Trading LIVE with TWO World Class Order Flow Scalpers (FT Fabio Valentini & Carmine Rosato)

Now this kind of setup, I'm making $2,000 risking $600, so I will trail my stop loss because this one can get to a $3,000, $4,000 position.

Those are my best setups, especially for continuation. Like you said, I don't know if today's really a continuation type of session, but engaging in this cage, it's really a suicide for a scalper. Are we gonna today?

I don't know, let's see.

We have two world-class scalpers, Fabio Valentini and Carmine Rosato.

For the first time ever, we have two hyper-profitable traders who both trade order flow, trading live the New York session, putting Risk at zero with this absorption of the top was really smart because I would never give $1,000 to the market without a reason.

I won't take anything under 2:1, but majority of my trades are 4:1, 3.5:1. It really depends on my entry and my target.

I think it's smart what you are doing. You are waiting for the cage to be clean so you have really clean price action.

I rarely move my target because—

In this special episode on Chart Fanatics, you will see their step-by-step process and inside the mind in real time, their decision-making when it's time to step in and execute.

I like trading where there's not a lot of liquidity because that is where, in my opinion, a lot of the edge comes from. So this goes to show you two different positions. We have the same analysis of this moving up, you taking it because of the volatility on the NASDAQ and you not putting any influence on the previous structure that I have because NASDAQ is usually a driver because it's less liquid.

But how to manage a trade, when to take a step back, and understanding most of all market conditions— all this and more only for the first time on Chart Fanatics.

The volume is really low for the session, so I'm lowering the sensitivity of the big trades to 40.

That's interesting. You do that?

I never do this in New York session, but—

Hey guys, it's February 13th. I'm with Fabio here in Dubai, and we're going to be trading the New York Stock Open live here, the 9:30 open. Hopefully we can see some good setups. Yesterday, Thursday, February 12th was a crazy session in both the Nasdaq and the S&P. So it's going to be interesting to see the opportunities that come today. There's some levels that formed from the previous day's session that I know both Fabio and I are watching. So it's going to be interesting to watch how the market reacts. You'll be able to hear our insight about what we're observing and looking for in the order flow. And it should be very insightful, both psychologically and both technically going over the order flow, because I know me and Fabio trade the same way. He mainly trades the Nasdaq and I mainly trade the S&P. But it's interesting to see the similarities between both of our trading strategies. So it'll be a pretty insightful session. I'm looking forward to it. Yes, guys.

So yesterday was an incredible short session. Usually when we are on Friday and we have an explosive session, I expect choppy. But we need to do this together. We trade this choppy session live and let's see how it goes. And I checked the method of Carmine because I follow him and I saw that we have almost the same trigger. So probably we will take really similar setups. I trade on the bad sister of Yes, Nasdaq. And let's see how it goes.

For sure. Yeah. So usually after an extended day like yesterday, do you usually look for continuation of that day?

Yes, I usually make the most amount of return when I have an explosive day. So I don't like balance phase. Okay. I don't like going in reverting. I go trend following. And from a statistical perspective, when you have two directional days like this week, then the market wants to breathe and rebalance. So today I expect a balanced session. But let's see.

I think that's important to note too, because Monday the market is closed. There's a half day, I believe, or holiday. It's a President's Day. So, and now we have Friday after a big move and CPI data just came out about 45 minutes ago. So market really is not doing much at this moment. We're coming into our levels though. I know we're spotting some things brewing on the order flow a little bit.

It's building the pre-session battle. In 9 minutes we open and already I can see a huge amount of volume. A lot of sellers aggressive on this horizontal level, the 24,740, and buyers trying to hold the level. Usually when you have this fight, the first level that break out, you have an explosion. And this is some setups that I like to do during the opening. And I marked the green level because this is where I expect to be a potential good level to start again long. The point is that I will not load contract because during the opening you usually can get some heavy slippage. So it's, it's not smart to trade. I will just observe the price and I want to check how they behave in the next 9 minutes because if these sellers gets absorbed here on this horizontal level and we go up, I have a setup, but I will wait. Usually I wait 15 minutes after the opening to not get the explosion of volatility.

You let it digest. It's always crazy in the first few minutes. Yeah.

You trade the opening?

Very rarely will I trade the open. Very, very rarely. I like letting it digest. You know, we trade, you have your levels of interest and you observe price action around your levels of interest. And usually when the market's opening right at my level of interest, I kind of want to see how it reacts to that level of interest first and how price action's responding to it instead of just blindly getting in because it's at my level and it's at the open.

We were charting before and we expected a reaction up from the bottom. So after the CPI news, we expected an explosion up. And I never trade before the opening, but actually that's the one that also Carmine marked was the best of the day. So if we can get back to rebalance there, I think also from a balance profile perspective, it's interesting.

Well, the market moves from balance to imbalance, balance to imbalance. So it's interesting to see it revisit. So I have 68. $8.30 on the S&P as an area of low volume from February 6th. For me, just zooming into yesterday's price action, and I know you're probably going to disagree with this, this area, this consolidation range, for me, I consider that balance, and I have a hard time finding continuation inside of a balanced range once the market revisits that range. Now, there's hopefully going to be opportunities that come out of that, but for me, I really don't want to get caught really trading inside of this tight consolidation range because even looking at the volume profile here on, uh, on Bookmap from yesterday's drop, and the market began to consolidate. You see all this volume built here from $68.95 to like $68.80 on the profile, on the profile right here. Yeah, so that's the level that I had marked. There's so much volume there, so there's a lot of acceptance of that. There's a lot of volume being built. There's a lot of traders who are long there, short there, underwater, in profit right now. So if the market revisits that, it's kind of like a sit-on-my-hands type of area. I would love for it to get above it, and find acceptance. And then I may look for that continuation setup that you were looking for. Yeah. Because there's unfilled levels, 6917 on ES and 6914. They're what I call zero prints, where there's zero volume on one side of the market. Yeah. And in this case, the market aggressively sold off and trades were aggressively hitting the bid. And at these prices, no trades hit the offer. And the market likes to revisit them. I don't know when it's going to revisit them, but they're usually very strong magnetic forces the market likes to revisit at some point. And yesterday, so unfortunately I did not trade yesterday here in Dubai. It's going to be actually my first session this week. But yesterday's large sell-off filled the term zero prints that formed on the previous Friday that I tried shorting into. So yesterday's setup would've been ideal for a day like today because I know the levels that form. As soon as they form, I mark them because the chances of them being revisited are very, very high. Some days in the same session, some days it takes a week or maybe even a month, but they're just important to mark.

Very inefficient.

Very inefficient because it didn't give a fair chance of one side of the market to trade at. So the market likes to be very efficient.

And you notice that when it reached this level, you just get aggressive on the level, break and continue, or it's a reversal play?

I mainly use it as a target. So if the market, let's just say, gets back above this balanced range, this consolidation range, I would say it's my line of least resistance. Meaning if the market accepts above this $68.95 range, $68.80, that my line of least resistance basically terms that if we can get above this area of significantly high volume, There should be very minimal resistance for the market to then go trigger those yields.

I agree. Totally agree with you.

So it's like a line of least resistance, meaning if the buying is strong above the 68.95s, it should, you know, everything we could come down and say we want this to happen, but that's where we observe the order flow around, move up with ease as long as the buying is significant there. So I will absolutely look for a continuation move if we could accept above 68.95.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you. We have a huge inefficiency of the top. Also the profile, it's empty. And there is a lot of void in the middle.

Right.

And today the news of the CPI pushed the price above on our accumulation area. It's not so smart to trade in a range like we are now. And I don't know if we can consider that Monday is closed. So it's really difficult that they managed to break this level today. If they break, we have a beautiful— And I think today it's a digestion day for the short that we had.

Yeah, maybe the people on Wall Street are taking a long weekend.

Yeah. Also, they— the 4 minutes before the opening, I'm used to see the price already starting to fight. Today it's closing in a reasonable range.

Fighting the close.

Yeah, it's—

So you're seeing signs of a possible range?

