verified as one of the best traders in the world because of his rankings in the Robins World Cup championship. Trying to take a falling knife. Maybe one time out of 10 you take it. But there is a huge probability that while you try you get cut. I don't try to take the lowest low and run cuz the probability is really low. I just try to join the market at the correct moment. I want to be in the direction of the pressure. Introducing Fabio Valentini, a world champion and internationally recognized scalper in the futures markets with hundreds of executions per month and verified track record of 100 to 200% in a single quarter in the competitive environment of a World Cup championship. Participating in the World Cup, I refined my process and I understood that the best way to get a really impressive performance keeping the draw down low is to start with you took a loan. It's already one to three risk-to-reward. You can decide to close or to keep the position and you know that the probability that you will reach the third standard deviation is 7%. So in 100 session only seven session it reach the third standard deviation. Will you keep the trade open or will you take the profit before everything you need to have a trading model and you don't need to go out of the trading model because the only times I went out of the trading model it was always lost lost lost stop. I'm interested to hear now because you kind of touched on two areas. one which is the initial reactions of the market a cause and effect relationship of volume and price and then you also have statistical data on your side. What do you more believe in of just data and large sample size tendencies or real movements you are seeing in the day based on volume and price? This is a really interesting question and oh ladies and gents we have a trader who is wearing a whoop band. So, I need to know the stats behind it because on certain days, 30 trades in a day. We have a champion scalper and if I'm not mistaken, you've ranked three times in the Robins World Cup in the scalping division and come second a few times and also third place. So, phenomenal stuff and I want to start off with just asking directly, how many trades do you take average week or in the World Cup? How many trades have you taken? So, in the World Cup, uh there is an average of 500 trades every three months because it's a quarterly cup. So in one cup it was like 350, the other one was 600, the other one was 550. So around 500 trades per cup and uh I think it's the only way to keep the draw down low and get a big performance because you need a big data sample and a lot of execution. Otherwise you can just go hard on risk but it's like gambling because you need five lucky trades and it's not my approach. So I prefer to if I'm joining the competition I'm scalping every afternoon from the starting of New York session to late night in United Arab Emirates. Okay. And there is another guy on the other side of the planet in Malaysia that is Natrian that is my main competitor. So he did 223% and is scalping in the exact same way I do footprint scalping. Okay. What was your performance in in in the World Cup? Now, if I'm not mistaken, it was 68% in the first cup, 88 or 89% in the second one, and 218% in the third one. Okay. So, I I'm going to guess and say the year you did 200 was because of the exponential days approach you have. Yes. So I participating in the world cup I refined my process as I improved also as a trader and I understood that the best way to get a really impressive performance keeping the draw down low is to start with low risk and compounding the account and using for example the profit that you made in the first two hours or three hours of the session to make additional profit. So let's say that I start one day with uh three take profit. I risk 0.25% and I take for example one to four risk-to-reward. So at the end of the first two hours I have three targets and I am 1% 1% and 1%. So I have a total of 3% on the account. I'm taking 2% on the side and I'm opening two trade with 0.5%. So it's increasing. Why? because I notice that my profit is concentrated in um very few session. So the big amount of profit I do is when NASDAQ rally and I join the trend in the correct moment and when the strategy is not working because maybe you are in consolidation it's better to don't trade. So I take maximum three stop loss per day and I'm down for the day. If I have a streak of three stop loss it means that is not the environment to use my strategy. Okay. So I guess the the scaling risk where you're just leveraging profit of the day is a sensible way because on certain days at the start of the day you don't know how many trades you will take but on some days it might be one or two another day it might be 30. So you're protecting yourself where your worst case scenario is you're back to where you started the day. Yeah. Why would you take an approach of let what is the risk per trade when you are doing 0.25%. That's how you start the day. how I I start in the beginning of the cup as for example let's say that I reach 50% but it's not enough it's a huge performance in three months 50%. But it's not enough to be in the podium. So I just start to raise my risk. So at the start of the day at the start of the month of the first month of the competition and in the same time I'm not starting immediately to raise the risk like let's say in the first month I have 50% profit in the second month I start from 0.25% I raise to 0.35% or 0.40%. But if I get a good day, one to four, one to three, one to five, multiple trades per day, maybe I sit at 5% profit for the day. So I take half of it and I risk in two two or three or three trades. And if I'm risking, for example, let's say 2.5%, 2% on one trade and I get a one to five, it's 10% on the account. But this 10% is compounding with the additional 50% of profit. So it's way more. Mhm. This way I keep my draw down really low. But low I mean below 20% but to achieve 218% in three months it's more than one to 10 risks to to return in the the concept of risk. So it's really big. Do you think many traders in the in the World Cup or in general like someone who's just looking to make profit in their life um should modify an approach like this or because I've had a lot of traders that just do 5% risk per trade or they'll have an A+ setup and they have more conviction and then they will scale into that uh with more risk at the beginning as opposed to compounding a day. Yeah, this is this depends on the number of execution that you have. For example, let's say that I have a trading model that is only giving me 10 trades every three months. the only way I have to make a good amount of profit is to raise the risk. I don't have this problem because I have a lot of execution. I have a huge amount of stress but also a lot of execution. So, but yes, maybe you are as swing trader or maybe you are intraday trader. Intraday traders maybe have one setup per day, two Tesla per day and some days or some week zero setup. The only way you have to win the competition and to compete against scalper is to uh increase the risk per trade. Yes, it makes sense. If you want to increase your rate of return, you either increase and you have a a fixed edge and you know that this edge over 50 trades, it gives me this result is to take more trades or or take more risk. Yeah. There is no other way around it. Yeah. When it comes to because this is a question I asked outside but I think it's good for the podcast which is if you are trading M1 time frame, 15-second time frame and you're really involved in just session movements and reactions, why not find a reaction early in the day and ride the wave of the day? Why is this get in get out approach or you know a trailing stop kind of approach? This is a really interesting question and I was trading like this three years ago. Then um I did statistical analysis