Instant Gratification

There was an interesting comment from Bryan yesterday. He was asking, I think, why or how I sat through a couple of hours waiting for the trade to develop.

I think it goes back to 1981. I lost a lot of money during Christmas 1981. In fact after Christmas of 1981 I decided never to trade between December 15 and January 2. I stuck to this until just after I started using range bars. In Christmas 1981 I was chopped up like a very fine hamburger, milked dry and spat out.  I still remember it vividly. I had a lot less experience and my desire for instant gratification was in the forefront of my head.

Fast forward to now. I have taught Kiki to put on a trade, put in a drop dead stop and let the trade do its work. The way we trade, during "normal" markets (if there is such a thing) we get onto the move and it goes. Because the order flow takes you there.

Yesterday was the same except the volume was low. There was some long liquidation going on that held price in a tighter range for longer. There is the concept of a coiled spring I was talking about with Kiki while this trade was going on. We knew there would be a break eventually and a decent one. We saw that the buyers were more anxious than the liquidators who were allowing their offers to be lifted. Sure, we could be wrong and we could have lost a bit on our exit. But that's the business we're in. At no time did I see anything on my charts that invalidated the trade. Christmas markets at other times can get slower. Bryan be aware that you have to trade what is there. I love to ski in powder snow but sometimes I have to adapt to slush or ice if  I want to ski that particular day.

I decided its getting too thin out there so I told Kiki last night that we should not even look at the market this morning. Having said that, there would have been an interesting trade on the Dow Euro 50 had we been around. In fact, it was a perfect setup and shall be the subject of a post talking about how that trade came together.