When I got to the chart, we had a nice bear trend developing, and I was ready to go short. But as the bars started forming with tails below, I got concerned that the trend was losing steam. We got a BOPB, but the signal bar wasn’t great, and it came right after two bars with prominent tails — not exactly the strong continuation I wanted to see.

We then hit the measured move of the first leg down, and a second entry sell formed. At the same time, we were also getting a potential wedge bottom, and there were a lot of overlapping bars. That added to my hesitation. I was still worried the bear trend was running out of momentum, and I was actually looking for a possible MTR instead. The bear trend just didn’t seem strong enough anymore, so I stayed cautious and didn’t want to sell all the way down. In hindsight, that hesitation was probably a mistake — but that’s trading.

After the downtrend made a new low, prices stalled and formed a few dojis. That was a good sign the downtrend could be ending. Right after that hesitation, a great bullish signal bar formed — but unfortunately, I wasn’t at the chart when it triggered. It ended up giving a really nice HL MTR.

The reversal and move up were short-lived. As soon as prices hit the previous swing high, it stalled and then took a nose dive right back to the previous low. At this point it was starting to look more like a range. Prices briefly broke below the range low, but again the market stalled. Overall, the price action was incredibly jumpy — the market looked nervous all day.

After the breakout from the range, things got really choppy and the market barely moved. Not an easy or ideal day to begin trading the PA accounts. Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t force anything today.