I see it. If I need to choose a direction from these current order flow setups, I see that the sellers are having less result on this movement. The CPI got digested on the upside. We have a lot of lever to rebalance, so I will choose to revisit the level that you also marked. But I'm pretty sure that he will not be able to break it. So probably it's a reversal play from that level back into balance. It's not the kind of day that I like, but the bulls are in control on the pre-session. Like the last 3 minutes, and then we see who wins this battle. I like to create my own version of opening range breakout. So I just create the battle based on big aggression because the first side to win the battle is the one that squeeze.

That's gonna squeeze.

Okay. So it's, it's a good momentum play with a good risk reward. But as of now, I cannot decide what they want to do because they are really close, tight inside this range. And from the CPI explosion that we had, we have a lot of level that from profile perspective, they still didn't revisit. I use a lot the fixed range.

Fixed range.

To see how they are fighting and they see these aggressive buyers here. That didn't got revisited and we have a huge delta here.

That's a delta profile.

Yeah. So probably they have unfilled level on this side because there was a big bullish and the movement was explosive.

Explosive.

So it's possible that the buyers will get back aggressive when we get to this level. Here, as you can see, we have a huge sell delta, huge buy delta. It's just—

It's a mess.

It's a mess. Like it's really difficult to have an edge here. This area still didn't got broken. They just try to fake the low, and they really like to see the aggression of the participants in the wick, right? Because like 700 contracts on Nasdaq, it's a lot. It's really a lot of volume. And seeing that they started this movement here, we have a total of 1,250 contracts, some notional value of hundreds and hundreds of millions without result. This one is typically an accumulation, right? Yeah. So I have my conservative level, I have my aggressive level, and I expect a squeeze on the upside during the opening. Let's see how it goes.

Let's see how it goes.

1 minute.

—It's a big battleground right now. So it's important to have similar to how I look at the market levels and then observe the price action around the levels. Do you put any influence on levels that formed maybe a week ago, two weeks ago, if you visited?

I was doing this before, but from a data perspective, the most recent order flow interaction holds more value for me. I would agree. So like if I need to check at the wap point of one month ago, or a profile level of 3 weeks ago is not as important as the battle I'm watching now, because this is actual order entering the market. Right. Let's see what happens here. Let's see if this bull takes control and they squeeze the hell out of these aggressive sellers.

On the S&P as well, we have that aggressive seller stepping in. You see the negative delta and the cumulative delta also building. Let's see what they do. I like resetting my depth of market, my volume profile at the market open.

Sellers tried on the same horizontal level to take control. They got absorbed again, and now I think they will try again to move, going to the aggressive delta level of conservative buy. Now you can see during the opening you have swings so big that it's almost impossible to make a good sniper, because if you are buy, if you are sell, you get taken out from this wick.

It's also very important that you sit on your hands and just observe and wait for a proper setup and a pattern to appear.

The most amount of money is made when you just wait. All right.

Trading is very boring and it's—

Look at this rejection on the horizontal level. On the horizontal level, yeah. Okay. Now, this rejection holds the— Sellers absorbed on the bottom and the buyers reloaded. So I expect this to be probably the bottom of the movement. The squeeze will happen when we will get aggressive here. Unfortunately, this is SD opening. Otherwise, this will be an amazing risk-to-reward setup. It's not this kind of opening where you have one side controlling. It's more like, let's finish the accumulation directly on the VWAP.

Yes, directly on VWAP. Beautiful. And there's also a massive sell imbalance down here at the low on the ES, the same exact level as the NASDAQ.

Well, look, if I need to choose a direction, I choose buyers, huh?

I would agree, but that's not a valid reason to place a decision off of.

Yeah. What's the main confluence that you use for execution framing?

Like, uh, I'm looking for trap participants. I'm looking for traders who are just gonna get, you know, in trouble, I guess, that are showing massive aggression towards one side. And if the market moves against them, they're gonna have to get out of their trade, causing a bigger domino effect. Yeah.

You as well? Yeah, this is one of the setups. I also use initiative candles. So when I have a clean win of the battle, that for you it's an aggressive battle, breaking one important level, for me it's a continuation play because as you were saying, the path of least resistance now it's on the other side, right? So I go to the next level of liquidity.

My best setups are when the next level of liquidity has a very high probability of triggering. Yeah. If the market breaks, let's just say a strong level. With aggression and it should move up to the next level with ease. Those are my best setups, especially for continuation. But like, like you said, I don't know if today's really a continuation type of session.

You, you prefer the balance, right?

I prefer reversals and I prefer balance. Yeah, makes sense. Trading education is completely broken.

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But we trade the most liquid markets in the world, so I mean especially the S&P, ES, it's one of the most liquid markets and it usually reverts always back to the mean. Very infrequently is it going to have a trending day and most frequently it balances.

Yeah, it's just nature. Nasdaq is a little bit different. Right. Yeah.

So right now on the S&P, we see at 6860, we see a wall of 663 sellers sitting in 6860 and the market's trying to rally and we see the buyers really trying to hit it hard. And break above this level. So let's watch the reaction.

The first battle of the session got win by buyers. So I expect that they can challenge this liquidity level. Like, this is really precise. When you have a profile and you have a level. Now, unfortunately, I didn't want to risk slippage, but I noticed that if you get the fixed profile and you have a really strong level without a doubt of control of the buyers, This level, because they also reloaded back down, can be a continuation setup. This is what I mean when I say that I prefer directional day, because every time I have a news wing, I can get a fixed profile, right? I can load in the direction, putting the first position at risk-free. So the first position of the day capitalizes the second, the second capitalizes the third. It's a domino effect. Yeah. And when you have a directional day, you make, yeah, you make a huge day. Yeah. Yesterday. Yeah.

So we're having trouble at the 6860 level.

Yeah. They, they rejected.

They rejected pretty well. Yeah. What's interesting, and I think the way that you talk about that is so important, is because you're going with the most recent activity in the order flow. So drawing a fixed volume profile is significant because if the market's moving up and we say that we're seeing strong buyers. Yeah. The market revisits those buyers like you just had saw. Those buyers need to defend price. They don't want the market to come against them. So they're going to reload and defend price and absorb like we just saw.

It's like also if you think about news, no? The most recent release of information, if it's strong information, it's able to move the market stronger, most aggressive, because it's recent. It's an information that you need to price now. The order flow is the same. Like I will never, if I see aggression of the sellers, I will never go long because one month ago there is one level. Right. That's what I mean. Like, I prefer the live interaction battle. They rejected the top at the liquidity level in an amazing way.

Yeah. It's pretty interesting to see. See, when I trade, I don't really look at the NASDAQ, but sitting next to you and seeing how you're observing the same thing that I'm seeing on the S&P is pretty strong and powerful.

I noticed that also the NASDAQ, it's being more aggressive a lot of times leads the level. So if we have a breakout on the NASDAQ, maybe take some minutes before the ES follow-up because it's more liquid and being more liquid is more slow.

Think about this, right? If you're in the position and you're looking to get into a really large buy position and you're expecting the market to move up, whether it's institutional, whether it's a big bank, whoever, right? But somebody that's looking to buy a big position, if you move the market up and then the market come back, comes back to where you bought price at, you're going to do everything to really support the market. Yeah. And other people are going to notice this and also follow the footsteps of you buying as well. Which is where the strategy is so powerful.

You use market maker edging mechanics. Correct. Sometimes you see big players stepping in at options level, like the put wall, the call wall, and these used in frame with the profile area. Because how I started the week is marking the most sensitive level on the volume profile. I don't know if you use for the long-term logic, like I like the low volume node, I like the Like when you have clean level of not acceptance of price, because I noticed that when it revisits the low volume node, you have the most aggressive movement of the week. That's how I use long-term analysis.

So you'll mark long-term like deltas and volume profile structure? Yeah.

Yeah. Or we see that it's the most choppy opening we had this week.

