Mr Early Riser. Fri Feb 12

I've been Mr Early Riser today as a friend has spruced up my main trading computer with new ram and memory and a good spring clean. I was just about ready for the market open although there's still all those stupid glitches in Outlook where you have to change date formats and whatnot.
Anyway, the US lead was strong with base metals particularly favoured but the Aussie market is still sceptical and it's been the standard sell off from a gap higher opening. At 11.40 am we're up 8 points, the high was a gain of 39 points.
Boral looked like it could fall early but once again some buying appeared so I've just bought back the last 7k at 567 for a loss of 1875, 2738 overall and another 35 in costs.
On the brighter side, I sold 2k more of my Fortescue long at 494 on the open for a gain of 480 dollars. Incitec Pivot is also up a few cents at 349. Potash in the US rose by 5% and that often provides a good lead for Ipl. I suspect that if the market can recover then the stock will rally along with it. It's through the short term resistance at 347 and it popped through the 4th wave high from the pullback which was at 352.

12.48 The market is still slipping lower. I went too soon in Boral which is back to 560.
Overall the Xjo index and the futures chart have rallied without breaching resistance so I'm still looking at the market going lower.
I've got a potential short in Challenger which broke down through support just below 400 and fell quite quickly to 351. It touched 395 yesterday and opened there again today but has reversed throughout the day.
Click to enlarge

1.27 Short 10,000 Cgf at 376.5 as the stock follows the lead of the rest of the sector.

2.17 Although the market has been drifting lower all day and is close to the lows I wouldn't be surprised to see an afternoon rally as twice this week we've discounted good overnight rises.

Fortescue reports on Monday so I'll be selling out the last 5k at some point this afternoon. My target is around 500, we reached 494 this morning and although I think the target is conservative there's also a fair bit of downside in what's an unpredictable company.

3.37 A small rally petered out leaving the market unchanged. I'm also going to sell out of Ipl by the close because the rally is just too choppy, there's no drive to it.

4.15 Out of Ipl at 348 for 800, 1100 overall and 30 costs. Out of the last 5,000 Fmg long just before and after the match out for a 491.5 average for a gain of 1175 and 1905 dollars overall less 30 in costs.

I didn't sell the last 5k of Cgf as they finished reasonably well at 381 with the 60 minute chart looking as if there's more room to retrace up.

The market managed a gain of 8 points with my short squeeze coming late on by way of the Spi.