Wednesday Notes - It's Still Just a Job

4:15pm

Dear Diary,

Wowzer ... where do I start? Headfakes, broken intraday supports that were as solid as pudding, and failed intrday trend pullback attempts had me scrambling far more than I'd like (not that the market cares). Hand me the Dramamine.

OK, I ended modestly green at +$6K, but I had to work for it and ended the day off my intraday equity highs as I got a bit sloppy in the last 30-minutes expecting at least one of the afternoon supports to hold -- especially 770 (pudding again) -- and not going heavy enough on providing liquidity to the 2:00pm and 3:30pm panic buyers, so we'll call it the third winning ugly day in a row. At this rate, I consider myself long overdue for a home run after hitting singles and doubles for much of the last two months. And I actually thought I was on my way toward that today before the afternoon market "umpire" ruled that I had to go back to second.

I felt I traded the morning session fairly well considering I was looking for 760 to hold a bit longer than it did, before stopping and reversing hard on the 10:30am short pullback toward both 760 and the 5-minute trend line. And such was the trade of the day at this end that ended up being critical to offset some of the slop later in the day.

Obviously we continue to have bailout "noise" in the background that is causing the roller coaster action, although I continue to trade based on what I see and simply try to minimize the damage when what I expect doesn't happen.

So there it is again ... the good simply outweighing the bad in another day in crazy business. And while I'm sure many did far better today (although I imagine many got their bell rung), I seem to be morphing a bit into Michael Mizrachi -- a.k.a. the "Grinder" -- who makes his poker living by simply grinding out modest win after modest win that by the end of the tournament or year combine for a decent stack of chips. 37 out of 38 days now + ... I still don't get it.

And so with two days left in this second of twelve legs of the 2009 race, at this point I'm simply looking forward to March, which has traditionally been the one month during the year where I seem to find my sea legs and that often sets the pace for the remaining three quarters.

Today was also a good reminder that despite the glitz that too often accompanies this business (I've still never figured out why), it's still just a job.

A job that starts again tomorrow.