Trading Strategies and Techniques

so I learn very quickly over time what's working what's not working and that may not be let's say a bad habit to unlearn that may just be like that setup doesn't work anymore quit trying to make it work so you have to journal by there's something about writing it down on a piece of paper each day that creates something very connecting for me and I I've heard it from many other Traders I journal every trade that I do I don't do a lot of Trades during the day I might do four five or six some times like today I did two if you can't Journal those trades in kind of semi-real time you really should because you'll get a lot of insights from that welcome everyone to done with David Floyd we spoke a while back about his trading kind of going more systematic so DAV welcome back on the podcast good to have you here again ATN thank you very much greatly appreciate it last time uh was great conversation and hopefully we can do a repeat and maybe even improve on yeah we always have some good chats here so tell me a bit more about kind of what's been been going on since we last spoke in terms of trading you know when we last spoke I don't remember all the details but you know it was right around the time I was kind of in the early sta not early but you know maybe the um stages where I'd made a pretty serious transition out of an analysis style that ID used for years which was Elliot wave analysis and you know it worked well for me for many years it would was nagging things though was that I was always I never felt confident in the consistency of it and even though Elliot wave is a rules-based you know analysis approach it it always lends itself to a little bit of subjectivity but I think beyond that one of the things I noted was that I could do some really really topnotch Elliot wave analysis and come up with a a game plan plan for a trade but what I realized was that unless the majority of the market participants in that particular security we looking at that same setup it may or may not play out it may just be kind of like a tree falling in the woods where Nobody's around no nobody hears it nobody cares and that really got me on a quest to look at something whereby it was objective in terms of the analysis but whereby the majority of Market participants would have a reaction to particular price levels being touched triggered whatever verb you want to use and that kind of led me to what I've been using now for probably over three years been out there publicly for maybe 18 months to two years and that's the idea of identifying price levels using look back periods that simply measure volume the price itself frequency of trades and then the specified look back period And I look at four look back periods you know each one successively longer and what I ended up finding was that trading based on the Market's interaction with those levels allowed me to be a lot one more confident and allowed me to have the you know kind of that that sense that the Market's going to respect this level I can do something with this you know it's not as simple as just saying okay well if you're coming up to this level and it's a resistance level I'm going to sell it or if it's coming into a support level I'm going to buy it maybe you do maybe you don't you still have to have some trading Acumen but without those guideposts as to what the Market's doing and where it's you how it's reacting with those levels I felt as though this was Leaps and Bounds a better approach for me to to do my trading and it has been so that's basically what I've been working on or continue to work on and continue to refine it you've been trading of course for many many many years and that's kind of something you do to I guess improve the way you do things and the way you did things before uh so people have to understand like it's something you come up that's completely new but you've been like in the market for a while you kind of want to make it better then you come up with this thing uh how different are these from like pivot Points or something is it that different they are different than pivot Points because yes pivot Points are mathematical calculation as these are um but that's just pivot Points and I have to refresh my memory but pivot Points are simply measuring highs and lows and um doing some arithmetic around that that to me is a bit arbitrary you know you're taking the high and low and then you're dividing it by something I can't remember the exact calculation and I did use pivots way back when I was starting off in the IND in the industry and I'm not saying that they're not effective but again it's leaving out one key component it's leaving out where a lot of price action is taking place um you know you might have a pivot drawn onto your chart but that doesn't necessarily reflect a historical historically significant price level what I did differently was identified where a lot of volume took place at a particular price a part uh at a specified look back period and then had that drawn onto my chart so it was basically I'm not using anything that's proprietary per se because I'm simply looking at Market data that are already exists volume price frequency and time those are all available to anybody maybe what's unique about it is how I've um you know done the calculation for the software but once I you know once you once you have that loaded you can use it for any symbol so that's how it's different than pivot Points is is to the best of my recollection of how pivot Points work um and again it takes the subjectivity out of it it's not that I'm saying that looks like a support level it's that's what the that's what the market data is telling me because what I've come to learn over the years as you said you know I've been at this a long time and kind of I like to say this and I don't like to say this at the same time you know I'm coming up on 25 plus years in the industry so that's a good thing I got a lot of experience under my belt got a lot of bumps and bruises to prove it also tells me that I'm getting older but you know maybe you get older you get a little bit wiser but the point of all this is that I want to get to a point where I'm letting the market dictate what I should be doing as opposed to me saying hey this is my forecast market and I'm going to kind of muscle you into it because that doesn't work it's kind of like being a surfer out in the ocean and you see a big wave coming and you're like well I want the wave to break this way you can't control that way the wave's going to do what the wave's going to do and the markets are going to do what they're going to do it's up to us to try to get in sync with them and if you stop stop fighting the market and get in sync with it holy crap it makes your life a whole lot easier that's a good see it Fisher so these levels you use them to trade inaday or how exactly are they used well that's the beauty I mean price levels are are time frame agnostic you know if if if there's a resistance level let's say in the S&P is at 4450 it doesn't matter if you're trading intraday if you're a swing Trader or if you're a position Trader the Market's going to come into that level and likely respect it then it's just a matter of you factoring in how you want to trade it based on your style based on your time frame based on your holding estimated holding period so you know for me on the snps for instance I love to intraday intraday trade the snps using these levels with Forex oh definitely swing or position trades I'm taking those same levels but I'm extrapolating out a little bit further because that's a market that's more conducive to that type of trading you know not necessarily to day trading so much so it really it doesn't really matter and you can use them on any symbol any any any instrument whether it be crypto ETFs Futures stocks whatever it is whatever time frame again since it's a mathematical calculation it just it really doesn't matter as long as there's price data you know the levels can be drawn on your charts and then you've got a template from which to work from I should people going to want to have a look at like what kind of levels you use and how you use them so if you want to maybe share your screen and kind of go through that you can definitely do that and kind of give you a glimpse of what you look at and how those are are used for your trading I just happen to have this set at 4 hours this is um S&P 500 chart because what I wanted to do because I knew we'd be talking a little bit about this or I suspected we would I wanted to put things into context before I really kind of Dove down and showed how they work because the key thing is that I'm looking at four different time frames or four different look back periods you know a short-term look back period medium-term medium to longterm and then longterm just like you know if you're looking at a daily chart that's more significant than let's say a one minute chart so it's the same idea here green levels are the shortest look back period then it goes to Orange then it goes to Red then it goes to purple the look back periods are pretty static they're a little bit Dynamic depending on volatility but that to me is kind of the you know kind of the part that I that the I've devised that gives a good a good reading you know the look back period is slightly adjusted just to kind of fit in with what the current volatility is um so in this instance we've got the the purple and orange levels up above and coming into today's session we were below those levels so it's kind of like saying um you're looking at a daily chart but if you look at the weekly chart we're we're bearish but it's bullish on the on the on the daily chart well you you're still bearish overall because the higher time frames are are bearish so it's kind of that same logic here so since I've got a purple level here in an orange level here and prices are below that coming into today's session there's a little bit of a bearish overtone but the fact that we had been holding this level here for you know a good better part of a month now we've kind of gone back and forth around it meaning that 4497 level we've traversed it we've come back above it we held it right here here in fact let me bring up a drawing tool so it' be easier for your users to see it give me a moment here so you you'll see that prices interact with these levels quite well and then today was the day where the the level finally gave way so the idea of using these is pretty straightforward I always look at it as resistance is resistance until proven otherwise meaning if prices are coming to a resistance level I'm not trying to play it for a break higher I'm expecting that that level will be held and prices