Monday Notes - Lack of Market Emotion

4:15pm Like sports and poker, trading can be intriguing in that often the end score often doesn't reflect one's performance. (Tell that to the Cardinals though!) And I actually felt good about today's trade even though I'm slightly negative after commissions to the tune of a whopping -$158.

Yes, it will go in the books as the first net chip loss of '09. And I'm glad that's finally out of the way as it was starting to toy with my brain, although the # will only show on the P&L in terms of commissions exceeding the daily gross gain as I continue to await the first gross loss.

Of course the daily #s continue to mean nothing except in aggregation 332 days from now, and so we'll continue to focus on instead evaluating mindset and execution. And once again, the afternoon performance exceeded a morning loss thanks to short scalping the 2:15pm mini-bull trap retracement toward resistance ... which again ended up on being limited to a mini-trap as once the high-probability extension occurred, the market refused to cave further.

Suffice it to say that today's trade paid primarily to the early gap buyers, range traders, and 1st pullback micro-trend traders who were on their game. Breakout mavericks and second pullback traders likely drew down.

Not much else to say as we await a break out of the 810-830 ES logjam to stir at least some semi-violent emotions to provide more fertile ground for those of us who maximize opportunity by trading off others' emotions.

Right now, it feels like a market full of androids.