on the MA that is u um maximum adverse excursion on price and is the number of days during the month that you have really big explosive moves and it's not so big in percentage. So I just want to compound smaller profit but every day instead of taking the home run 1 to 10 1 to5 this is another thing that I think it's a misconception in the trading field people thinks that one and one to2 risk-to-reward are really bad they just want to shoot for 1 to 30 1 to 40 to 30 maybe you will get it but my priority is win rate I want to see a lot of profit in my trading account not only one profit and then a streak of 10 stop- loss Because this is really hard and if you do a Monte Carlo projection on it, you can see that maybe you encounter 30 40 trades of losing streak and this is really hard on from the psychology side. You have also to consider that if you're a scalper, you have a huge impact of commission on your trading account and and how does that play out in the world cup with so many extra the commission are bigger than normal broker but at least I'm only competing in the futures war trading cup so uh I don't have spread I see this is a a good advantage for scalpers but uh the commission are really big for the like the impact from commission to profit is like 10% of the profit it is taken out from commission. So maybe the actual performance is 240%. I understand. I want to take a moment from the episode to remind you of Alpha Capital, a long-term sponsor of the show, a leading prop firm in the entire industry. And in the last year, they did over $50 million in payouts. That's why they are a top ranked prop firm that's been around for years and is not going anywhere. And with the multiple step plans they have and the multiple packages that they have, there is going to be something catered specifically to your needs at the most competitive pricing. And because we have a long-term relationship with them, we are able to bring you a massive discount of 20% off all evaluations. So click the link in the description or use the code toot to get 20% off all your funded accounts working with the best prof in the industry, Alpha Capital, with your strategy because you are kind of you gave a very nice analogy of just the gas pedal on a car. Yeah. Yeah, you're you're looking for reactions, just little impulses of the day and just trying to catch catch a piece of it. Um what is your way to protect yourself when you're wrong? Is it just an approach of very fast break even or do you allow the trade to play a bit? No. Um so I will start with my process of creating a narrative for the day with trading. So the first thing is that the analogy of the car is that the price structure because I still use price action because the price action is the result of the impact of the volume. So it's really important to understand if for the day you are like aggressive buyer or aggressive sellers and you can see only from the result of the volume and the result of the volume is price if I see that I'm for example going uh long really aggressive and accepting different structure breaking structure high like the concept of market structure or auction market theory for volume traders uh to create this is the first step this is the direction of the are then I need to check the order flow. The order flow is how much they are putting the the feet on the gas, how much they are pushing. And this for me is orderflow analysis. Orderflow analysis is my trigger. It's like my execution model. So for example, let's say that I'm long for the day and I see a retracement in price and the price reach a really important level for me. Uh point of interest it's called in the price action world. And u on that point of interest I'm not immediately opening the trade. I don't trade on limit orders. I just wait and I see if from the order flow I can see an aggression in price. I want to see momentum and follow up from price. So it's not only volume is the relationship between volume and price. After that I start to trail my position too. So to reply to your question, I start to follow the market with my stop loss. So if I see that the volume is continuing to rise and the price is following up, I'm following because if I have a breakoff structure, it means that there is a volume shift and I want to be out of the position. I also did a statistical analysis on this. When you have price that is rising and you have a breakout short and this breakout short is being follow up by order flow. So the volume is going aggressive short. There is a huge probability that I will get a stop loss. So it's worth for me to take me out of the market with some profit. Just maybe I will not reach one to three the final target but I will close one to 1.5 is still profit and I can use this profit on my next position. Yeah. To scale up the risk. You mentioned here that uh volume is a precursor for price. Yes. And and therefore it's better to read volume to then understand price. But then you also mentioned here that you're doing an analysis of volume and price. Yes. It's so important. Am I am I correct in understanding that you're seeing volume signatures, then you're seeing the first reaction in price and then you're trading the follow through. You don't trade the initial movement. No, I never trade initial movement and because I can relate this like trying to take a falling knife. Yeah. Maybe one time out of 10 you take it. But there is a huge probability that while you try you get cut. M so uh I'm not um a reversal trader not I don't have a mean reversion model I don't try to take the lowest low and run because the probability is really low I just try to join the market at the correct moment when there is momentum when there is volume and when there is price followup I want to be in the direction of the pressure because when I was not profitable that I started my career I was always trying to take like the reversal trade like the last sell candle before the buy movement. I think we every every trader at this moment try to take because it's really satisfying but it's not profitable like you can do this maybe in some markets but if you take for example NASDAQ really aggressive move the probability that you will take the last candle of the day sell before the move up it's like 5%. when you have found a bias for the day and I want to get into that in a moment and how you build it. When you have found a bias in the day and you're taking 10 20 trades in that day, will it only be in the direction of your bias or it will be up and down throughout the day? This is a really smart question. What I do is that u I have some models to take to take reversal but to start to take reversal I need before some profit for the day. M so the day start like this like today we took some profit on the the live trading we did and we were long on NASDAQ then there was an opportunity short but the market exploded collapsed didn't gave me the time to jump on the trend but if I had a retracement I will continue lower and when I jumped off the charts now I don't know how is NASDAQ but the market was really overextended short okay when the market is really overextended and I have profit for the day. I try to go back to equilibrium. The concept of equilibrium with volume analysis is like the P point of control is the fair value of the volume. Yes. And is the the level that you will eat with the highest probability. So it's just a trade that is reversal but is high probability trade. How do you determine the fair value of the day? the fair value of the day. I just plot the profile of the session that is a volume tool. You can use any platform for this from the starting of the session to the end of the session. And you will have the distribution of the volume for the day and you will have the the area and the level where the most volume uh was exchanged. This level is the level that you will reach with the highest probability. So