Thursday Notes - "Clear!"

3:50pm Well, I'm chalking the week up to vacation from a P&L perspective as I'm still not quite in sync with the current market rhythm, including dealing with often non-existent volatility and making the effective transition today from Europe to the U.S. market after the earnings news began to hit the wires this morning.

As far as today's trade goes, I at least managed to cut an early five digit loss (the result of some early aggressive U.S. shorting) to an acceptable -$6K chip scratch once I finally figured out sellers had begun their long weekend early.

And while I admit I'm pressing more than I can remember in quite a while, the good news is I seem to be minimizing the cost of blinds and antes. Let me put it this way: Considering (1) the market's poor intraday rhythms this week, and (2) my week's overall performance that I'd frankly grade a C at best, I'm rather shocked my chip stack didn't take a hit more than the actual -$5K on the week. It should be down -$20Kish easily all things considered. So perhaps some some subconscious chip preservation mode has kicked in ... who knows.

As I said in my talk last night, I tend to best feel the market's pace when it's volatile and emotion is rampant (sort of like playing Poker with a table full of players on emotional "tilt"). And for now, I'm not feeling the other market players emotions, which is ultimately what drives confidence, price movement, and creates those funny lines we call charts and indicators.

My only current concern is I'm not mad at my week's performance (or perhaps I should say my "weak" performance). That in itself raises a red flag to me as frustration is usually what fuels the next hard run. That or a hard smack which hasn't happened since the infamous February 10th.

Maybe I need to be mad at not being mad.

Anything to fuel motivation and jump start the trading heart's current rhythm.

Hand me the defibrillator paddles.

Clear!