Following Tuesday's gap-up and sideways session for ES, Wednesday was a gap-down and sideways string again. If the markets are trading somewhat heavy volume as related on CNBC, this one is doing so in consolidated fashion.

Click on image to enlarge!

Potential for a couple of small-swing profits mixed with a lot of sideways churn. Markets still await their first directional move inside U.S. trading sessions for this new year.

Click on image to enlarge!

TF likewise wedged sideways between two gaps… filling neither. Before the end of Friday’s session, both of those holes in the chart will likely close.

Click on image to enlarge!

Both 6E and EURUSD sister symbols for the euro currency against USD were on the move Wednesday. We expected and predicted that Tuesday, inside the team room. We also planned for a 100+ pip price move Wednesday, or soon. It came yesterday, we prepared ourselves for that, we executed accordingly… pretty much business as usual inside moving markets.

Friday is the monthly non-farm payroll saga, which definitely gets plenty of press coverage from today onward. I’m mostly interested in my personal hours of operation, which is 5am thru 11:30am est. After that I’m probably idle until 8am est on Friday, but will let market action dictate my level of interest. As repeated too many times last year, there are many ways to manage your trading & trades. My way, for me personally is hunting the bigger swings intraday or across several sessions’ time as trend moves unfold. Perhaps you prefer to enter & exit differently. To each our own.

Regardless of that, we want to be very sure to de-emphasize the seeming importance of daily trading performance. I am convinced beyond any shadow of doubt that self-imposed pressures for daily performance are one of the biggest mistakes traders commonly make, and one of the biggest reasons most traders ultimately fail. Absolutely no question about that fact in my mind.

So we’ll be certain to avoid that trader-pitfall trap in this forum ourselves. When the week ends and trading is done, we’ll tally up each day’s take (or give) and summarize on a weekly basis. But as for what happened yesterday, what happened today or what happens tomorrow on its own? Means absolutely nothing to me, you or anyone relative to how the month and the year will go.

Actually, it really means less than nothing in the end.

For more daily updates from Austin, visit his blog at Coiled Markets.