if I need to do a reversal trade, I want to make sure that my profit target will be the level that gets hit with the most probability during the day. So it's kind of like an end of day reversal play as as one of your trades. The the reason I asked let's say this uh do you ping pong of buying and selling only the direction of the day is because you could either take the approach of you just uh trail your stop and whenever you get tapped out you're out and then you scale it throughout the day. But you could also avoid taking a partial by just selling or hedging your position and uh take a you know you don't you can hold more volume on on the main impulse. Does that make any sense for you or you want to um take each trade independent? Um for me each trade it's a different model. I am really analyzing everything about a single trade. The way I manage the position the the care I have for the analysis of the order flow. I use multiple uh screen because I need to have the price on one part and the order on the other part and it requires so much focus managing one trade and I only can do one asset. This is the reason I only trade NASDAQ because it's a lot of execution during the day. So I don't open multiple trades simultaneously. I only have one position because the number of focus it requires is really big and I want to connect to this regarding because you told me what's the condition that you use to get also the reversal trade because not every day I do reversal trade I use an instrument that is called VWAP and uh it's a uh volume weighted average price and uh with VWAP you can plot the standard deviation that is the deviation of the volume for the Okay, of the volume weighted and when you get to the let's say second standard deviation there is a really big probability that you will get back to fair value reload reaccumulate and then explode again and that initial stand that deviation is is derived from what range this deviation is from the starting of the newer session start and it's like the first hour or is the no it's all the new session it's like developing as the market is developing but you can also use daily uh volume weighted average price. There are different way to use it. Uh but considering that I only trade New York session, I use it for the New York session and it's it's cool because it's developing as the price action is developing. So you just see the relationship of volume and price in the same moment. I'm interested to hear now because we've you've kind of touched on two areas. One, which is the initial uh reactions of the market, a cause and effect relationship of volume and price. And then you also have statistical data on your side. Let's say this VWAP idea or the end of day reversal which is not necessarily what's printed today. It's more like over time these scenarios are a favorable one. What do you more believe in of just data and and kind of um large sample size tendencies or real movements you are seeing in the day based on volume and price? I will say both of them and I will explain you how I started my career. I was having like a watch list of 20 assets. Oh gosh. Okay. Because I was trying to get as much execution as possible. I was charting for example Euro Euro dollar. In the same session I was charting uh the pound. I was charting the NASDAQ. I was really going to confuse myself to try to get more money. This is the worst approach that you can get as a as an intraday trader. uh in in time I understood that by getting deeper in the understanding of one asset one asset but understanding the statistical deviation of the asset for the day the moment where volatility kicks in the probability that you will go to the second or to the third standard deviation a new word opens to you for example if I say we are starting the session on NASDAQ okay you took along it's already one to three risk-to-reward You can decide to close or to keep the position and you know that the probability that you will reach the third standard deviation is 7%. So in 100 session only seven session it reached the third standard deviation. Will you keep the trade open to try the Omran or will you take the profit? No it makes sense to take it. Yeah. This is the reason I stopped to take like huge riskto-reward trades because statistical analysis is something that is keeping you on track. Then there is a huge narrative part, analysis part. But before everything you need to have a trading model and you don't need to go out of the trading model because the only times I went to out of the trading model, I took more than three trades per day. It was always worst lost lost lost stop. It's very interesting because I've arrived at a similar conclusion which is for my entries I want to be based on something cause and effect in the market. I don't want to predict. I want to react to something I see. However, for my exits, um you can get well, in my opinion, I found myself being too watching the reaction and then taking a partial or exiting my trade too early. So, what I did was I just like your standard deviation model, I just take my partial at the average volume, average volatility of the day. So, if I know on average EU is moving 15 pips every London session, why wait for 20 or 25? I take it at 15 and then the average daily range, I close my my full position. It arrives at around 1 to 3, 1 to 10 based on entries. I I that's the approach I've taken. You also mentioned which I want to get back to here two things. One of your building your narrative for the day I guess through technicals. Yes. And um what is your point of interest because I think that means a lot of things for people. Yes. Uh so the point of interest usually it's the area where you expect where from historical data you can expect a reaction. So for example, trader like burn like to use supply and demand. Price action trader like to use um explosion of the move or starting of the move or market structure to get back to the original point. I like to use volumes. So I just use the price to get a really big demand for example but then I go deeper in this demand. I want to see where is the maximum level of aggression in this area. So I have not one big area but I have one level one horizontal level. If the price reach this area and I see what I want to see from volume so a reaction and a follow up of price I'm not trying to take the falling knife. I'm stepping in at the right moment where I have a point of interest where I have the bias of the day in my direction where I have the volume that is in correlation and in tune with price. So I have four like box to tick before taking a trade and I know that when all the box are ticked I have a real edge on on one asset and after that I know also I I did analysis on what's the probability after the market start to rally that it will get back. So I know exactly when to put stop- loss to break even stop in profit. Interesting. So it's not upon a market structure shift in your direction or something because market structure shift sometimes can be misleading like you see a breakout of structure but the price is for example having an absorption on the long. So you can expect it going lower. So the volume takes the volume as something that is confirming your bias with price. So let's say that there is a breakoff structure. I go to check on the volume if it's a real breakoff structure. Let's check the volume. What are they doing? They are pushing. We have aggressive buyers. We are trapped buyers. We have trapped sellers. What are we doing here? What can I see from cumulative volume delta? We have pressure long. How is the VWAP? Are we in the lower standard deviation? And I stock probabilities. When I I check four, five, six box, I know that this trade can be a one to three with a 50% win rate. So, it's profitable and I don't care about the single trade. If I take stop loss, I go to the second. If I take three stop loss in one