Monday Notes - One Step

4:00pm You'd think that booking a modest gain in the morning and hanging onto it all day wouldn't be an issue for me, yet given the events of the last few weeks I had to do something to turn the momentum back in my favor, and that describes today's trade at this end.

Ironically, the best entry came a few hours after Sunday evening's Globex open as ES momentarily traded below 920 (I nibbled just to make sure I wouldn't have trigger lock on Monday), yet most had to settle for the limited intraday long entries which included a couple of decent pre-open pullbacks, the initial opening range break, and a handful of intra-session pullbacks where TICK decreases couldn't push price down.

Hopefully, we'll get some "MAT" (Morning after Trend) oscillations in the morning.

In the meantime, here are a few follow up thoughts to overnight comments and emails.

Regarding the earnings stop, it's intended on being a month-end stop -- similar to a three line break chart where the period has to close below a certain figure. And it's been a loooooong time since I've had a losing month -- not to mention -$50K -- so suffice it to say that I expect to neither hit it nor end the game. Any suggestion that I "want" to hit it by putting it in place is completely incomprehensible.

With respect to what caused Friday's late-day surge or today's opening Europe squeeze, my response is "don't know and don't care". The fact is a strong range was broken, buyers had the upper hand, offers were lifted, etc. etc. If you're looking for the "why", you won't be trading for very long.

And lastly, thanks for the private notes addressing my neck and back issue. I certainly don't want to turn this site into a health update, yet as I mentioned over the weekend, it's a significant personal issue right now that is having an enormous impact on my focus and ability to monitor the market, which may involve potential surgery. And such is another reason why I chose to implement the cumulative earnings stop to ensure I don't let the last few years of momentum completely disappear on one stupid loss of concentration in light of current conditions.

Yet this too shall pass, and I'm putting on a full court press to try to resolve it.

Looking forward to tomorrow.