will reverse same thing for a support level and these levels aren't support resistance by definition it just depends on where they are relative to price action so if you're approaching it it's a resistance level if you're approaching it from below approaching it from it above it's it's a support level I was actually bullish overall coming into today's session if and that's the big if if this 45 4497 level held and early on in the session we did hold that level but then we broke down below it and in fact I'd have to drop it down to a lower time frame to give you the granularity on it and I'm going to drop it down to a f minute chart so here's that 4497 level this is when the Federal Reserve made their announcement today Market immediately spiked lower did I do anything with that no prices were down here before you could even bat an eyelash but given that I was bullish coming into the session as long as we held above 4497 once we made that big break lower now you have to shift to a bearish bias support now becomes resistance we came back up retested it and then on this bar right here where we flushed lower that to me everybody can approach it differently but I had the knowhow that once we broke below and came back and retested it and couldn't get back above that's when I switched into a bearish mode then we come down and we interact with the orange level which is the next higher time frame so more significant a beautiful break below it retest and then a continuation lower so there were two entries for me at least in today's session after the FED meeting did I catch all of this move lower down into the orange nope you know it's hard to catch the whole move sometimes you do sometimes you don't did I ride this one the whole way down no I caught a good chunk of it here and and scaled out right into here but again I'm not embarrassed by that you're never going to catch the whole move what's most important is knowing that these levels are going to provide potential and that's the key word potential opportunities because the Market's going to have a reaction to them and that's the difference for me between being subjective in my analysis and objective because if I know a lot of price actions taken place at that level over a long period of time people have a vested interest in either supporting that level refuting it whatever the case may be all I know is that there will be there'll be a dog fight usually at those levels and when it fails the market gets sucked down to the next level or sucked up to the next level depending on which way you're moving so hopefully that was kind of clear how would you deal with days that are kind of just chopping around these levels you see price go up and down and kind of goes around these levels a lot would you still trade them or you kind of stay away from these choppy days it's a great question I think it's one of the things I don't want to present these things as like a magical solution that you buy them when they're coming into a support level and sell them because markets don't work like that everything does need to be taken into context you know the reason I had the opinion I had today is because we've been holding this level for so long but each day getting a little bit you know less and less bullish because we couldn't really push significantly above 44.97 so you know that bullish view starts to get eroded a little bit you I am going to answer your question So eventually when we broke it decisively that tells you all you need to know meaning the market doesn't want to hold this level anymore and when it came back and failed to get back above it's really telling you that you don't want to that it doesn't want to hold that level so to address your question yeah there are days this is an unusually good day from a price action standpoint but there could be many days where we just chop back and forth between these levels and are there opportunities yeah there are I'm not me personally I'm not interested in those levels because those have become really choppy really difficult to trade so again it all really goes back to your ability as a Trader are you a short-term Trader well maybe you do want to take advantage of those if you're a swing or longer term Trader that's just noise to you you'll wait till we get to a level where there's an inflection point like today you know you're a longer term Trader or even a shorter term Trader there were signals like that for you today but maybe you know tomorrow we could just move sideways all day and we might never interact with a level in which case I'm not making any trades by and large so you be updating these levels every day or is it more every week they update um they update when the lookback period has ended then they get changed so I don't know when these levels have change it's all well I shouldn't say that I know when they'll change it's a dynamic look back period the green levels change fairly fre frequently the purple ones rarely change I shouldn't say rarely but they don't change very often how about that so it's not like you're going to log into your computer tomorrow and these levels are going to be completely different I can assure you that this this level will be here tomorrow this level will be here tomorrow and if we Zoom back out to let's say to a two-hour chart all of these levels will still be here um they don't change very often but they do change so hopefully that's going to be you don't have to worry about it changing hour by hour day by day it doesn't work like that they're pretty they're pretty static on there um until really big moves occur then they get adjusted I was going to say and you don't have to do anything they will update automatically doesn't matter what time frame you use them on if you're looking at an hourly chart daily chart monthly the levels will all be on there something you mentioned earlier is that you look at these levels for day trading in the S&P but then on let's in Forex we look at them for mostly swing trading and position trading is there a a reason for this or what what's the logic behind this for me it's just the nature of the market I I don't again I could be wrong but I've never found relative to day trading the snps I find day trading FX to be a little bit too quiet a little too slow um I would I'm more comfortable taking a position in FX like dollar Yen recently or about to get long in CAD Yen I find those trades a little bit more compelling from a swing and position trading standpoint but still using the levels and still using the logic if I want intraday action S&P is pretty much got it for you you know it's got something for everybody there's enough movement each day where you can you can grab a few points in there so it really just depends on the market for me FX is more of a swing and position trading Market you know for others I know plenty of people who day trade FX and that's fine I just prefer to day trade the snps how do you pick the pairs you look at especially for Forex you mentioned CAD Japanese Yen which is not a pair that I think too many to look at is there any reason why you have a look at that that specific pair yeah it's interesting well I like the way the Canadian dollar moves um and you know to go back and give you a little bit more context I only look at the major pairs Kaden is kind of the Oddball there in terms of the non-traditional or the non you know major pairs I only really look at euro aie dollar dollar Yen and CAD Yen I don't really look much beyond that because again to stay on top of it and and be aware of how prices are inter acting with these levels you know you can't be looking at a ton of of symbols at least for me um Kaden I trade because sometimes dollar Yen can be just a little goofy although Kaden can be pretty goofy too but for me I just like the way it trades and I like the way dollar Yen trades at times and you know I can tell you know right now you know those are really the only two currencies I'm looking at right now that have anything to do Euro not really anything to do there's no reference points that were near for me to find a trade I mean yes it's in a downtrend but I need levels to instigate a trade and right now we're just not near any level so that's the other thing that really helps is unless you're near a level it's really hard to instigate a trade because you don't have anything to work with anything to lean on right now at dollar Yen and Caden there are levels to lean on so I I can kind of use that to my advantage so I think You' got some indicators on your chart and things you might look at I believe the stochastic is there what are these used for is it like based on adding some confence to your levels or how do you kind of use these tools yeah you know I'm creature of habit I've used stochastics since God probably since 199 7 98 I'm going back a long way so I still find them useful but definitely a secondary maybe even third fourth level indicator and I think the way you described it was probably the best way I like to look at them sometimes does it kind of confirm what I'm looking to do relative to this level or you know if you're coming up to this level and let's say I want to get short here not saying I did but let's say you wanted to get short into this purple level I might look at this and go well stochastic is pretty overbought probably makes sense um you know if I'm looking to maybe get short you know when the stochastics are here and we're below that purple level maybe I might wait a little bit and fine-tune my entry and maybe let prices rally a little bit but to be honest with you I don't try to get too read too much into that but I think some value can become can be had by doing that because everybody wants to maximize their entry point you know even if your trade ultimately works out everybody hates getting into a trade and having it immediately go against you that's the worst feeling in the world it erod your confidence so even though it's easy to look at all these things in hindsight trying to find- tune your entry points relative to these levels is still a goal of mine so you know prices may have fallen away but I might say I'm going to wait for a little bit of a rally and sell into that as opposed to getting short here and then having it go against me 20 or 30 Pips or five or 10 points on the snps even though I might ultimately be right I'm immediately get slapped on the hand once I get into the market so sometimes the stochastics can come can come in handy that way other things I look at are options flows especially in the S&P not so much in currencies and 10e notes I'll look at the options flows cuz that's the other Market I trade quite a bit of more on a swing trading basis um although there's some intraday