session, it means that the market is like consolidation. So, it's better for me to stay out. I just take the loss and I know that in the next day, I only need one good trade to cover all the losses of the previous day. As a trader, it's very simple. You have to find an edge and then you have to have a mind so you can follow that edge. But how do you know if you're performing correctly or not? You have to know your data. And Tradzeller is going to show you everything that you need beyond the surface level win rates and performance and equity curve. It's going to show you detailed reports. It's going to be your back testing tool, strategy testing tool, playbooks, notes, and it's going to be a full journal. It makes your journaling easier, faster, and more meaningful. Whereas, if you were just documenting on an Excel spreadsheet, or taking screenshots on your iPhone, you wouldn't be able to pull out the data that you need. the correlations that the AI within Trade Zelda is pulling out for you. There's so much variety and utility within the software that I think it's essential for any trader. So, the link somewhere below is going to take you directly to the Tradzella website. I'm not getting paid. This is for you. If you want it, if you like it, go ahead and explore it and probably you'll be using it for years to come. When I have when I look at my checklist for my intraday prime setup, the four things you mentioned is exactly the same things I want to look at. It's different because it's FX versus futures, but I want area of interest and let's say a market structure related one. I want to refine it. So you're using volume to refine it. I have my ways of doing it. Then I want to see the initial reaction. Uh and then um you're seeing your initial reaction in volume. Yes. And then price action to get in. The fifth box I I like to have is time of day. Um out of out of the whole let's say session of of a Euro USD, I only like the London open or the second hour of New York. Is time a consideration for you? volatility linked to it. I completely agree with you. I use one platform that is free and it's called Mataf and is giving me the volatility of every asset in term of ATR for the day and in term of pips or movement for the day. And I saw that NASDAQ it's really what is ATR? Average ATR average true range. Two range. What does it mean two range? Um average true range is the true range. Sorry, true range. I thought you meant true range. No, true range. No, no, true range. Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay. It's average true range. And uh uh with MATF, you can just predict where you can expect volatility for the asset. But the things that I do is that I don't trade on the opening of the New York session because as I was explaining to you, you have you can expect huge volatility and I I like to work with really tight stop- loss. So if I'm wrong, I want to know immediately and so it's not good for me. So I just start to trade after like the opening of the new session where I see some balance. Okay, the initial balance of the session. Then maybe I have a breakout. Okay, my session for the day is from UWA up from breakout is long. I will only try to add to long position. Then maybe we go outside the second standard deviation. I have 5,000 for the day of profit. I can risk 2,000 and try to get the reversal trades. So you're only doing reversal after you have some profits and after one standard deviation. Yes. Because the probability I I have like a sample of more than 500 trades reversal and the probability is low like the probability that my reversal trade will go to take profit is like 40% 1 to 2.5 one to three. The probability that my trend following will go to take profit it's one to three 40 50%. Even 60% when the session is directional. So it's just not worth the money for me if I'm not in the competition. Yes. Yes. If I'm competing, I need this kind of additional profit because even 5% can make the difference. I understand. When it comes to a 600 trades in a quarter, which is a huge amount per day. Um how many of Well, let's start off with win rates. What what is a average win rate or what is your tolerance of where you like to be in your win rate? I didn't calculate it exactly the win rate, but it's around 50%. like one take profit, one stop loss. Well, I I like to keep balance, but the risk to reward is minimum one to two. And and what is your philosophy in general around break even to just because you are trading reactions, you can just put it break even as soon as you can. Yes. To protect the loss. Is that something you do or you want to see what happens? Uh I I don't do this immediately. If I see a really big aggression, for example, let's say that I'm going long, my narrative is long, I reach my point of interest, I have my trigger, my confirmation of trades and I see the price exploding after executing my trade, I can just say, okay, there is this level of aggression if price if the market comes back and break this level, I want to be out of the position because it means that the sellers are taking over. So, I just put break even immediately. But in some trades you know you start to see consolidation week down week down week down like there is a really long accumulation. So you need to understand also the condition for the day. There are really day where the volatility is really big that you see immediate reaction days where you just week week and after 30 minutes the the trade start. So you you need to let the market breathe a little bit. But at the same time, if you see your confirmation that the buyers are stepping in, you can just put to break even. You can you just need to be efficient in saving as much money as you can. Yeah. You you mentioned your refinement process for a point of interest where you're taking a high volume point within the overall range of your demand area, let's say. I'm interested to know because I don't have the luxury of having uh volume in price action in forex and and many of the viewers won't either. Um, what does it look like? Let's say you take a 15minute demand and then you find your peak points in volume. What does that look like on M1? Have you found any price signatures to correlate with your volume signatures? Unfortunately, no. Like uh I tried because in the beginning I was trying to find this kind of data also for Euro dollar. So I just try to step down to one minute to see maybe I can find something that can be similar to what I see in NASDAQ but volume and price have some kind of different information. Okay. And there are some kind of information that you cannot just deduct. You need to see them. And I also went to one minute time frame of NASDAQ to see if there is some pattern that is constantly in correlation with volume. So I see that when I have this level in price maybe I have a liquidation of the low and then I have an explosion but there is it's different like I need some kind of a check also for the trigger that I can just see from volume and this is something that is bad because you become dependent on it like uh if I have only the price action chart my mind start asking okay the bias is long but what about volume like if you re reach your point of interest before I was a price action trader Now I want to check there is absorption there is exhaustion. What are doing the sellers? What are doing the buyers? How many effort are they putting in printing this candle? Who is winning the battle in this area with price action? You only see the results of the battle. You don't have all the information behind what happened in this battle. I understand this is actually very enlightening. One thing that I liked here that you said is um deduction can only take you so far, but you need to see to actually to know what's going on. But I I want to hang on the word deduction even though your answer is obviously fine confirmation but when I look at what