Transcript for:
Notes from the January 25 ICT Mentorship Lecture

all right folks welcome back all right so this is the tuesday january 25th 2022 ict mentorship on the youtube channel all right so this is the internal range liquidity and market structure shift lecture all right so i gave you homework on the community tab if you have not been paying attention to that that's where i'm kind of keeping you abreast as to what you should be expecting next or something that just comes to mind that i feel like sharing so this is the link i sent out the other day and i wanted you to go through this particular chart and look for reasons that provided the market structure shift and the buy side and sell side liquidity so if you have not done that please stop the video and do that now otherwise you're cheating yourself of learning opportunity all right so here is that chart again 15 minute time frame on the e-mini nasdaq 100 futures contract for march delivery 2022. and take your attention over here okay this old low and these relative equal highs see that old low below that is cell stops and relative equal highs above that is buy stops now you could have used this high here there's nothing inherently wrong about that but whenever i see equal highs like this might and if it's higher than an old high over here i'm going to use that so that way there's a little bit of insight for you for your study journal the sell side liquidity you can see that the market trades down hits that runs through it then rallies all the way back up clearing equal highs so the buy stops have been taken here okay so at both of these price points here and here that's the i guess the point at which you'll look for or anticipate a market structure shift you don't force it okay i see a lot of people try to teach my concepts it'll talk about market structure breaks or shifts and we'll use that term interchangeably but for intraday i want you to think about intraday market structure shifts because it's not necessarily a break in market structure that leads to prolonged multi-day movement okay what do i mean by that if you see a market structure that's bearish and it's broken to the downside intraday that may just lead to an intraday price leg that may eventually see that high be taken out in the same day so that's why i'm using the term market structure shift not market structure break for our conversation here on this mentorship just know that when i'm gonna lean on that term market structure break it means a little bit more in context versus an intraday shift in market structure just means that there's likely a downside draw or an upside draw intraday by saying the term shift okay so there's a little bit of semantics there all right so we have both of these areas here and here where there would be a likelihood of a market structure shift up here we look for a fake run above here so that fake run above how do we know it's going to be a market structure shift that's bearish i get that question a lot even from mentorship students what you're looking for is the evidence i'm going to show you here tonight okay forget everything else everybody else says about market structure breaks and shifts and all that stuff this is it okay this is the brass tacks there's absolutely nothing else that you need to know about it i promise you if they add anything to it it's just because they want to sound and look different but this is the algorithmic perspective of a market structure shift in today now keep this price level in mind so it's essentially fourteen thousand six hundred and fourteen thousand eight twenty we're just eyeballing it okay now dropping all the way down into a two minute chart this is that same particular day here's those relative equal highs and this run down here okay if you recall 14 6 and around that 14 860 or so okay if you look at this market structure without having the levels on your chart it's easy to get lost in all the quote unquote noise the uninitiated and i know it's going to razz the people that don't care to really learn here but the uninitiated folks that will watch a video or listen to some of the lectures i'll put out they're trying to bring something in they're trying to bring in their preconceived notions and ideas about what they think they understand about markets or technical analysis or something in price action and i want to kind of like allow you to just put that aside for a moment and just imagine this chart is the first time you looked at price action for the first time and that's hard but kind of like strip away everything else that you want to bring to the conversation no order block discussion no breaker no none of that stuff okay supply and demand elliott wave all that garbage if you look at this price action here when we had this low form right before this low was formed there's a swing high right there now in the first mentorship video i gave you i mentioned that high frequency trading algorithms will use market structure on a three minute two minute and one minute chart many times sub one minute that would be like 45 second 30 second 15 second intervals okay what the algorithms are actually doing and this is also going to correct a lot of people out there because they put out misinformation it's so nonsensical but i'm challenging you to go into your charts and see if this is not what's actually going on because it happens every day if high frequency algorithms are operating every single day then these signatures will be in the chart okay if you look at this short term high here right