Wow. It's the end of the world as we know it (but what the heck, I'm a Mets fan) and I feel fine. 18 years ago tonite, the Mets won game 7 over Boston for their last Championship. It hasn't been much fun being a Mets fan since, but it's always worse being a Red Sox fan... until this year and this amazing playoff run. Congrats to them!

Nearly a carbon copy setup as yesterday's springboard monster up day. Price bounced off the converging ma's along with a ZLR of converging CCIs to go long. I got it again, and this time I got more than a scalp, as I played it with a runner for +21 ticks total. Definitely got out of the runner too early, as it ran comfortably the rest of the day, but oh well. Gio moderated today and she nailed it perfectly, of course. Another +100 tick day for her. I wound up 3-1-0 for 20 ticks, so the rest of my trades were a wash. My loss was anticipating a ZLR short, but with the Fisher clearly heading up, I should've sat on my hands. The purple 70 CCI (my own invention) was above the zero line all day, meaning the trend was up and longs were in order.

Wonder what's happening with this market? Maybe it's the Saudi Royal Family (crude was tanking) and the PPT joining forces for a final "Save Dubya" push.

Damn, it's hailing in Los Angeles! This is like The Day After Tomorrow with the weather all out of whack. My fig trees are getting pelted. Never seen anything like this before.

Today was only a half day for me as my baby fell off the bed and did a face plant. He was freaked out after that, and so were we. He's got a Dr's appointment tomorrow. Not for that, but to get his first flu shot. They give babies flu shots in 2 doses a month apart. Still no flu shots for mommy and me. We'll have to ask around for that nasal flu mist thing.

Interesting thing in chat today was that calm, cool and collected Gio got all riled up. A guy who's another old veteran of the room going back to the paltalk days got inexplicably short the YM at 9886, which unfortunately was very damn near the beginning of the pop up for the rest of the day. Then as the YM was rising he was posting that he was adding to his short at 9896, 9906, 9926, etc. It was a typical "old fearless" fuckup maneuver and I felt bad for him. Gio chewed him out and asked what the hell he was doing posting trades that had absolutely no connection to anything Woodie teaches. All he could say was that he'd explain his strategy later. He slinked out of the room, and I hope he got out of that trade immediately afterwards because we closed up 105 ticks above his initial short and he was slapping on additional contracts like they were going out of style.

So what the hell was he doing? I don't know, except letting his "hope mode" and "prayer mode" and "dammit mode" emotions get to him and messing up. As I said, he's a Woodie vet. Just yesterday after the close, he took the mic in chat to explain some of his YM trades, and now he's a room pariah with Gio publically ripping him a new hole and newbies joking about him after he left. That sucks for him. Just goes to show you the importance of discipline. Even the best traders can have a doozy of a lapse.

Two of the old, old, old Woodie vets having a good laugh in chat afterhours today over the worst kept secret in chat -- that nobody does CCI the Pure Woodie way. Okay, I won't say nobody. There are some strays. Maybe NickTrader and then there's a bunch of newbies trying the priceless, only CCI, one timeframe way... until they give up.

In response to whether I've changed my approach (again?)... let me state categorically for the record, "I am not a flip-flopper!" :)

The approach I have been consistently studying and applying since the end of August has been Woodie's CCI. I focus on the 14 CCI and 6 TCCI everyday, trying to spot the Woodie patterns. That's the foundation of everything. It's like learning to hit a baseball from Ted Williams, who must've taught, mentored and advised thousands of would-be Ted Williamses in his lifetime and millions more with his bible, The Science of Hitting. Still, he never produced any Teddy Ballgame clones. Maybe they will in the future from his frozen head, but that's another story. A guy could mimic Ted's stance, listen to his advice for years, read his book a dozen times, study that chart that says you can hit .400 if you narrow your swinging zone to this 6 inch square, and take 5000 hours of practice and real game pitching and you'll never approach Ted Williams. The same goes with Woodie.

