DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?

It was 25 years ago today that the US Olympic hockey team upset the evil Soviets. The Lake Placid Games are especially vivid in my childhood memories because our family had just bought our first color TV. We were always behind the times. At least my parents got a good TV. It was a Sony Trinitron which they kept and used until it finally crapped out a couple years ago.

The thought of those victorious underdogs brings a smile to my face now. I'm stuck in the underdog role tossing out my one contract (and once in a blue moon, two contracts) trades against the sea of big dogs. Sometimes it feels like it would take a miracle for all this stuff to finally "click" and work for me. Woodie says the CCI is getting me in one bar ahead of the rest of the world. Lots of times, if I get in long, the world is selling one bar later. If I go short, the world is buying one bar later. It really feels like a coin toss now as to whether these patterns work out. Still, there are people in chat who are seemingly banging out monster winning percentages. Is it all mental? There have been times I've been in the "zone" in life. Mostly in sports. Sometimes in academics. Just a feeling I couldn't be beaten by an opponent or the feeling I'll ace a test or course despite not putting in as much book and classtime as others.

There were just people like that. The ones who practiced more on the tennis court or basketball court or studied way harder than me, and I'd whip 'em. I knew I would, and I did. In trading, I'm the whipee. I feel like I'm the guy putting in the extra screentime and reading time and when it's showtime, they whip me. Can it be like that? Or will all the hard work pay off in the end?

This morning, my IB TWS was nutty. I logged in and it was red, giving me blank quotes. Then I logged in again and it was yellow, only updating stock quotes and last night's HSI closing price. Took about 10-15 minutes before it went green and all the futures data was coming in. That ever happen to anyone else? That lack of opening data messed me up for awhile, and with consumer confidence coming in too, I decided to sit on my hands.

I started monitoring this other $4995 system I was talking about. It uses a much shorter timeframe than my usual charts, so its charts were were filling in faster. It was a mistake trying to monitor this new system at the same time as I was watching my CCI charts. I wound up doing a bad job of watching both. My first trade was a bad trade with good results. The ER was waterfalling, so I got in my barrel and jumped for 15 ticks. That's a fantastic day for me right there. I should've quit, but there was plenty of time to go, so I decided to "play it smart" by switching to the "less dangerous" YM. In essence, I was playing prevent defense, and how many times do you see a team get burned by that? I frittered the day's profit down to $40 before shutting down BT.