trades on 10e notes um but again using the levels trying to find out where the Market's heading relative to using those levels so it's interesting because some Traders would believe that being like more subjective gives them a better Edge because they can pick the trades they can pick the levels uh you going more kind of more objective or over the past few years kind of it's probably something that a lot ofers want to do or they might not be sure they can have an edge by being like all objective so do you feel like there's a better Edge thatw do you feel like there's still bit of like discretion you need to have to to trade better that's a really really good question and hopefully I can do do that question Justice in terms of my answer I still believe that experience in discretion plays a huge part but before you can become discretionary you kind of have to earn it you've got to show that you can make money as a Trader even if it's not pretty you know even if you're making just a few bucks if you're demonstrating some consistency and your underlying trade metrics are improving by just using some very blunt entry levels using these you know using these price levels then you can start to factor in discretion over time there's a great quote out there I don't know who I don't know who it's attributed to but you have to earn your right to be discretionary I think to be discretionary with limited experience that's a nogo because it's like kind of me it's kind of like me showing up in an operating room going I'm going to use a little bit of discretion here on this open heart surgery I may have read the manuals May understand it intuitively but for me to go in and use discretion without having done any operations before probably not going to work out so well and I would use that same exact logic in the market until you really understand the nuances of how the markets work on a day-to-day basis and the Securities you're trading I don't think your discretion is worth anything in fact I think it will actually do more harm so I think you have to you know for so for me I got many many years under my belt yes I want to start with an objective piece of data to alert me to where a trade setup is but then I want to rely on my discretion and my intuition and my experience to maybe help me fine-tune whether or not I'm even going to use that that price level on this instance there'll be days where prices will come up to these levels and I'll do nothing because the Market's not trading in a way that's conducive to that and as a newer Trader you don't have that Insight at that point in time in your career to really make that call so you have to kind of start off using it very blunt okay we're hitting a resistance level Market's a little overbought uh some of these other markets are rolling over I'll get short that's perfectly fine that's how you kind of earn your you earn your stripes you you earn that experience you have to be blunt initially so I I think that answers your question hopefully I did a good job of addressing it because I think it's a fantastic question um you got to leave the discretion and the intuition outside of the equation until you've got enough hours under your belt so meaning if some habits or some ways see the market you picked up over the past few years of experience kind of affect how you trade today because maybe they don't don't they don't work the same today no no that's that's another really good question I mean old habits die hard and you know as someone who's been at this a long time I definitely still have some bad habits and you try to unlearn those habits as you learn new things but it's very hard um but in terms of the discretion and the experience I think once you get that under your belt I think I think that's not something that you unlearn necessarily because I think that's that's a level of experience that you've filtered over the years I think the bad habits come from doing things because you didn't know any better then once you learn that there's a better way that's an easy habit to break but I don't think you're I don't think that level of discretion unless you're not paying attention or you're deluding yourself I don't think that level of discretion needs to be unlearned because that's just like millions of data points in your head that I think if you've approached the market in the right way over the years that that will prove to be quite useful for you so I don't think that in of itself is a bad habit I think it's the bad habit you did because you didn't know any better those need to be unlearned and we all have them you know that's why you'll never arrive as a Trader in terms of figuring it out or have it figured out if I anytime I hear somebody say I got it figured out I'm like oh boy you're about to be in for a rough ride because the markets always evolve slightly and we're always on that ongoing Journey as a Trader that's just the nature of it how do you get rid of these bad habits do you have a process to go through or do you have any kind of practice of journaling or something to help with that 100% um I am a diligent journaler I'm also a Jour a diligent uploader of my trades into Trader sync software I know every trade that I have I've got everything very clearly defined in terms of what type of a setup it was so I learned very quickly over time what's working what's not working and that may not be let's say a bad habit to unlearn that may just be like that setup doesn't work anymore quit trying to make it work so you have to journal by there's something about writing it down on on a piece of paper each day that that that creates something very connecting for me and I I've heard it from many other Traders I journal every trade that I do I don't do a lot of Trades during the day I might do four five or six sometimes like today I did two if you can't Journal those trades in kind of semi-real time you really should because you'll get a lot of insights from that but the key stuff really comes from having those trades uploaded and then being able to look at your trading history you know based on time during the day may be from 7: to 8:00 a.m. I'm here on the West Coast of the US how do I trade during 7 to eight what symbols do I trade well what type of setups are working for me it's like any other business you have to go back and you have to see what's working what's not working how do I make adjustments so yeah unless you have that data and you're not if you're not keeping track of that data Woo you're missing out on something that's going to really keep you continuously keeping your Edge is there anything we didn't kind of talk about or touch on you want to mention or or focus on a little bit I don't know what the demographics are of your users or what the average EXP experience I'm sure it's all over the map but maybe they skew in one way or the other if you gave me a sense of what way you're your you your not your users but your listeners and viewers tend to skew me I'd be happy to kind of offer some insights with that type of a background in mind yeah there usually people from like somewhere between 30 and I would say 45 years old people who want to be able to go full-time trading they want to do like the way you do it which is like making a living from Trading so definitely that kind of Dem graphic well I mean first of all it can be done um I'm one of the people that has been doing it for a number of years um it requires a tremendous amount of work again I'm stating the obvious but I will get into some of the real what I would consider good insights from somebody who's done it for a while I've had my share of UPS I've had my share of downs um it's not an easy business um the the key thing I in my opinion and I think most professional Traders would would hear me out here or see it this way less is more um if you're going to try to trade every instrument that happens to come across your screen or that you see on social media it's going to make it really hard um you have to specialize um if you go to most hedge funds or any of the prop trading desks that are out there at the banks or um any of the prop desks at the hedge funds because they all have little PODS of Traders within the hedge funds trying to generate return everybody's got a specialty one person may trade British pound one person may trade Nvidia you know they're very specialized and if you're going to trade in any instrument know that you're competing against somebody who's specialized in that instrument they're going to have more insights than you because they're doing it you know five days a week six to have you know six to seven hours a day so for you to show up and go I'm going to trade Nvidia today okay maybe you'll do fine but that Nuance of not being in sync with how an instrument trades I think can be really a major blow so it really requires you to have your blinders on doesn't matter what Nvidia did today or Bitcoin or whatever if you don't trade it it's just noise and you should discount the fact that you could have gone over there and traded it and traded it well maybe you could have but you know just do yourself a favor stick to what you trade pick a handful of instruments to trade and trade them the other thing you have to get really clear on is um you got to trade on a time frame that's consistent with who your what your demeanor is your risk tolerance your demeanor I know for me personally I knew this a long time ago there was no no ambiguity about this I didn't want to be someone who held positions for weeks and months doesn't suit my personality I knew I wanted kind of that instant gratification short-term birth I wanted to capture that stuff so unless you're trading in a style that is consistent with who you are from a personality and risk tolerance standpoint it'll never work you know the two have to be um they have to be in concert with one another so I know for me anything I anything I try to push past a few days or a week or two in terms of FX or let's say 10e notes I know that I'm out of my element that's not where I want to trade that's that's too long for me to wait to know if if I've been right or not so that that's really important um you know if you can find someone who's been successful to kind of take you under their wing and I know that's kind of hard nobody that's really successful is going to want to take you under their wing per se um but you know if you can get a few minutes of their advice and get some insights from them that can go a long way um there's so much free information out there now on social media it's a blessing and a cur and I would probably say it's more of a curse because you don't know what's really good you don't know with what that person is doing or what