Market opened with a big strong bull bar with a 17 pts. overnight gap. I entered long on the bull breakout bar expecting to fill the gap. I had a small concern it could be a bull trap, and when we stalled around 8–10 pts., I took the trade off at 10 pts.

My initial target was 15 pts. just below the overnight gap, and it got filled a few bars later. But I was not too excited about sitting through a big pullback this early in the session, so I am happy with my 10 pts. on 2 MES contracts.

Price did bounce off the 20 EMA and did a two-legged pullback Second Entry Buy, but it felt like buying too high and there was not any good signal bar. One had to use a double bar entry, and the signal bar formed below the EMA.

When we got the follow-through bar, it closed with only a few ticks from the current day high, and I could just not buy that high. It turned out to work out fine, but easy to say in hindsight.

After this the market got super sideways with stacked bars, so I took my dinner break. When I got back to my chart, the sideways market was still going and it had just hit the measured move of the smaller range.

When we got a Second Entry Buy at the bottom of the range forming a double bottom, I took a chance on a long. A bit risky since there was not much room and very little momentum. I would say boredom was a factor in taking this trade too.I had my initial target at the measured move of the first bull leg of the day, but I was not confident we would get there given the slow market and that it needed to pierce through the previous day high and all time high.

I ended up taking it off at 5 pts. on two contracts. The market was so slow and stalled a lot. After this it just slow chopped higher, and there was really not much momentum or volume.

There were a few other chances to enter on what turned out to be a strong small pullback trend in a spike and channel pattern, but the bars were small. We passed the all time high and slowly climbed toward my initial measured move target.

It did miss the measured move by a few points before bears got a decent pullback that could signal a reversal. But it was just too late to risk it since bulls could easily continue, and there would be no time left to fix the trade.