start with the lettering scheme again for the afternoon at A again. A - Although 3801 wasn't breached, price is unable to make a significant rise. B - In fact, it turns around just below 3803.. so does this look like a serious breakout or no? Here at B we in fact form a lower high. Now this might not be confirmed until the drop below 3801 which happens on the bar below B, but this action certainly validates the wedge behavior at A... buyers simple didn't want to pay more. C - So here we have another ledge forming at 3800, which can be said to break, but it barely drops, resting at 3799. I extended the apex line from the hinge earlier on in the day. With so many hinges and levels and apexes, its easy to find something that fits, so I'm fully aware of this, but this line does act as a mean for quite a bit of the action... traders are finding lots of trades around this level. D - The climb up to D is quite unexpected, especially if watching in real time, which I no longer was by this time. E - A drop to E and a climb to F is really just more chop. F - We should note here that we fail to reach the high of 3805 and then quickly drop. G - We come to rest at that mean and just chop away for 45 minutes. H - Should we note that we fail to break 3801 this time? Too many levels, I know, and its all chop anyway, except maybe for the scalping inclined. But lets note that H is a lower high from G, and this is a lower high from the initial poke to get to the high of the day at 3805. Should it be obvious by now that most traders don't find price above 3800 to be attractive? Its true that it isn't dropping, but it isn't going up. Now if traders are looking for trades.... where is the LOLR? That poke up was a failure, probably only technical in nature in that stops were run and it didn't stay up there long. Can we therefore conclude that they are more likely to try down first before they try up again? I don't have the answer to that question, and I'm not sure if a statistical answer would help. Perhaps we need to just focus on looking to see what they are doing, to see if they are venturing up or down at an attempt to exit from this area which they are clearly happy trading in now. I - By the time we get here, we can see that we have gone through a series of lower highs, and we are now even making lower lows. I can once again draw in a SL that refuses to be broken, yet a ledge at 3795 that is holding up well. For 7 minutes price is getting squeezed until it falls out the bottom. J - Note here that I drew in a yellow line to match up with a previous double bottom that propelled price up. Once again, I have far too many levels drawn in to make any profound statements, but we should keep noting that previous levels of support are all getting broken now. Of course by now we are at 3793, 10 points below where I wish I was already short from. I am also not very good at watching 50% levels, but this would be the place. If the poke down to 84 at the open we call the bottom, and the rise to 3804 we call the top, then here at 94 is exactly 50%, and price melts through no problem. K - This level, can't even remember where its from, causes a bit of a pause, but the extremes of this RET are only 2.25 points. I note this because I am casually noting how big are RETs that are in fact the end of a move. What I have seen in my brief study is that a RET of 5 points or less is usually not a problem. So if we hit a low of 80 for example, I can let it go to 85 before I have to really worry that the bottom was in fact 80. Of course context is huge, especially if that low matches up with an important level, but I mention this as a way to talk myself into staying in a trade. Price hitting a low and coming up 2 or 3 points is hardly a reason for worry, expect of course if I got into the move right at the very bottom and now each tick is against me. Getting in much higher up is easier to swallow. Each tick against me still causes me to lose money, but in this case, its only less profit, but not more loss. Is there a difference? I'm not sure... L - We do in fact drop lower, and come to rest just above 83, the low on Monday the 9th. M - We note that we retrace to 87, a difference of 4 points, and sure enough we do turn down again, but we start forming a serious of higher lows. Point being that an exit at 4 points above the low might be taken because of fear, but an exit lower down to get an extra couple of points was possible. N - By the time this low forms, we should be thinking about an exit, and price moving higher, above M, should really cause us to exit the trade if we haven't already. Now its really hard to say where I should have gotten in. It all looks like chop, and although I see the series of lower highs, F is in fact a higher high. I