before this low formed when this high is taken out right there on that candle that's significant only only if this run down here has traded into sell stops okay below an old love some kind it could be a a double bottom it could be a single low okay but it's got to be trading under some retail idea that would be viewed as support up here the same thing we're trading above highs so we know that above old highs a neophyte perspective will be these are unknown orders so therefore that's a flawed perspective on price action how do you know there's liquidity up there how do you know there's buy stops up there it's just logic it's simple look at the chart everybody's trying to do something based on some kind of theory logic whatever some system there's buyers and sellers coming in at all times their buying and selling quote unquote strength or pressure has absolutely no bearing on where these prices are going to go i know that may shake individuals that think they know something about the markets oh i have an uncle that used to be on the floor of the chicago board of trade and blah blah blah the mercantile exchange guys say this i don't care okay i don't care what any of those folks say because they didn't design the algorithm so again put all those you know talking points and everybody else's opinion you've adopted because you probably heard someone else talk about it and you subscribe to the review because it's easier just to do that instead of going and looking at it for yourself and that's what i'm asking you to do i'm telling you this is my personal belief you're going to see proof of these things in a live account execution but i want you to see the logic behind it because if you can see this you'll be light years ahead of everyone else and you'll laugh in the face of all these people that are going to tell you you're wasting your time trying to learn this i promise you this lesson is going to change a lot for you when this run above these relative equal highs happens right there you're anticipating a market structure shift you're not forcing it you're not trying to get ahead of it okay i don't think any of you are going to have the skill set to do that there are ways to know when to sell short right above that not even wait for the shift in market structure just like there's ways to know to be a buyer down here without seeing that short term high broken then looking for a buy over here the opposite see this swing low let me go back to this for a second we have this high on this candle then we have the candle right after that here the highest one and then the lower high of this candle here so that's a swing high very simple little pattern but it means a lot when it's in the proper context when this high is broken with this particular candle right there that is significant only on the basis that we have taken liquidity out of the marketplace that's it so when it broke this short term high this is more meaningful and then the market will start to seek buy stops okay or buy side liquidity that would rest above here here and here now i shared an example of live executions and i was teaching on the idea of utilizing micros which are essentially two dollars per handle okay so or 50 cents per tick this chart is nasdaq e-mini this would represent twenty dollars per handle and there's four ticks in each handle there's your twenty dollars per handle okay so again what that means is fourteen six eighty to fourteen six eighty one that's one handle or four ticks there are some that will doubt the idea that you can trade all these little internal swings okay and i'm going to give you some insights on how i was doing it okay the main context of this lesson is for you to go in to your charts and try to prove me wrong okay that's the challenge here that's your homework i want you to learn what i'm doing in this lesson here and then you go into your charts back testing and i'll show you what that looks like what does it mean to be back testing and what you're looking for and how you're going to screen capture all those things but your mission is to go into the charts and look for this not being true okay this is exactly what i did on baby pips back in 2010 i told everybody do not take my word for it don't take my word for it go into the charts and see if this is true or not i believe it but i don't want to try to convince you because i won't you'll convince yourself once you start seeing it it's it it's over there's no argument after that okay but it's simple logic very simple this is a very clean chart is it not all i'm going to do is add a few annotations and this is about as extensive of lipstick we put on our chart i know it's shocking right can you still see the candles because it might be a little obstructive i'm being facetious you see these guys out there with these charts that have graffiti all over it you can't even see the price candle nothing you can't you can't see any of it but there's all kinds of overlays of all kinds of nonsense which means absolutely nothing because algorithms could care less about any of that stuff triangles harmonic this crabs it's crazy i know but hey everybody's gotta have a religion so here's those cell stops so this little area here shaded in that's a area where cell stops would be residing below that 14 600 level okay on that 15 minute time frame so the market dove into that liquidity and you may or may not know that is a buy you don't need to you anticipate a shift in market structure when the market rallies above when does that happen on this candle right