Tug of war. Wed Apr 29

Just over 2 hours into the trading day and the market is down 17 points, led lower by a weak result in Anz. The overnight lead was less bad than expected and the market could have had quite a strong up day. It's still threatening to find a base here and rally as the bulls and bears fight it out. I'm watching very closely but haven't done much.
I sold a few bhp puts on some opening weakness and I've bought more qbe puts as the stock has gapped back up 70+ cents to 2080. Amp confirmed the break trading as low as 502 but is now up slightly at 510. Cba is down but outperforming the rest of the banks by quite a bit.

12.26 I'm not looking at any new trades as I've already got 2 longs and 6 shorts and I want to manage them. For the moment, I'm reasonably confident with my positions over the longer term but I'm a bit concerned that the market could take off with a big rally today so I'm on alert to see whether I should look to close out any positions and try again another day.

1.38 The market has rallied around 30 points and I've haven't been able to do much. I did buy and sell some mqg stock for a small profit as I want to stay long the puts I have there. That pretty much sums up my feelings about today. I've seen opportunities to get out of positions but haven't taken them as I haven't changed my mind and I can't see a lot of opportunity in a counter trend position. Here's bhp as an example.

The weak opening meant that bhp broke its 5 day pattern of making higher lows on each swing down. Now it's rallying but I don't expect it to push past yesterday's high. I sold a few puts early but want to keep the rest of the position. Hindsight tells me I should have got out of all the puts and looked to reinstate the position later, or else just bought and sold stock and kept the option position intact. Anyway, I didn't, and now I don't see that there's too much further to go - if I'm to be right on this, at least.
The daily chart seems quite significant. It's looking likely that yesterday's high might be a second lower high and the sharp swing down I'm looking for may happen in the next day or so. I suppose the reason I only took off a few puts this morning is that I'm looking for a larger scale move.

3pm The intraday rally seems to have run its course and cba which was outperforming its peers has finally broken support. The 60 minute chart shows that the stock held 3485 on Monday and Tuesday and then looked like it could form a slightly higher base at 3500 earlier.

Here's the daily chart. I'm hoping there's some acceleration now. The daily break was on Monday at 3550 but the stock tried to hold that level until now. There could be some support just above 3400 but if that fails the next level would be 3140 support from February.
3.30 Qbe has been as high as 2107, surprising me with its strength, but the 60 minute chart shows it's just bouncing aroung in a range. Perhaps, there's some switching out of the banks into this.

4.01 Sonic Health, shl, is firming up with the rest of the sector. There's a buying opportunity with the stock having decisively rallied through last week's high but it's a little extended and I'll try to wait for a better opportunity.
4.14 The match out had the xjo finishing down 13 points on the day. It was hard to tell which way it would go with the opposing forces of weak banks and mildly bullish US and Asian influences. Not a lot of change to my positions. I added to my short in qbe on the rally and reduced the short, taking a little profit, in bhp and wpl. Shl is on the watch list for tomorrow. A slightly negative day for me to end a run of good results but cba was satisfying.