Friday, March 6, 2009

Friday Notes - Weird Day; Decent Week

5:00pm I'll keep today's post short for now as I'm tired, which showed toward the end of the day in overtrading the 2pm-3pm slop in anticipation of the short squeeze that didn't happen until later in the session. Talk about a cruel tease ... you knew it was coming, yet leave it to the market to finally do it after everyone looking for it gave up!

Frankly, I imagine a lot of traders were frustrated today, and I could have easily been roadkill -- a.k.a. Maverick in Top Gun getting caught in the jet wash -- had I not eased up on the throttle and grabbed the ejection handle (probably a terrible metaphor, but you get the point).

Yet considering my low energy level today, the early-day squeeze that had absolutely no bounce (which I fished for on the retracement ... more on that over the weekend including my view on "ejection handle" stops), and the mid-afternoon slop I mentioned, I'll take the +$11K chip gain and close the week at a decent +$54K, which is a bit more like when the motor was in full gear in the fall of 2008.

And while it seems that I'm finally starting to find some rhythm, it's important that I don't lost sight of the "cornerstone" fictitious draw concept -- which I haven't referenced much lately, yet reflected one of the key mental breakthroughs for '08 that I can't lose sight of -- which is to view this week as a disaster when Monday rolls around to avoid any chance of resting on laurels. So on Monday, I'll need to be in focused comeback mode.

I'll post extensively over the weekend as my brain is in full gear on tax issues, changes to the scorecard (I'll elaborate more on the "No Regrets" idea), and other thoughts. In the meantime, I'm going to unwind and have some fun at a local cash game tonight, so I'll respond to comments on Saturday.

Oh, and I managed 4th place last night at the table. Still in 3rd overall, but the gap continues to close.

Look for "The Weekend Trader" posts as usual over the weekend.

3 comments:

Charles said...

RE: "I imagine a lot of traders were frustrated today",

yyyep...

which tells me I gotta get BETTER...hope you have a great weekend D-man

BTW, just curious, any thoughts on the VIX today?(i'm still learning to use it)

-charleS

Don Miller said...

Hi Charles -

The 15-min VIX pretty much mirrored ES to the inverse as it often does, opening with a bullish bias before retracing and not holding trend support just as ES didn't.

Then for the rest of the day it remained in a slight uptrend (bearish bias) before changing trend very late in the day.

I wasn't staring at it a whole lot today, although as usual it was a decent confirming/non-confirming supplmental indicator.

Re: frustration, I was certainly frustrated at times today as well, it's just that the good outweighed the bad.

Don

momo said...

Hey don, looking forward to your thoughts on ejection handle stops. I was long into the early squeeze which was wonderful if I hadn't added back on the pullback which wasn't one but a full fledged sellboff without any breaks for 15+ points. I never recovered and even got caught again in the last half hour short squeeze I had been looking for but given up on.
I pretty much erased the entire week's profits today.
So yes, today was frustrating to say the least.