do I deduce in the market certain things are going to be like correlations or divergences with other assets? Are you doing something with NASDAQ and maybe dollar or other indices or maybe even the major tech stocks within the NASDAQ that have more influence? Are you are you looking at other charts alongside NASDAQ? Uh I'm not doing this only for one reason because for my brain to process all this kind of data in one minute taking 20 position per day will be too much. It's too stressful. It's too much information. I'm overloaded. But I have one trading model that I was trading two years ago that was was using was charting the correlation of all the uh US indices like NASDAQ, US30, S&P 500 and I was waiting for cracking correlation. I was waiting that one of them was doing something different and I was trading the spreading between the other asset in the direction of the trend. This was super profitable. But uh after some times I saw that the edge start to like balance and I didn't find this as much valuable as what I'm doing with order flow. I'm doing a lot of what you are saying in swing trading. This is called intermarket analysis. I'm like searching for what is doing the correlated asset. Maybe I'm searching for euro dollar and then I also want to chart the DXY or I want to chart the British pound. I want to understand what is happening the correlated asset. But imagine checking this correlation in 15 seconds. So where is your home? Is it 15-second time frame? The 15-second time frame is the execution time frame. It's the last check of the box. Like I have everything perfect. I go to 15 seconds. I start to watch the order flow and I have an aggression in price if I want to go long. Okay, I check. And I also use a lot of range bars that is uh not related to time is related to volume or to movement. It's like 20 ticks range range bar. Uh this is to remove time from your chart. Like I don't need to see the candles in 15 second that are developing on the same level. I want to all them to be in one range bar. I want to see what happened in this kind of battle. So in scal in scalping you you try to get the as much information as possible but easy to process when it comes to the execution time frame being 15-second why 15-second and not 30 or my choice is M1 because when I did try 15 second number one the stress and number two the gaps like they're not clean candles why did you choose 15-second time frame because I found one pattern in 15 second that when it's being followed by a shifting structure of M1 is giving me an incredible advantage on the execution side. So it's it's purely because with order flow I found one repetitive pattern that is giving me like the possibility to have a smaller stop-loss because when I see it I know that the next movement is like an explosion in price but I don't have only one trigger. I have different models on execution but this one is the main reason when it comes to futures because you have no spread. Yes. This is the reason you can actually do the 15 second because sometimes in in Forex my 15-second stop loss would be the same as my spread and and then it also makes sense. Yeah. Okay. And what was your analysis time frame not the execution time frame? Uh my analysis time frame is 15 minutes from the bias perspective. Then from 15 minutes I go to my last time frame that is one minute and from one minute I only check the last part of the box with 15 seconds. Okay. Sometimes when the market is really choppy depends on the market condition I use range bars. So uh instead of going uh to one minute I just go directly from 15 minutes to 20 range bars. That is like lower time frame. And I usually do this when the market is full of gaps. You know, it's holiday or there is not a lot of volume and you see like M1 that is not clean in futures. When it's not clean, I prefer to use range bars. 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It seems also now recently or maybe even in general, you spent a lot of time uh also understanding fundamentals. Yes. and and how to let's say transition towards swing trading I guess outside of the World Cup just your personal accounts. Number one, what is driving that change? And number two, are you still taking your scalp edge for entries in a swing trade? This is really smart. No, I'm not using the model that I used to execute on NASDAQ on my swing trades because the time it takes for the fundamentals to react is too big. I don't have an edge. I cannot put a small stop- loss with order flow. So for me order flow doesn't make sense for weekly daily time frame. Maybe volume analysis maybe analysis of the volume profile and the profile structure and the VWAP but not order flow. Order flow is like the interaction between buyers and sellers in the slow smallest time frame. So what I do what the reason of the shift to long-term is because u on scalping the problem is the stress and the time commitment. Andrea saw it today. We were doing live trading together because he was recording the day in the life and I was four hours in front of the charts and even for eating I cannot go out of the chart. Why? Because I need to follow position tick by tick. If the market is exploding up, I need to put my stop loss below the explosion because if the explosion gets taken out, then the market is probably going low. So, I cannot give back profit to the market. And when you are sculping with big account, you get maybe 3,000 4,000 5,000 euros or dollars per trade. So, every distraction that you get, it's minus $1,000. M and um we we had the talk with this about burn today and also burning if you have huge amount of money let's talk about hedge funds or let's talk about really big retail investor swing trading is more convenient because the pressure you get on your mind is lower. Can you imagine scalping with really small stop-loss with $50,000 of risk per position? That is like explosion of the market 3 seconds minus 50,000 and then you can say but at the same time you make a lot of profit. Yes. But you have to think on how much stress you are putting all your brain and on your health. Mhm. Because I'm almost 30 now and you start to value time with family. You start to value free time. And I didn't started trading and sculping to be a slave of the chart. So, I'm still continuing to make sculping because it gives me a lot of money, but I don't see myself for the next 30 years sculping. Maybe I do this for another five, 10, 15 years, but I want a model that is getting me money without my time commitment on the chart that I can just do on Sunday. So instead of let's say extremes of 30 trades up to 30 trades in a day versus let's say one trade every two weeks or one trade per week what about like because I know you've developed models for your intra session or scout plays instead of taking 30 executions in the day trying to find the best one of the day and instead of 0.25 25 risk. Just put one 2% risk and and you can get the same yield in terms of ROI 2 3% in a trade that a swing trade would give you and you still have the benefit of rates of return and you can still walk away because you don't need to be four hours maybe it's only 30 minutes 1 hour. I did also this test with statistics and I saw that out of all the models I have I have a model B model C model C model is like I have a good edge on it but it's nothing special. B model is a really good trade. A model it's trade that ticks all the box. The win rate is not so different. It's like 50%. 