Is there much point in working past the first hour? It's summer, it's slow, after the first hour the YM is so increbibly slow recently in fact, it's slower than paint drying, slower than grass growing... will things pick up after the Fourth or will they be like this until fall? Until the economy is roaring back? I mean, I can live with the hours, it's great, I worked an hour today was short the YM, set my bracket and went for breakfast, perfect workday as far as I'm concerned, but if I could put in more time I would...
If you want volatility I think the last thing you want is the economy to come roaring back... check out the daily ranges in 2006-2007.
Short since 7:30, there wasn't even the usual flurry of deleveraging or whatever usually happens the last half hour... it's not like this is hard to do.. I made the mistake yesterday of overtrading in a dead market, finally realized that nothing I was doing was working and quit while I was ahead.. Today the pace was good for the first half hour, then the news came at 7:00 and price had new impetus down and it recovered and then bang, it's like somebody threw the big knife switch somewhere and it just drifted lower all day.. not a problem for me really unless I try to trade that really narrow range back and forth... I'm trying to get to where I can tell ahead of time if things are going to be that dead in the afternoon, sometimes there are moves, sometimes not... I think I actually do have tools for trading that really slow market, the question is about the value of working that hard for not too much or maybe even giving back a good bit, it's easy to be inattentive when it's that slow and next thing it's "why the hell was I long all the way down???"
That basically is it. Trade something else. Look at oil - really crazy there. Currencies. That said, I think this week is a little special in the setup anyway. See it like that: * Wednesday was 1st day of the quarter. * Friday is holiday. Maybe quite a lot of professionals closed the uwuarter on Tuesday and really do not want to get involved in this 1-2 day before holiday weekend mess. Rather a good time to take some holidays. At leat Thursday after deadzone was dead. Many already in holidays. I think it will improove again next week.