here see that little light bulb that's when you're thinking okay now i have a condition in the marketplace that i might see an opportunity intraday let's see if there's further evidence to that high is taken here we traded above it it does not need to close above that okay real important once that candle closes and this candle opens you're gonna monitor this candle and you want to see as soon as this candle closes does it create that fair value gap if it creates a fair value gap again that's a candle with a high one single pass up next candle has a load it doesn't completely overlap all this that's a fair value real simple okay this candle is where you would look to potentially trade at the earliest because now there's a gap there the market trades down into that boom takes off here is insight that everybody needs to understand because they're out here running around on youtube trying to teach order block theory order blocks okay i invented it it's mine no one talked about it before me and i first mentioned it in 2010 on baby pips prior to that 1996 i was only teaching it to people one-on-one in teachings that's it okay you can't find it in books prior to that it's mine no one else taught it before me it is mine so i'm going to correct all of you today so that way you can teach your people correctly and not hurt them see these down closed candles see that that's all one continuous order block what's it doing it's inside that pool of liquidity cell stops where's the open on that series of down closed candles right here that's the price level extending out in time boom so inside this fair value gap this opening price on the order block that's your buy plus three pips or whatever for spread and that's what you would use for a limit order hmm that's pretty neat in it well price starts to run where above the highs where by slots will be here above this high here and above this high here now go back and look at the example where this particular day here i put in orders and i was still learning how to use the thinkorswim platform and there's a little toggle box where if you toggle it it'll send your order right to the marketplace it won't let you review it and i had put that on to see if it was going to show me any kind of information on the screen but i didn't take it off so what happened was i put that on it was actually an order that i mistakenly had in so i was hoping to see if it could give me an opportunity to get out of it and cover with next to nothing or maybe even squeak out a profit it wasn't having it so i had to reverse and go back and go short wrote it down and then you'll see me covering in here and then going long selling short reversing going short buying long in here inside the order block rallied up sold the long reversed it bought it here got out over here and resold for that big run into that okay that's what i was doing there's people out there going to tell you he doesn't trade that way these people don't know how i'm trading you have no idea how i'm trading none of you do okay i'm teaching you obviously for those individuals that are outside my paid mentorship which is not open so please stop emailing asking people are still sending me emails can i join no you can't join be content with this i'm teaching you gold and it's costing you nothing but the time to sit down here and if it doesn't work you're going to know right away okay i'm not wasting your time i'm going right into the brass tacks that way the people that are weak minded will know right away this is it or it's not that way you'll know this is too much work for you and that's fine go and do whatever you got to do and i wish you good luck but the individuals that really put the time in and test what i'm challenging to look for you're going to see it's there and it repeats like clockwork okay it's real important you have that mindset so the buy stops above here that was taken this swing low forms once this candle closes so this candle we're watching does it go below that short term low it does so now we have a shift in market structure that is now bearish only because we've taken buy stops okay if everybody got forms the market rallies up into that you go short there what are you looking for below here sell stops below here cell stops below here cell stops and in this fair bay gap here so if you are in a position that has multiple contracts or say you have a forex trade because this works in forex too it's not just limited to futures again i'm just using this asset class because i cut my teeth on these markets when everybody else was still in elementary school that's trying to teach today i was trading the s p okay i probably sound like a young guy but i'm actually getting turned 50. so i've been around for a long time 30 years this november 5th 30 years that's three decades and the things i'm teaching you i'm not teaching you one trick pony insight these things work on all asset classes now i'm not going to co-sign the crypto markets because that only my students are reporting that this stuff works there i don't even mess around with it that much then though okay but you can take partials below here i probably wouldn't do it there but below here here and there's something you're saying why wouldn't you take them below their ict well if you're trying to get short here that's not really that much movement so if you're going to take some thing off your trade below that low why not just try to reach for that one and you could get it there right here okay and then although that low is nice as well below this