Tuesday Notes - Solid Performance

11:54am Nice to see the market acting "normally" within abnormal conditions. Despite the craziness of yesterday's record bounce out of the abyss, we indeed got the expected morning-after-trend action that so often follows a trend day. And as is usually the case, it was the traders' turn to earn their keep from the more predictable day after trend action -- versus yesterday's "trend" of over 100 points on ES (... and if anyone tries to convince you that yesterday's run was a high-probability expectation, I've got some Jan. 2009 Patriots Super Bowl tickets to sell you.) I'll take high probability every day.

At this end, I traded both long and short, with most of the morning's $40K chip gain coming from shorting the opening gap and adding upon confirmation of the initial turn. I could have sized stronger at the open for a home run, but instead opted for modest size and the solid extra base hit as I wasn't as focused as I would like to start the day. I mean I was focused, but not with that added element where I'd be comfortable trading mega-size.

So the week chip counts start: -$11K Monday (playing defense on low probability trend day) and +$40K today (playing offense on high probability morning after trend), or about what I would expect from a win/loss ratio perspective given the two types of days, and I remain pretty pleased with how I managed yesterday. I'm sure many "the S&P NEVER climbs 100 points in a day" traders got torched. Sure, it hasn't happened before and probably won't ever happen again, but that's still not "never".

1:06pm Not sure I'll trade much this PM as the afternoon of the oscillation day is typically a crap shoot at best. The daily downtrend could certainly resume (ummmm, yesterday's 100 point move and the overnight gap was a pullback on a daily downtrend as noted in the chart), but I'm a bit tired and still don't feel particularly sharp. Putting the defense back on the field now and not giving away the morning's work.

3:34pm OK, calling it a day. Nudged the chip count to +$44K by shorting the PM breakdown and then doing some light buying on the 3LB turn north. Very pleased with overall management the last two days. Earlier in my career I would have gotten hurt yesterday and then been too pissed off to trade today well. A decade of experience taught otherwise, and "Day 2" is when I make much of my keep.

I'll do a video shortly on my strong feelings of why "Day 2" is so much more predictable than "Day 1" ... Day 1 usually being the trend day. I find it's often best to simply let "Day 1" happen without major damage.

Also made another decent dent in the Q4 bonus which shot up to 41% complete with 2 1/2 months still to go.