Where Your Trading Focus Should Be

Heading into the afternoon, pullbacks toward 13-minute downtrend support may
provide additional opportunities for shorts with stops to the north. And while I
believe one’s trading focus should always be based on sound technical analysis,
it’s certainly been interesting to note the recent environment where the market
ONLY climbs on rumor. Such is not the
foundation on which bull markets are built.

Over the next few columns, I’ll share various tidbits from last week’s live
trade seminar. Based on participant feedback (still compiling the survey
responses), the time seemed very well-spent as we talked our way through
approximately 100 trade sequences over the course of the week, which included 26
trading hours where participants were able to view every entry, exit, success
and blemish. From my perspective, we accomplished one of our main objectives in
showing what trading is really about, which is far from the rampant industry
marketing hype and myths that too-often reflect after-the-fact baloney where
chop, stops, and miscues are non-existent.

The market cooperated nicely in terms of providing us with a variety of market
rhythms over the course the week, including both Thursday’s chop which was about
as bad as it gets, and the “Sons of Osama” moonshot and subsequent plummet. Both
rhythms required deft management in terms of entry execution as well as the
decision whether or not to trade. And while our focus was on the skill (vs. P&L)
as it always should be, the week’s results provided us with a good opportunity
to see the result of our hard work (and trading is indeed “work,” folks) of
using a consistent method which was reflected in nice profits.