This morning’s action was very choppy in nature. Despite this choppiness in price, the NYSE-TICK failed to spend any time below the 0-line. This type of behavior is typical of a strong trending day. On such days when the TICK has spent 90% of the time above the 0-line, a play that I will often take is to go long if/when the NYSE-Tick does manage to cross below the 0-line and then reverse.

This is precisely what happened this morning. Usually I would hold onto such a play and go for a larger trend-type move, but given this morning’s action, I decided to double my lot size & instead go for a small 2-3 tick scalp.

As can be seen, I waited for the NYSE-Tick to cross under 0 and then hook back up to the positive side. For convergence I also had a nice little 55-tick + Trendline Break & + Momentum Shift.

It was a nice, quick little play that scored a quick 3 ticks in a tough environment. Oftentimes this is the best that you can hope for when the markets are acting so choppy. My problem came later when the markets entered a downtrend. I didn’t want to believe it and kept unsuccessfully fading the move with the expectation that price would revert back to its mean and prior choppy nature. This pre-conceived notion costed me dearly today and turned what should have been a quick reaching of my Daily Goal into a day in which I instead hit my daily stop limit.