they're saying is any is relevant but again it goes back to maybe Point number one only focus on a few instruments then maybe find a few people who trade those instruments and appear to trade them well their commentary makes sense maybe pay attention to that but I think at the end of the day you got to find your own way you you got to find a trading methodology that works for you and then you just got to grind it out until you get it figured out the problem a lot of people have is when they have a few bad days in a row they get discouraged and like well maybe I'll go try to trade this way big mistake being wrong is part of it being wrong is part of being in this business and if you can't handle that you know think about that for a while because by jumping to another style or another set of instruments to trade you're only going to find that that might work for a few days and you're going to hit a little bit of a lull again and you're back to square one specialize for me personally I like trading the big markets cuz the liquidity is there and the action is there you're going to get plenty of give and take during the day to allow you to capture a range I think when you start to get into lesser known stocks you know if you're intraday trading that is you're not going to get those moves you're going to have to be in your trades longer and that again that maybe that's better suited to you and that's fine but I'm talking more from an intraday perspective the bigger the market the more liquid and the more range it is that's where I want to be I also know it's going to be super competitive you're going against you know thousands of Traders algorithmic Traders big hedge fund Traders big Bank Traders but you know what if you sit there long enough you'll figure it out and if you use objective analysis to alert you to where the trades are eventually you you'll come around and you'll figure it out but it takes a long time there's no shortcut by any stretch that's a very cliche way to end my answer but it's absolutely true you make some really really good points there and I think that a lot of people these days maybe more than than ever or they just like to follow Trends they like to follow like what stocks is trending what's what's stock people are trading what stock is talked about online and that can be of course maybe a good thing but also a very bad thing because then they kind of be focus on their own Edge or their own style and that kind of makes it way confusing yeah and you know the other thing too at T end is when you start focusing on the stock of the day for lack of a better way to phrase it what's your conviction level why are you trading it because if you ask yourself why am I getting long here why am I getting short and you really don't know why you'll have no staying power in that trade if it starts to go adversely against you you know I can tell you when I got short the snps today on that runup back to uh 44.97 I didn't sell it at the top you know very few people can do stuff like that that thing went against me five six seven points back and forth back and forth back and forth I didn't know if I was going to right and every you know you know at 50 bucks a point per contract if you've got a few contracts on and it's five points against you now you know you're you're down four figures and you don't even know if you're going to be right but the one thing I had in my favor at that point in time was I knew that we had broken a key support level we'd come back and retested it and we weren't going back above it that kept me anchored if I didn't know why I was getting short the S smps and it's suddenly against me Five Points I'm freaking out because now I'm suddenly like why the hell am I in this trade I knew why I was in the trade didn't mean I'd be right but I was able to weather it did it suck absolutely I you know I hate that you're in the trade you're like damn it I might be wrong here Market might just blow right through me and I might have to cover that didn't happen today but boy it does happen so unless you've got a real compelling reason why you're in your trade and that's not going to happen if you're chasing the hot stocks you're doomed I hate to say it but you're going to be doomed you said you know it's a benefit and it's a curse I think there's no benefit to being kind of a carpet bagger with stocks you're just drifting from one thing to the next I don't see where the advantage is now there might be somebody that come on your show and argue that against me and that's totally fine I'm sure there's people out there that can do that the vast majority of people though are not going to be able to do that you can't trade without a a really solid skill set and expect it to be an easy ride it won't be how do you know like when you have your sweet spots of number of instrument to trade or to focus on well I think it's a personal thing you know for me what maybe my brain capacity is just a little too low but you know for me you know four or five instruments Max I can't really do much beyond that you know I'm watching in the S&P price action intraday and then keeping an eye on some of the levels on the currencies there there's not much more I can do that that's where I'm stretched now there could be somebody else out there that can follow s to 10 markets everybody's different you got to find out what works for you for me less is more and you know on an intraday basis it's the snps I'm not really trying to intraday trade anything else because that takes all my effort and attention terms of the Swing trading yeah three or four things you know 10e notes and a handful of currencies that's about all I can handle um but everybody's different so that's why that's how I think you get to The Sweet Spot the other way to know is that you know if you're trying to keep track of too many things and you're not having any successes you're as a Trader as dictated by your your journaling and your you upload your trades every day into Trader sync or Trader view or many any of the many platforms out there you'll know that you're you're probably looking at too many things you can't keep track of it you're feeling very scattered you know take your own internal temperature or how you're feeling in side you need to show up every day and be as calm as possible going yeah thought that level would be tested as opposed to oh my God how why did that happen now you're on the now you're reacting you should come in every day and have a couple of scenarios if this happens this is what I will do if that happens this is what I will do that's how I come in every single day that may not happen but when that scenario does unfold it's no mystery to me I'm like yeah I thought this would happen is it okay to get in here yeah it is no I don't I don't sense it that that's a very different way to show up and trade the market each day you know for me when I look at the snps and the other markets every day is simply a continuation of the of the previous day kind of like a new chapter in the book you know the plot line changes a little bit but the overall narrative is the same and that's where by jumping around you don't have that Common Thread so when we come in tomorrow in the snps at least unless something dramatically changes overnight which I doubt would happen I'm coming in with the bearish View tomorrow I'll know what levels I want to sell into to get short I'll know where I want to take my profit targets I'm not coming in tomorrow being bullish with this silly idea of oh it's oversold what the hell does that mean you know oversold can become more oversold so there I I'm not confused about the way I come in tomorrow morning I'm bearish until proven otherwise that's a very very different mindset than coming in going okay what are we doing I already know what I'm doing now you're trying to figure out while the Market's open that'll never work that'll never work for anybody good advice for sure so where can people find you after this podcast and connect with you and also tell them where they can get your levels and start to use them for their trading yeah that'd be great um you can go to Aspen trading.com that's my website um I also do a um a podcast with a friend of mine where we talk about these levels and that's on YouTube at day Traders podcast day Traders day trader pod um you can find it there the levels will be on my website at Aspen trading.com uh they're available for trading View and for motive wave users that's all for now they're also in the process of being available for Bloomberg um but those aren't ready yet um and you can get them on a yearly or a monthly subscription uh you'll find them incredibly effective and there's also a Discord room that if you are a subscriber we have a Discord room with the users in there talking about trading just using those levels we're not talking about anything else so we keep the the the conversation very focused on using the levels nobody's in there talking about trading based on moon cycles or Fibonacci or anything like that and I'm not discounting those ways of trading but we're not talking about that we're talking about trading using the level so that's a good teaching kind of reinforcement tool yeah for people who have issues or have a tougher time placing levels on their own or who don't want to be bothered with like placing their own levels this can be a really good tool so definitely people can check that out I'll put the link below people can see how to use them and they can start to uh yeah get them and start to use them for their trading so I appreciate that that's cool thank you D for being here appreciate your advice as always I think it's been cool good catch up and look forward to catch up with you again in the future