Here's the thing, right, is that we could come up with all this and not— for, for me at least, I could come up with all this analysis, see the buyers get absorbed, see the sellers get absorbed. But for me, if it's not at my level of interest, I have little, you know, it's, it's not— my objective is to not catch every single move in the market. I don't look at the market moving down or up as me missing it. I just look at it as me not participating in that move because I have no reason to participate in it. If it's not part of my system and my strategy, I have no business transacting. Of course. And I feel like, you know, it's a massive issue with a lot of traders is they plan so much before the market opens.

They have an easy click.

As soon as the market opens, they see a move up, down, I got to get in it because if I don't get in it, I'm going to miss it. Yeah.

And this is the reason a lot of people have an edge, but they cannot make the edge work because 90% of the trades they take are not following the edge. Right. That's the main problem you see in the industry.

It's harder to sit on your hands and not trade than it is to click the buy or sell button.

The sellers are protecting, but also the buyers on this level, I see that they are really trying their best. You have a liquidity level on the ES?

On ES, I have no—

Only the top. No large liquidity. The next one is 33, 833, that it just reached.

Yeah. The sellers are really trying here.

Mm-hmm. They are getting aggressive to break it.

Another thing that I like looking for is if the market is trying to bounce and buyers are in control and holding the absorption levels, I like to look for bids step in, like really large buyers. This is not a good example of it that continue to support the market because that could be a really large— like reloading, reloading.

This is one. When you said I trade trap pad, I also like trap pad, but the most high win rate setup is when I see a reload on a sensitive level. Oh yeah. Because you can put the stop loss below high and it's really high probability that it continues and you go breakeven in 2 or 3 candles. So it's, uh, that's nice. Which timeframe you like to use? The 1 minute?

On candle chart or like a candle? Candle. Candle. I go to 1 minute or 5 minute. Just, I like seeing the different structure in the market. We really do the same stuff. Yeah. I constantly go back and forth.

5 minutes, 1 minute. Yeah. Have you ever tried range charts?

So my footprint chart that we have on the screen over there, I use a 20-tick range on the ES footprint. I like looking at 20-tick footprint and really just absorbing or looking at the shape of the volume distribution and the volume pattern on the footprint chart. And if the market's coming down into, let's just say, a support level, or I like looking for large accumulation at the low of that footprint bar to indicate absorption and accumulation.

Of course. And you like, for example, to watch also the total participation, total volume? Oh yeah.

Think about it. If a lot of volume's coming into the market and there's no movement in the market, that's a sign of absorption and accumulation.

This, for example, it's a reload setup that I have. Right. When you have a clean absorption at a static level in the direction of the main aggression that we have, this is something that I can take, but it's small scalps that don't make sense when you have this volatility because you go to breakeven too often then and you pay a lot of commission. So. What I prefer is to clean this range, at least the beginning of the session range. I prefer to be clean and then take a directional setup. Yeah, but going back to your demand.

Yeah, so for me, right, looking at the volume profile, you see how there's just so much volume built here. If we were to add this volume with the volume that we're seeing both in the overnight session and now the intraday session, this just range right here is a little bit of a chop, not a chop fest, but a little bit of too much liquidity for me. I like trading where there's not a lot of liquidity because that is where, in my opinion, a lot of the edge comes from.

Yeah, I agree. This is like fair value for them, so they transact really efficiently there and you have a choppy phase.

I'm looking, and I'm sure you could agree, you're looking for inefficiencies in the market, not efficiencies. Of course.

Yeah. They are challenging the law of the CPI.

Yeah, so let's see the pre-market lows break here. Personally speaking, I have no business transacting and playing a short position for a continuation still above the levels of support.

Because you don't play when the move already happened, you don't try to chase the price.

I would rather wait for the reload setup, like you just said.

Of course.

So you see here on my screen, there's two zero prints. You see at price 6828, there's no volume on the right side where my cursor's at. There's 75 volume on the bid and zero on the offer. And then below that, 6827.75 is 18 on the bid and 0 on the offer. Yeah. These are what I call zero prints, and the likelihood of the market revisiting them at some point is pretty high. So now I'll just mark these as levels, and at some point, probably when the pre-market lows break to pick up the liquidity, just be expecting a quick little bounce back up into 6828.

You are considering loading on the test on the shorts?

Potentially using this as a level, as a magnet. For where the market could revisit it possibly. And yeah, we use this as a target for a long.

But would you not consider maybe to visit after it filled a next liquidity level or you just, it's enough for you?

For this type of setup specifically, it's mainly just saying that, hey, we have zero prints on the chart and the likelihood of them filling is pretty high. The market revisiting them is significant. So, and then that's it. That's the idea. Now we actually have more 6820 that formed. Do you see anything significant?

I'm loading now the, the cash profile that I like to use to frame because if I need to short today, I would like to see the high of the cash revisit. So around the 25,041, shorting the price when it didn't revisit even the POC, it's really chasing, like we were saying. And also we are still in the demand. So chasing the price down in this case, it's not my AAA setup. So I just wait. Yeah.

So the likelihood now of us filling the zero print, which we're right there, we have one at 68,020 on ES. Yeah. And then we have another at 6827. The likelihood of them filling, I mean, the first one just filled. This is an important level to mark and watch for a potential, in this case, long for the revisit of it because the chances of the market creating a fair opportunity for the other side to trade at it is very high. So we did just fill the first one at 6820 and now we're going for the 6827. So this could have been a fantastic long opportunity.

Ah, you trade also on the mean reverting side, like from the— Yeah, yeah.

So this is a setup that I would look for a long, and both of them filled right there. Boom. Could have been a good trade, and it happened in 30 seconds, you know? So it's just marking out levels where not one side trades specific volume, marking it, and then looking for a potential mean reversion or reversal back into those levels. And we just saw that bounce. So we have a lower wick there. I wonder See if there's anything significant here on the footprint chart as well.

If I need to take a reversal play, I like to take from the rejection of the cash session, the previous cash session. Close? Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Look at this, right at the low of the day on the footprint chart, 335 positive delta at 6810 at the low. Aggressive buying stepping in and putting the brakes on the move down right here.

This is the same trick, like it's the initiative candle. When you have delta price coherence with a lot of aggression, I think it's also on balance. Look at that.

Inside the level of interest. Mm-hmm.

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Let's get back to the episode. I have a rule, it's called the CLC rule: the context, the location, and the confirmation. When all three align— context of the market fitting, who's aggressive, who's trapped, location at a good level of interest— and with valid confirmation, when my three pillars appear in alignment, that's when a good setup that, you know, needs to have risk put on. Mm-hmm. But that's a nice balance. I, I wonder on the NASDAQ, is there anything significant at the low that means—

So now, now they are revisiting the value area low, and this is a level because if the value area low gets rejected, you have the mean reverting setup. And we just rejected from the demand of the CPI. So now I'm considering that the cash session didn't got accepted in the first minute. And usually I watch the first 15 minutes to 30 minutes of rebalance. I can consider a long setup in this case, but I don't want to buy the top. I want to see a little bit of rebalance on this one. Acceptance. Yeah. I want to see if it marks above the 24,700. And I usually use the deep trades. The bottom of the Nasdaq was amazing. You have a clean aggression and absorption at the bottom and a lot of contract to be Nasdaq. So you always trade on horizontal area, but never momentum. Like you never trade trend following. Look at this movement. Crazy.

I got a little FOMO. I can't lie here.

That's not easy. Ah, you entered? No, no, no, no. That's not easy to monetize.

It happened in 30 seconds. So I mean, if you look at the low, significant buying volume. At the low. Yeah. With the zero prints there, you know, makes it the cherry on the top. It's a V-shape reversal. It could get pretty aggressive if it continues.

They are getting to the liquidity level. Yeah, 6860. The problem with this is that I don't have any confluence to add because it only made explosion aggression one after the other. And my risk to reward is not enough because where I cover, below the V-shape. So it's— Also, I like to use the speed of tape. Oh yeah.

You use it? So I don't look at a formal indicator for the speed of the tape. I mainly watch the depth of market for this only. It's a massive indication for me.