low and this is what i mentioned on the first lesson okay elements to a trade setup this is below the 50 level of this high and that low okay so 50 level that's what we targeting now this candle's low was the high end or first objective inside this gap so that's your target you're gonna look for that so you're looking for low hanging fruit the easiest target to get to you're not trying to be perfect and you grow into eventually holding to see if it will fill in that gap okay this very very always going down to this candle is high that's something that you strive for over time if you understand what i just showed you here that's a very simple process of looking for number one liquidity gauging what happens without having to know for certain because you don't know you're not going to know until the market shows its hand this is it showing its hand okay that's it now let's go into a one-minute chart and see how that looks a little bit different but still has the same characteristics here's that same price structure just on a one-minute chart the same logic still there right swing high taken after liquidity has been traded into this short-term high it's violated right when this trades down in here what's actually occurring okay put this in your notes high frequency algorithms are hammering they're just throwing orders in bye bye bye bye bye that is not okay here's an important thing that is not causing okay it's not causing the market to go higher it's just volume that's coming in the algorithms that deliver price that offer price they're constantly offering the price in the marketplace that's what's beginning to spool and go higher okay and regardless of where you want to trade at your limit orders they may not get filled where you're trying to buy with a market order you may think you're getting in at 14 62 but by the time your order is executed and confirmed you're in 14 664. that's slippage okay that's negative slippage if you were trying to buy it at 14 62 and it filled you at 14 661 that's positive slippage that's better than what you were expecting so when price starts to rally all this is is a default to the algorithm constantly offering price at a higher price okay and the logic and argument for anyone who wants to say oh it's buying selling pressure this guy has no idea he's talking about i know somebody that used to trade on the floor and he's laughing at ict right now okay go into your charts forget that i'll i'll let you have that perspective for a moment for the argument but go into the charts and see if what i'm not suggesting to you is the truth okay i could sit here and do a complete series on all the things that lead to what i'm saying is true but none of you will still believe it i'm showing a live account and entries and executions and they're still doubting it so no matter what i do there's going to be people out there but you didn't do it wearing orange you didn't do it in your corvette did you flip which i don't flip corvettes you're getting all kinds of stuff out there nonsense but you don't see anybody going into that robin's cup hello so we're looking at the swing lower here market breaks down trades back back up into this back up atmosphere you got here and sells off there's another favorite you got right there trades up into that as well this is a one minute chart so it's giving you multiple points of execution that you could trade on and then dives see these two candles here that's one consecutive bearish order block the opening price extended out in time why is this a good a bearish order block because it has that gap and it's taken liquidity and there's a market structure shift there's your height frequency high power high probability bearish order block forget everybody else's interpretation of my concept the order block that's it okay what is an older block you do you see a lot of people asking what is an order block only my students and mentorship know what an order block is okay what it is it's just change in the state of delivery okay it's a change in the state of delivery the market's being offered higher higher higher in these two up close candles how did this series of up close candles begin with this candle's opening right there that opening once this candle trades below it that changes the state of delivery so you go back to that point of reference right there and that's why it's sensitive the algorithm remembers that right there okay that's all i'm going to give you on the free mentorship level but that is your answer okay that is what an order block is it is a change in the state of delivery much in the same way all of this movement down here all these down closed candles the opening on that candle starts this series of delivery on the downside when that opening price gets violated here it changes its state of delivery now it was offering sell side when it goes above that opening now it's offering buy side what will it be doing after that it will be looking for buy stops buy stops buy stops because it's offering buy side liquidity see you guys don't even know what you're talking about you're trying to teach my concepts and you have no idea what you're doing you're talking about things in the left side of the chart trade it do it okay you don't even know what you're looking at and you're hurting the people you call your students and then right away when people don't know how to use them or understand what to do with them they'll say well this stuff doesn't work because they learn from someone who doesn't know what they're doing okay it's