Friday Notes - Hints of Momentum

3:30pm Well, considering I got to bed around 2:00am this morning after attending last night's overtime thriller (or as they say in Bahstan, "thrilla" as the entire Gahden crowd was on its feet for the third period and overtime), and was physically & mentally very sluggish this morning, I felt I read the market and managed the trade fairly well today.

Essentially the game plan was to take sure clips in the early going, before stepping aside and letting the market tip its hand which it did nicely once the morning 5-minute bull trap snagged the longs and the VIX crossed into a textbook uptrend. The result was biasing to the short side on the noon climb and feeble afternoon upticks to bank another +$8K chip gain on what continues to be rather modest trading of 1,346 contracts. And while the week's +$18K take clearly lags where I need to be, it won't cause me to lose too much sleep over the weekend considering a decent performance over the last two and half days.

Which for those who know me via the blog, isn't necessarily a good thing from an intensity perspective as I need to feel that crack of the whip to aggressively trade at peak performance. Yet I'll worry about that on Monday when the game is back on.

By the way, while I trade predominantly based on technicals, have you noticed that the market has now stopped going up on good news?? Potential good news for future volatility.

And so the Bruins are history, the Celtics will soon be as well (either Sunday or after getting demolished by the Cavs), and Big Papi has lost his mojo. I guess that leaves trading to keep this trader's competitive juices flowing.

Fortunately, our trading season only ends at a time of our choosing.

For me, that remains December 31, and I still need to pick up the pace else I'll be like the Bruins who after earning the #1 seed, sleptwalk through too many games and couldn't overcome it in the end. Or like Big Papi who for some strange reason (dare I say age or roids?) went from the league's greatest clutch hitter to an unconfident hitter who's monentarily lost all sense of timing.

I need to build on the modest current momentum.

The work resumes on Monday.

Please note that I'll be out of town for part of Saturday, but will still find time to squeeze in the Weekend Trader update.