Trading with Patience

Usually Monday are more exciting for intra day traders: new information from the weekend, pent up demand/supply on the sidelines waiting to get involved, or something makes the market move. However every once in a while we get a Monday that is very flat and boring as today was. That is when you can start the day with some probes, looking for opportunities but never with full leverage since the order flow that will take the stock or market to new levels hasn’t materialized.

Just look at the following 15min two day chart of $DIA, after we establish a trading range we were never able to break out of it. The only time we were able to get more aggressive was the break from the lunch time trading range around 2pm, the opening range lows had to be respected as support. When we penetrated those lows, but were UNABLE to close below that level, all the shorts had to cover. This chart summarizes the sort of day we had to deal with today. No real follow through on long positions and despite an attempt to break support the market didn’t have the volume to make lower lows.