On Monday, it looked like the market was prime for a breakout in trading

Since then it has only resulted in a head fake kind of maneuver. I’m glad to be back after a short summer vacation over the last week. But when it comes to trading, there isn’t much time off, so while I was away from the writing aspect of SharePlanner, I was still trading and managing risk on each and every trade.

But back to the market – did you notice how we had a nice, well defined breakout, but much of what June has been about is choppiness and going nowhere, so the following two days has been a reversal of sorts putting the market back inside of June’s Darvas trading box, and totally head faking the market.

Frustrating for traders, but that doesn’t mean gains cannot be had on a stock trading basis because there is plenty of that going on. Look for well defined and well developed trading setups. One of the bests this month has been iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBB) which had been basing nicely, going all the way back to the March highs. When it broke the out of the declining resistance, it went through the roof – that is what you have to be looking for in this market – those kinds of opportunities.

I don’t think this particular market environment bodes well with a heavily tilted portfolio in one direction or the other, and I think today will be key for the market’s direction going forward. The S&P 500’s 20-day moving average was tested yesterday and it did hold. Today will be about whether we hold that moving average and bounce higher like we have done of late, or whether we break that and have a legitimate reason for getting short on this market.

Today will be interesting!