From what I can tell, you are looking at the market in a way that will give you an excellent chance to make some money. Your comment about not taking that short because the swing was getting old was "right on".
I mentioned last week that as the volume declines during late June, July, and August, you might see the market a little more clearly from the 500 tick chart perspective. It is taking 7-10 minutes just to fill one 1000 tick bar, especially between 11:00a-3:00pm. You'll just need to make some adjustments on targets and stops.
Today was a total break-even day for me. I only took 3 trades. Why? I don't like getting into a position right before the 10:00am number and that's what got the momentum going. From 11:00am we seem to be just chopping around in a small range, typical summer behavior. After 3:00pm, I took a couple of stabs at the long side.
On the 500 tick chart, there is a 1st Sig Cross at 15:07 that was right at the 62% retracement of the prior swing. Perfect, except it came back down for a re-test at 15:21 and stopped me out for a breakeven trade. I shut down at that point, but you can see on that 2nd test of the 911.00 area, the 3/10 had no downside momentum, so when it turned back up, it was for a nice few points. This is what I was trying to convey earlier. Watch for those divergences on the 3/10 at the 50%-62% areas. If there is no momentum on those re-tests, take an entry when the 3/10 starts to move away from the zero line.
The rest of the week is going to be very low volume. It doesn't mean you can't make money. Just keep in mind that between 11am-3pm, we are likely to see very small ranges.
