When I got to the chart, there was a bull leg up closing the ON gap. We then pulled back to the EMA, so I was looking to buy. The bear leg down into the EMA was very choppy with a lot of dojis, so it wasn’t a great-looking pullback, but when we finally got a bullish bar with a big tail below — rejecting off the EMA — I took the entry. The bar had a small body, but I was expecting a retest of the previous high. It was essentially an H1 Buy, but it turned out to be a bit too early.

Prices pulled back again, forming a Second Entry Buy. That one triggered, but prices immediately turned down and made an even deeper pullback, which was a bit scary. But we bounced off the 50% retracement, and that big bear bar had a decent tail below it. The next bar was a bull bar, and I finally got the scalp for +5 pts. The target was hit right at the recent highs, and I didn’t want to push for a bigger swing there.

After that, prices got closer to the measured move of the first leg and started going sideways in a trading range. The bulls looked like they were losing steam. We then got a breakout to the downside of the range, and when a good-looking bear bar formed a BOPB, I took the short. I was aiming for the range MM at +6 pts, and it looked good at first. But then we started getting lower wicks on the bars, and when prices pulled back I adjusted my target down to +3 pts.
I really should have held the trade — it hit my original target perfectly and then reversed — but yeah, easier said than done. Still plenty of work to do on the mental side when it comes to holding trades.

Prices then made two more tests of the range low and formed another Second Entry Sell, but the signal bar was bad with a lower tail. The follow-up bar was decent, but I still skipped it. It would have worked for a scalp.

After that, prices formed a nice big bull reversal bar at the range MM. I wasn’t fully convinced by the context, so I only took it on the eval accounts. It stalled, and I closed it for a small profit.

From there, the market basically died. It crawled slowly downward with no momentum — pretty much untradeable. I called it at 2 PM CT.