When I started, we had a trading range and I was waiting for either a breakout or a fade back into the range. The bulls managed to close a bar just outside the range high, and I wanted to see one more bull bar to trust the breakout. That second bar didn’t look very strong, but in hindsight I should have taken a chance on it for a swing — just hard to do in real time.

After this, there was no real way to enter before we finally got a pullback late in the trend. We got a nice bull bar forming a second entry buy, and I took it with one contract, expecting that I might need to add on if the bears pushed for another leg down — but they didn’t. I was planning to go for 10 pts. to the top of the range, but the market stalled a lot and I ended up taking only 5 pts. It would have worked for about 7 pts.

After this, the market went sideways in a trading range. There were some signs of bearish imbalance in the range, but since we had a strong trend up, I was still leaning bullish. When we got an FBO of the range to the downside with a strong bull bar, and then a higher low confirming it, I took the trade with two contracts. I wanted 5 pts. on the first contract, which I got, and I planned to go for 10 pts. to the top of the range on the second. But again prices stalled, so I took 6 pts. instead.

I got lucky — right after I exited, the market had a sudden hard spike down, probably news-related. My trade would have survived, but I would have had to sit through another pullback. The market felt very nervous today.

The market then went sideways again inside the range. Since this week is Thanksgiving and a U.S. holiday week, I decided to call it early — not expecting much movement in the last 30 minutes of the session.