So the "process" for me is to take what Woodie offers, take what other great traders in his room offer, and work with that. Dissect what they're doing and see if I can use some of that and create a blend called "my CCI technique." I've chided myself for the constant tinkering. I've felt frustration because I've fallen behind my previously set timetable for going live with my trading and I always feel guilty if I'm not glued to the screen putting in study time around the clock, around the calendar, but I'd like to give myself credit too. I think I'm too hard on myself. Lots of people take a hell of a lot longer time, losing a lot more money, to figure out they need a trading methodology to fit their personality instead of trying to wedge their personality into a ready made system. If it takes me 60 days, 100 days, 250 days or whatever to develop my winning method, and then apply it successfully, then that's what it takes. I'll be truly concerned if my progress totally stops or goes backwards, or if I suddenly scrap the CCI and subscribe to an astrological stock picking newsletter, but I think those initial "I can't figure out these Woodie patterns for the life of me" days are past. For now, though, I am definitely progressing. It's still a work in progress and changes will happen. I will be dipping my toe back into real trades very soon because I do feel "bench rot" creeping in. Maybe one real trade a day. Maybe trade in the morning, paper in the afternoon, or vice versa. I don't know yet. For all the methodical practicing and studying, nothing beats that adrenaline push of being in a real trade, and to a certain degree in all traders, we live for that. Seeing some real game action will be a quick cure to my persistant feelings of not doing enough, and hopefully, with some success or not, it spurs me on and speeds up my learning curve.

3 minute YM. Bad confidence number and up, up away we went. Too much thinking today, and I wound up either flat and wishing I was in or going for a scalp short and knowing that was dumb. 7 weenie paper trades today (4-2-1) for 22 ticks, a third back in commissions. The big kahuna trade today was the first ZLR long with all CCI converging at the ZLX, Fish flipping up and price bouncing off converging resistance. I nailed it. Where I went wrong was to assume this move was going to be a counterblip in a nasty red day, so I got out with my scalp targets and the thing sailed on without me. 15 minutes and +40 ticks later, Gio announces that she hopes everyone got that trade, she's still in and will monitor it on the 13 and 30 min charts, and she was off to unpack her bags after returning from the trade-a-long. Gio got her +100 ticks today riding the YM all day and unpacking her bags. She rules. She really does.

Goddamn, is the internet slooowww tonite or is it just me?

3 minute YM today. Only took 3 trades today on the YM: 3 winners for + 22 ticks. It was a fair trading day. In hindsight, a lot more swings looked tradable for good scalps, but I switched to 1 contract with a wide stop and no target so I could work on my "trade management" skills a bit. Didn't take much heat on the trades so I wasn't tested on cutting my losers short. I did, though, cut a couple winners short.

I'm still in experimental stage with the new trading plan. I've pinched from here and there among the traders I like in the room, and also thrown in my own stuff. The Gio multiple timeframes is totally anti-Woodie, but I'm now resigned to not being Woodie or aspiring to pure Woodieness. I've had the Gio - 2, 5, 8, 13 charts up for 3 days last week and long playback sessions. I just can't get much out of the 8 and 13. I can't sit in a trade for 4 hours like her. I wish I could and ride a trend all day, but that's not me. I've switched to the 2, 3 and 5. They're close in time. Some would say "why bother?" since the 2 & 3 are so close, but I'm keying on the 3 for all setups, 2 for perhaps a quicker entry and 5 for Woodie's view, as that's his sole YM chart. For the ER, I have the Sierra 125 tick (to approximate the 250V), 3 and 5 mins.

From earlinarizona, I've taken to drawing 90% horizontal trendlines. They're easier for me to see and follow, as everything runs parallel to the zeroline, +/- 100 and +/-200. The trendline breaks are also easier for me to see. Somehow, diagonal tlb's have me jumping the gun too often. There's a lot more discretion in diagonal TL's running along peaks and valleys, plus there's always the question of whether to use the turbo, too. My charts get messy awfully fast as I keep rejiggering diagonal TL's, so I'm trying to keep it more basic and comfortable for what my brain can do right now.

From r7, I've adopted a scalp mode. Not for all the time, but it's a useful strategy to have the arsenal as choppy days are more the norm in the market now. He uses the 8 ema and disregard Woodie's 25 lsma and gb007's 34 ema.

Today's chat was pretty fun. The Florida trade-a-long was going on and they surprised the hotcomm room by hooking up to us live. Got to hear and see a bunch of faces as the moderators took turns at the mic. Two new patterns were introduced (the "notch" and "plateau") which I'll get around to one day. The "sidewinder" indicator was officially released, though only on esignal so far. Hopefully, somebody will program it for us Sierra users.

Been putting in extra screentime the past few days, getting used to the multiple timeframes and ascertaining appropriate target and stoploss levels.

