Today was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. What an incredible feat of engineering, daring and national will! Lots of great coverage out there on the web if you are interested. The Eagle has landed! Here’s Neil at Tranquility Base from a camera on the top of the LM:
It was also a monumental day because I took my first trade since January. I played the open on the ES futures. I was watching a 133 tick chart on Think or Swim. My plan was to play a quick 2 point move off the earliest opening range balance, whether long or short. I also wanted to follow the direction of the internals. I wanted to be exposed to the market for as short a time as possible, so I would either have immediate follow-through (within a minute or two) or I would get out.
Here’s what my chart looked like when I made my move:
I saw that we were pausing near the upper end of the initial range (grey lines) and that there was about 2 points to run from there to the 944.75 pre-market highs. I was also watching these charts of the $TICK and the $ADVN-$DECN for confirmation:
You can see that as of 8:32 CT (9:32 ET) we were in the green on both internals and rising. I got long at 942.50, target 944.50, initial stop 941, just under R1 (red line w/dots). Here’s how the trade played out:
Just a quick hesitation and then off we went. As we thrashed near 942.50 for the first bar or three, I was sorely tempted to just bail out to lock in a tick of profit for my first trade back in the markets, for psychological reasons. I sat on my hands and made myself just watch–stick with the plan; I got my immediate follow through, and I was in the green. When we hit 943.75, I thought we would make it to my target, and as I went to move my stop up to breakeven, I was filled for +2 points. Mission accomplished in around two minutes.
I’m a better trader than I give myself credit for, and my years of watching the markets are starting to give me some “tape sense”. While I’m happy for a win (of course), I’m happier that I made myself follow the plan and stick with it, and that I got my feet back in the water at all. I’ve been avoiding it for far too long.
So break out a beverage today in celebration of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Mike Collins, and me. 🙂
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