think right around I, and certainly dropping through J should have been taken. By now of course, the move is over 10 points in, and all I'm worried about is selling the bottom. Mark Douglas talks about beliefs, and where they come from. If your first experience with a dog is a bad one, in that he bites you, you will from now on always think dogs should not be trusted. When meeting the next dog, even if he is nice, its too late, your belief is already formed and you will have a long road ahead to change this belief. If on the other hand your first dog encounter is with a friendly dog, upon meeting a bad dog later, you will realize that you will need some qualifications to help you better assess for the next time. Your friend experience was good, so your belief is that dogs are nice, and your second encounter, since it wasn't good, just teaches you that you need to be more selective. So the first encounter is critical, it is what sets the belief, and if the encounter is negative, it will be an uphill road to change. My belief about buying below RETs causes me fear. I have tried several times, and one day in particular, I wasted over 6 points in total, shorting 3 different times with a market order, exiting each time with a 2 point loss, only to see the move go in the direction I was trading seconds later. If I waited mere seconds, the first short would have turned around and dropped again, and perhaps that move would have netted me 10 points if I could stand to hold through the next RET. So perhaps I wouldn't be as scared to take trades below minor RETs in a down move. Now I'm not sure if my conclusion is that I should be shorting every time I see a cascade down and just hang on for longer if price starts going against me. But what I am saying is that buying below the RET is more than likely a profitable strategy in the long run. My stop was super tight, and it got hit because the entry wasn't ideal, it was already well into the move. Its the first entry that usually works right away, but each subsequent entry might require a little more patience. If I do this at least 10 times, I think statistics will be on my side, but I am emotionally clearly not ready yet. I have also since realized that a 2 stop loss is just far too tight. So my choice is to either hang in longer, or get in sooner, and I think I am subconsciously looking for the move even before it starts, to get into a trade that hopefully allows for a better exit if needed, and is already in the money when the first hesitation arises. I'm clearly still putting it all together, but I find I am getting freaked out less, I find that my initial desperation exit is usually a waste because a better place to exit will present itself if I hang in a bit longer, and if I hang in a bit longer, the trade ended up working at least half of the time. Rarely have I actually sold the ultimate bottom or bought the ultimate top (meaning it was good that I got out when I did). I have just caught a bad part in the little RET. (this also means that I shouldn't do the opposite of what I think I should do since I'm really not fishing out the ultimate tops and bottoms of moves) Anyway.. who would have known there was another 10 points at least on the way up. Oh well... moving forward... (oh ya, price came to rest at that mean of 99... granted, it was bound to land on a level given that I outlined so many, but its still kinda cool how this all works!)
PREP FOR JUNE 12 So overnight, we made a dash higher again, getting to 3806.50. It didn't last though, and even though it was tested again a few minutes later, a lower high was formed. We ended up going back into the range. I therefore see the overnight action is being mostly between 3797 and 3802. We have in the past few minutes taken a dip below to 94, so lets see if this lasts. Like yesterday, where the best entry was actually pre-RTH in that going long above the higher low was the best at 84/85, today, it seems like going short around 3803, below that poke that took us a bit higher was a great trade when it was obvious that traders didn't want to go higher. Anyway, nothing I can do about that now. In terms of the channel, I am sure we must be riding the upper line here. A few days ago we were most likely above it, but by now I think the line would have caught up to us since we have essentially gone sideways for days now. Attaching a 10 minute chart which shows the roadmap of the past few days and the levels we might be hitting. Dropping below 79 would really drop us out of this, but we have a few levels to get through first. I just don't see going up right now, in fact, we just keep dropping. In the off chance things turn around at the open, pick a number.. they are all important! LOL... 3791, 3799, 3801, 3803, 3806.