I've been letting my life slide more and more off-kilter. The end result being, not only have I not been putting in the necessary screentime (esp on weekends), but I've also been lacking for necessary downtime and necessary quality family time. Not sure how I hit the trifecta as I always thought if I took "time" away from one area, I'd have to be applying it elsewhere... to something I can nail down. That's one of the logical concepts that we know doesn't equate well to reality as time inexplicably escapes from all of us all the time.

Well, I'll be doing playback all weekend. Need to revise my trading plan, too. I should have some new thoughts to share by Sunday night.

5 min YM.

It never rains in Southern California... except when it does, as it is doing now and has been doing for the past 3-4 days. Last night totally sucked. It was the hardest rain yet, and we have this balcony railing outside the bedroom that gets hit by the gutter falloff. We had that ring ding cling clanging going on all night. The smoke alarm outside the kitchen started humming, too. I woke up a couple times to figure out what that was about. Somehow a little water was leaking into it from the ceiling (how? I'm afraid to find out) and shorting it out, so I uninstalled it. Finally, our power went out and reset the alarm clock, so I woke up late. Only saving grace was that the baby slept soundly through it all for an amazing 13 straight hours.

Anyway, the YM had a very tradable range again today. The follow-through was not as good as yesterday. Again, there were too many times my quick scalp target of +4 was hit, my stoploss was auto-moved to b/e +1, then that was taken out a second later. I'll have to work on a new revision of my trading plan by the weekend. The all-in, all-out strategy seems to be better if the market is tight and I'm going to scalps. Going for a tiny scalp and hoping for a successful runner are opposing strategies that are tough to combine. The other point is if the market continues its recent volatility and good moves (let's hope so), the scalp strategy isn't necessary and I needn't have a preset target at all. Just let CCI take me out on an exit signal. I have to be nimble enough to adapt to and adopt the proper strategy for each day, and not just approach each morning with the same cookie cutter mindset.

Again, I watched the 2 and 5 min YM mostly, paying no attention to the 8 and 13 min charts. The 5 min has given a good number of setups the past couple days, so I've looked to that first, then to the 2 min for a corresponding signal and more defined entry. With the 2 min, it's fast enough to just take the signal regardless of where you are in the bar. No muss or fuss wondering if I should wait for the bar to close, or wait for 20 seconds are left or whatever. I stayed on the 5 min for monitoring. Exiting with proper CCI exits on the 5 min is the goal for now. That didn't happen too much today as my runners were stopped out prematurely. Fix that and I'm golden and happy.

Woodie will be releasing his "sidewinder" indicator soon which he touts as an effective range indicator. It'll just be a number (-75 to +75 indicates a flat market so sit on your hands, > +75 means safe to take long signals, < -75 means safe to take short signals). There's a West Palm Beach trade-a-long next week. Guess it'll debut there, and then the rest of us get it. So there's something new to add to the pot. I've been trying out the Herrick Payoff Index on the bottom of my charts with zero impact on my decision making.

Purple Haze YM 5 min chart tribute to Jimi Hendrix. I was listening to some Are You Experienced? today. Pretty cool looking. I may keep it for awhile.

Today was a picture perfect day for signals and follow through. It's days like this with solid CCI results that bring in 50 new people to the chatroom the next day. I tried the "Gio method" today, keying off the 2 and 5 min charts. The 2 min chart was chock full of signals today. Too many. So I actually looked at the 5 min more and looked at the 2 min for simultaneous sigs for entries, going back to the 5 min to monitor the trade. I put up the 8 and 13 min charts (just the CCI), too, but can't say I paid them much mind today.

The unorthodoxy of going to longer and longer term charts is nearly as unsettling as trying to go priceless. While I'm sure most traders would also see it as illogical to be watching the 13 min chart off a 2 min entry, it serves the same purpose as going priceless: to reduce stress, fear and headfakes. As long as there's a nice trend established, Gio can milk a trade for all it's worth, and a big trade once in awhile can make your day or week. I'm going to try and emulate her going forward. To her credit, she took the time yesterday to spell out her methodology and intra-trade thinking in detail. Her two hour lecture yesterday was more beneficial to me than the usual daily advice of "read the CCI manual" (http://193.203.240.46/woodiescciclub/Trading-Woodies-CCI-System.pdf) and putting in 100's of playback hours trying to achieve pure Woodieness enlightenment with my own discretionary entries, exits, trendlines, timeframes, targets, stop losses, # of contracts, etc.

Also want to give kudos to NickTrader who has started to post some trades in realtime again. He's also started a journal thread to post charts (though infrequently so far), and to r7 and racer who have shared their trading plans with everyone.