it's blatantly obvious what it is but okay same thing here buy side is being offered until that opening price is violated right there then the change of state of delivery occurs now the market's going to be doing what offering sell side liquidity what's that mean it's going to start going lower and attacking the sell stops all the sell sell equity it's offering it to the marketplace that's what's happening that's what the algorithm is doing that's what the algorithm does okay you buying and selling me buying and selling everybody over there on reddit is not going to change anything at all it's not going to do anything and the argument that defeats all that buying and selling pressure is how do you argue against the bull squeeze and the bear squeeze there's a short squeeze going on the market's rallying up when it's been bearish that's just their cop-out that's their way of saying well you know everybody shorten and now they're covering so there it is and i learned the same thing folks i believed all that garbage two thousand plus books i know what those books told me is what you are learning too because the same people teaching today retail garbage elliott wave this and that it's all stupid stuff man it has nothing to do with why these markets are doing what they're doing zero has nothing to do with it don't worry i got proof today but the market goes down to that 50 level because it's going down to what i teach you what did i say in the first video it's going down from a premium market relative to this low and this high 50 is here that's equilibrium so it's going to go down to a discount and that's that gap right in here it doesn't look like a gap so much here but if you go back up one more time that's that single opening right there on a two-minute chart and then on a one-minute chart it's two candles that make that up but you're gonna have to do is go through a progression of going from the three minute two minute and one minute chart and you'll get your market structure and your areas of where it wants to look for an imbalance or overload high and it just makes it easy but just a real nice delivery there and here's the lipstick on it on the one minute chart swing high is broken market structure is now bullish rallies taking buy stops taking buy stops taking buy stops this right here these highs right here is just staying below that low it's building up more interest that this is what resistance that is engineering liquidity that way when this runs above it those individuals that know what you're learning today they know that that's a pool of liquidity for buyers coming in at a high price why is that useful because smart money that bought down here or here or here or here or here that's where they sell to high seeking buyers it's not hard logic folks it's not complicated okay it just feels complicated because you see other people trying to teach something and you hear or read in the comments you're teaching it better than ict does no you don't [Laughter] no you're not you're not doing you're actually teaching it incorrectly and without the real context of what it is that you're missing but i get it you think every down closed candle is a bullish order block and up claim that one is a very short block and that's not the case look in here okay for the guys that say i did not take trades or i didn't trade this way see that gap right there see that see that down closed candle right there that's your order block boom by it right there what about this right here dropping down all these candles here are more significant if you look at it on the two minute chart see that it becomes one order block right in here buy it sell short buy it again we got up into the stops sell short reverse and ride the larger swing down don't listen these yahoos out there to say that i'm not proving something to you i'm proving it that's what i said i was going to come out here this year and do that's this whole point of being here this year it's my 30th anniversary november 5th i've been a trader in the markets living and breathing this stuff for 30 years you're not really in any position to demand anything from me i enjoy doing this but i don't need to provide any kind of proof to you either but i'm loving it this year i'm slowly putting it out there and enjoying all the naysayers and the things they're saying and it's just fun because they have no idea what i'm about to bring this entire year none of you are going to doubt anything so the one-minute chart just a real nice delivery here as well filling in that very value you got change in the state of delivery now it's offering sell side what's that mean it's going to match up sell stops it's going to keep going below old lows into an imbalance until we get down to a discount is that hard is it hard to see what i'm showing you here pretty clean isn't it clean chart now i don't have all these things on my chart when i'm watching price because i already know what i'm looking for and i don't want to have any distractions and i don't want to have a level or some kind of annotation that's going to keep me thinking only with that perspective okay or that idea it allows me to be fluid with what the market's actually doing versus going in and saying okay this is what i think is going to happen and this is the only thing that can happen you understand what i just did there i allow myself to be flexible whereas if you have all these things you're putting on your chart you're only only seeing your will be done so i keep my charts clean and then i add the annotations