I know there is a point to keeping a bloggery. Its why I do it, and while writing there is an effort to entertain you. But also, this is my mind’s temple. The more auctions I observe and chart and hypothesis upon, the more confidence I have in an approach that earns me money.

So if you’re basic, and your desire is amusement via a quirky title/picture combination, there are other places for you. And it’s okay for you to seek entertainment, I do it sometimes too.

Even though I throw in some peaches and honey in with my vanilla auction writing, my primary mission is to bank coin via extraction market extraction. This avocation allows me to pursue many other wonderful life endeavors without being restricted to the confines of a grey cube. Life is more than a pleasant commute, home, salary, and three weeks paid vacation.

Hence, you will find me fiddling with dials and pulling levers daily to cut my own trek through the jungle that is life. Along the way, hopefully I clear some vines blocking a readers way.

My book is long. I have a short term hedge of puts in AAPL because we are on the topside of balance. By the end of this week I will have a fairly strong handle on whether the fake move FUNGULA logic is to be put aside. The Nasdaqs closed NEUTRAL EXTREME—a rare bullish contextual piece.

Heretofore, I have written plans and executed on them live. Henceforth I will do the same with the inherent goal of GAINZ.

It is important to know where we are location wise.  Here is an update, we are on the upper edge of a six day balance.  It is similar to where oil was, only that balance was much more mature.  See below:

Day two of February sees oil prices again higher in the premarket and at an important mid-week juncture. Price is at the upper extreme of intermediate term balance, trading just below the prior swing high (which also occurred before US cash markets opened).

After making strong progress to start the week, it will be interesting to see if the recurring sell force so prevalent in this commodity takes this opportunity to mean-revert this asset, or if instead buyers can build acceptance (read time and volume) up in the region.

The third scenario would be an extension leg up above to target the NVPOC at 52.60. You can see what I am observing below:

Everyone is different, but when I do homework outside of the trading hours and then calmly assess the context of the auction I become synchronized with the market. I can feel an understanding of its intentions and what its likely to do.

The action begins to resemble a symphony, with the invisible hand of supply and demand as our conductor. When the baton is pointed in my direction, I play my small part of the song and then I return to sitting with good posture and breathing. It really is wonderful and relaxing.

Today for instance, I came into the open with a short bias. I clearly read the open, and I started scalping shorts. There were some long scalps at times but overall I was short. And I made money, isn’t that interesting?

As the session entered the final hour of trade there was a sense the buyers were becoming more aggressive. Their rotations were larger, we knew conditions were susceptible to a sharp move, and buyers had early made a range extension.

I didn’t really participate, but I did not fight it either. Instead I watched my book, nearly 100% long mind you, appreciate. I would like to raise some cash before Friday’s NFP, hopefully even sooner because this week will be heavy on Fed jawboning.

I don’t have a top pick. Be well my friends.

Oil had a strong secondary wave rip through early this morning after the strong thrust we saw into the close Friday. It is reminiscent of the 1/14 rip and subsequent 1/15 premarket completion wave.

Today, it will be interesting to see if buyers can defend their secondary wave with more gumption than the last go of it.

I have highlighted the key intermediate term oil levels on the following volume profile chart:

My goal for February is to think big.  How big?

As big as it takes.

Because the path of growth can only be incremental for so long.  WSS subs, the latest session should be hitting your inbox momentarily.  Be sure to thumb through it and prepare for the week.  That way, when the others have a lingering Super Bowl buzz, you will be poised to yap their chains.

As we head into February, you cannot deny the beautiful volume structure on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  Price is pressing the lower boundary, and it may crack this time, but if not the overall structure will produce a quick mean revision, see below:

I do not take my presence on Twitter very seriously. Coincidentally, my stream is a source of entertainment. That is not to say every bit of financial commentary presented in the twitter hemisphere is without value, but rather that it takes diligent processing to concentrate down to a pure information extract.

However, I do not filter all the participants, all the time, nor do I filter my tick stream to remove 1-lot “noise”. I want to see as much information as possible, when I want to. Sometimes in all that commotion a theme emerges.

Today’s theme was the most confidently bearish I have ever seen. My stream was super confident on the bear side. People who never tweet their positions were touting their TZA and puts on this or that. More than ever, and I do a lot of twitter, it’s my drug.

AND I SAY GOOD. Flip it over logic has taken me through the month of January and I made money, dammit. It’s been a grind, so what? You want to know a real grind? Spend a summer month on a cement crew, 7-days a week.

Do you know what this weekend is? I have watched two quarters of football this year and even I know it’s the Super Bowl. So screw it, my book went into the weekend long, much longer than where I started the week. I couldn’t care less to gain CLOUT by TOUT-ing some hot new long. They don’t last long enough, so why report on it.
If you want to talk about trading, about how to trade or about performance mentality, we shall. If you want to fly onto my dock and wait for me to catch and throw you a fish, then you’re better off heading to Florida.

THE FISH ARE SCARCE AND I INTEND TO EAT AND FEED MY PEOPLE.

PS – big #FF to my homies on Twitter, you make the week awesome.

Emotions are the caveat emptor to mistakes in trading. It is okay to have emotions—they are the passion fuel that drives us through life. The key is astute awareness and childlike curiosity for their nature.

It can be difficult to clear the haze and demonstrate objective judgment, but I find numbers and mathematics help quite a bit. You see, mathematics are the international language of logic. They are cold truth. To ignore them would be at your own peril.

Therefore, when the battle becomes heated, it is my fiduciary duty to lean on the logos of numbers.

Let me share a story with you. Marked on my chart during the Weekly Strategy Session was a certain “naked VPOC” dating back to January 16^th. These areas tend to be revisited. On Monday, when I was presenting auction theory to the After Hours with Option Addict crew my charting computer went BSOD and I had to perform a hard reset. When it came back live my weekend work had been omitted from the charts.

Though I thought I was diligent in marking them back up Monday night, deep into the hours with burning eyeballs, I had failed to note the naked VPOC at 4101.25. It was only through fate, through a query from a learning trader about naked VPOCs that my awareness was brought to this oversight.

You have to take what you get in life. I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to speak to other traders.

Thus when the market was going 0-100 REAL QUICK, and it hit my mark, I was buying. It was my duty, per the code of the SHOMP, and I was merely a vessel of execution.

Logic can be your friend. Logic can help you develop confidence amid the “chaos” and logic can liberate you from suffering.