Thanks for the advice, but I used to do the scalping thing - didn't work for me, I tended to overanalyze and by the time I made up my mind to pull the trigger, the move had already started and the risk had escalated. I have decided to go back to what my original intention was (and what I am best at, as far as analyzing) - swing trading on the daily chart while fine tuning my entry on the intradays. But all those little intraday chart patterns keep calling me with their sirens song - "Buy me", "sell me" - but so far I have resisted (read: haven't got my trigger finger back yet.) Of course, holding overnight should do wonders for my insomnia - should sleep like a baby, waking up every two hours wet and crying.
here's my story, in a nutsack (or is that nutshell?) - I started out in commodities with Larry Williams (read that Ken Roberts crap first but could tell it was too simplistic.) I started out badly as everyone does (if they're fortunate), but soon learned to read a chart properly, and after a couple initial drawdowns made some money in the bean complex. So I got cocky and decided to try trading volatile silver - from the short side (not having access to info that I do now, little did I know that Buffett was buying at the time - winter of 97/98.) Of course, after losing a fair amount of money, I finally gave up shorting Si for good - the day before the market topped. Of course. Would have been profitable one hour after the next day's open, which was too volatile to get on board.
So after a lot more mediocre trading of volatile commodity markets - after all, I had traded silver, why should I be afriad of cocoa, cotton and the Yen and Pound? - and a period I spent looking at a lot of charts, I decided to trade the stock indices, because they seemed to trend and retrace more predictably and cleanly. Of course, I made this decision just prior to the market tops in 2000 - and got way in over my head with the extreme volatilty, for which I didn't have the risk tolerance. Of course, all I could see was the "I shoulda done that" and "I shoulda made $$$", rather than realizing I was in over my head.
To make a short story long, I had to quit due to a trying divorce (read: the bitch took my trading account but I kept my house and equity.) So I am just recently returning to trading after a couple years away. Up to now I have been a hell of a chart reader but a lousy trader - I am hoping to improve that, but then aren't we all?
Oh yeah - and when I said I had "nursed" the position - I had not yet gotten my real-time charts back at that time, so my method for unlimited real-time quotes was to keep up my order-entry screen with an order typed in - and toggle between "enter" (which gave me the last tick and bid/ask) and F3 which takes me back out of the confirmation screen. I did this every 2-3 seconds for about 6 hours, with an occasional break to eat or for a nature call. So it was a fun day.
And yes - you're correct about the Triangle - originally from the Pittsburgh area, so from the Golden Triangle to Research Triangle.