Monday Wrapup (1/4) - $225 gain

8AM
Well for starters, I took a short pullback last night about 30 mins after the open that I scaled out of for a $250 gain over the ensuing 4 hrs.  Was up as much as $375 and down as much as 3 ticks.   Seemed like the market had gotten ahead of itself at the open, but not much follow-thru.  Still nice to turn a profit on my first trade of the new year!

12PM
Even though the market has been trending higher all day I've had a hard time locating decent long setups.  My only trades thus far are 4 countertrend shorts. 

Made $250 on the first short taken at 9:48AM after a 2 tick drawdown.  Felt good about my exit too.


Next trade was taken at 10:02AM, but I closed about 30 seconds after entry.  Trade went against me 2 ticks at the start so I closed at breakeven just due to gut feel.  Turns out my gut was wrong as this trade would've made at least $250-300.  Oh well. 


Took another short at 10:32AM that pretty much went against me from the start.  After a 1.5 pt drawdown I managed to close for a $150 loss.  At various points I found myself thinking about closing this trade as it went nowhere after entry.  Of course, as I was about to exit the trade moves against me.  Did a good job of not puking into the up move and exiting on first pullback. 


And my last trade this morning was pretty much a repeat of above.  Took a short at 11:36AM.  Wasn't a great setup.  Vol spike was minimal.  Entry was on a 2nd chance opp on a pullback after first signal once prior bar's low was taken out. After being down 5 ticks, I closed the trade for a loss of $125 over a series of exits. Could've done much better with these last 2 trades. 


So basically I'm down $25 on the day not including last night's gain of $250 which I'll lump in with today's trading.


4PM
Not much going this afternoon except chop.  Finished the day up $225 including last night's gain.