I like trading like I like my football, pretty, clean and ending with a decent result

What I don't like is tight scrappy games where the result can go either way and is usually decided by a mistake rather than a moment of brilliance.

At the moment I'm seeing a scrappy and ugly market. None of the currencies know whether they want to go up or down. Stocks don't know where they want to go and can't seem to put more than two winning days together, and even those are as rare as rocking horse poop right now. Only the FTSE is managing to break the mould as it looks at hitting a four day winning streak today.

Oil is up and down and looks totally bored with all the production stories.

Throw it all together and we have markets that are unsure and non-trending day to day.

These might be fantastic for intraday players and scalpers but I don't get much chance to play the lower timeframes so all I see is indecision.

How do we combat that if markets don't fit our trading style?

For the way I trade it's a matter of patience. First I have a look around at the bigger levels on the higher timeframes and note any that are close. Then I scale down a bit to see what levels are poking about on the lower time frames. When doing this I very rarely go lower than an hourly chart as doing so increases the intraday noise that I'm not in a position to listen to. I'll still watch the 15m charts just to see the intraday moves but only to keep my "feel" on markets.

Once I've found levels worth watching it's then that the patience is needed. But even then there's no certainty that I will trade a level as I have to judge every move in its context. If there's a big reason behind a move that could be a game changer, it increases the risk to that level being a viable trading spot. In trading you can never be rigid in your plans, rigid in discipline is a must but as every move is different, you can't marry a level or idea.

So how do you see markets right now? Are they conducive to your trading style or are they making things difficult? What do you do when markets don't dance to your trading style tune?