A - 20 mins before the open, we have this swift drop here, goes right through a level I have marked, comes up to test but stays below. More confirmation of the short bias. B - At the open, I see the rise up to here, no problem, I am ready to go long as well, but just wanting to wait a few minutes for the market to really show a clearer direction. In hindsight, this bar is a fairly good REJ bar, opens on the low, and closing even lower. Next bar barely makes it any higher, but I tell myself that I will wait till I clear the lows of overnight at 89. Now this is an interesting excuse. If I sold short at around 91, I do have 2 points of space to see what happens at 89. I suppose 91 could have also been a lower high if price turned on me right here and continued higher, but this would be negating the REJ bar. Since I was favoring long now though, I hadn't thought to go short yet, but if I'm gonna go short below 89, heck, why not go short from 91 and get two more points? C - So we do drop, and it looks solid, so I say f-it, I'm just gonna short with a market order. Goes against me right away. No problem I tell myself, up was already rejected, hang in there. D - We retrace up to D, which just happens to be the overnight low. Looks like we needed to test this area again to see if there were in fact any buyers, to see if this was a FO. Fortunately we don't find any at prices above this level, so we turn down. I'm scared to miss out on a move, as I usually do, but these tests do happen, where price retraces to the breakout level, especially if its something prominent like an overnight high or low. Being patient to wait for this test, and shorting below it, perhaps about 88 should be a better tactic, but I'm not that graceful and fluid with my orders yet, and I'm scared of the test not happening and having to get in much lower if I hesitate at the first opportunity. E - Its looking good, I'm almost $80 into profit when we turn around right here. I've got his level marked, 83, low of yesterday. I think with each passing day, I think one second faster, and its not long before I hit the close button. Realizing we bounced off an important level, I'm not sticking around to find out if we do continue down. In hindsight, my exit could have been a little better, I could have made an extra point, but the reason to exit was solid, especially after the higher low 3 mins after E. Still, I'm up $31. F - Now here is where it gets unfortunate. I have a clear REV at an important level. I have the higher low, and this bar just before F that forms the higher low is also a great REJ bar, opens and closes on the high. In fact, all of these bars before this close on their high. The thing to obviously do is go long anywhere around here, but I just can't recover fast enough. Who knows where I would have exited, but it would have been for a profit for sure as this was a very safe entry given the price action that followed. G - The climb up looked a bit difficult given the large RET, but we make it to 93. I see the stall, I see the RET in the 15 sec, I think of a short as marked. The rationale being that it seems like we failed to even make it to the opening range high. This works, but only for a few points. H - Its interesting that if we connect the lows at E, price hits here at H and turns around. This is what scares me about some SLA entries. If they are too far away from the DL, price can technically come down to the DL line before I think the up trend is over. But coming down to here would surely stop you out of some longs if they weren't taken right at the bottom. I - 3 consecutive lower highs has to be a sign... and the fact that this happens at the opening range high is the icing on the cake... drats, I did nothing about it. Once again, I'm waiting to see what happens when we come down to the DL. We do, it breaks, and I still do nothing. Now if I just shorted below the 3rd lower high, I still got room to see what happens at the DL, but I'm just not quick enough yet, nor do I trust myself or my price reading enough yet. Most important of all... is it in my trading plan? Let me check..... oh wait.. I don't have a plan! hahahaha.... (but REJs at key levels will I think be the star of the show) J - The drop stops here, don't see this as being important, but I note that for about 5 mins, we keep making higher lows. K - Here for 5 minutes, we cannot penetrate 3790. Are these two observations important? Perhaps it is micro managing, maybe good for scalping, but seeing this at least keeps me in tune with price. I only draw it after the fact for my review. L - For this drop, I'm in the bathroom. I don't come back until we are below 83... shame. Can't say I was prepared to do anything about it mind you. M - We go right through 83 this time, but hesitate at 79 here, which was our low yesterday, so no surprise we stop here. I note that we cannot penetrate 78, and we also cannot go above 81. I was thinking of going short at the marked arrow based on the fact that we dropped below 79 again after our little retrace and it looked good on the 15 sec chart. It clearly wouldn't have worked, but the exit could easily have been made for only a point loss, if that. I am also seeing that when we do leave to go up, its after several minutes of only bumping up against 81, we are no longer even bumping up against 79 to the bottom.. so this should be a clue in price reading. N - Great REV here. Is it just random? We broke 83 easily coming down, so is this level still important? O - This dashed line here is the mean of a range that brought us up to these levels from over a week ago, so once again, we have a fairly good indication of why price comes to rest around here. I also note that at least for a few minutes, we can't go any lower. P - This point hurts. Its a higher low. I was still thinking this looked like a hinge, so lets see which way it breaks. By the time we get to 78, its breaking up, and such a good place to go long. Q - This dip down might scare us if we were long, but its a quick REJ, so a long above here is solid as well. We might also call this a dog because the dip down failed to follow through. I have trouble believing that we could go long after such a dramatic drop and I keep just waiting for the continuation of the original move, especially given my short bias. Clearly price will have to turn around somewhere, and I have some good confirmation here of this fact. Today didn't end up being too chaotic, and making points on the way up, down, and back up again was quite realistic. Its getting better every day though!
