Old times and old gaps

Since I am now no longer real time connected I am feeling like old times, for me, when I had to press the refresh tab to get up to date quotes and not see the charts and the orders and executions flowing. It is quite a step back.

Having said that, this change will force me into an end of day mentality which should be better for the trading style I am looking at shifting towards in future.

Today I placed a couple of orders based on yesterday's closing prices plus a little bit of breathing room and was filled within the first few minutes. Straight stock plays. Nice in one sense as there is no real time constraint due to time decay at least. Small priced stocks, both less than $5 to let me buy a larger position and see breakeven earlier (commission consideration here)

I am expecting the market to rally somewhat over the next short term as the S&P is bouncing around the old gap levels from August of 2008...August 6th to be precise. The entire time since September 18th, 2009, when this old gap range was re-touched, has seen the gap range as a bit of resistance initially, almost not worth noting. Since November 12th it turned support as it has been regularly tested 4 times since.

Last week saw the S&P drop right into the range again and now the upper end is resistance and the lower is support as it trades in this really tight range between about 1070 and 1105.

While I am far from being bullish on the market I do believe that we will see a return to the mid January level of 1150 at least once more time before it turns south for a longer drop.

If I am wrong I may have to close the put sides of some of my iron condor trades, as previously mentioned. If I am right I only need to be right until February expiration and even then I can still be wrong as long as the market does not sell off too strongly over the next few weeks.

Jeff.