Here They Come!

News comes in and obliterates my call for a red bar before jolly new highs.  

The overnight new highs are not here yet, but the programs will be hard-pressed to not give it the 'ol heave-ho to look above to ferret out liquidity.  That's the high odds bet.  

Or is it?  Can't a rational person handicap a test of these highs as high risk for a reversal?  In the face of seemingly unending governmental buying sprees?  

It's all so fluid that we just have to go with the flow... 

Look above Failure = bad.  Watch the hell out and go with to the downside. 

Acceptance higher = It's all still a game, and let's party with them as long as the setup is decent.  

Nails On The Chalkboard

Had my 2nd hard drive crash in a month.  Now there are some odds!

Classic, slow grinder, check-mark with perfect structure -- for what it was.

The daily reference is here and we are on the look out.

A failure here and it get's really ugly fast.

But the grinder is up and unless anyone steps in front of this laggard-fun-fest, then it's all systems go!

But being long here just feels like NAILS ON THE CHALKBOARD!

If the selling comes in hard, it's going to be a go-with type of day.

I'm making the call here that a red bar prints before a jolly new highs party prints.

Balanced Day

Our new journaling experiment was interesting today.  Totally SLOW market, but I found the new approach great!  And will try it again tomorrow.

New Project

New project for the week: A Decision Journal.

The structure is a bit more detailed than my regular journal.  Although I do keep track of many of these things already.  But, maybe this will add some additional edge to the process.

Trading Decision Journal: 

1) Relevant variables that will govern the outcome.

2) What I expect to happen.

3) Why I expect it to happen. 

4) How I feel and my confidence level.

If I can't write down the relevant variables that govern the trade, and why I think that my vision of the future movement has high-odds of occurring, then my trade is probably being taken for other reasons than profitability. 

I'm simply not going to learn from my trading decisions if I don't keep trade of, and review, what's decided and why.  

Another benefit will be reduced hindsight bias and it will FORCE me to make my rational EXPLICIT upfront.  With luck this habit will surface bad thinking that might have otherwise slipped by.  

Easier said than done!  

With that, here is a quick review of some of the other tidbits to chew on:

Check-mark Move Up

We like our fluid analysis this week.

The bearish up move bias, morphed into a bullish continuation-holiday-week-pattern bias, and we were able to roll with the punches.

Today a textbook check-mark day to behold!

Same Pattern

Same pattern as yesterday:  Morning up, then selling.

Those pesky minor highs and lows sure do trigger!

Up, Down...up or down next?

Bullish tendencies printed today...

That is until they didn't.

Up morning, afternoon selling.

But volume was really low, so I can't really sound the downside alarm based upon today's action.  But I do think today was bearish.  And my over all structural position at this point is bearish.

But it's pre-holiday and we note this fact.

Today we take an extra-sharp eye at the 5 minute structure to divine clues that gave the astute trader an edge in gaming the afternoon selling.

But, of course, the bigger picture references most always set the dinner table.