Today is Tuesday, May 19th and the Indexes marked a little time today. No ground gained or lost.

It was pretty much a flat session today, but they gave it a run and could not hold, so, it sold off at the end of the trading day to close flat. The ending did not bode well for tomorrow’s opening, but there is some support 10 to 15 S&P points below today’s close.

This is a very critical area, short term. I generally feel that the market will try and make a slightly higher high from last week’s close, but as stated yesterday, Monday’s low is the line in the sand. Break that and watch out.

Tough to say, but I am sticking to my original call. I really don’t need to be right about this directional call. If the market is selling off of yesterday’s lows, I will be looking for short opportunities with some legs to it. Technically the market is still in an uptrend on the dailies and if and when that changes, I will simply point it out.

In today’s trading, it ended up on a positive note, which is always nice, but I did have a few trades that I got stopped out of early on. I had originally intended to pick off a few small trades and be done early, but I changed my strategy and set myself up for extended moves. That would be at order entry, my stop goes in and I have no target.  I run only 4 or 5 tick stops on my trades, except my scalp trades, which can be a small as a  3 tick stop.

Since I traded a bit heavy on my last trade, I would call today’s session 3 times daily goal.  Currently, I have been trading 5 contracts, but the last trade looked too good. Usually I trade smaller at the end of my session, but today was my exception.

Trading is going to involve loss, there are no two ways about it, but how we handle it is going to make the difference when trying to come back. Come back I did, catching some real nice moves for several points. I could see the price action was saying, “today is a better day to let it run” and I listened, to my ultimate benefit.

I have included a short segment of my last trade of the day. Since I was up nicely at this point, I went in a little heavy. If the trade worked out, great. And if not, I still picked up my daily goal. That trade worked out just like I saw it, a nice move of 3 & 1/2 points. This was split up at a couple of levels and I even went in for an extra point there at the top.

If interested, click on the link below to check out the 5 minute video. I do show some of the mid range signals for the day. There are no indicators on the chart except a directional tool, that works right into my method. If I lay over the chart the indicators that I use, they give me all the exact same signals that I have posted on the chart, very nice.

I do try and not depend on the indicators and it would serve you well if you could train your eyes to see the trades without indicators as well. Most indicators are lagging behind price and can be a good confirmation of the pure price action play that exists right on the screen. That being said, if you don’t know how to read price action, I would suggest that you learn. It is the best thing that you could do for yourself. It will give you confidence and the ability to take the trades that present themselves to you. If you freeze when you get a great signal and do nothing, that means you do not have enough confidence and need to put screen time in.

This will give you the ability to spot the moves as they come up, but if you don’t know what it is you are looking for, then you have a problem. You can spend a lot of time in analysis, but if it’s not taking you forward to a grounded trading approach based on pure price action, then you could be hurting yourself. To unlearn bad habits can take years and you may never fully understand how things are done on the street. If you are committed to mastering the art of trading, you really need to learn how to read price action, the natural rhythm of the market. It has a beat. Can you hear it, see it, feel it?

http://www.screencast.com/t/wBOTrQhh A few of today’s live trades

Related posts:

1. Market Rhythm, can you feel it !
2. New Stock Market Move Now Confirmed
3. Stock Market Still Showing Strength
4. Stock Market Building Up Pressure, tomorrow could be the day
5. Opportunity to Beat Wall Street

Tags: trading indicators, uptrend