Like, in the reversal candle, you can see the speed of the building. You can see how they are getting more and more aggressive, and you can see that for the first time now, buyers are getting rejected and the sellers are in control. Like, the wick is giving you a frame to say this candle saw only aggressive buyers and never saw a retracement. Wow. So they only bought aggressively. They never Let the price retrace. This one is a potential continuation, and I can consider loading the first setup here. Just waiting for this candle to close. It didn't even came to retrace, just an explosion. Like this one, I go 1 to 2, 1 to 3, and I take the momentum phase. If it comes back in the candle and I see another absorption, I will consider loading. Like if you think about it, if you have speed, if you have momentum, and if you have direction, there is more probability that the price will push you in profit fast. Right. And it's enough to put the position to break even. So my best trades work out.

Like that. Yeah. The trades that hang out, they spend too much time. Yeah. Usually the trades that don't work out too well.

If this candle keep holding the level, I will consider loading here on the long side. It's rejecting. Also, when you have full body candle, And you have sellers stuck in the middle. Okay. So let's say that this candle closed full green and they have sellers absorbed, like the buyers are rising in absorption. I have a momentum setup. This one, it's reversal. Mm-hmm.

Ah, when, when sellers come in the middle of the wick. Yeah. And it's a 1-minute chart.

519 absorption. I can consider loading. This is a 1-minute chart. Yeah. It's a new level of skill training and explaining what you are doing while watching at the camera.

We're Italian, we could do it, right?

Yeah, olive oil in the veins and it goes. We are failing. I need to It waits them. The absorption of the 520 contracts of the top would have been amazing for a continuation setup, but they got rewarded. So they are going to visit lower price.

So you were looking for the market to bounce, for these potential passive buyers to support.

I showed this revisit, no? They loaded another 519. On Nasdaq, it's a huge amount of volume. Huge. If they reject this and the candle close here, okay, I can load one contract here and one contract here with the stop loss below this one and capitalize on the squeeze momentum.

Look at the sellers really stepping in now.

Yeah. I want to see the speed of tape here.

Now, would you draw a volume profile for that?

That's exactly what I was doing next.

So on my screen, I have a CVP column and this shows me the volume profile specifically for the specific move that I'm watching, you know?

You see this one, why I will not consider, it's really empty, right? This, it's pretty, the buyers got on the top, so they got absorbed and you have aggressive sellers protecting the level. So I don't think we will stop here. I think we can have another, yeah. So the continuation setup of the sellers as of now, because this is dynamic, no, also buyers can get really aggressive in one candle and it print the Delta level where I want to reload.

I would normally look for a low volume node here, but even on ES, there's nothing significant on the rally up.

It's only buyers. Yeah. There is no low volume node. There is only high volume node of buyers.

The best setup that I saw was the zero prints filling on the deep charts. I mean, that would have been a— what's the risk to reward on that? It's crazy.

And you have aggressive sellers stop on the bottom. So it's like— This is the trap. Yeah, but it happens so fast. It's a 1 to 2.35 risk to reward. But it depends if you enter at the close of the candle or in the middle.

So for me, I don't wait for a close of a candle. For me, that tells me not much information. You see something?

I was like— You know, when you are live, you want to execute to make people happy. The problem is that I need a level and I need a clean battle between buyers and sellers, and I want to be in the direction of the winner. As of now, I have sell aggression with buy absorption. So I have mixed information and we are going to revisit the origin of the move.

The selling is really trying here.

Yeah, they are trying their best. See this bit of tape. The value area low of the cash session got already rejected. And it's—

so for me, this is a potential reversal, a bounce here. So the market is breaking under this little consolidation range right here. And as we tried to break, I mean, looking at the tape right here at 9:52, we tried so hard.

I see, I see the same from the—

look at the bounce, you know.

From the aggressive sell and also the speed of tape. They are loading the speed that buyers used to load.

Yeah, this would have been a nice—

I will consider this one, you know.

See, for me, that's too late to enter now. That the entry—

No, no, no, not, not now, eh? Not now. I mean, covering myself above the big absorption and loading two levels of entry. The first one, it's at the breakout of the range because this one is like if you have a small balance area, you know? Okay. And Sometimes when you have momentum, I get 2 contracts filled and then I explode and I'm really fast in loading other contract when it goes, or if the setup fail, it's possible that I see this rejection. It brings me back into profit. Okay. So now we, we go up again and I have time. For example, this is a failed auction for me. Mm-hmm. Okay. So I need to cover my risk as fast as possible. Right. So if we go above here and it gives me the opportunity, I will close the position to mitigate the total risk of the setup.

It looks good.

Yeah, I closed because this rejection, for me, it's a sign, and I stole $400 from the market. If we manage to break this top and I have a continuation of the reload, I want to see population of aggression on the way up. That's it. That's it. They are getting aggressive now. So if this is coherent with the speed of tape, a momentum setup, it's another one that I can load. How do you see it?

For me, the entry was when the balance range broke. This one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You just enter. For example, the, the choice that I take of putting my risk at zero with this absorption of the top was really smart because I would never give $1,000 to the market without a reason. Also, I categorize the coherence of the absorption of the speed. So for example, let's say that this candle, you see these aggressive buyers, no, entering really fast. If this candle closed with a big wick and buyers at the top absorbed, is more strong than a simple absorption.

We're going to probably go break the high of day here. Near buyers were absorbed. Aggressive buying stepped in after. How is it looking? Yes, already on the liquidity level. Yeah, so similar how you mark that balance range. To me, I consider this market structure demand. This to me is signs of accumulation and absorption here.

So your setup was break and test on, or directly by limit? Like when you break, you are into? As soon as it—

so here we see the balance, right? See the market making this balance. If I go here, tools, and if I put a horizontal line here, we have the balance range. The market broke the balance range right there. Yeah, yeah. And as it broke in real time, it looked like the sellers were really, really coming in and aggressive. And if I look at the delta here, A lot of passive absorption. Massive absorption. And then this bar closed near the high on the 20-tick range. And these sellers got absorbed and the buyers aggressively stepped in. Watch the next bar. Next bar, aggressive buying. Next bar, aggressive buying. Really aggressive buying. And this was the setup down here because this offers the least amount of risk here. Might be the lowest probability, but the least amount of risk for the highest amount of reward.

Yeah, I love it. Unfortunately, you need to be crazy for something.

You gotta be like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And bouncing back and forth between applications, you know?

Sellers took a crazy control back on this. So now we're retesting that balance lower here. That's the point. And now I see buyers absorb, like sellers going down in absorption of the buyers. I really like it. Let me see if I can play a little bit with this one. Now my top setup will be the balance got broken on the downside, the speed of tape Is there, I have already absorption. If I go up and they see absorption at the buyers on this candle. Yeah.

This could be a liquidity trap, pick up liquidity, bring it down for somebody to buy. Especially when the 1-minute candle looks like that, you know? Yeah, we're testing the balance low here. Massive volume coming in.

Ah, you watch also the horizontal volume. Oh yeah. And I'll sometimes pull up the cumulative delta. You use sometimes the relationship between volume and movement of price to understand how much result they had with a certain effort?

Yeah, so massive effort with no result and no reward is a good reversal signal.

We all know the same stuff, brother.

Maybe you're my brother from another mother.

Yeah. I don't know about that.

Who knows? So now we're reclaiming back into the balance. Let's see if this holds.

Pretty choppy for an opening.

Yeah, so the first 30 minutes for me, first 30 minutes to an hour kind of sets the tone for the day.

Yeah, that's what I was expecting. The problem is that they didn't set at the A clear tone because buyers absorbed at the top, sellers absorbed at the bottom. We are still in the same range where we opened. So also for model like the opening range breakout or the IVB, today there was no setup as of now. This is your favorite market scenario, the balance. Take the ping pong.

If there was a level of interest for me, my low volume node at 6830, because of how deep we moved into it is, is is done, right? The best setup that I saw, which I hesitated to execute on, was when the pre-market lows broke. We had the zero prints that formed and the massive absorption at the low. Massive absorption. That's an A+ perfect setup.

And really low risk. Very low risk. The only fear I have on this setup is being slept. If you have a huge aggression, maybe they stole some some ticks because you get filled lower than your original stop loss.

