reminded me of the conversations I have daily with the majority of traders as I try to convince them there are times when it might be best to sit the sidelines as we wait for further clarifying information. The reasoning lists for each side are fairly equal and if the technical don't give a heavy signal for one direction or the other, they are at the mercy of needing a lucky guess, which for most has a poor track record(myself included). The first response is usually, "you're too wishy-washy, I just want a buy or sell rec". This is one of those days, for multiple reasons, that I have gone into a "manage the risk of each trading account I'm working".

Longer term my bias is lower but the time factor calls for a potential 3-5 dollar bounce and if Oct breaks 56.45 and Dec breaks 50.45, the up momentum door opens up. I have no idea whether that will or won't happen but I do know all markets can start a round of profit taking whenever they want. Yesterdays action of follow through failure and todays upward move after negative index drop is not the move that should have happened for the knockout punch. I started buying Oct to spread against producer short Dec, yesterday at the close. I have spread up to 30% of producer hedges this morning at the 54.60 area, my original intensions had those 30% buy orders working yesterday between 53.80-54.00. Maybe I will get that for today for some additional spreads and maybe I won't------but this fisherman's nose can smell a $3 updraft at anytime. Could be just another of my daily hallucinations but if/when it proves to be reality we give back too much and at the same time would be out of sync with my Risk Management Spreading Objectives.

Sometimes a I have to go with my instincts when managing risk and then wait for the market to tell me whether I'm right or wrong. DH, the sharks did get me yesterday and that's what started this whole instinct guessing process I'm working today.