May 14th...nothing good to say.

Today was a perfect example of a good day to not trade...but not due to the market.

I was up late last night.
I did not sleep all that great.
The power went out early this morning... I have alarms to alert me to this for various reasons.
The dogs, due to being disturbed, wanted up and out.
The power never cam back on so I dealt with very limited water supply for morning routines.
I dragged myself into the office.

This does not provide a good mindset for anything so I should not be surprised that I was not on my game today...in fact I was not even in the same stadium.

Seven trades, all losers, most small, a few larger than my normal. I traded with an expectation, with a vengeance, with frustration...I finally threw in the towel.

Here is the NYSE TICK chart, for reference and for me to really see what really poor trading ideas I had. I dropped the bars and left the Bollinger Bands on with the various moving averages. SPY chart for reference to follow. The vertical bars are divisions between the apparent trending types over the day and this should give some direction to the trade styles to use during these times. I placed these lines in hindsight but without any other reference to charts.

Here is the corresponding SPY chart with the lines placed at the same times...only using the TICK references. The generalities of the TICK are pretty close to reality.

The light blue line is yesterday's opening price. The the low for today, during regular market hours, never broke the low for yesterday, the bottom of the chart is about $88.50, which was the low. Seeing as this was tested before 1000h it could be a good idea to stay long as long as the price stayed above that level with some conviction, found in the TICK trending up over the morning

Trades 1 and 4 could be timed to correspond with the rising low of the TICK and the testing of the 200SMA on the SPY.

Trade 2 was testing the 50 and 1/2 of R1 ( which I find useful often) and a TICK low, slightly higher risk but still a good pullback entry especially once the 30 crosses and the price tests both these SMAs shortly following the arrow.

Trade 3, a short, is the inverse of 2 as price tests the 30/50 on the underside. The heavy red line is yesterday's close, a decent resistance as it has been tested for about an hour. Target would be the 200SMA.

I have decided not to play the last hour as it is too volatile for my risk level right now...as long as I can follow that rule of mine.

While these are all hindsight trade setups they are setups that I will be watching for over the next while. The range market is the toughest to judge for me so I will try to stay away from it for a while.

Jeff.