so that way my students can see what the internal dialogue in my mind was while watching price do what it does naked there's nothing on the charts at all when i'm trading zero nothing okay so with that i want you to think about how this is useful okay number one you're looking at london highs and lows the session for london open okay for instance like two o'clock in the morning at five o'clock in the morning new york time every time i tell you just always set it with new york local time two o'clock to five o'clock in the morning that's your london session what's the highs and lows of that session okay that's important because the market's going to probably sweep above those highs or sweep below those lows and create situations like this okay and the new york session is seven o'clock in the morning to 10 o'clock in the morning new york local time okay what's the session high and low for that and do the same thing for asia okay 7 p.m to 9 p.m and that's it those are the three times of the day that i'm looking for specific key highs and kilos and any intraday high and low forming right before the equities open at 9 30. pretty easy right the hours of operation again are generally between 8 30 in the morning until 11 but it can be extended to new york lunch noon i do not tend to take trades after noon local time in new york that hour is usually very problematic and it just it's better not to even look for any kind of setups wait until one o'clock preferably really 1 30 to 4 o'clock then you get that afternoon trend typically you'll see between two o'clock and three o'clock there's a setup that usually forms in the afternoon trend or set up in that period of the time of the day that will also offer opportunities but that's outside the scope of what i'm going to be teaching in this mentorship but there's lots of things you can look on youtube about the afternoon session and you can just combine some of the things that i'm going to teach you here and just it's not hard to make a you know an addition to what you're learning here so if you want to trade the afternoon session you can obviously pick up some insights from other youtubers that do trade futures but for developing students this is enough i promise you this is enough okay all right so we talked about internal range liquidity and internal range liquidity is looking for short-term lows or short-term highs inside a price leg that we're retracing back into okay that's all it means internal range liquidity is a short term higher low with stops above or below it or an imbalance in that same range of price action and i taught you market structure shifts showed you exactly all that's necessary that is all that you require and the skill set of identifying pools of liquidity that is going to be something you learn rather quickly just by going through old data and looking at the times of the day i gave you in this lecture all right your homework is you're going to go through your e-mini futures intraday charts and you'll be looking for stop hunts that lead to market structure shifts intraday you're going to log your examples with your own annotations for your study journal so what i showed with the break in the market going higher and lower above old highs or lower below an old low that's running for stops that's a stop hunt then you're looking for that signature for the market structure shift on the three two and or one minute charts okay if you look for that between 8 30 in the morning to noon new york local time in the e-mini markets or if you're watching the micro markets the same logic exists okay but you're going to start going back from today and go back as far as the data will allow you the more you do it and you annotate your charts the more experience you're going to have and it's pseudo experience yes but you're teaching your brain i use this analogy a lot with my paid mentorship students it's like hunters okay to know where you're gonna find a deer if that's what you're going to go out and hunt you need to know how to track one okay or sit up in this tree stand and wait for it to walk by but usually they go out and they walk around in the woods and look for tracks would you know what a deer track looks like before i was shown one i didn't know what it was okay but because i'm showing you what it looks like that's all this lesson was predominantly focusing on is the actual view of what it looks like the details what you don't need is anything above and beyond what i've shown you the only thing you need is what i've shown you here it's simple it's straight to the point and i'm only talking to that way you understand that this is all that is required notice there is no commitment of traders notice there's no breakers notice that i've stripped it down to the chrome now this is the only way you can trade but i'm showing you something that i think personally is in my opinion this is so universally simplistic all of you should be able to do this one okay in my opinion i think this is it and that's why i more or less built it because i think my daughter which has zero interest in trading i think that this is going to be easy for her to see it and understand what to look for it doesn't have a lot of moving parts notice that it's very specific times of the day specific highs and lows you're going to look for it's simple but you won't appreciate how simple it is until you go back into your charts and you annotate your 15-minute time frame for your buy-side liquidity pool and your sell-side liquidity pools and then going down into the