57 61 62. So I cannot just eliminate B model and C model and say okay I put more risk on the A model because there is not a huge gap in performance. Just the more execution I got the more money I make, the more profit I got. But uh for the intraday model, maybe this is something that I want to work on the future like getting one trade from order flow and running all the trend of the day, but it's not what I'm actually doing. So for sure I will develop it, but at the moment I'm doing purely scalping. So I mean everything you've said is is like I'm talking to myself. Like everything you do is is so so similar. I I just have some few differences and and one of them is um when I when I'm in a trade and I call it the inducement of the day. I I find the peak volatility and and peak movements of the day and then I just want to get that session and day impulse or average daily every session range and that's that's enough for me. So usually it's one max two entries per day. I mean not even it's two three trades per week but in a single day it would be very rare to have two trades. Um, but I can sit and watch the price action of the day and on M1 I can see zones where it's coming back to a reversal or is is it's now continuing in my direction. You can sense them, but I never find a reason to actually execute upon that trade. So, I leave it. Um, the reason I say all of this is because the the trade that I choose to take is because I'm I'm maximizing I call it the inducer of the day for a reason where I'm finding that first domino and then I know the following dominoes will go in my direction but they're not as high as pro as highly probable because the zone of reversal that I find highest is usually at a London open. So 3 4 hours into London session I'm already a little bit away from the initiation points. Do you find those in your entire day the highest probability reversal points whether linked to time or linked to you know as as we could say Asia low range or or a trend line something is is there zones where you see more reaction and zones where you see less reaction uh I saw that my most pro profitable um time of the day for reversal trades on NASDAQ it's like 8:45 European time so in the evening And in a in a US time, what would that be? Like it's it's middle of the session. Yes. You have like midsession reversal or late session reversal. This is something that is usually retracing to 50% of the movement. Like I checked that if you have a really explosive day on NASDAQ, the time where it it rebalanced to the fair value is like third quarter to fourth quarter of the session. So in in the last part of the session, it's like if the orders are rebalancing at the time and deciding if they want to go lower for the higher for the next day or if they want to switch the the trend. And I saw that uh there is a two hours window where I have more win rate with reversal trades. But that's linked to time of day, not necessarily what's on the chart. No, it's linked to time of day. What about chart related factors? Let's say a previous day high and low, previous week high low, Asia high, Asia low, or M15 structure getting getting wicked through. Do any of these give you a higher reaction point? No, I only use the previous day and the current day. I use uh only two days of data because I use 15 minutes and for me it's not important if the previous day gets taken out or the previous low gets taken out because I'm not using the trap traders model. This is another model. This is a reversal model and the trapped traders model is really similar to the ICT concept of sweep of liquidity. Yeah. And this is working this is a really good model. The point is that uh the win rate is lower than mine because I'm trading the momentum. If you think about what is a leap of a sweep of liquidity is a concept of failed auction. So the market tried to break out it didn't went through is coming back inside and you are considered this a liquidation or a swept off stops is used in the common terms and this is a reversal model because you are hoping that the market from that point will reverse. Yes, I only trade if instead of sweeping, it's breaking and continuing lower. So, I just do trend following after the market gives me the direction. I had a model like this before, but was not as profitable as my current. That's interesting. For me, I have also a reversal continuation. My reversal is my preferred in a similar fashion that you just said. Usually, what it'll be is a is a London reversal and then a New York continuation. So then the day has a preference of my Asia range as another framing. But interesting uh whoop that you're wearing on your wrist. 30 trades in a day uh and and the pressure of performing and so forth. What does the data look like on that on a on a trading day? So uh we did an experiment with uh Andrea uh it was uh the moment where he was uh marrying his wife. Okay. Okay. And we were doing the uh how is it called? Bachelor bachelor bachelor party. And he told me Fabio why you don't trade the day after the bachelor party. So you are drunk half drunk stressed and you start to scalp 20 trades. And he did a video on this like there is me trading gold an asset that I don't usually trade. So my stress it's even higher because when you do something new your cortisol spikes higher because it's something that you are just learning trying to adapt and I saw that scalping th this is incredible but it's not losing trades that is stressing me out. It's floating profit. Think about this. If you have a $2,000 stop-loss, okay, what's the worst case scenario that you lose $2,000? Yeah. Yeah. But if you are floating $6,000 and you are taking the decision, I put my stop loss to break even and I let it run to third standard deviation to get the 10,000 or 12,000 and the market is coming back. You're losing 6,000 or maybe you are not even putting break even. You are keeping the stop. So you go from plus 6,000 to minus 2,000. It's minus 8,000 in your portfolio. I understand. Yeah. So it's it's anxiety of not knowing the outcome. Whereas in stop loss, you know you lost and you know how much you lost. It's the uncertainty of getting that profit. It's something that you see on the table and you take a decision and someone go comes and take it out. Now you are with an empty table. I want I want to ask a question related to exactly this which is um I used to do the model of kind of swing trading 1 hour 4 hour swings or 1 hour 4hour market structure and then timing it with an M1 entry so this is also like five six years ago so I wasn't at the level I am now but I would have on trading view you know your stop loss to take profit ratio was maybe 1 to 20 1 to 30 and uh it would make no sense for me to hold full volume because for this reason I could be risking 15% of unrealized to gain another 5% that makes no sense. I'm I'm trading completely different now. But this idea of unrealized gain being lost is also like a loss. Uh which is why for me I have a rule of at 1 to three riskreward I take 50% of my position um to count to counter this issue. Do you have any anything in place or is just your trailing stop to to protect your unrealized gain and adrenal? Just trailing stop because uh if the market snaps back to me and reverse I keep my profit like I I got proven wrong but I made money out of it. But when when the market is let's say doing you know it's flowing in your direction does M1 break a structure against your direction that doesn't necessarily mean it has to come back to break even or has it could just be a 50% retracement and then continuation. Yes, but the M1 shift would happen and then you would be triggered out of the trade. So you're kind of exiting early, let's say, or two reaction. I'm only exiting not only if the price if there is a breakoff structure, but if I see that there is a breakoff structure and the order flow is telling me it's coming huge pressure short. So I'm always validating. It's like if I create a narrative and then I comes to you, you are order flow today. Okay. And I ask you what are what do you see here? I see a break of structure. you what do you see from volume and you tell me no fab it's not going lower the volume are putting the pressure up so what's the point of closing yes I just wait because maybe it's a fake out usually plan your stop loss in that