The slog toward the 1273.80 target shown is starting to feel like a climb up El Capitan with a 50-pound backpack. Each feint has given way to a sharp selloff, followed by a tedious, ratcheting recovery. This hasn’t altered the target, nor even the odds that it will be reached, but it has made profiting from it an endurance test. The futures have beckoned a ‘mechanical’ buy at 1232.65, stop 1218.75, three times in the last two days, and although none of the trades would have been stopped out, in retrospect it would have been preferable to wait for a ‘camouflage’ entry opportunity. That, at least, would lower the bar, keeping one in the trade for perhaps an hour, as opposed to…days. The ‘mechanical’ trade remains valid nonetheless, but it will take more patience the guts to ride it out.