2 minute YM

Gio will be giving a lecture on charts and her CCI techniques after the mkt close, so let me spit out my mkt day recap quickly. I sat out the first hour again. My serious problem of perpetual fatigue is still afflicting me. The YM seemed to have a better range than ER, so I concentrated on the YM (2 min & 5 min). I did 16 paper trades today (12-4-2). Wait, that's 18 trades. My 10 trade limit is still a solid guideline for me, and one I will start off with when doing real trades, but in practice, I guess I should be actually getting in as much practice as possible in trade setup recognition and execution.

All day, I found myself sluggish in focus/concentration. My entries were late -- all of them, which turned out not so bad. In fact, I've been looking at various lagging filters (like the Fisher Transform) that slows down my CCI trigger finger. I'm finding that it does help me in jumping into those increasing instances where the CCI signal will whip you out. [See the two arrows marked with an X for two shorts I didn't take because I waited for the Fish to flip down. That kept me out of the trade an extra bar, by which time, the trade would've already been underwater.

The real problem for today was my exiting so slow. I took the full stop loss whack on the 4 contract losses which turned a really nice day into a so-so day.

note: That new scribble shit over the price bars is the random walk indicator (length = 14). I'm looking to see if crossovers are timely or useful in any way. Not sure yet judging by today as I wasn't keying in on it much in realtime. I've also added a thin white DMI (directional movement index, length = 14) atop the CCI. That shows nice promise as a trend indicator above/below the CCI zero line. In fact, today it gave nice ZLR signals right off the zero line.

I'll report back later if I can glean anything from Gio's lecture. I'm actually willing to give her YM 2 min, 5 min, 8 min, 13 min stuff a try. My brain has eroded and now functions at the speed and tone of her voice, so maybe I'm on her wavelength, and her trading style would suit me to a T.

I need to plow through all the Innersworth daily emails that I've been accumulating, so while I do that on this Sunday morning (the New York Giants have a bye-week), let me cut & paste things that strike my fancy or strike an inner chord:

Reduce Stress During the Trading Day - Exercise regularly. A rigorous exercise schedule will allow your body to let off pent up stressful energy. It is also a good idea to sleep on schedule. Try to go to bed and wake up at the same time. It is hard to cope with stress when you are tired... give yourself credit for all the effort you put into trading. It is tempting to feel good about your efforts only when they pay off. But you put in just as much effort putting on a losing trade as a winning trade... Finally, it is useful to imagine the worst. Many times we are afraid to look at the worst-case scenario, but it is often less stressful to consider the worst. What we tend to do instead is think that a catastrophe is about to happen. It lurks in the back of our mind as a vague and amorphous threat... don't let stress get the better of you. You can take steps to reduce stress, and if you do, you'll find you'll trade more calmly and profitably.

Developing Your Psychological Edge - Many novice traders get bogged down because they focus on making big profits, and the status and respect that may go with them. There's a disadvantage that comes with taking such an approach, however. You end up putting extra pressure on yourself to perform beyond your skill level, and when you do that, you usually choke under the pressure. It is better to focus on the process of trading.

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. - - Ayn Rand

Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. - - William Faulkner

Disappointment and Regret: The Other Trading Emotions - Humans tend to overstate the adverse effects of a dreaded outcome. And there are a few simple strategies we can use to control these emotions. For example, if we control our risk on the trade, and plan it out carefully, the risk will be minimized and the actual potential loss will not be catastrophic at all. Another way to minimize disappointment and regret is to try to impersonalize the trade. Think in terms of probabilities, "This is just one of many trades. The outcome of this single trade means nothing. The big picture is all that counts." By reminding yourself of the relative insignificance of a single trade, you'll minimize the potential regret should you lose. Similarly, it's also important to avoid over-interpreting the significance of a trade; a single losing trade (or even a few losing trades) doesn't mean that you have poor trading skills; it may just be a run of bad luck. There's no point in making the outcome of a trade symbolic of your skills as a trader.

Mistakes are the usual bridge between inexperience and wisdom. - - Phyllis Therous

Trading Fears - Underlying many trading fears is a need for extreme perfectionism. If we believe that we must always be competent, we will expend all our precious psychological energy mulling over the negative consequences of failing, rather than focusing on what we are doing in the here-and-now to implement our current trading plan. Traders who believe they must be thoroughly competent spend too much of their time worrying about what they did wrong, what may go wrong, and how they will recover should they fail. These thoughts are distracting and obscure the flow of immediate experience, and the ability to read current market activity with unfailing accuracy.