case where volume is not supporting the market structure shift against you do you put it just to break even to allow the space just to break even to have some okay time to breathe for the market and as soon as the price follow up on volume so it gets back long I put the stop loss below this uncertainty Got it. So, actually in a when you're in a trade, you're moving your stop loss every few minutes. Usually, it can happen every 10 minutes, every 15 minutes, I need to trail the position. It depends on the volatility at the opening of the session like uh in the first 15 minutes I can do just opening one one minute or 15 seconds later break even. Mhm. Then the market is breaking the structure and the volume have a huge follow up long stop in profit and then I let you run. So the crypto bull market is well upon us and with opportunities left right and center why not utilize other people's money instead of your hard-earned money. So introducing to you the world's first crypto prop firm Bitfunded and they've partnered up with an exchange to bring not only the world's first crypto prop firm but actually a prop firm that has an exchange-like environment. Imagine as if you're trading on Binance with all the benefits that prop firms bring with the leverage you can have or hundreds of thousands of dollars in buying power utilizing other people's money. So your total risk is just a couple hundred max or as cheap as $79. And with the special offer that they have going on right now for you as a Titans of Tomorrow viewer if you buy two profs, you'll get a third one for free. So click the link below this video to head over to the Bitfunded website and start to utilize other people's money to benefit from the crypto markets whilst minimizing your downside. And in the World Cup specifically or maybe both um do you stack positions where you'll have multiple open trades with exposed risk or it's like when I'm out of trade one that's only when I enter trade two. Yes. I don't the maximum I can do is like getting fractional entries having different level to entry loading accumulating like institutionals are doing on the higher time frame with a common stop loss. Yes, common stop loss below them just to get a better entry point like filling everything because there is the risk that it fills the first order and then skyrocket. So I just fragment my order uh but it's one position. I never have like two three four running position because um as I told you my risk management cannot be effective in this way. If I have three running position, maybe they all snap back at me and I am exposed for four, five% of the account because I'm in huge profit. I don't like this. I do one position. So I I want to actually touch more because we I didn't ask enough on the psychology side of when your anxiety I mean I think from outside perspective of a non-scalper the concern would be anxiety of too many decisions to make and too many entries and therefore too much stop losses. That would be the perception and and I'm in agreement with you that uh if you have a very mechanical based to make decisions it's not requiring too much mental capacity. You're just referencing your rules and then saying do I act or don't act. Yes. But um if the anxiety that you're getting from a trade is usually in the floating P&L, do not think in a swing account that you may have where your risk per trade is maybe larger and a 50% retracement is very healthy on M15 or 4hour whatever that your anxiety in a trade in a swing position may actually be higher than your your days where you have 30 trades. Of course, I I think this this is the reason I wanted, for example, to get a whoop for burn and check maybe when when it's floating 30, 40, $50,000, $100,000 on the position and the price went back to break even. Yeah, I I really want to do this study because for me it's the floating profit that is giving me stress, but you cannot do a scientific study on one person. You need to check everyone. We react differently from the psychology perspective. So but I think yes for me in the swing trading account for example I took the last trade it was copper uh long really big long it went to take profit but at one certain moment I had a 50% uh retracement and there was more stress on this wing account on the scalping account I was with 20 trades like managing during the day but I think it's also related to experience I'm a scalper from eight years I am a swing trader from only two years and so I'm pretty new. I'm still learning and trading but I don't have the experience of burn or Larry Williams or Eric Stoki. Now we are studying options for example and uh we see that people with 20 years 30 years of experience on the back are completely not stressed at all like you just manage things differently. this idea of let's say stress and anxiety in a position does it matter in the end because as long as you follow the correct behavior if you have emotion during the trade but you did the right thing I guess it doesn't m the result is still still positive from the money perspective yes but you have to think of what's around trading there is your family there are your friends the way you react the way you go to bed to bed if you are super stressed the way you wake up the day later. It's not good. For example, let's think that we are 3 hours in advance from, for example, Italy or from Europe here in United Arab Emirates. So, I finish my New York session at 11 in the night. Imagine getting stressed before going to bed. Yeah. Like getting a streak of three stop loss and going to bed. It's not healthy. It's also interesting because I remember when I used to swing trade, I would if I woke up in the middle of the night, I would always look at my phone to see how the trade is doing. So at least as a scalper you have conclusion of the day and then you make peace with the outcome. But with a swing you're just checking for the whole week like what's going on and you remember the emotion that you had when you check the phone during the night and you see that you are losing money. How was it? It's sometimes you enter again actually well I used to do silly things actually but yeah these emotions are strong you know actually even even um last week uh I had a trade and and a take profit level that I wanted it to meet and it was just floating around it and and just didn't go through uh not even for long maybe like 20 minutes it was just hanging around just a few pips shy and um it was a battle in my head and and I've been this should I close it should I yeah it's so close but like I don't need to be but like all these decisions But and I remember thinking like this is also me after so many years of of being exposed to this and the emotion is just as strong as it probably was in my first year. And I think the emotion maybe doesn't change or the stress you'll get on your on your wand maybe won't change. It's just your reaction towards it. You're you're more in control to not make an emotional based decision despite the emotion being there. Um the next place I want to take this conversation is you you've opened up a dimension that I don't have which is volume because of the futures market you have access to that you also mentioned now you're transitioning another transition from not only swing but also options uh what are you seeking by moving towards options trading let's say that I see options as an opportunity to remove the part about discretionary analysis because in swing trading and in scalping I'm still putting a lot of discretionary analysis. So I put my time, I put my decision making process in active with options. I noticed that is really close structure. You just plan the strategy in advance and you execute it. There is no oh maybe today it can do this. No, because you are working for example on volatility. you are working for example on uh 10 years of back testing of one option strategy on one asset on S&P 