First real day as a full-time trader, and I’m pretty excited about this new lifestyle 🙂

I woke up, went to the coffee shop close to my home, had a few coffees, and looked through last week’s trading days. After that, I went to the indoor pool nearby and took a nice swim. Then I went home for some lunch, watched an old Brooks chart review, and finally headed to the office to get ready for the US market open. I can definitely get used to these routines 🙂

Living in Norway gives me a lot of time before the US market opens, which feels like a big advantage. There’s time to prepare properly instead of rushing into the session.

The market opened with a big overnight gap to the upside. Early on, we got a lot of sideways action during the first few bars around the Globex high. Price action looked confused, like the market was still trying to figure out what it wanted to do after the long holiday season.

At bar 11 we got a bull breakout at the top of the range, followed by a nice follow-through bar on bar 12, so I entered long. I took this trade only on the evals since we were still at the top of a trading range and the bulls hadn’t looked very strong earlier in the session. My target was the range MM.

After I entered, prices pulled back and then stalled for a long time. I was already preparing to get out at breakeven, but right as I was about to exit we got a big bull bar forming, which allowed me to squeeze out about +1.5 pts before getting flat.

Prices did get very close to the range MM, but it took forever and was extremely choppy. Price then formed a smaller range above the bigger one. When we got a bull breakout at the top of that smaller range, I entered short on a visual LH back into the range. The trade made about +4 pts at best, but then pulled back, so I exited around breakeven at about +1 pt. The bulls still felt too strong for a clean reversal.

Prices made another attempt to reverse, but instead formed a clean two-legged correction down to the bottom of the range. That made it hard to trust the bears, but also hard to trust the bulls since they were clearly losing steam. Overall, the market just chopped slowly up and down inside roughly a 15-point range for about 3.5 hours.

Finally, the bears managed to get a clean bear breakout bar below the range low, and I entered short again, targeting the RTH open at around +12 pts. Once again, prices stalled and printed multiple dojis, so I exited at breakeven.

Pretty frustrating day, to be honest. But it’s the first real day back after the holidays. Better days will come 🙂