Be Flexible Enough to Stand Aside - Trading profitably requires that you monitor the market moods and your psychological moods. When either one is not conducive to trading, it's best to stand aside and wait for the situation to change. Don't make the mistake of thinking you should trade even in these potentially debilitating conditions. By staying out of the markets, you can survive to trade another day, when you're in a peak performance mental state and the market conditions are optimal.

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going. - - Jim Ryun

* Sticking to the Plan - People who are controlled and disciplined in everyday life, ironically, tend to have trouble sticking with trading plans. Disciplined people are rule followers, and research studies have shown that rule followers prefer certainty. However, anyone who has traded the markets for a few months soon realizes that the markets are not certain, and conventional wisdom is not consistently valid.

As it turns out, people who are more impulsive in everyday life have less difficulty following a trading plan. They view trading as a "game" and they enjoy risk. These kinds of people truly don't care what happens. They have a natural, carefree attitude when it comes to trading.

Have to get to bed here, but didn't want to forget to get this new Woodie chart up (for future reference). He mentioned late in the day that he was going to show some new chart feature thingy that he came up with -- for EXPERIENCED cci users ONLY, and this is it. As Woodie explained it, it's the cci zero line as the center band and the outer bands are fibonacci retracements. At first blush.it does'nt look much different from other moving average envelopes or bollinger bands or keltner bands that one can mess around with and get similar price action at the top, middle & bottom, but Woodie says this is something that can help people stay in trades longer. He's not releasing it yet, and I guess he'll treat it like his other new things, either introducing it fully at the next trade-a-long (which is in a week or two, I believe, in Florida) or he'll beta-test it with his select inner circle first.

Woodie also mentioned something very interesting: he's also developed a better CCI which gives better signals than the, um, stuff the rest of us are using. I guess this is how Woodie stays ahead of the sheeple. Shit, I don't blame him for it. Wonder if he'll share this new CCI with the commonfolk anytime soon?

A sweet mother-of-god yippie-ki-yay waterfall trade on the YM this afternoon. This is the 5 min chart (I also have a 2 min up), and this was the first time I saw my 3 signals line up. 1) the bline was ripe for a sling (the ribbons were in overbought territory while the baseline remained weak), 2) Fish (the Fisher Transform) flipped short, and 3) CCI signalled short (there's a questionable slanting ghost, but I took the subsequent shamu). Combined with the knock on the 34 overhead and slipping under the 25 lsma, and this proved to be perfection -- a 50 point drop with a hfe (hook from extremes) exit, though it tumbled another 30 points after that. Waiting for the Fish to flip again and the ribbons to kiss off the baseline would've given the extra 20-30 ticks.

Never got back online yesterday. The flu vaccine shortage is hitting home. I took Grandpa (turning 84 in Dec) for his flu shot yesterday, and after waiting on line for a couple hours, we were told they were all out. My 8 month old son needs the vaccine too, and though we were told the shortage doesn't affect babies, our pediatrician has pushed back the date he's expecting to get it from the 15th to the end of the month (or maybe early next month). Maybe the entire country will be wearing Hello Kitty SARS masks this winter.

As for trading, I'm on my mandatory middle of the day "clear my head" break. The past couple morning were atrocious for me. I was 0-3, -$160 + comm on Monday. Had another bad 1st hour yesterday (0-3, -$140 + comm). Hate digging a hole like that. However, after my midday break yesterday, I finally righted the ship and was able to watch the charts and get into a mini-zone of clarity and concentration. I reeled off 17 winners and 2 b/e's on both the ER and YM.

This morning, I pre-determined to sit on my hands for the 1st hour. There was a nice gap and crap pattern. CCI-wise, on the ER, there was a great shamu entrance to go short and an inverted ghost for some ticks on a bounce. My first stabs at the ER this morning (see chart above) were not pretty. The first arrow shows an attempted ZLR long. There is no ZLR there, but believe me, it was there when I hit the LONG button. Problems: 1) I didn't pay attention to the time left in the bar at all and got whipped by an intrabar wiggle, 2) the bline chart on the bottom was clearly moving down from extremes. Seven minutes later, I tried the ZLR long again. This was a more promising setup, taken at the end of the previous bar. The bline ribbons were starting to turn up. It didn't go anywhere, but I was able to get out at b/e. Only slap on the wrist I'd give myself for that one is that I didn't heed the Herrick Payoff Index which I have on the bottom, telling me we were rangebound & flat. So there's an example of two trades and paying for hard earned lessons again.

