The key to navigating the current market environment is to be very clear about your market style. Only certain approaches are working right now, and if you force trades, you are not going to make much progress.
This is a good time to reflect on the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 Rule, which states that you tend to produce 80% of your gains in 20% of the time. Eighty percent of the time you don't make much progress. For traders this is largely a function of the market environment, and if you are not cognizant of what works best for you, then you will waste a lot of time in the wrong market.
The current market tends to favor very short-term scalping and day trading. There is not enough sustained movement for position trading or momentum plays. If you have a longer-term time frame, then you might find some stocks to buy incrementally on pullbacks, but there is no urgency to build positions currently.
I tend to be a stock picker with a time frame of days or weeks, and I'll occasional do some day trading as well. There just isn't much at all right now that fits my parameters, and I'm not going to try to create a trade where none exists.
Rather than try to force some things, I'm staying patient and will wait for conditions to change. For me this market is now undergoing the 80% of the time when there is minimal opportunity for gains.
Since I know that we will eventually have another period when I will earn the bulk of my profits, I don't feel any anxiety about not racking up profits right now. This is just one of those times when we tread water and wait for the market come to us. It is the nature of the beast and there is no reason to view it as unusual.
The indices are in the middle of the intraday range and volume is light, but the lows have held and that is the important thing.