Right. Well, in the NASDAQ, that's very possible. The ES, because of how it's a little different, you know, for you to— we have different risks. Yeah. There's more slippage in the NASDAQ, especially with larger size. Yeah. I mean, right now with the volatility on ES, the book thickness is between like 40, 50 contracts. So if you have the market order 20 contracts in, it's not going to make it too difficult.

Yeah.

But NASDAQ, I don't know how thick the book is, you know, market ordering 10 contracts. Let's just say they look at this, what's going on?

Hmm. Let me blow up the speed of tape.

I gotta use the speed of tape on, uh, on Deep Chart.

It's really powerful. Like if you have coherence of speed of the aggression. On a sensitive level, it's an amazing trigger. Yeah, it's really an amazing trigger. Buyers looking really aggressively on this one.

Was there data or news at 10 AM? Because that happened right at 10 AM.

I don't think so. Did you start immediately with order flow, or you had a price action moment in your career?

No, with futures, order flow immediately. So I have a little family background on Wall Street. Mm-hmm. And nice. They don't look at candles for short-term trading. You know, they don't look at candles at all.

They don't look at algorythms.

They love ICT on Wall Street. That's their best friend.

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Now let's get back to the episode.

You walk into their office, you see 30 depth of markets on one— yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't see anything else. Yeah, I know, I know.

They work with data. They cannot have a discretionary view based on let's guess what there is inside a candle. Correct.

But everybody needs to have some sort of discretion with a systematic approach, right? I mean, you have patterns that you look for. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a systematic approach to it.

And it's not discretionary at all because the patterns are backtested over a large amount of trades. But you know, also with price action and candle, I find some really good, for example, one is the opening range breakout, like the breakout of the candle of the first 15 minutes of the session. Have a really smooth equity curve, but then you need to add on top of it some timing tools.

I always think about before I take a trade, if I can't tell myself the trade that I'm taking and I can't give it a label, or I can't say, okay, this is a zero print trade, or this is a market structure demand trade, or a specific playbook, I have no business taking it.

Yeah. I have a rule. If you cannot journal immediately and you need to think why you are taking it later, don't take it because there is no reason.

There's no reason. Yeah. I'm sure if everybody watching this had Fabio and Carmine next to them and they could tell us why they're taking the trade, it would save a lot of trades that they should not be taking.

It would make one-third of the execution.

Yeah.

But I think this is also because people approach trading as an income method. So they just need to pay the bills at the end of the month. So they force themselves to find opportunity that ends up in losing money because they are not respecting the model. So they are just gambling.

Yeah, you were gambling, correct?

The volume is really low for the session, so I'm lowering the sensibility of the big trades to 40. That's interesting. You do that? I never do this in New York session if it's not a super choppy day, but as we said in the beginning, 2 days of directional collapse. Today I expect the market to be choppy. Okay. So If I don't see a clean breakout of the top or the bottom, I will prefer to stay out. And I have the top of the cash session that is exactly marked with the top that you were waiting the— Yeah, the 60s. Yeah. And it's where I should consider engaging in an opportunity. A fake out or a continuation?

A fake out. Fake out, yeah. See, now for me, because of there being significant volume directly above the high of day from previous session, I can't consider that move. Just because of tons of liquidity there. Mm-hmm.

I, I don't consider the long because as you see, the delta, it's empty. Yeah. It's like there is no clean direction. We have buyers at the top, completely absorbed sellers at the bottom, completely absorbed. I have a cage. And this is the reason why the breakout of the first 30 minutes or 15 of the session works because the side that wins decides the direction for the day. And finally, I can load a lot of trend following setups. And they have—

Can you move this volume profile to the one candle before that drop? Right there. Here? Right, yeah. Now, if you extend that to the right, there's volume build under here. Yeah. So that, to me, see how volume's building and expanding there? To me, that's a little bit of a red flag to transact around there. I understand.

You know? I understand. In this area, anything that I see in this area as it is developing now, If I really want to anticipate a breakout, I will do this at the acceptance of the value area high of the specific move.

Yeah. Wow. Okay.

If I want to anticipate the squeeze, like I do the, yeah, this one, it's at the clean breakout of this level, but engaging in this cage, it's, it's really a suicide for a scalper. Are we gonna stay? I don't know. Let's see. If I see enough volume building, I will try to make the sound and load some contract in. And then we see if we squeeze.

I think you need that sound in VeepCharts when someone clicks buy.

We will make it. Okay. We will put.

I will be a customer.

We need to put also your sound. You have something with the community that is really peculiar that you do. Yeah, we could. Yeah, we do.

This is just the definition of balance.

This is just the definition of boring. Like, imagine the traders at home. How many traders will not sit on their hands and take 20 stop-losses in this range?

Now, I'm going to agree and disagree with that.

You think they can stop?

An experienced trader may strive in these conditions, right? And if an experienced trader may take, may have taken 6 setups right now, but each trade might have been 3 points or 5 points.

Ah, like really—

Very small. And I think having that mentality in a balanced market is the right approach instead of going for a, 20-point move or a large move one time. Yeah.

This is something that I did also in the first podcast of Ritz, but makes sense on the S. If I need to take 3 ticks and have the risk of being squeezed 5 ticks on the Nasdaq, on the S, yes, on Nasdaq, I never do this. Yeah. Only at least 20, 30 points of multiples.

Yeah, on the S, I go for at least 12 to 15 points, and usually it's about 3 points of risk.

You have a minimum risk to reward that you accept.

I won't take anything under 2:1, but majority of my trades are 4:1, 3.5:1. It really depends on my entry and my target. In volatile days like this, honestly, in volatile days like this, my risk to reward tends to be a little lower because of where my entry is in relation to the order flow, because of how fast it moves. On balanced sessions, when it moves a little slower and I'm catching a nice mean reversal, we're getting some buying activity coming in.

I see the speed of tape loading. Yeah. And the big trade's loading. I will just mark one level and see how it engages because it seems like an anticipation of the—

And I see a rebid also forming on ES here as well. The bid's down here filling, broke under, reclaimed, and now we're rebidding. Mm-hmm. 6839.

This is super important for me, like the interest of the buyers Got 50% lower in 3 seconds. I can see this as a loss of interest in going up in the speed.

See, I would love to add that speed of tape to my trading because I look at the speed of the tape on the depth of market. Yeah. And if I miss it, If I wasn't watching that, I would've missed what happened there.

You know, they rejected in a crazy way the level, the horizontal level that they put, and the, the buyers took again control of the situation.

And, and look at my screen. They're rebidding at 6839. Yeah. This is not a bad setup.

It's not a bad setup at all.

Aggressive buyers coming in, rebidding 6839. We are still inside the cage. The problem that I have is we're in the cage. That's a re— perfect rebid at 6839, and that's the same level you have.

It's funny that we see it's the stuff in a different way, but it's still the same level.

It's the same level you have. Yeah, it's the same exact level. 6839. Look at that massive bid. Yeah. Phil.

Let's see if we can anticipate a good squeeze.

Here's the value area high.

They are doing it. I want to see some aggression.

The delta is really building.

I will mark also the 520. That is 520 executed contracts. Horizontal level. And look at the speed of tick here.

Wow, yeah. That's probably a strong buyer coming in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absorbing all the selling volume. And this one could be something.

Yeah, look at all that strong buy.

Rejected on the 520. You are considering a setup.

See, for me, my target would be above the high of day. So if I'm entering here, having a 6-point, 5-point target is no bueno. It's not even 1 to 2.

It's not good. It's not good. Yeah. Yeah. But I see buyers getting aggressive, absorbing. No, I kind of like this one.

A possible absorption too.

I see also this 111.97 contract absorbed at top. You see why it's good not to have a trigger finger. The 520 rejected perfectly the 77. The squeeze It's possible to happen when we break this level. Being so fast with a trackpad is not easy at all. It's not easy at all. It's master level challenge.

I think you may get it here. I'm seeing signs of buying.

Consider buying at the explosion of the top, reloading here, and having an exit position here. And trying to anticipate the squeeze. I will go for, it looks good, Fabio. It looks good, but we are on the horizontal level that I fear.

