The right attitude to approach the market with is: "I don't really care if I make a trade today." Each open position should bear some degree of urgency, the result of laying in wait, ready to nail an entry you've been waiting for.

That's pretty rare. In fact, I'm convinced you only need to trade 5 times a year. As I've reviewed my trading records over the past 10 years it's clear that most of what I've done has been busy work. There's an argument for busy work as well. It's like placing some jabs at your opponent in a fight, testing the waters. It's so easy to get distracted with those jabs. If you've got a losing streak of 10 or so jabs it can be frustrating. That frustration colors what you'll see. It comes down to balance.

That was my thought as I looked at EURUSD this morning: staying in its trading range.

Yet the ¥ is making money for me. Interesting.

I can't look at oil without thinking I missed the boat. My primary theme is natural gas so I can't help but look at the oil futures daily. I missed the reversal at $51. I was waiting for $49. This is where my jabbing comment comes in. I regret not taking a jab at that level, just one contract to put it on my trade monitor. I'm not shorting energy here though there's a triple top on the hourly natural gas chart.


My issue here is the daily chart which is convincingly bearish:

Sometimes you just need to lay in wait. My bullish disposition is based on fundamentals. It's the most misunderstood commodity: priced like oil with a completely different geology. The simplest explaination of this difference is from Matthew R. Simmons, author of Twilight in the Desert. Imagine 2 balloons, one filled with oil and one filled with natural gas. Take your finger off both. Which empties faster: the gas of course. Further, once the natural pressure of the oil balloon empies you can still squeeze it to get more oil out. That's about what we've got in terms of natural resources.

However, there is little (I'd argue none) discounting for this geological difference. When shortages occur the spikes will be sudden and lasting. A well managed position in natural gas with a bullish bias is my current dominant theme. This is no quick money scheme.

In equities I'm holding AAPL, ECA, EMN, GOOG,IIG and NGG. When they turn south I sell calls. Pretty simple. There's no such strategy for futures that I know of. You need to either lighten up or get out. It's a binary situation. I suppose there are some spreads that could soften that position, but in general I find spreads noisy. I'm not managing the risk, I know what the risk is. I'm laying my balls on the chopping block. That's different.

That said, I still have 2.