3 min YM - 3w, 2l, +17 ticks (will detail later - got some errands to run now)

All right, I'm back. We've got a ton of offline stuff happening over here this week, including my son's first birthday party on Saturday. My trading time is going to be sporadic (like today), but hopefully my results are sporadic (like today).

Things started out swell. 34 ema was at a sweet green angle from the get-go, so the plan was to grab a ZLR long off a 34 bounce. In the first hour or so, I wheeled off 3 straight winners.

1) ZLR long off the 34 ema. I was watching the bline stoch also (the blue line) for a 50 cross. Got my targeted 10 ticks.

2) Same deal. +10 ticks.

3) Very steep angle, but it was a gb tlb long. 34 angle was still beautiful. The stoch crossed the 50. Bang. +10

Ah, I thought, so this is what it feels like to be in the "the zone." Just sit there and bang out winners like you're shooting down ships in Space Invaders. It was nice while it lasted, but then my wife had to get ready and go out to meet some friends in a bank she formerly worked at, to hand out invitations to the baby's party. That gave me about a 2 hour break to feed, play and watch Sesame Street with the baby. I returned to the charts around 12:30pm EST. The 34 was now sloping down red. A long trendline held the CCI down for nearly the entire time I was gone, giving a good couple ZLR short sigs.

4) The down trendline was broken but it still looked like another ZLR short was setting up (doesn't Woodie warn about the 3rd straight ZLR being suspect?), especially with price reaching up to tag the down sloping 34. So I went short and it stalled after a couple ticks in my direction. One worry was the blue stoch didn't reject at the 50 line and go back down. It broke up by a hair and just hung above it sideways. The fisher was clearly going up. I got out with a -3 and was happy I reacted and accepted a smaller loss instead of taking the full 10 tick stop that've plagued me before and ruined the win column totals and my morale.

Next pattern I saw was a ghost short. I passed. This time the blue stoch did cross the 50 down. That was good. The 34 was still green at that point though (as it turned out, not for much longer), and the biggest warning flag in my head was that the turbo was so far ahead of the 14 CCI, that it just felt like it would sling back in my face if I took the countertrend ghost. The ghost worked anyway, followed by a ZLR short that I also passed on. I didn't see it until afterwards. Must've stepped away.

5) A 3rd successful pattern tlb/vt long worked out, making it 3 straight winners I missed. So you know what happens when you miss a bunch of trades. I made up my mind to take the next one no matter what. It was a still a good day, and there was no reason I couldn't make it a better day. I took a ZLR short once the price bar passed up through the red 34 and back down. The blue stoch was coming down, but nowhere near the 50. The fisher was clearly up. This one went against me immediately, and this time I didn't react and get out early. I took the 10 tick stop loss. I called it a day.

So all in all, a hodgepodge day. The YM didn't have a super range today, but still plenty of opps to grab ticks both ways.