three-minute two-minute moment chart so for every individual day that you're logging and you're back testing back testing is just dressing your chart up like i'm showing you here and then studying it not just do it say okay i'm done really going to see how price moved and how it delivered how many pips did it move how long did it move going higher or lower how much drawdown did it put on your position if you would have taken one all of those things you want to annotate that in your chart so that way when you go back through your study journal you'll have many examples that look at and because you're looking at it and you're seeing it over and over again repetitively when you have a period of time where nothing feels like it's working and you feel confused you want to go back through your study journal and look at these examples because it will encourage you through periods of time where you just feel like it isn't clicking okay it's why it's important to have a study journal because you're going to see this stuff is happening every single day every single day and don't take the infancy that you have right now and the lack of experience and amplify that to there's no way i can learn how to do this because that's a lie that's a facade don't buy into that view okay it's something that you're going to have to grow into and it's going to be quick for some and it's going to be slower for others and there's no way i can make it easier than this okay because that workload that you have to go through of back testing and logging and acquiring examples the more time you do that the more examples you acquire in back testing i swear this is the secret okay because that is the thing that's the work that's required a lot of people say they do it but they don't okay they go back a couple days and say oh this is i don't think i'm getting anything from this but that's the reason why they fail because that's the work that's required you know having 10 pages in a notebook saying i took notes and you didn't take notes you scribbled you wasted your time you knew going in you weren't going to be that headstrong about doing it and that's what is required to learn this otherwise if you don't have that mindset this isn't going to be for you because it's going to require work it's going to take effort and organization and personal responsibility if you don't have those characteristics you need to develop them if you don't develop them and patients you must go out there and find somebody that's good at giving you trade signals and just submit to that and you good luck with it but this isn't it i got another portion of the video i want to show you now and i'm going to show you this logic actually working today in the nasdaq e-mini contract all right so we're looking at trading views chart in the backdrop and i have the td ameritrade open over top of it scrunched down so that way i can operate with the trading view and i'm going to highlight in trading view a fair value got after a market structure shift it's bullish and i'm going to show you an imbalance that is in a premium okay see that just the opposite of what i've been showing you change the color on this and the idea is i want to see it drop down into that green area but if you look real close there's actually a smaller little fair value got just below that green box okay this is not supply and demand okay the idea is i want to see it drop down to that green box and i don't know if it's going to dip into the lower fare value cap so whenever there's two fair value gaps like this this is for your notes in case you missed this the idea is i'm going to let it trade down to that lower one i'll sacrifice that better entry and if it trades down there and trades into it and then comes right back up into that green box the first higher fair value gap i'll enter when it's in there and expect that the lower one won't be retraded to okay i'm going to be trading with a stop that will have essentially three and a quarter percent risk i'm not suggesting that's a size of risk for you i'm just telling you that's what i have in mind when i'm taking this trade and this is again just my personal belief in this i'm not suggesting that you should believe me or you subscribe to this view because i'm showing you a live account this does not mean that every trade you take forward from this day on is going to be like this it doesn't mean it guarantees profit it doesn't but my belief in my faith is that i've seen this work so many times over the last 30 years that i know that this is something that's going to work enough for me and that's all that matters it's a personal endeavor when you're speculating if you don't have any faith in it then obviously you would never put live money in it all right so the market's starting to drop down a little bit in here and let's say for instance that it runs up into that upper rectangle first before going down to the green one then i would nix the trade and that means i wouldn't take a trade and i'd move to the sidelines and probably do nothing the rest of the morning or watch and see if there's something else that sets up all right so now i'm inside that rectangle but notice again i want to see if it goes down to that lower fair value gap that's not highlighted i'll mention it when we get into it that right there i'm willing to sacrifice that because that's actually the better buy but if we go back up into the higher fair value gap and create like a tail on this particular candle i'll see that as just running for a lower imbalance and then it