Pick your trades carefully

Today was the first day back after a long weekend in the US, the day was expected to be slow, but that doesn’t mean we can’t squeeze a few good trades out of the market.

But as always when the volume is slow, look for one or two trades and then walk away. That’s exactly what we did today.

I wanted to wait until at least the first ten minutes or so today, after a long weekend it’s natural to want to get back into trading quickly and make some money! But in my experience it pays to be patient, get a read on the market before placing your first trade. The very last thing you want or need after a long weekend it to take a large hit on your first trade.

So after watching the initial action, despite the pop, the TICKs showed us the real bias to the market, they just couldn’t get above 300 which indicated no real buying interest.

A failed push higher opens up the high probability that the market will now probe lower, especially in a low volume environment. But I was going to wait until I saw some evidence. A slightly more defensive strategy.

When the market broke the last low that was my entry, the sellers had become the dominant side and it was time to jump on. This was only going to be a scalp trade and so my exit would be the prior low OR a -1000 TICK indicating a flush. We got the latter just before the prior low and I closed the trade.

The second and final trade of the day for me was a long trade.

Having seen the market find some support at the prior low and the TICK divergence I was ready to go long, staying defensive I waited for the trendline to break before going long.

I only managed one scale for 10 ticks before it reversed and stopped my second half out at break even.

The rest of the day was relatively range bound. But I bagged 2 profitable trades, kept out of trouble and I’m ready to push down the throttle as the volume picks up.