I'm really quite disappointed with myself. I saw the drop yesterday, perhaps halfway into the move already, but I was sitting here, and I did absolutely nothing about it. I had it in my prep for days now that I was waiting for weakness, and that when it showed up, I knew that the airspace down below should mean a quick drop. It really was quite a low risk trade, and I did nothing about it. Going over the day, I also see that the climb back up to the opening high at 3794, where we have succession of 3 lower highs is really just a double top with the opening high, and then a triple top, and really, 3 chances for price to tell me that it just didn't want to go higher. At the time I'm thinking that we are in an up move, but the amount of confirmation that it seems I need is a 40 point move down before I realize and believe it! (that was sarcasm). The fact that this happened at the opening high, that we couldn't go past it 3 times, and then even the retrace to 3790 as a final test was all missed. Its true that I don't know if I would have held right to the bottom at 52, but its a trade that should have been taken. At the end of my session I was happy to not have lost money, to have made $30, but looking at it all now, if all I plan to focus on is capital preservation, I might as well just stop trying to trade because this isn't going to get me anywhere. Anyway.. gotta prep for today now since I gotta add in the new contract seeing as volume is higher on the Sep one now and I have to redraw some of my charts.
PREP FOR JUNE 13 Ok... got my stuff done. Its a bit complicated with contracts using MultiCharts, the free version, since I can only add in 2 symbols, and IB doesn't provide a continuous data source, so I gotta build my own, sadly with only 2 quarters. Anyway, there is a bit of a gap between yesterday and today given the contract switchover on my chart, but it looks like we are now in a range of between 3760 and 3772 overnight, with a mean of 3764. (the range is actually tighter, these are the extreme bounds of price overnight) Looking at it all compressed, we can see a nice SL coming down from the highs of 3800 yesterday. The airspace we had got filled in because price rallied back up yesterday, but since then, its a succession of lower highs. Makes me wonder if I should just go short already somewhere, but once again, I cannot be locked into a short bias. I like to look over the day and see where the one best trade was, and yesterday it was being short from overnight, and then being short at the double top of the opening high. I made the comment though that the overnight traders and those during the RTH have different ideas of where they want to take price, sometimes being negatively correlated, but I think I did look into this several weeks ago, and there was no consistency. Sometimes the trend from overnight continues, sometimes price goes in the opposite direction. Just as I'm finishing typing this up, price is actually breaking the previous lower high, which also makes the previous higher low significant. So waiting to see what happens at the open. Here is a highly compressed chart of what I'm looking at.
Drats, no trade again today, but my reason is two fold. One was a bit of a glitch with my continuous contract charts. When I tried to put a trade on, it wasn't showing up in the chart, so I had to switch back over to the NQU4 chart for my one minute. I also felt a little lost because all my reference points from yesterday were based on the previous contract, this one seems to be trading 6 points lower, so I'm not sure how well any of my levels matched up. Knowing this, I was basing all my stuff on just today's prices and rejections, and it would have gone quite well. A - REJ of 76 right at the open. B - Want to try for a short here, based on 15 second action, but really hold off to see more of the opening range. Here is the lesson that I'm learning more so each day. If I did get in, around 71, and freak out when price hits 74, stopping out since it went more than 2 points against me, its obvious that price comes down again. Its of course hard to see in the moment, and in the next example, price didn't come back to me. Here is the big BUT though... given 10 trades, if each is given a little more room, if you wait for a retrace, what you lose on having one go against you 4 points perhaps instead of 2, you more than gain in either the trade working, or being able to scratch for a better price. Context is huge of course. C - Here I just casually try to plot in a long, based on a REV, seeing that the previous bars all have higher lows. Doesn't work out too well.. and hanging on would just cost more money. The context here is break of the previous lows at B. Once this happens, you are in new territory I think, not still in the range that was quite established, 70-74. D - So I see the drop, and I'm actually quite calm. We come up to 72 again, and I notice that even though we have retraced more than 7 points, from 64 to 71, my SL line is still intact, and whats more, I have an opening REJ and a lower high. So a