Tuesday Notes - Textbook A.M. After Trend

4:00pm As I said last week, there's nothing wrong with chop when you expect it, and we indeed got the textbook and high-probability morning oscillations after yesterday's trend day, which I was pretty much able to match throughout much of the session.

The result at this end was a pick-up in trading volume -- finally getting back over the 2,000 daily contract mark -- as the result of multiple wholesale fades of early price or TICK extremes (low probability of extending on the morning after a strong trend), and a decent chip gain that was just shy of dark green. [See updated matrix at left.] And while the #s aren't relevant, I'm currently defining the bottom line colors as: light green +$1 to +$7.5K; bright green +$7.5K to +$15K; dark green > +$15K. Chip loss colors are the same in reverse. It's of course waaaay to early to even think about keeping numerical score, but I figured I'd avoid the inevitable questions on how I'm currently defining the chip count colors.

And while I feel I'm still not matching the intensity and cheek-to-cheek dance from last fall, I certainly felt as comfortable trading today as I have in a while ... like stepping into an old comfortable pair of slippers.

It's of course nice to see the market provide equal opportunity to the trend traders (yesterday) and oscillation traders (today). Yet it's when one matches both step for step where a prolonged dance with the market can begin, as was the case throughout much of '08.

I'm still clearly not there yet, but I may have found at least one of the dancing shoes.

I'll keep looking for the other one.