Why I got out

Here is a five minute bar chart of today's e-mini day session. I was long two units at an average of 914.50 and sold those units a few minutes ago at 926.00. My range estimate for today was 910-935 (blue rectangle). Why did I sell my long position nearly 9 points below the level I estimated would be today's high?

The market is constantly giving you new information about its condition. The hardest thing to learn in trading is how to make appropriate adjustments to this new information as it appears. In this case I knew that yesterday's day session high was 927 (red dashed line) and was the highest level yet reached during the rally from the March 6 low at 666. Today is Friday and activity was definitely slowing down as trading progressed and was not very high to begin with, even after the release of the employment number this morning. So when the e-minis took out the 927 high on a high volume bar (red arrows) I sat up and took notice. The question was whether or not this was a high volume breakout to new highs or a "running of the stops" before another break.

In the event I noticed that volume immediately dried up after the breakout and the market started to drift lower. This did not look like a high volume breakout. At that juncture I decided to accept my 10 point profit instead of taking the risk that the market would break 10 points or more from 927.

I still think we shall see the e-minis trade in the 940-50 zone next week.