Friday, May 15, 2009

Why I covered

Here is a five minute chart of the e-mini day session. A little while ago I covered my two short units at 878.00. Here was my thinking.

First, the market had gotten as low as 876.75, close to the low of my range estimate of 875 and to midpoint support at 874. You may wonder why I had shorted a second unit at 879.25 so close to these levels.

Well, one never really knows what the market will do. I believe there is a good chance we shall see the 865 level early next week. The high volume breakout bar (red arrows) had the possibility of starting a wide open break to below 870 today, so I wanted to have a full position if this were to happen. In the event the market went a bit lower on reduced volume and then started trading sideways again. In these circumstances I felt I had given the market a fair chance to accelerate downwards, but since it instead was trading sideways again near support levels I chose not to press my luck. So I covered.

The net result for today is a small loss. But I see this as a successful day in light of the erratic nature of the day's trading.

2 comments:

Win said...

Carl,

I really like the last sentence of your post today: "But I see this as a successful day in light of the erratic nature of the day's trading."

Valentin said...

Carl,
as always great week again! Expiration Fridays in eminis are hard to "manage" even for wizards (as defined by Jack Schwager). I know one professional trader famous for trading eminis. He does not recommend trading on expiration Fridays... Thank you for educating us! Greetings from Germany, Val