At least to go break the high of day you got here. Let's see.

I have a target that is above the high of the day. The speed of tape is amazing. Right. Speed of tape is crazy aggressive. You are into? No, but I'm seeing the massive buy absorption.

The problem with entering at the high is where am I putting my target?

If, if this candle close red, it's a failed auction and they will take out the position manually. Now the speed of tape is getting super low. You can see here, this invalidate my setup and I'm waiting for a clean breakout to reevaluate the situation. I got 104 contract absorbed at the top and if they can run over it, I can consider reloading on the 250. Expect them to take back again this low, and they will build a position on the way down. Now they are exactly at the level where they got absorbed before. You see this huge delta horizontally is where they got absorbed here. Mm-hmm. So they are not having an easy time breaking through. I would like to revisit this huge delta candle. Here they go. One here, and another one I load here. I cover myself below the low, and we try again the squeeze. It's a nice dip.

It's a nice, it's a nice impulsive dip.

Yeah. Now the position management is the one that is not. Let's see if they can reload. Beautiful buyers. I'm risk-free. Like, I really value the speed of taking your position to risk-free more than risk-to-reward. Like, even if I get a 1 of 1 constantly and with few seconds of putting risk-free, it's a free shot for me. I pay out from my commission on this one. So now I have two scenarios. Either it's a failed auction and I lose zero money to monetize it, either Even it shoot up and I make $3,000 risking $700.

Now, my argument to that would be, what if the market pulls back to where you originally entered and it still validates your real reason for entering to begin with? Would you then look for a reentry?

No, if it's invalidated, no, I will not look for reentry. Like, and every time I have an aggression, I raise my level. First of all, to avoid a squeeze. Second of all, to pay with breakeven plus 2, 3, 4 ticks for all the breakeven I take during the day. So you see, we took breakeven, but we are building $740. Building, yeah.

So, but my argument to that would be if the market pulls back and moves to the same price where essentially you entered at, and you're seeing the same confirmation at where you entered at originally, you reenter. Yeah. Because some of my best trades are exactly what you do right there, and I'll reenter, but maybe I'm just a little too early to it.

This one, I will definitely back more new to the market. On this one. So it was, and you know what I don't like, Carmine? If we had an acceptance and aggression above this one, I will still consider a long. Right. And as you can see, sellers are taking aggressive—

It's a balanced day, so we can't really expect a lot of continuation. For me, my rules, middle of balance.

No, no, but you're right. You're right. I wasn't I like this one. You're right. I like this absorption on the—

No, there's massive absorption here. On ES, it's the same exact thing.

I will say that we have one of really boring day. We're good. Of the session.

The best thing that I saw was at the low of the day. Yeah. And then on balanced sessions, trading around the lows and the highs is where the edge is, not in the middle for me. Yeah, I agree.

or the breakout of one side.

Yeah, correct.

Would you consider a fake out of this high to go down?

I would, but the fake out would be better if there was a level of interest above this. You know, for me—

We missed the level of the CLC.

We missed the level of the CLC, right? I mean, looking at the volume profile, there's just significant volume there. And if you look at what happens in this area of high volume yesterday, it was just sideways. You know, so for me, it's just transacting in an area where there's a lot of efficiency. No, the market can't stay in a balance forever. It's going to move.

I will consider a reload of this one if we breakout back inside the value area high for an accumulation, but I didn't open anything because sellers are still in control. Now I want to see if we printed the level on the fixed range. Oh, now the fixed range is populated. They are building. Yeah, it's building highs at the top of the range.

Yeah. So for me, I mean, if the market was not in balance, a setup would be to long, a strong break under that. Yeah.

Do you trade the London, Carmine? London session? London?

No, not really. Very, very rarely.

And then you ever try to bring your position overnight? No, never. Never. So you're intraday.

The only way I will hold something overnight is if I'm trading the option on it. Oh, you also trade options? Very rarely. Maybe a month ago I traded, uh, there was a zero print setup and I longed the market. It was a really strong sell-off day, similar to yesterday, along the market, and the contracts went up 500% in like 2 hours. And it was a lotto. I was risking zero. If it went to zero, I was happy with it.

I'm not an expert in options, but I see a lot of potential.

For sure.

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Now let's get back to the episode.

But yeah, mainly, mainly just the futures. I like being in and out, you know, usually in the first 2 hours. That's, that's my window.

So you have a family history of Wall Street trading? Yeah.

My cousin, my uncle, my best friend.

Yeah. But for institutions or like they, now they are retiring.

A real, a real prop firm. A real, I like, a real, now you need to specify a real prop firm. You hear the word prop firm and you think it's, you know, a funny company.

It's a fake. Yeah.

A real prop firm that gives them their own money and when they make money, others, the firm makes money.

You know, the first time that I tried to explain how a prop firm operates to an institution, he was like, so you need to pay them to make you— so they have a really different concept of prop firm in the professional space. Today it's an educational session.

I was going to say, 50 minutes the market's been open.

50 minutes and it's not moving. Ritz, why you choose today? We find something. Oh, yes. Yesterday, yesterday, the volatility.

I was at dinner yesterday seeing the market collapse and I was not doing good.

But this is not the day that you like to trade, right?

In a different structure, yes. But with this structure, my mean setup for a day like today would be looking for a long above that consolidation range from yesterday. Mm-hmm. But we're just so far under that. Um, another setup would've been the long at the low, but this liquidation on the bottom, it's amazing. It's, it's, we can't say, we can't talk about trades that we didn't take. You know, we were watching it. We know. We didn't take it.

You know that I see that we can revisit this, uh, this low level. Yeah. And this is what I'm waiting to get a value area low long. To keep for the day.

Right. You could see the value area developing in real time. You just see the cage, like you refer, you just see a massive volume of—

Break out of the cage that goes back up will be a AAA for me.

Yeah. I would not mind an imbalance, a break under 6830s. Impulsive move down, hold the low volume node, hold the strong buyers from earlier. It's an existing level of interest, 6830 as well. I wouldn't mind that.

Look at these buyers.

The speed of the tape.

The speed of the rejection tape. They attempt another time. Is your value area high? Let's see, they attempt to break. They have this wall that is crazy. I can also cancel the fixed profile and only watch the, the cage. This one for me, it's a squeeze, Carmine. This momentum trade for me, it's a squeeze. If I can get a good absorption of the sellers, I can do the same that I did before. With an asymmetrical risk to reward, even that goes to 1 to 5.

So is the main thing you're looking for right now is aggressive buying come in above that? I have two setups.

One is conservative. I go here and I want to see trapped. Right. I want to see trapped sellers. I want to see that speed of tape going aggressively up. The momentum setup that I have, it's a clean breakout of the cage with acceptance above with aggressive buyers. And they can take all the run-up for the other day, because if we break the cage, I really don't think we will revisit the low.

For me, I like your conservative level over the upside scenario.

Do you ever do intermarket analysis?

With other instruments? Yes. No, no, because like you said earlier, I care about the order flow that's happening right now and that's it.

I use when I have, for example, a clean balance area and I see the Nasdaq breaking aggressively one side of the area. I was fading the ES breakout because Nasdaq is usually a driver. Because it's less liquid, but gives you a bias for the day. And with additional confluence, it's working really amazingly. I'm not doing this now because I only trade NASDAQ. I want to— the intermarket analysis, it's on the driver of NASDAQ, but—

The only intermarket analysis I would do is if there's a significant outlier. Let's just say the NASDAQ is up significantly and the ES is doing nothing. Yes. I'll then look at the NASDAQ. I'll look at the stronger name, either reject support, reject resistance and then maybe play the opposite from that. Um, but when they move in sync with each other, I don't really see an edge in that.

Mhm. It's building the liquidity level that we are waiting.

You know what it's doing, right? It's trapping traders right now. Everybody's longing this, shorting this. Yeah. A setup that I would look for is if the speed of the tape really picks up under the 6830, under that balance range low, was a flush. And it flushes down impulsively and aggressively, that's, that's something that I would look to transact on. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you.

