Monday Notes - Turn Up the Volume

6:15pm Will someone please turn up the volume? It seems that both the market and my personal trading volume (446 contracts -- both sides!) have slowed to an absolute crawl. In fact today may be my second lightest trading day of the year. I had about zero interest on the day, except for probing a few shorts on the 1:20pm and 3:15pm breakdown attempts, stopping on both for a -$4K day's scratch.

The main comment I have about the market's recent pace -- or more accurately lack thereof -- is that it reminds me of early September when the pace changed drastically, and it took many of us (those that survived) a few days of realizing what was going on to adjust. Normally, all we can do is minimize the losses until the adjustments are made.

And while market changes can frustrate discretionary (vs. system) traders, I suppose we can't feel too bad as it actually has a similar effect on systems which often aren't able to adapt, and thus get stuck with setups that worked in earlier times but not the present. As has often been said, when you find the key, they change the lock. At least discretionary traders can put the brakes on once we realize what's happening.

At this end, I'm truly looking at the week as a single "trade" ... which for all intents and purposes will likely be my final trade of the year as I mentioned over the weekend. Today I paid for some blinds and a few feeler bets. Yet I need to start seeing Jacks or better if I'm to put much more of my hard earned 2008 capital at risk.