What's it gonna be, up or down?

Yesterday I expected a rather choppy day. But instead, today we had a nice rally, comparable to a random (bigger) upday in the 2009-2010 bull trend. Not too volatile or too choppy, everything looked well orchestraded. So where are we now?? Today looks as bullish as yesterday looked bearish. Although today itself didn't look all that volatile, there still is no clear direction to where we are going. And that will probably remain so as long as we are staying in between the Octobre high and low. Until one of these is broken, I expect more chop and volatility.

Oil, precious metals and the euro (to a lesser extent) joined the rally.

After yesterday's big down day, today came somewhat as a surprise. The market still hasn't figured out where it wants to go, up or down. And that can drive a man insane, recent volatility is driving swing traders and investors nuts. Here are blog posts from guys I follow and who I read on a regular basis. They are normally cool/sober guys, giving mostly businesslike advice. Here are the posts they wrote yesterday...

Upsidetrader - A tender note to Europe

Investing With Options (Steven Place) - I've had it

To me, these posts said it all. To me this is a hint that less is still more. Less trading and smaller position size that is. I prefer staying in cash or to go home with small gains over risking the farm! Have patience and be disciplined, I can't stress that enough.

5m-chart SPY to be found in the trade-section.

Daily charts DIA, SPY, QQQ and IWM:

Trades

In the second hour of trading, a nice bullflag formed. Volume started coming in and I went long on the breakout of the flag. Long SPY @125.33. I took partial profits (1/4 each) @125.50 (too soon), 125.78, 125.65 (kind of misjudged this one) and out the last part @125.86. Not bad but took off first and third part too soon. Also because I had a slight bearish bias in the back of my mind.

5m-chart SPY:

Have a great weekend!!