so I learn very quickly over time what&#39;s working what&#39;s not working and that may not be let&#39;s say a bad habit to unlearn that may just be like that setup doesn&#39;t work anymore quit trying to make it work so you have to journal by there&#39;s something about writing it down on a piece of paper each day that creates something very connecting for me and I I&#39;ve heard it from many other Traders I journal every trade that I do I don&#39;t do a lot of Trades during the day I might do four five or six some times like today I did two if you can&#39;t Journal those trades in kind of semi-real time you really should because you&#39;ll get a lot of insights from that welcome everyone to done with David Floyd we spoke a while back about his trading kind of going more systematic so DAV welcome back on the podcast good to have you here again ATN thank you very much greatly appreciate it last time uh was great conversation and hopefully we can do a repeat and maybe even improve on yeah we always have some good chats here so tell me a bit more about kind of what&#39;s been been going on since we last spoke in terms of trading you know when we last spoke I don&#39;t remember all the details but you know it was right around the time I was kind of in the early sta not early but you know maybe the um stages where I&#39;d made a pretty serious transition out of an analysis style that ID used for years which was Elliot wave analysis and you know it worked well for me for many years it would was nagging things though was that I was always I never felt confident in the consistency of it and even though Elliot wave is a rules-based you know analysis approach it it always lends itself to a little bit of subjectivity but I think beyond that one of the things I noted was that I could do some really really topnotch Elliot wave analysis and come up with a a game plan plan for a trade but what I realized was that unless the majority of the market participants in that particular security we looking at that same setup it may or may not play out it may just be kind of like a tree falling in the woods where Nobody&#39;s around no nobody hears it nobody cares and that really got me on a quest to look at something whereby it was objective in terms of the analysis but whereby the majority of Market participants would have a reaction to particular price levels being touched triggered whatever verb you want to use and that kind of led me to what I&#39;ve been using now for probably over three years been out there publicly for maybe 18 months to two years and that&#39;s the idea of identifying price levels using look back periods that simply measure volume the price itself frequency of trades and then the specified look back period And I look at four look back periods you know each one successively longer and what I ended up finding was that trading based on the Market&#39;s interaction with those levels allowed me to be a lot one more confident and allowed me to have the you know kind of that that sense that the Market&#39;s going to respect this level I can do something with this you know it&#39;s not as simple as just saying okay well if you&#39;re coming up to this level and it&#39;s a resistance level I&#39;m going to sell it or if it&#39;s coming into a support level I&#39;m going to buy it maybe you do maybe you don&#39;t you still have to have some trading Acumen but without those guideposts as to what the Market&#39;s doing and where it&#39;s you how it&#39;s reacting with those levels I felt as though this was Leaps and Bounds a better approach for me to to do my trading and it has been so that&#39;s basically what I&#39;ve been working on or continue to work on and continue to refine it you&#39;ve been trading of course for many many many years and that&#39;s kind of something you do to I guess improve the way you do things and the way you did things before uh so people have to understand like it&#39;s something you come up that&#39;s completely new but you&#39;ve been like in the market for a while you kind of want to make it better then you come up with this thing uh how different are these from like pivot Points or something is it that different they are different than pivot Points because yes pivot Points are mathematical calculation as these are um but that&#39;s just pivot Points and I have to refresh my memory but pivot Points are simply measuring highs and lows and um doing some arithmetic around that that to me is a bit arbitrary you know you&#39;re taking the high and low and then you&#39;re dividing it by something I can&#39;t remember the exact calculation and I did use pivots way back when I was starting off in the IND in the industry and I&#39;m not saying that they&#39;re not effective but again it&#39;s leaving out one key component it&#39;s leaving out where a lot of price action is taking place um you know you might have a pivot drawn onto your chart but that doesn&#39;t necessarily reflect a historical historically significant price level what I did differently was identified where a lot of volume took place at a particular price a part uh at a specified look back period and then had that drawn onto my chart so it was basically I&#39;m not using anything that&#39;s proprietary per se because I&#39;m simply looking at Market data that are already exists volume price frequency and time those are all available to anybody maybe what&#39;s unique about it is how I&#39;ve um you know done the calculation for the software but once I you know once you once you have that loaded you can use it for any symbol so that&#39;s how it&#39;s different than pivot Points is is to the best of my recollection of how pivot Points work um and again it takes the subjectivity out of it it&#39;s not that I&#39;m saying that looks like a support level it&#39;s that&#39;s what the that&#39;s what the market data is telling me because what I&#39;ve come to learn over the years as you said you know I&#39;ve been at this a long time and kind of I like to say this and I don&#39;t like to say this at the same time you know I&#39;m coming up on 25 plus years in the industry so that&#39;s a good thing I got a lot of experience under my belt got a lot of bumps and bruises to prove it also tells me that I&#39;m getting older but you know maybe you get older you get a little bit wiser but the point of all this is that I want to get to a point where I&#39;m letting the market dictate what I should be doing as opposed to me saying hey this is my forecast market and I&#39;m going to kind of muscle you into it because that doesn&#39;t work it&#39;s kind of like being a surfer out in the ocean and you see a big wave coming and you&#39;re like well I want the wave to break this way you can&#39;t control that way the wave&#39;s going to do what the wave&#39;s going to do and the markets are going to do what they&#39;re going to do it&#39;s up to us to try to get in sync with them and if you stop stop fighting the market and get in sync with it holy crap it makes your life a whole lot easier that&#39;s a good see it Fisher so these levels you use them to trade inaday or how exactly are they used well that&#39;s the beauty I mean price levels are are time frame agnostic you know if if if there&#39;s a resistance level let&#39;s say in the S&amp;P is at 4450 it doesn&#39;t matter if you&#39;re trading intraday if you&#39;re a swing Trader or if you&#39;re a position Trader the Market&#39;s going to come into that level and likely respect it then it&#39;s just a matter of you factoring in how you want to trade it based on your style based on your time frame based on your holding estimated holding period so you know for me on the snps for instance I love to intraday intraday trade the snps using these levels with Forex oh definitely swing or position trades I&#39;m taking those same levels but I&#39;m extrapolating out a little bit further because that&#39;s a market that&#39;s more conducive to that type of trading you know not necessarily to day trading so much so it really it doesn&#39;t really matter and you can use them on any symbol any any any instrument whether it be crypto ETFs Futures stocks whatever it is whatever time frame again since it&#39;s a mathematical calculation it just it really doesn&#39;t matter as long as there&#39;s price data you know the levels can be drawn on your charts and then you&#39;ve got a template from which to work from I should people going to want to have a look at like what kind of levels you use and how you use them so if you want to maybe share your screen and kind of go through that you can definitely do that and kind of give you a glimpse of what you look at and how those are are used for your trading I just happen to have this set at 4 hours this is um S&amp;P 500 chart because what I wanted to do because I knew we&#39;d be talking a little bit about this or I suspected we would I wanted to put things into context before I really kind of Dove down and showed how they work because the key thing is that I&#39;m looking at four different time frames or four different look back periods you know a short-term look back period medium-term medium to longterm and then longterm just like you know if you&#39;re looking at a daily chart that&#39;s more significant than let&#39;s say a one minute chart so it&#39;s the same idea here green levels are the shortest look back period then it goes to Orange then it goes to Red then it goes to purple the look back periods are pretty static they&#39;re a little bit Dynamic depending on volatility but that to me is kind of the you know kind of the part that I that the I&#39;ve devised that gives a good a good reading you know the look back period is slightly adjusted just to kind of fit in with what the current volatility is um so in this instance we&#39;ve got the the purple and orange levels up above and coming into today&#39;s session we were below those levels so it&#39;s kind of like saying um you&#39;re looking at a daily chart but if you look at the weekly chart we&#39;re we&#39;re bearish but it&#39;s bullish on the on the on the daily chart well you you&#39;re still bearish overall because the higher time frames are are bearish so it&#39;s kind of that same logic here so since I&#39;ve got a purple level here in an orange level here and prices are below that coming into today&#39;s session there&#39;s a little bit of a bearish overtone but the fact that we had been holding this level here for you know a good better part of a month now we&#39;ve kind of gone back and forth around it meaning that 4497 level we&#39;ve traversed it we&#39;ve come back above it we held it right here here in fact let me bring up a drawing tool so it&#39; be easier for your users to see it give me a moment here so you you&#39;ll see that prices interact with these levels quite well and then today was the day where the the level finally gave way so the idea of using these is pretty straightforward I always look at it as resistance is resistance until proven otherwise meaning if prices are coming to a resistance level I&#39;m not trying to play it for a break higher I&#39;m expecting that that level will be held and prices will reverse same thing for a support level and these levels aren&#39;t support resistance by definition it just depends on where they are relative to price action so if you&#39;re approaching it it&#39;s a resistance level if you&#39;re approaching it from below approaching it from it above it&#39;s it&#39;s a support level I was actually bullish overall coming into today&#39;s session if and that&#39;s the big if if this 45 4497 level held and early on in the session we did hold that level but then we broke down below it and in fact I&#39;d