It's been tough to get on the bike again after a week off. I forgot that I have still training wheels on. I'm in desperate need of a better morning preparation scheme. I used to be most energetic at the open and very active. Now I find myself like death warmed over, unable to get anything done in the hour I'm up before the market open than get my charts up. I've got a workout bench and weights gathering dust next to me. I've got plants outside that are dying for lack of water. Coffee seems to have no effect on me anymore (besides moving my bowels). I'm basically mired in a mental quandry, trying to figure out if I'm trying too hard or not trying enough? Is this dread that I feel every morning? Or just the usual frustration that comes with this profession? Have I reached the bounds of paper trading or have I barely scratched the surface? I feel guilty for taking time off or having a good time, when I have no tangible results to show for my work. It's just all getting to the point of my thinking "isn't this too hard and difficult for something I supposedly love to do?"

Think I'll go walk the dog and water those dead plants.

Here's a capture of my latest charts frankensteinization. 1) The price candles are back, 2) Most of the CCI ribbon clutter is gone, 3) Buffy's 2X B-line was added on the bottom to observe for possible use as a CCI filter. More info on it + her full setup at: http://www.dacharts.org/archives/2Xbline/. Gotta run to the post office (it was closed yesterday, remember?) and run some other errands. Be back later for today's market musings and stuff.

RIP Superman

Woke up to the news that Christopher Reeve was dead. I remember as tiny kids, my brother and I were in the jacuzzi at my grandparents condo out here in LA, when who strolls by? Superman! It couldn't have been that long after the first Superman movie came out, so this was really big, larger than life shit to see him. He was walking with some other people, maybe being given a tour of the place as a prospective buyer, and he gave us that freeze frame Superman smile and he was gone. I guess you can't slap enough superlatives on the guy for his spirit and determination and all that, and they're all deserved.


RIP Super Dope

OTOH, there's Ken Caminiti, the self-admitted steroids using, alcoholic, crack addict 1996 National League MVP who dropped dead yesterday in The Bronx. Only reason to be in The Bronx is if you have tickets to a Yankees game, and apparently Cammy didn't. My brother used to work the ER at Lincoln Memorial where he wound up, and that's a shitty place to work and a shittier place to die. Sadly, here was a guy who wanted to give back to the game and mentor kids not to take the wrong path as he did, and now he's cemented his memory as the "anti-role model" as his name will always come up as the worst case scenario for athletes gone bad.


NYC

Let me complete the hat trick and mention my kid brother again. He's getting married in 3 weeks. We got a great last minute deal and flew back home to NYC to surprise everyone at a pre-wedding party. It was the first time back since we visited after 9/11, so it was a grand reunion. Plus, everyone was excited to see the baby. Now we get to do it all again for the wedding in Hawaii.


... and finally, trading:

I had to wait a couple hours for my charts to start generating usable data this morning, then I tried to force off some trades to shake the rust off and reeled off 3 straight full stop losers on the YM for $160. All on paper, mind you. Then I stared at the tight range for another hour, before saying "fuck this." I walked 8 blocks to the post office and found out it was closed for Columbus Day. So there you go.

I had 3 books with me last week, including two by trading psychologist, Mark Douglas, which I feel I should seriously re-read. I wound up only reading The Da Vinci Code, which is a great book, but didn't have anything to help my trading (though it does mention fibonacci stuff). I also got a paperback, Money is My Friend, which I could probably finish in a few hours if I seriously put my mind to it, then get in a couple hours of playback after dinner, instead of my great urge to take a nap now and then watch the Astros-Braves game.

My self-discipline is frittering away. I've got a Chris Reeve angel on one shoulder and a Ken Caminiti devil on the other. Superman is whispering in my ear, "Stop wasting your time. Be serious about your life and your goals. Don't give into laziness and cowardice." Cammy devil is saying, "Who gives a shit? You're sleepy, so take your nap! Tomorrow's another day to trade, so maybe you'll feel better then or next week, or next month, or fuck, we'll turn over a new leaf for 2005."

Sorry, been on an unexpected hiatus. Haven't watched the mkts or looked at a chart for the past week. But I'll be home tonight and ready to hit the frontlines again Monday morning.