Wednesday Notes - Letting Go

4:00pm If much of the last 18 months was about not letting up, the next few months may very well be about letting go. Not letting go of trading, but simply letting go of a few of life's attributes to see if I can regain my balance in both trading and life. I'll get back to that shortly.

First, it seems I made a good decision by driving to Boston last night and incurring the cost of a hotel room for my 10am appointment so that I'd be able to monitor the markets in the morning and take advantage of any opportunity without having to fight traffic or do the old eyes-on-the-Vaio-while-driving routine. (Oops, I just realized my daughter is now reading this -- which is apparently now hard to avoid when Googling "Don Miller" now points you here unless you're looking to buy a book or car. Never mind, I never trade while driving.)

So the $200 or so investment returned about 2000% for the morning, even though I missed the 10am pullback wholesale long. I primarily caught the earlier DAX and ES range oscillations after the initial overnight run-up, along with catching the 8:15am ADP spike down for a decent wholesale long.

So the month and quarter start off with a good decision and a fourth consecutive solid & tight day . Yea, I know it's not the 58-3 Jan-Mar Win/Loss, but you have to start somewhere. I'm also seriously considering restarting the daily scorecard concept which I've sort of done mentally over the last week.

I also did well not to trade the rest of the day except for one probe bear trap entry around 1:30pm (see attached chart; click to enlarge) that I scratched after two minutes after it seemed clear the market had no mojo. Yes, that's an autoplotted sequence; blue triangles reflect the opening and closing of a long sequence, and I'm still working with MF Global and TT on fine-tuning as it works about half the time right now. If it works, I'll do more of these.

Now to the topic of letting go. Today's news on my back pretty much confirms earlier findings that I have a narrowing of the spinal canal ("stenosis") in the neck area that's not easy to treat, and can't be fixed with a new chair, stretching, pill, etc. btw, it's not that I'm in pain ... rather it's a pins and needles sensation in the hands and a few other places. So while I'm not giving up, I am letting it go from a spiritual perspective, while promising to work hard at reducing stress, eating better, doing some light exercise, and regaining a blend of body-mind-spiritual focus that has sorely been lacking in this man's life over the last few months.

I'm sure you've heard "You are what you eat".

How about "Your trading results (or any performance-based results) reflect the state of your mind and soul"? Corny? Perhaps. True? Oh yes ... with May and June prominently displayed as Exhibits A and B.

Finally, a reminder to scroll back through recent posts if you're interested in what is typically fairly informative follow-up discussion to my initial daily ramble. In the case of last night's post, someone asked me about my writing style, and there was also some good back-and-forth dialogue on increasing size (or not).