have to drop it down to a lower time frame to give you the granularity on it and I&#39;m going to drop it down to a f minute chart so here&#39;s that 4497 level this is when the Federal Reserve made their announcement today Market immediately spiked lower did I do anything with that no prices were down here before you could even bat an eyelash but given that I was bullish coming into the session as long as we held above 4497 once we made that big break lower now you have to shift to a bearish bias support now becomes resistance we came back up retested it and then on this bar right here where we flushed lower that to me everybody can approach it differently but I had the knowhow that once we broke below and came back and retested it and couldn&#39;t get back above that&#39;s when I switched into a bearish mode then we come down and we interact with the orange level which is the next higher time frame so more significant a beautiful break below it retest and then a continuation lower so there were two entries for me at least in today&#39;s session after the FED meeting did I catch all of this move lower down into the orange nope you know it&#39;s hard to catch the whole move sometimes you do sometimes you don&#39;t did I ride this one the whole way down no I caught a good chunk of it here and and scaled out right into here but again I&#39;m not embarrassed by that you&#39;re never going to catch the whole move what&#39;s most important is knowing that these levels are going to provide potential and that&#39;s the key word potential opportunities because the Market&#39;s going to have a reaction to them and that&#39;s the difference for me between being subjective in my analysis and objective because if I know a lot of price actions taken place at that level over a long period of time people have a vested interest in either supporting that level refuting it whatever the case may be all I know is that there will be there&#39;ll be a dog fight usually at those levels and when it fails the market gets sucked down to the next level or sucked up to the next level depending on which way you&#39;re moving so hopefully that was kind of clear how would you deal with days that are kind of just chopping around these levels you see price go up and down and kind of goes around these levels a lot would you still trade them or you kind of stay away from these choppy days it&#39;s a great question I think it&#39;s one of the things I don&#39;t want to present these things as like a magical solution that you buy them when they&#39;re coming into a support level and sell them because markets don&#39;t work like that everything does need to be taken into context you know the reason I had the opinion I had today is because we&#39;ve been holding this level for so long but each day getting a little bit you know less and less bullish because we couldn&#39;t really push significantly above 44.97 so you know that bullish view starts to get eroded a little bit you I am going to answer your question So eventually when we broke it decisively that tells you all you need to know meaning the market doesn&#39;t want to hold this level anymore and when it came back and failed to get back above it&#39;s really telling you that you don&#39;t want to that it doesn&#39;t want to hold that level so to address your question yeah there are days this is an unusually good day from a price action standpoint but there could be many days where we just chop back and forth between these levels and are there opportunities yeah there are I&#39;m not me personally I&#39;m not interested in those levels because those have become really choppy really difficult to trade so again it all really goes back to your ability as a Trader are you a short-term Trader well maybe you do want to take advantage of those if you&#39;re a swing or longer term Trader that&#39;s just noise to you you&#39;ll wait till we get to a level where there&#39;s an inflection point like today you know you&#39;re a longer term Trader or even a shorter term Trader there were signals like that for you today but maybe you know tomorrow we could just move sideways all day and we might never interact with a level in which case I&#39;m not making any trades by and large so you be updating these levels every day or is it more every week they update um they update when the lookback period has ended then they get changed so I don&#39;t know when these levels have change it&#39;s all well I shouldn&#39;t say that I know when they&#39;ll change it&#39;s a dynamic look back period the green levels change fairly fre frequently the purple ones rarely change I shouldn&#39;t say rarely but they don&#39;t change very often how about that so it&#39;s not like you&#39;re going to log into your computer tomorrow and these levels are going to be completely different I can assure you that this this level will be here tomorrow this level will be here tomorrow and if we Zoom back out to let&#39;s say to a two-hour chart all of these levels will still be here um they don&#39;t change very often but they do change so hopefully that&#39;s going to be you don&#39;t have to worry about it changing hour by hour day by day it doesn&#39;t work like that they&#39;re pretty they&#39;re pretty static on there um until really big moves occur then they get adjusted I was going to say and you don&#39;t have to do anything they will update automatically doesn&#39;t matter what time frame you use them on if you&#39;re looking at an hourly chart daily chart monthly the levels will all be on there something you mentioned earlier is that you look at these levels for day trading in the S&amp;P but then on let&#39;s in Forex we look at them for mostly swing trading and position trading is there a a reason for this or what what&#39;s the logic behind this for me it&#39;s just the nature of the market I I don&#39;t again I could be wrong but I&#39;ve never found relative to day trading the snps I find day trading FX to be a little bit too quiet a little too slow um I would I&#39;m more comfortable taking a position in FX like dollar Yen recently or about to get long in CAD Yen I find those trades a little bit more compelling from a swing and position trading standpoint but still using the levels and still using the logic if I want intraday action S&amp;P is pretty much got it for you you know it&#39;s got something for everybody there&#39;s enough movement each day where you can you can grab a few points in there so it really just depends on the market for me FX is more of a swing and position trading Market you know for others I know plenty of people who day trade FX and that&#39;s fine I just prefer to day trade the snps how do you pick the pairs you look at especially for Forex you mentioned CAD Japanese Yen which is not a pair that I think too many to look at is there any reason why you have a look at that that specific pair yeah it&#39;s interesting well I like the way the Canadian dollar moves um and you know to go back and give you a little bit more context I only look at the major pairs Kaden is kind of the Oddball there in terms of the non-traditional or the non you know major pairs I only really look at euro aie dollar dollar Yen and CAD Yen I don&#39;t really look much beyond that because again to stay on top of it and and be aware of how prices are inter acting with these levels you know you can&#39;t be looking at a ton of of symbols at least for me um Kaden I trade because sometimes dollar Yen can be just a little goofy although Kaden can be pretty goofy too but for me I just like the way it trades and I like the way dollar Yen trades at times and you know I can tell you know right now you know those are really the only two currencies I&#39;m looking at right now that have anything to do Euro not really anything to do there&#39;s no reference points that were near for me to find a trade I mean yes it&#39;s in a downtrend but I need levels to instigate a trade and right now we&#39;re just not near any level so that&#39;s the other thing that really helps is unless you&#39;re near a level it&#39;s really hard to instigate a trade because you don&#39;t have anything to work with anything to lean on right now at dollar Yen and Caden there are levels to lean on so I I can kind of use that to my advantage so I think You&#39; got some indicators on your chart and things you might look at I believe the stochastic is there what are these used for is it like based on adding some confence to your levels or how do you kind of use these tools yeah you know I&#39;m creature of habit I&#39;ve used stochastics since God probably since 199 7 98 I&#39;m going back a long way so I still find them useful but definitely a secondary maybe even third fourth level indicator and I think the way you described it was probably the best way I like to look at them sometimes does it kind of confirm what I&#39;m looking to do relative to this level or you know if you&#39;re coming up to this level and let&#39;s say I want to get short here not saying I did but let&#39;s say you wanted to get short into this purple level I might look at this and go well stochastic is pretty overbought probably makes sense um you know if I&#39;m looking to maybe get short you know when the stochastics are here and we&#39;re below that purple level maybe I might wait a little bit and fine-tune my entry and maybe let prices rally a little bit but to be honest with you I don&#39;t try to get too read too much into that but I think some value can become can be had by doing that because everybody wants to maximize their entry point you know even if your trade ultimately works out everybody hates getting into a trade and having it immediately go against you that&#39;s the worst feeling in the world it erod your confidence so even though it&#39;s easy to look at all these things in hindsight trying to find- tune your entry points relative to these levels is still a goal of mine so you know prices may have fallen away but I might say I&#39;m going to wait for a little bit of a rally and sell into that as opposed to getting short here and then having it go against me 20 or 30 Pips or five or 10 points on the snps even though I might ultimately be right I&#39;m immediately get slapped on the hand once I get into the market so sometimes the stochastics can come can come in handy that way other things I look at are options flows especially in the S&amp;P not so much in currencies and 10e notes I&#39;ll look at the options flows cuz that&#39;s the other Market I trade quite a bit of more on a swing trading basis um although there&#39;s some intraday trades on 10e notes um but again using the levels trying to find out where the Market&#39;s heading relative to using those levels so