New start. Mon Jul 5

Coming in to work today, the streets were quite clear of traffic because school holidays have started and a lot of families must have taken a holiday. The market has ignored a negative lead, on very light pre-holiday volume, and after an hour's trading we're up by 7 points.
On a daily basis, the Xjo index is trending down and has closed at new lows the last two days. On an intraday basis, there was a lower low on May 21st. My take on the chart is that it probably hasn't hit a low yet, but that the low will be quite close in price and time. Here's the daily.

Looking at the bigger picture of a weekly chart spanning 5 years, I notice that it's quite similar to the daily chart above. There is a solid rally off the lows which retraces about half of the fall and then renewed weakness. In the case of the daily chart, the renewed weakness has obviously taken the index back to the lows and I expect something similar in the bigger time frame.
So my road map for the rest of the year is for general weakness and a sell the rallies type of market.

In light of that overall view, it's with a little trepidation that I've bought some Bsl today at 211. I was short this recently because of it having a slow shallow rally which is typical of an a-b-c correction and although I didn't show enough patience with my own short position, the stock did slip down to a new low. Having made that minor new low, I'm expecting a quick bounce back into the 220's as the first attempt at a rally.

There's a recent low, providing an emergency stop, at 203. The risk reward on this trade is not much better than 50/50 because, having missed my entry at 209, I chased it up to 211. That being the case, I'll need to be conservative with this one.

Looking over this post reminds me of my new (trading) year's resolutions. One of them is to let the market come to me and to trust that it's going to unfold as my reading of the chart suggested - unless there are subsequently clear signs to the contrary, of course. Patience and trust.

In the end, trading becomes an exploration of self as you find yourself dealing with your own patterns of behaviour and beliefs about success and failure, self worth, work ethic etc.

As you strive to improve your trading, it's important to be gentle with yourself. Some of those patterns can be quite deep rooted and changing them may take longer than you think, but it definitely can be done.

4.10 Our market continues to underperform and today we've drifted off after the early rise. The Japanese market is firmer and the Hang Seng only mildly down so there's not an obvious catalyst for the sell off except the pre-existing momentum on a quiet, US holiday affected day. We finish the day with the Xjo lower by nearly 17 points at 4222.