Not Enticed to Trade Today

Monday 5/7/2007 ES Futures

How it went

Pretty boring today. I was definitely cautious today. The last “pre-FOMC” trading I was too quick to get aggressive an took some signals that caught me in some less favorable entries within the middle of the day’s small range. So when I saw we did not have any volume coming in today I played it safe.

Trade Log of My Trades

Trade Pos. Entry Exit Entry Time Exit Time Result

NONE

My Take

Kept all my account to trade another day. :-)

Trade Narrative and thoughts about My Trades

My signals were mixed today… The NYSE Tick seemed weak with lower highs than I’d like to see for movement to the up side. Price opened relatively flat from Friday’s close, but the Advance and Decline lines had a spread that would normally have me leaning toward a long trade.

Then with the weak volume levels I was loosing interest fast. With the FOMC announcement Wednesday, I was suspecting muted price action. I just hope the entire day is not flat sideways price movement.

Passed on the first one - Could have jumped short on 1515.25 a little before 9:30 CT. This lethargic price action has me just evaluating and trying to pick the setups in real time, but not risking capital yet for today. This trade would have worked. This was definitely the best trade from my entry signals for today. That said, only 2 points could be harvested if I placed a target to take profits right there. Price action only went 1 tick beyond.

I have passed on a few more signals. I was almost tempted to try one because the first trade could have yielded 2 points. Well… all of the following signals since then would have only been 1 point scalp trades or break-even trades if I tried to hold for more profits.

Done for the day.

Thoughts About Today

I think I should be willing to trust the first few signals. Then if price action dies out like today did, along with profits in the trades I tried, then I can stop trading for the day.

The other option would be to go into a scalp mode and close the position after 1 – 2 points. That would not allow any trades to run for bigger profits, but could get some profits on the quieter days. I’ll have to do some more research on this one.

Lessons Learned - Or still needing to reinforce

With no action today there is not much for lessons. I’d have to say that I seem to have learned to be more patient and wait for good entries. Too often in my past, I’d try to “make something happen” and get into more traders. On a day like today that is not always good.

I also did a good job at resisting the feeling that price action may roll over and that I should get short. These would have been bad entry points near the low side of the range. Overall I'm probably better off just watching today's action and not trading.

Trade Well, Trade Wise

John