Tight range day, May 22

The first pre-market entry in my journal outlined my expectations of the market as follows:

"watch SSO from $24.60 as support and $24.90 as resistance"

The second entry states that "I expect today to be a watch and see day as I tinker...". I even told myself not to trade today. Friday (old no trade on Friday rule that I always break) and more so a Friday before a long weekend in the market.

SSO opened at $24.65, a penny off of yesterday's open, dropped to $24.33, reached a high of $24.90 and has wallowed around between the two numbers all day.

I tried a few trades, 3 of the six that I tracked. My first exited rather ungracefully as I got almost 10 cents less than my stop. All were nice setups but were all too close to the numbers to be really good trades in any event though.

The high low TICK moving averages basically span evenly either side of zero, good indication of a flat market and a good market to stay away from for index trading unless trading higher volume scalping.

Make that four trades. SSO broke the $24.90 mark and returned for a test, TICK seemed to substantiate the "test" so I got in at $24.91...for a stop out at $24.83... basically at the price I figured if it hit it was not likely to stop. Should have been playing the envelope after all as SDS made a better than 50 cent move at the same time.

Interesting to note that the open and high for the SPX does not correspond at all with the SPY or SSO, relative to their prices. I expect that this is normal. Too bad that Esignal does not give volume for the SPX, just the ETFs.

I look forward to trading next week as I expect to be able to see a trend day or two to test out my TICK trading on.

Jeff.