should accumulate in here and i have my trigger on the buy button okay i'm just going to go in with a buy at market not trying to do anything advanced here okay and if you look at the bottom of the td ameritrade live account module you'll see nasdaq symbol and you'll actually see my profit loss going as the trade is entered and i took a trade in the e-mini s p and it was basically a scratch i ended up making 75 so i put a trade on and came back on me stopped me and that was the end of that all right there i am putting the order in and there's the confirmation that the orders were received so now i'm long you can see at the bottom of the pop out it shows that i'm down initially what looks like 20 i know i'm up 20 right now so now down 75. so this is the part of trading where it feels scary if you've never traded with live funds and you just feel like you got to watch that number of how much money you're making and losing that's the worst thing to do okay what i'm watching is the chart does the chart continuously keep giving me feedback visually that it's accumulating and not going lower now it can go one more time back into that lower fair value gap that's permissible to me i'm willing to endure that i just don't want to see it overlap that entire thing and go lower because then i'd have to close the trade and preferably save my stop notice the bodies of the candles are staying relatively inside that fair value got the shaded green now i again i'm only adding this to the chart because i knew i was going to record it and share it with you today but i do not have this in my charts okay the only annotations i have in my charts is when i'm teaching my students and since you're here at least for right now i'm calling you my student even the haters all right so with the aid of hindsight because i lived this moment this morning it does go down one more time and stab into those wicks that are forming now when you put a trade on you kind of like give the complete control of everything to the marketplace and you want to just allow the market to do what it's going to do and not try to overthink every fluctuation every little minor movement in the price action is not something that is going to hopefully sway you so i've already had it in my mind that it could go back down and make a slightly lower low than those two little wicks that it's formed inside the lower fair value gap so since i had that expectation that it could potentially do that i'm desensitizing myself to that in the event that it forms an ideal scenario would be it doesn't do it at all obviously but i'm allowing for that price action especially with the volatility that we've been seeing the last few days and what i'm thinking right now is they're taking it down one more time to accumulate more longs notice i'm saying that not it's selling pressure driving price down i think this uh this is where i took the most heat on the trade if i'm not mistaken i think it's like 455 dollars of trade drawdown while being still in the trade which is below the threshold i've already said my maximum risk on a trade if i'm trading competitively is four and a half percent per trade generally i like to take a trade that i feel comfortable with around three three and a half percent that's a good trade for me okay showing signs initially that it's wanting to go higher and what i'm trying to do is keep my focus on that lower level or the the bottom of that pink rectangle that's the low hanging fruit that's the easy target i'm telling you to try to practice and learn to reach for the ideal scenario would be to go all the way to the top of that pink but while you're learning don't do that okay it's easier just to let it trade the low end and just take it off when it gives it to you i have my trigger on the flatten button so it cancels every order takes me completely out of the marketplace as soon as it touches the low end of that rectangle i'll collapse the trade right now i'm up seven nine almost nine hundred dollars eight ninety five nine thirty five nine twenty five and again you can watch that fluctuation in the lower right hand corner of the pop out i'm at 1100 plus 11.49 okay traded there touched it now i'm collapsing the trade there just like that and that's it now my account's booked and mark to market with eleven hundred ninety dollars and gain in the balance now reflects it with twenty seven thousand nine hundred fifteen dollars and eleven cents so there's trading view showing the chart i'm watching because i like trading these charts i don't like td ameritrades charts it's i don't like them so i'm just using the pop out which is why are you showing us things scrunched up you're just i'm not hiding anything you can see it it's right there so let's go over and take a look at the chart now you can see nothing has changed i just magnified that pop out so it's entirely taking up my entire screen we're gonna go to the nasdaq e-mini contract simple and i am so clumsy with this platform still and i'm sure i'll get real good at by the middle of the year and not nudge all right so we're gonna look at this day and there's the chart on one minute and i'm gonna add an overlay okay but i'm going to put in so you can see where the trades are in that chart there's the executions and there is these areas i showed you on the trading view chart so for the inquiring minds that wanted to see a live chart and live account and all that business and the logic of what i'm teaching in the youtube channel i humbly submit this and so i'll talk to you on thursday be safe