But if it bounces without us, without pulling back to the conservative level, for me, I can't off my system. The NASDAQ's a little easier because you get the 10, 20, 30 point moves like this. Mm-hmm. You know, the S&P might take a few minutes depending on the volatility to move up the 10, 12 points that I need.

It's nice to see that when you plot the last distribution profile, you see buyers getting more aggressive on the delta as you go up. And this is a typical breakout setup because the delta is building more aggressive. 1, 2, 3. These stairs is the one I use to anticipate the— So for me, a clean acceptance here, it's a momentum trade, but the flush of the buyers and then starting to go back again up is the AAA. Right.

Another setup that I look for is, let's just say this is at a level of resistance, right? And you see 104 contracts there on your big bubbles. If there's 104 there, but maybe only 40 here, and I see more size here and it puts in a higher low, that to me is a little bit of a divergence that says that, you know, the absorption is there and a quick reversal to go for.

Yeah, yeah. What do you mean for a quick reversal? Like just a quick little pullback down.

This wouldn't be for an all-day trend. This wouldn't be for calling a high a day. It would just be for a quick little relief sell-off.

And you cover yourself above the absorption or you give a little bit of room?

I would cover myself above the absorption with the potential to re-enter if I just have mistimed it. A lot of my trades are entering. Here we go.

Your value area high. They are preparing to lift off. Maybe we get a Maybe we get, but we need to get cleanly above 24,824. And my little friend speed of tape needs to kick in because it's boring. And you know what's funny, that the target is on the balance of the other day. So it's really good risk to reward for, as of now, it's dead. The speed of tape is dead. There is no aggression on the How come there's a gap?

There's no speed of tape. Is that just the data?

It means that it's not relevant. Okay. So it's really low, and you can put a filter. I use a lot this gap between two candles as a reload. Like, imagine the buy pressure when two candles gap in one minute. Mm-hmm. Okay. This one is usually sell candle. Okay. And then if the candle close by above the gap, you have a push candle. Mm-hmm. And this one can be the candle that slides through. You see that if buyers absorb these aggressive sellers on the way up, they are preparing. So you have a gap, you have an absorption of the sellers, they are preparing for the—

Can I get it?

It's coming, yeah? It's coming, yeah? Rizzi is laughing there. It's funny because when you have a squeeze, you see speed of tape with a massive candle. You see buyers aggressive on the top. Now, a play that I can make, it's a buy stop above the area with a stop loss below. I think that's what I will do. Um, we load here. Another one we load here and another one we load here. We cover ourselves below the big aggression. Let's try this fade setup. This one is the anticipation of the squeeze. So is the momentum move. If we have a breakout, one candle and I'm risk-free. If we have a failed auction, It's almost going. Okay. Covered the risk. Now either they fail the top and I'm out with risk-free or I take all the squeeze on the way up. Still a little bit. 1, 2, 3. Squeeze. As you pick trades. Here we go. Speed of tape loading. So I have the confirmation. Aggressive sellers entering, buyers reloading at the level. I steal more money from this market. And we take the momentum up.

Aggressive buyers are coming in. Go, bro.

I didn't load enough size because we didn't add the retracement, but it's still crazy risk to reward. Look at the speed of tape.

It's choking up, yeah.

There you go. Now, this kind of setup, I'm making $2,000 risking $600. I will be taking out the position. The point is that we broke the cage. Right. So it's really possible that we have a continuation. So I will trail my stop loss because this one can get to a $3,000, $4,000 position.

You will, yes, let it run. Yeah.

I remove the speed of tape because now the squeeze is done and I don't need it anymore. Now, in choppy days when you have really deep retracement, This model is not performing. Now you understand why I need Directional Day. Yeah. I will cover below 191. Let's see if we pick up the momentum. How does it look on the ES?

On ES, it looks pretty good because it could potentially turn into a trend. You know, from balance comes the imbalance. So maybe this is the start of the imbalance. Which is why you're going to start trailing to speculate that the imbalance is coming. Yeah.

And now the sellers need to close all their— so it's possible that we have a really good move up. Okay, it's already 1:5. I will take the top of the squeeze and take it out. We risk $600 to make $3,000. Now I start to play with the profit that I have to build to, yeah. I'm surprised. I would expect that they will revisit the, the low level before the explosion. Yeah. Yes. That's what I usually see. It's not common on the NASDAQ that you have, uh, specifically after the day of yesterday, right? To see an impulsive move up. And I still, if all this, it's an attempt to start up a trend that gets absorbed really aggressively, still the fakeout setup It's there. Imagine if this candle prints a wick, no? And you go back inside the balance. Yeah.

So for me now, what I look for is the volume to build outside of the cage, right? To see the market breaking out of it. If it could continue to build.

And still take another break and test.

Yes, it could be a break and test. Yeah, exactly. But like I said earlier, the problem with this is we're revisiting back into the range that we consolidated at yesterday.

I love this cluster of liquidity.

So you wouldn't mind looking for a breakout inside of all of this liquidity here? No. Huh.

But I know that the behavior of the market changed. Now we did this move because the market is illiquid in this area. As soon as we go to the fair value area, start to do this dance of consolidation again. Like we don't have the condition to hold a 1:20. No, we don't have the condition today to hold the 1:20. So it's better to build profits. 1 to 3, 1 to 4, and then use the risk on this to make another 1 to 3 and close at 10,000, and that's it.

I'm very surprised you don't use a depth of market to execute off of.

No. Yeah. I, I only use decent speed of tape because my setup is more statistical than immediate order flow. Okay. So I entered the majority of time with a limit on the absorption. Right.

Massive buying speed of tape picking.

They are going to the fair value. They reach now the liquidity level. Now, if this candle managed to print all red, okay, if this is an absorption and we are the previous day fair value, I consider when we have the condition that today we don't have, a mean reverting setup. A mean reverting setup.

Yeah. Well, I could tell you for me on ES right now, there's a zero print.

Ah, you consider a mean reverting setup? At the 76.50s. Yeah.

You know, the further it moves away from this, the better the trade will be.

I don't have the fixed profile, you know, I think we will squeeze to the 25,000, another move up and then I can consider the mean reverting. I have only one of the three confluence that I'm looking for reverting. They are absorbing the sellers as they go up. This is a block of orders that will— an order block, an order block, an order block. This is a block of order flow orders trying to protect the price.

Yeah, my zero point filled.

Filled? You took it. No, it filled.

It was entering with a 3-point target is no good on ES.

It was a beautiful reversal.

On the NASDAQ, you could get those moves, you know, the 10, 20, 30 points. On ES, having a 3-point target is no good for me.

It's not enough risk to reward.

But you see how the shape of this profile is starting to develop into a P? How it kind of looks like a P-shape right here?

Yeah, I like it. And that's what I was saying, like if you break this one on the downside and this is an absorption, you have a mean reverting setup. I think we will go to challenge the first aggression. The point is that going short on a momentum like this on NASDAQ at least, you really risk to be squeezed out.

On the S&P as well.

I think we will go back to the main activity, and this one is my reload setup. This one, all this fight is the acceptance area and the main fight, and it's the reload logic for me.

I could tell you what, if this structure wasn't like this on ES where we have the consolidation from yesterday, I would be looking for a pullback into this breakout range around the 68.70s, 68.65s, where the aggressive buyers really stepped in. Makes sense. But like I said, with this consolidation above the high here, it's kind of like a ceiling where we're trying to jump, but we're hitting our head on the ceiling.

I mean, I'm anticipating another squeeze, second one. They are accepting the area. This one I will try to go above the eye. Now we are in a balanced situation. And when you have this stuff and you flush the top, you get an aggressive buy candle that creates an amazing momentum on the side. Let's see if we can have it. The only fear I have when you have this momentum is that the market can collapse and not give you the feeling level that you want, and it takes more money than what you can give it to it.

But consolidation near the highs are typically a bullish sign.