500 and you know that the average return is this you can expect this draw down you don't need to take a huge amount of decision it's like if you are planning the battle in advance okay way in advance and with scalping you are fighting the battle and adapting to the battle how is it going should we go farther should we retire what should we do? And uh it's really different from the scalping and swing trading. It's more statistical analysis and mathematics that everything else. Mhm. Why at uh almost a decade point in your career are you still in this um searching, changing, improving phase when you already have an edge and and do you not feel like I have an edge? Let me keep doing this because it's serving me. it's it's getting me podiums on on the World Cup and it's also making me money. Do you not have a sense of like if it's not broken, don't try and fix it or don't try and change it. Mhm. I before changing anything in my strategy, I do a huge amount of testing phase. Okay. So, I'm only changing what I'm sure that it's improving the model. I'm not changing this at all. For example, let's say that uh I see that the volatility on NASDAQ is rising really big under the Trump administration. So I see that the average movement for the day from MATA for the last three months is getting really big. It's getting 25% higher. Why should I keep my risk-to-reward law? I can make this additional 25% profit every position. I should adapt to this. Maybe in the next year it will be different. So I cannot use a statist a static approach to a dynamic market. If the market was always the same, I will say okay, I make a lot of money. I sit here. I'm done for life. M but the market is evolving. The the NASDAQ is changing. The amount of volume is changing. The dynamic is always something that it's evolving. So I try to survive in this market by refining my edge and before making any change making sure in advance that the change that I'm making is making me more money. You you see also burn yesterday told if the information is not making me money I don't want to know it. is the same for me. Like I don't care if Trump is doing a tweet or anything else. I have my statistical model. I know that's it. But if I can have a 5% more win rate, for example, because I start to check that if the market takes the high of the previous day or the low of the previous day, I have a bigger explosion as a reversal trade. I mean, this is something that is interesting. But before changing my model, I will back test three years. Oh, three years. Yes. Okay, that was actually going to be my next question of what is your process of uh sampling through data? How much data or do you test it on another account? Is it demo? Is it just in back testing? How do you make a decision of a change in your system? Usually is back testing and if it's not a huge amount of data, I can do multiple years. For example, if I just need to check if I have a better performance after taking the low of the day or the of the day, I can just do this with multi charts that is a platform for algorithmic uh trading. And but if I need to check for example, will my 5,000 trades sample improve with one small change, it's a huge amount of work. So probably it's not worth it. But if there is a big change for example understanding the bias of the day better to filter the trades where I take a streak of three stop loss I will I will make a lot more money if I can predict that the volatility for one day is really low from statistical analysis I can just decide today we will have consolidation with 70% probability it makes no sense to spend half of my day in front of this chart and also lose money with the considerations of your now valuing as you get older uh your time I guess your mental piece and these kind of things why take the additional pressure and stress to have to perform in a public way which is the world cup because I really value the way my students see the concept of mentor and they need we have some kind of responsibility for the people we are teaching trading to and they've always been really honest about the risk of the trading field and the trading profession and uh I was always doing live session. So I was trading in front of them. I was doing live analysis with them. I was refining the edge with them and one day the community told me try to pass the prop form in futures field during the summer because they know that during summer NASDAQ is consolidating. So they they are just picky sometimes you know they want to to push you. So I did the challenge session one session two session three and they were really happy but then they told me why you don't join the world trading cup like just to prove yourself just as a challenge I join it then I had fun because I also improved as a trader because you have all the world watching you and so if you make for example 7% draw down 5% draw down 10% draw down you have all the audience telling you ha I knew that you are not as good as you pretend to be and this is something that is forging your mind because you start not to care about external distraction. It's like scalping. Sculping in a room full of people like today with someone passing asking you what you are doing is a training for me. I'm training my mind to be in the state of flow and uh so yeah the first challenge I was not satisfied with the performance because I saw that people were pushing more than me and they don't care about draw down so the my first was like 68%. My second was 88%. My third is 218%. So I see an improvement but the draw down is the same. So just I'm using this as more to prove to myself because the goal is beating me in the previous challenge. It's not to beat the other one because if we want to do a complete challenge, we should include the draw down. If draw down is not included, I cannot see if I'm doing better than them because the absolute performance is not enough to value a trader. And uh this is the reason I joined the World Training Cup. And uh to wrap up the episode, uh it's been a a huge deep dive and both you and Andrea, I think we're going to see, but I think this is another rocket of an episode. I want to hear also as you approach the 10 year mark in your trading career. What is um the future? What is the future for you? I mean like what goals do you have? Is it more World Cups? Is it investors? What is the direction you want to take in your career? To be honest, my dream is to open an edge found and uh to have the best mind in the world, young people that really are passionate about this field because for me it's not only a profession. It's really a passion. I like to chart. I like to spend time spend time in front of chart. I like to research. I like to do it's not something that I do for money because I already have money. But doing the extra mile, spending the Sunday to see to refine the edge is something that is really fun for me. So it's really a lot of fun. And uh for this year I want to change my industry with my business partner. The industry of trading with my business partner because we see still that a lot of people are trying to connect the lifestyle showing the lifestyle with and not actual trading performance with what they want to sell. So I think this industry need a big clean up on what is happening in the field. And so the first one is edge found the second one it's a cleanup of the industry the third one it's more time more time because uh now the economical side of trading is done completed okay now I can relax but I want to really spend some time off of the charts now and to invest more time in like developing other part of my life like health. I need to take care about my health now. And um I'm also passionate about bioacking. So this is another thing that I will put my effort in 2025. Beautiful. Fabio, epic episode. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Boom. That was sick, man. I was sick. That was so sick.