short below any of the bars around here seems safe. I am working on giving price more room, on seeing what is a major problem to the trend, and what is just the expected wave. I also notice that the highs above D just penetrate the little range before, so if price does come down, we would be rejecting that price level, a good sign. (Note, this hinge isn't drawn in until much later) E - This is an even better place for a short. We can't even break the highs above D, and although a hinge is forming now with the higher low just before this, context still favors a down move. F - So at the down arrow indicated, I'm getting very serious about my short. My SL is well respected, and although we just had a dip down, we are still bouncing off an even lower high. (Hinge still wasn't drawn in) This of course ends up being the perfect place to short and I just watch price drop. G - So we get to here, and although this is an SLA entry to go short, I'm hesitant. These recoils are dangerous, I don't want to lose 4 points, by giving it more space, to find out that the bottom is in. I missed the best entries up above, so I guess I'm gonna make myself suffer and learn my lesson for not getting in earlier where I should have. A few mins later, my caution pays off because I see the higher lows and draw in this hinge. It breaks above, but comes back down. H - Here we form a higher low, but of course its not apparent until 2 bars later perhaps. I - Going long right here is the classic SLA trade. I didn't see it at the time, but I can call this a dog, this quick move down and back up. We had a little range before, around G. We tried to leave when we broke out of the hinge, we came back down into the range, but find out quickly nobody wants to trade here anymore. So trying lower didn't work, trying in the range didn't work, so we should try higher. Sigh... such good analysis after the fact, never in real time.... J - This is where my hinge from before comes into play now. The up move is serious, its retracing almost all the way to the beginning, but we have this interesting bounce here at 68. The action around D and E really is a lovely hinge, with an apex of 68. We can see that our first try out of the hinge didn't take, we came back to test it around F, but then eventually did drop out. So now that we are here again at J, this REJ looks serious, and its a short I think I would take if I was comfortable with putting on the trades on a whim. It doesn't work, and its interesting that the breakthrough of the apex coming back up is quite strong indeed. K - So the opening high, the REJ, should provide something juicy here. We do penetrate, 5 ticks actually. Had I been playing a REV, I would have been stopped out I think with my 1 point rule, but we do reject this level. L - Does previous resistance here at 72 not provide support? M - I am itching to go short here, right at 76, just taking it. I notice we hesitate, can't even go those extra 5 ticks this time. I would have played it just as a scalp of 4 points, exiting when we got to the lows at L if we got there, just exiting at that level. N - We do get to the lows of L, so a market order would I think have netted me at least 3.5 points. How silly of me though. The move down was 20 points, the move up was 20 points... that is what I should be focusing on. O - Look at the hesitation here, but perhaps a tick lower as I'm only keeping this line from the opening high. P - Look at our inability to make it to 72 again. It breaks to the upside, no surprise there. Q - It doesn't go far mind you, and these series of lower highs tells the story. CONCLUSION Does anyone buy the excuses I offer today for why I didn't put any trades on?? I'm not feeling too bad today though. I had those two issues that warranted some attention and distracted me. I have only gone through one previous contract rollover. Today though, once again, I see how critical the opening range is, it really sets up the price action to follow. I am also getting much more comfortable with the price swings, not being scared of every tick. There really are so many things you can use as reasons for or against a trade, so its critical that you know what is more important. Today the SL helped me quite a bit, and the series of lower highs was golden. Entering below the crests would sometimes be problematic, but keeping in mind that we have lower highs provides the necessary context to stay in. I do believe that if I traded as outlined it would have been a very positive day. But it really doesn't matter what I could have done. If I could have, I would have, but I didn't, so I guess I can't. (not yet at least!) Focusing on the points is really much easier than on the money. And also to keep trying is pivotal, not letting one bad trade effect you, if your reasons for taking the next trade are solid and not based on desperation to make money back. A few of the shorts earlier could be stopped out, but re-entry in this case would have been critical. Seeing the 6 or 7 point recoils should tell me to be more patient as well, to give price more room.