Quiet day today

Back to the four trades today. One small loser and not too much on the profits.

AEM opened up quite a bit and is doing some settling. I expect it to drop back to at least opening prices by days end but who's to say. Yesterday I thought that an overnight short position might have proved promising...although I would not have seriously considered it. I would have seen a $3 per share loss pretty soon in. I did miss out on the initial boom but the spread was large and the volatility was way up so I did not feel comfortable placing anything. I did one in my head that I would not have actually placed, but just curious if I called it right and I would have been out $1 per share in two minutes. The early morning rush is not the best time to play.

0.71% for today, 9.81% overall for the month of December, considering the Monday drawdown that isn't too bad as it still meets my 1% per day average goal (1.23%)...of course that is based on a 4 trading day week so 4% per week is the target.

I will not likely trade tomorrow and we will see about Friday when it arrives.

I would pop in two more trades but I am tired today and not on the ball.

A note about the volume in the quotes. I like to see a huge buying or selling pressure in the quotes, as I did today. At one point the asks had 223(00's) at one price, $44.25 I think. The price didn't do much moving for a few minutes, the asks stayed firm and started to sell. Normally I might expect that a large volume ask like that might drive the price down as someone is offloading shares but they were selling and the price didn't budge much. I have in the past used this as a cue to go long just as the asks are drying and the buyers are slavering for more and there is often a nice quick rally as the asks retreat into the 1's and 2's. This one was interesting as the R1 was at $44.38 so I really think that some astute trader was just selling into the top of the rally expecting the price to meet resistance at the R1 line. That wsa really why I only watched this one as I kind of expected it to drop afterwards also.

It did drop off a bit but rallied right on through afterwards. My last trade caught some of that as I entered long at $44.20 and bailed at $44.40, no stomach for holding anything this morning so not much more than break even on this one.

Interesting side note. The one training outfit that I would consider actually paying for their program suggests to trade for a month and aim for break even. I understand their thinking in not wanting new traders to try to hold positions for that big run that may not (most likely not for new traders) materialize. I must admit that I have been guilty of holding too long even after trading and knowing not to expect big things every time.

Jeff.