it&#39;s interesting because some Traders would believe that being like more subjective gives them a better Edge because they can pick the trades they can pick the levels uh you going more kind of more objective or over the past few years kind of it&#39;s probably something that a lot ofers want to do or they might not be sure they can have an edge by being like all objective so do you feel like there&#39;s a better Edge thatw do you feel like there&#39;s still bit of like discretion you need to have to to trade better that&#39;s a really really good question and hopefully I can do do that question Justice in terms of my answer I still believe that experience in discretion plays a huge part but before you can become discretionary you kind of have to earn it you&#39;ve got to show that you can make money as a Trader even if it&#39;s not pretty you know even if you&#39;re making just a few bucks if you&#39;re demonstrating some consistency and your underlying trade metrics are improving by just using some very blunt entry levels using these you know using these price levels then you can start to factor in discretion over time there&#39;s a great quote out there I don&#39;t know who I don&#39;t know who it&#39;s attributed to but you have to earn your right to be discretionary I think to be discretionary with limited experience that&#39;s a nogo because it&#39;s like kind of me it&#39;s kind of like me showing up in an operating room going I&#39;m going to use a little bit of discretion here on this open heart surgery I may have read the manuals May understand it intuitively but for me to go in and use discretion without having done any operations before probably not going to work out so well and I would use that same exact logic in the market until you really understand the nuances of how the markets work on a day-to-day basis and the Securities you&#39;re trading I don&#39;t think your discretion is worth anything in fact I think it will actually do more harm so I think you have to you know for so for me I got many many years under my belt yes I want to start with an objective piece of data to alert me to where a trade setup is but then I want to rely on my discretion and my intuition and my experience to maybe help me fine-tune whether or not I&#39;m even going to use that that price level on this instance there&#39;ll be days where prices will come up to these levels and I&#39;ll do nothing because the Market&#39;s not trading in a way that&#39;s conducive to that and as a newer Trader you don&#39;t have that Insight at that point in time in your career to really make that call so you have to kind of start off using it very blunt okay we&#39;re hitting a resistance level Market&#39;s a little overbought uh some of these other markets are rolling over I&#39;ll get short that&#39;s perfectly fine that&#39;s how you kind of earn your you earn your stripes you you earn that experience you have to be blunt initially so I I think that answers your question hopefully I did a good job of addressing it because I think it&#39;s a fantastic question um you got to leave the discretion and the intuition outside of the equation until you&#39;ve got enough hours under your belt so meaning if some habits or some ways see the market you picked up over the past few years of experience kind of affect how you trade today because maybe they don&#39;t don&#39;t they don&#39;t work the same today no no that&#39;s that&#39;s another really good question I mean old habits die hard and you know as someone who&#39;s been at this a long time I definitely still have some bad habits and you try to unlearn those habits as you learn new things but it&#39;s very hard um but in terms of the discretion and the experience I think once you get that under your belt I think I think that&#39;s not something that you unlearn necessarily because I think that&#39;s that&#39;s a level of experience that you&#39;ve filtered over the years I think the bad habits come from doing things because you didn&#39;t know any better then once you learn that there&#39;s a better way that&#39;s an easy habit to break but I don&#39;t think you&#39;re I don&#39;t think that level of discretion unless you&#39;re not paying attention or you&#39;re deluding yourself I don&#39;t think that level of discretion needs to be unlearned because that&#39;s just like millions of data points in your head that I think if you&#39;ve approached the market in the right way over the years that that will prove to be quite useful for you so I don&#39;t think that in of itself is a bad habit I think it&#39;s the bad habit you did because you didn&#39;t know any better those need to be unlearned and we all have them you know that&#39;s why you&#39;ll never arrive as a Trader in terms of figuring it out or have it figured out if I anytime I hear somebody say I got it figured out I&#39;m like oh boy you&#39;re about to be in for a rough ride because the markets always evolve slightly and we&#39;re always on that ongoing Journey as a Trader that&#39;s just the nature of it how do you get rid of these bad habits do you have a process to go through or do you have any kind of practice of journaling or something to help with that 100% um I am a diligent journaler I&#39;m also a Jour a diligent uploader of my trades into Trader sync software I know every trade that I have I&#39;ve got everything very clearly defined in terms of what type of a setup it was so I learned very quickly over time what&#39;s working what&#39;s not working and that may not be let&#39;s say a bad habit to unlearn that may just be like that setup doesn&#39;t work anymore quit trying to make it work so you have to journal by there&#39;s something about writing it down on on a piece of paper each day that that that creates something very connecting for me and I I&#39;ve heard it from many other Traders I journal every trade that I do I don&#39;t do a lot of Trades during the day I might do four five or six sometimes like today I did two if you can&#39;t Journal those trades in kind of semi-real time you really should because you&#39;ll get a lot of insights from that but the key stuff really comes from having those trades uploaded and then being able to look at your trading history you know based on time during the day may be from 7: to 8:00 a.m. I&#39;m here on the West Coast of the US how do I trade during 7 to eight what symbols do I trade well what type of setups are working for me it&#39;s like any other business you have to go back and you have to see what&#39;s working what&#39;s not working how do I make adjustments so yeah unless you have that data and you&#39;re not if you&#39;re not keeping track of that data Woo you&#39;re missing out on something that&#39;s going to really keep you continuously keeping your Edge is there anything we didn&#39;t kind of talk about or touch on you want to mention or or focus on a little bit I don&#39;t know what the demographics are of your users or what the average EXP experience I&#39;m sure it&#39;s all over the map but maybe they skew in one way or the other if you gave me a sense of what way you&#39;re your you your not your users but your listeners and viewers tend to skew me I&#39;d be happy to kind of offer some insights with that type of a background in mind yeah there usually people from like somewhere between 30 and I would say 45 years old people who want to be able to go full-time trading they want to do like the way you do it which is like making a living from Trading so definitely that kind of Dem graphic well I mean first of all it can be done um I&#39;m one of the people that has been doing it for a number of years um it requires a tremendous amount of work again I&#39;m stating the obvious but I will get into some of the real what I would consider good insights from somebody who&#39;s done it for a while I&#39;ve had my share of UPS I&#39;ve had my share of downs um it&#39;s not an easy business um the the key thing I in my opinion and I think most professional Traders would would hear me out here or see it this way less is more um if you&#39;re going to try to trade every instrument that happens to come across your screen or that you see on social media it&#39;s going to make it really hard um you have to specialize um if you go to most hedge funds or any of the prop trading desks that are out there at the banks or um any of the prop desks at the hedge funds because they all have little PODS of Traders within the hedge funds trying to generate return everybody&#39;s got a specialty one person may trade British pound one person may trade Nvidia you know they&#39;re very specialized and if you&#39;re going to trade in any instrument know that you&#39;re competing against somebody who&#39;s specialized in that instrument they&#39;re going to have more insights than you because they&#39;re doing it you know five days a week six to have you know six to seven hours a day so for you to show up and go I&#39;m going to trade Nvidia today okay maybe you&#39;ll do fine but that Nuance of not being in sync with how an instrument trades I think can be really a major blow so it really requires you to have your blinders on doesn&#39;t matter what Nvidia did today or Bitcoin or whatever if you don&#39;t trade it it&#39;s just noise and you should discount the fact that you could have gone over there and traded it and traded it well maybe you could have but you know just do yourself a favor stick to what you trade pick a handful of instruments to trade and trade them the other thing you have to get really clear on is um you got to trade on a time frame that&#39;s consistent with who your what your demeanor is your risk tolerance your demeanor I know for me personally I knew this a long time ago there was no no ambiguity about this I didn&#39;t want to be someone who held positions for weeks and months doesn&#39;t suit my personality I knew I wanted kind of that instant gratification short-term birth I wanted to capture that stuff so unless you&#39;re trading in a style that is consistent with who you are from a personality and risk tolerance standpoint it&#39;ll never work you know the two have to be um they have to be in concert with one another so I know for me anything I anything I try to push past a few days or a week or two in terms of FX or let&#39;s say 10e notes I know that I&#39;m out of my element that&#39;s not where I want to trade that&#39;s that&#39;s too long for me to wait to know if if I&#39;ve been right or not so that that&#39;s really important um you know if you can find someone who&#39;s been successful to kind of take you under their wing and I know that&#39;s kind of hard nobody that&#39;s really successful is going to want to take you under their wing