Friday Notes - Wake Me on Monday

4:00pm 'Twas a bit of a market snoozer today in terms of speculative patterns and market pace which left me providing some very light liquidity on a day where - continuing yesterday's analogy - I largely played defense (+$2K) and wanted to make darn sure I didn't crash any planes before returning to the deck for the weekend.

And so the chip stack growth slowed a bit this week to a unusually low +$12K due largely to Wednesday's speed bump and plummeting volatility, as I continue to try to deal with a market rhythm that is often more suited to traders who prefer range trading or having their capital in the market for extended intraday timeframes for slow grinds (neither is my game or preference.) Of course the moment traders become "comfortable" with this, the game will change once again. It never ends.

And so the time-proven strategy continues to be to push the chips hard when both market and trader are in strong rhythm (btw, "preferred" rhythms will always remain highly individualistic and varies by trader), while grinding out modest wins when such isn't the case.

The latter is of course more difficult and thus isn't discussed much by fee-based "advisory services" (I'm being nice) who never slow down their one-size fits all recommendations, or action junkie traders who burn through capital faster than Bernard Madoff.

For the rest of us, the profitable journey remains long. And this one has 258 days left as we remain in the early stages of the second of four laps (quarters).

Everything in the meantime is just noise. Even if the noise is an occasional jet engine and you momentarily get caught in the jetwash.

Goose will always be there.

Look for "The Weekend Trader" as always.

btw, for some reason traffic spiked to another all-time high on this site earlier in the week and we're now around 700 consistent daily onlookers and well over 1,000 daily visits. Who'd have thunk. New visitors - please be sure to check out the FAQ link and the key posts in the lower left hand margin. Doing so will help put this diary in perspective.