per se um but you know if you can get a few minutes of their advice and get some insights from them that can go a long way um there&#39;s so much free information out there now on social media it&#39;s a blessing and a cur and I would probably say it&#39;s more of a curse because you don&#39;t know what&#39;s really good you don&#39;t know with what that person is doing or what they&#39;re saying is any is relevant but again it goes back to maybe Point number one only focus on a few instruments then maybe find a few people who trade those instruments and appear to trade them well their commentary makes sense maybe pay attention to that but I think at the end of the day you got to find your own way you you got to find a trading methodology that works for you and then you just got to grind it out until you get it figured out the problem a lot of people have is when they have a few bad days in a row they get discouraged and like well maybe I&#39;ll go try to trade this way big mistake being wrong is part of it being wrong is part of being in this business and if you can&#39;t handle that you know think about that for a while because by jumping to another style or another set of instruments to trade you&#39;re only going to find that that might work for a few days and you&#39;re going to hit a little bit of a lull again and you&#39;re back to square one specialize for me personally I like trading the big markets cuz the liquidity is there and the action is there you&#39;re going to get plenty of give and take during the day to allow you to capture a range I think when you start to get into lesser known stocks you know if you&#39;re intraday trading that is you&#39;re not going to get those moves you&#39;re going to have to be in your trades longer and that again that maybe that&#39;s better suited to you and that&#39;s fine but I&#39;m talking more from an intraday perspective the bigger the market the more liquid and the more range it is that&#39;s where I want to be I also know it&#39;s going to be super competitive you&#39;re going against you know thousands of Traders algorithmic Traders big hedge fund Traders big Bank Traders but you know what if you sit there long enough you&#39;ll figure it out and if you use objective analysis to alert you to where the trades are eventually you you&#39;ll come around and you&#39;ll figure it out but it takes a long time there&#39;s no shortcut by any stretch that&#39;s a very cliche way to end my answer but it&#39;s absolutely true you make some really really good points there and I think that a lot of people these days maybe more than than ever or they just like to follow Trends they like to follow like what stocks is trending what&#39;s what&#39;s stock people are trading what stock is talked about online and that can be of course maybe a good thing but also a very bad thing because then they kind of be focus on their own Edge or their own style and that kind of makes it way confusing yeah and you know the other thing too at T end is when you start focusing on the stock of the day for lack of a better way to phrase it what&#39;s your conviction level why are you trading it because if you ask yourself why am I getting long here why am I getting short and you really don&#39;t know why you&#39;ll have no staying power in that trade if it starts to go adversely against you you know I can tell you when I got short the snps today on that runup back to uh 44.97 I didn&#39;t sell it at the top you know very few people can do stuff like that that thing went against me five six seven points back and forth back and forth back and forth I didn&#39;t know if I was going to right and every you know you know at 50 bucks a point per contract if you&#39;ve got a few contracts on and it&#39;s five points against you now you know you&#39;re you&#39;re down four figures and you don&#39;t even know if you&#39;re going to be right but the one thing I had in my favor at that point in time was I knew that we had broken a key support level we&#39;d come back and retested it and we weren&#39;t going back above it that kept me anchored if I didn&#39;t know why I was getting short the S smps and it&#39;s suddenly against me Five Points I&#39;m freaking out because now I&#39;m suddenly like why the hell am I in this trade I knew why I was in the trade didn&#39;t mean I&#39;d be right but I was able to weather it did it suck absolutely I you know I hate that you&#39;re in the trade you&#39;re like damn it I might be wrong here Market might just blow right through me and I might have to cover that didn&#39;t happen today but boy it does happen so unless you&#39;ve got a real compelling reason why you&#39;re in your trade and that&#39;s not going to happen if you&#39;re chasing the hot stocks you&#39;re doomed I hate to say it but you&#39;re going to be doomed you said you know it&#39;s a benefit and it&#39;s a curse I think there&#39;s no benefit to being kind of a carpet bagger with stocks you&#39;re just drifting from one thing to the next I don&#39;t see where the advantage is now there might be somebody that come on your show and argue that against me and that&#39;s totally fine I&#39;m sure there&#39;s people out there that can do that the vast majority of people though are not going to be able to do that you can&#39;t trade without a a really solid skill set and expect it to be an easy ride it won&#39;t be how do you know like when you have your sweet spots of number of instrument to trade or to focus on well I think it&#39;s a personal thing you know for me what maybe my brain capacity is just a little too low but you know for me you know four or five instruments Max I can&#39;t really do much beyond that you know I&#39;m watching in the S&amp;P price action intraday and then keeping an eye on some of the levels on the currencies there there&#39;s not much more I can do that that&#39;s where I&#39;m stretched now there could be somebody else out there that can follow s to 10 markets everybody&#39;s different you got to find out what works for you for me less is more and you know on an intraday basis it&#39;s the snps I&#39;m not really trying to intraday trade anything else because that takes all my effort and attention terms of the Swing trading yeah three or four things you know 10e notes and a handful of currencies that&#39;s about all I can handle um but everybody&#39;s different so that&#39;s why that&#39;s how I think you get to The Sweet Spot the other way to know is that you know if you&#39;re trying to keep track of too many things and you&#39;re not having any successes you&#39;re as a Trader as dictated by your your journaling and your you upload your trades every day into Trader sync or Trader view or many any of the many platforms out there you&#39;ll know that you&#39;re you&#39;re probably looking at too many things you can&#39;t keep track of it you&#39;re feeling very scattered you know take your own internal temperature or how you&#39;re feeling in side you need to show up every day and be as calm as possible going yeah thought that level would be tested as opposed to oh my God how why did that happen now you&#39;re on the now you&#39;re reacting you should come in every day and have a couple of scenarios if this happens this is what I will do if that happens this is what I will do that&#39;s how I come in every single day that may not happen but when that scenario does unfold it&#39;s no mystery to me I&#39;m like yeah I thought this would happen is it okay to get in here yeah it is no I don&#39;t I don&#39;t sense it that that&#39;s a very different way to show up and trade the market each day you know for me when I look at the snps and the other markets every day is simply a continuation of the of the previous day kind of like a new chapter in the book you know the plot line changes a little bit but the overall narrative is the same and that&#39;s where by jumping around you don&#39;t have that Common Thread so when we come in tomorrow in the snps at least unless something dramatically changes overnight which I doubt would happen I&#39;m coming in with the bearish View tomorrow I&#39;ll know what levels I want to sell into to get short I&#39;ll know where I want to take my profit targets I&#39;m not coming in tomorrow being bullish with this silly idea of oh it&#39;s oversold what the hell does that mean you know oversold can become more oversold so there I I&#39;m not confused about the way I come in tomorrow morning I&#39;m bearish until proven otherwise that&#39;s a very very different mindset than coming in going okay what are we doing I already know what I&#39;m doing now you&#39;re trying to figure out while the Market&#39;s open that&#39;ll never work that&#39;ll never work for anybody good advice for sure so where can people find you after this podcast and connect with you and also tell them where they can get your levels and start to use them for their trading yeah that&#39;d be great um you can go to Aspen trading.com that&#39;s my website um I also do a um a podcast with a friend of mine where we talk about these levels and that&#39;s on YouTube at day Traders podcast day Traders day trader pod um you can find it there the levels will be on my website at Aspen trading.com uh they&#39;re available for trading View and for motive wave users that&#39;s all for now they&#39;re also in the process of being available for Bloomberg um but those aren&#39;t ready yet um and you can get them on a yearly or a monthly subscription uh you&#39;ll find them incredibly effective and there&#39;s also a Discord room that if you are a subscriber we have a Discord room with the users in there talking about trading just using those levels we&#39;re not talking about anything else so we keep the the the conversation very focused on using the levels nobody&#39;s in there talking about trading based on moon cycles or Fibonacci or anything like that and I&#39;m not discounting those ways of trading but we&#39;re not talking about that we&#39;re talking about trading using the level so that&#39;s a good teaching kind of reinforcement tool yeah for people who have issues or have a tougher time placing levels on their own or who don&#39;t want to be bothered with like placing their own levels this can be a really good tool so definitely people can check that out I&#39;ll put the link below people can see how to use them and they can start to uh yeah get them and start to use them for their trading so I appreciate that that&#39;s cool thank you D for being here appreciate your advice as always I think it&#39;s been cool good catch up and look forward to catch up with you again in the future

Transcript for:Trading Strategies and Techniques

Transcript for:
Trading Strategies and Techniques