Yeah, no, but I like the recovery of the aggression that we had was incredible, really. Right. Oh no, we have the round at 24,900. Let's try to take the round one. They are consoy. This one will go. I'm thinking about covering because this one is probable that goes short. We have a lot of aggression now. Buyers are trying to hold it. Doesn't look good on the buy side. Ultra balanced area. This choppiness of NASDAQ after breakout only on Friday, we can have So this one took $1,300 for me. You see what's the risk? This massive candle are the ones that I can take. Took $300 more. So now we are going in the first balance level. Still, I think we are going to break the top. So now I have a better risk to reward. So the final target I have is this one. I'm watching the same thing. So let me check the risk reward is massive. I can get to the 0.995, squeezing to the 0.997. Let me check if I have—

What a sell candle. Massive sell candle, but on ES, the selling's building. We're coming into 6865. This was the previous breakout level.

Yeah. Now we are in the box, but with this aggression on the short side, I will not feel so confident to buy. You are considering a buy setup? Potentially.

Problem is, is we're in the cage.

No, we are out of the cage.

For me, my cage is from yesterday's consolidation. Ah. So I like how this delta right here, you see 6865, there's a -704 at 6865. The selling's really trying to step in here. So only the potential setup would be if this breaks and we reclaim back above 6865. But until then, uh, and I would be going for a higher day target. Mm-hmm. Uh, high of the day. Yeah. But if it doesn't hold, It's an invalid setup. I think creating if-then statements, if it, if this holds and then that breaks, that's a potential entry. And for me, that's nothing now. That's it. Really strong selling.

They didn't even stop at, no, you had the rejection candle here, but then it got eaten back by the sellers. So even my potential buy, it's a crazy risk to reward, but I will not take it now. Because I can see some absorption, but it's total control of the sellers.

See, that's the difference, right? So this goes to show you two different positions. We had the same analysis of this moving up, right? Yeah. You taking it because of the volatility on the NASDAQ and you not putting any influence on the previous structure that I have versus me not trusting the breakout, right? Because I would be going for a larger move to then if I was in a position going for a larger move, being in this now drawdown. So it goes to show you two traders that have the same analysis, but different asset and different perspective on that trade. Yeah. You know?

For the first time after all this move is starting to build a little bit of interest of the buyers in the speed of tape. And we are at the previous departure of the market.

Right. The previous higher day. Yeah.

Oh, it's looking nice. It's looking really good.

So now I consider this market structure demand potentially forming here.

Yeah, I like it. I really like it. Still, the sellers don't, uh, you know, don't give room for movement. I would consider risking the initial profit of the day to have an extension setup covering and trailing the risk as it goes. But if I don't see speed of tape, for me speed of tape is so important because it's showing you initiative. Would you consider this day if you were at home alone and if you didn't have to to do the live, would you trade or would you already walk out from your laptop now?

It's easy for me to say after the fact. The only setup that I really saw was at the low of the day. Mm-hmm. Uh, that's a perfect setup at the low with the zero prints. Mm-hmm. For me now with the balance like this and kind of moving back into the range, pretty big bid, 6860. Do you see any absorption on there?

Yeah. I see that they are challenging the low of the cage that I made. And if these sellers get absorbed. It's true, you don't have the risk of getting squeezed with yes, but you need to frame more long-term setup. Otherwise, it's not worth paying commission to open a fast move. I don't like the interaction here. It's nothing interesting for me. Speed of tape is slipping. Big orders is slipping. I think sellers will get aggressive on this area and collapse it to the down with another big candle.

Yeah. And now we're moving back into the range. So now you would trade something back into the range here? I don't like it.

I don't like it either. I don't see anything that would add value to the money that they already made.

And it's, uh, see what the difference of your execution and why that was successful was because of your timeframe and your perspective on the move. You were just going for a quick squeeze. You weren't going for a home run. You were going for a quick squeeze. Which is a huge difference of you could have the wrong, right analysis, but lose money on it if you were going for a different type of setup.

But I trade both of them.

Like the long-term— Depends on the conditions.

The long-term long is still here for me. I still cannot believe that they make this big movement without taking the bottom of the range. And here they go. There it is. Wow. Beautiful. It's looking really good. You took a short on this candle? No, no, no. And for position management, how you usually do? Like you leave your full target or you consider maybe taking some partial or?

I rarely move my target. So when I enter the setup, like let's just say I was looking for a long here, that's my target. And what I'll do is on the S&P, if it moves up, let's just say 7, 10 points in my favor immediately, I'll then adjust my stop loss to break even. That's kind of trade management that I'll do. But it needs to move in my favor relatively quickly.

And stopping profit, you put or you keep stop loss to break even?

Usually break even. I don't like to pay myself along the way. And the reason why I do it that way is I have the ability to reenter. If I threw out the analysis and didn't reenter, maybe I would pay myself along the way. But like I said, some of my best trades are the reentries. Sometimes I'm a little early to the party. Mm-hmm.

Another dip down and we are at daily VWAP.

It's important to just trade your setups. Is this speed of the tape picking up for you or no? No, it's nothing good for me.

Yeah. Like, that's the reason I'm asking you stuff about management because I don't see anything that I can execute now. And also the level I don't like. I don't like the level now. Like, if I need to choose an execution here, would be the selling absorption of these buyers for a continuation move that brings us back to the— He did it. There you go. He did it. Followed by speed of tape. This one is a move back to the range because they accepted now back inside. So this one, beautiful trade, this one. This one followed by the speed of tape. It's a really 1 to 4 with the stop loss, not even above the candle, above the absorbed buy.

The sellers are really piling in though. They are strong. So now would this be something you're looking to short a pop or a reload setup and target the balance range low that formed?

You know that this is one of my favorite setups. The problem is that we are back inside the same range and we have nothing. We have a consolidation range for another 2 hours and it's— but yes, if I need to take one target, I will take the low of that balance. Yeah. That's my target for—

I think they go for that balance low.

The fact that on Monday we have an early close of the market is not helping us in volatility because no one will engage with big capital on a Friday. I like how you use the footprint. I like the visual that you have.

Yeah, because I can see the delta.

Yeah, you can see the shape, you can see the total volume.

You can see the total volume. I can see where the bar opens and closes. It's beautiful. The Nasdaq footprint moves too fast.

You cannot, like, I put bubbles because to scalp with the execution that I have and bring, if I need to read also numbers, it's really difficult. But if I was trading ES, I will use the same one.

ES has no bubbles that are significant here, which is interesting to say. There's nothing large.

You have something small, but nothing interesting, but still it's coherent because it's a sell aggressive.

So that pop right there was a nice little reload, initial setup.

This was a reload setup.

It's popped. As it popped, the aggressive sellers stepped in, and now we come down. So let's see if these sellers get rewarded or if they continue to— is this at the low? Where's the low? The low's here.

They are challenging the law that we are watching, eh. Now I usually expect an acceleration. Now there is an opposite squeeze. You see how I identify the best candle. You see that this candle here and this candle here have more than 70% of the body and really small wick. This is the typical aggression candle that frame my reload area. And this is the low that I expect them to, to break. Yeah. I will not consider a short if we break this one.

No, no, no. It's the same thing on ES. So on ES, we have the really big green bubbles as it initiated up. As the market pulls back, it's support, support, and then we continue to move up. So that 6830 is going to be a key level for me as well, but trading above that is difficult. So 6830 on ES, and then what is it on?

24680. At the end of the day, we watch different instruments, but order flow is order flow. It's reflected on the big trades, it's reflected on the heatmap, it's reflected on everything. Oh, look at the speed of tape here. It's picking up. It's, I think, the highest that I've seen during the day. Because we are on VWAP.

And it's VWAP.

Yeah, because we are on VWAP. Okay, so Beautiful. So, I know it's a bit beautiful. I have something interesting here, but not enough speed with this trackpad. So this one inside the range, it's a reload of the sellers. Even if the speed of tape is so high. Oh, so beautiful one. Considering it. Okay, we put here. Go to the top. Sure, no? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we are back inside the range and we're reloading. We are reloading, yes. The cage rejection for the third time of the day with this speed of tape not following in a breakout. For me, it's like a failed auction logic. That's the holding gauge daily.

Yeah, I want to see this.

They are rejecting the high. The problem is that they spike up on NASDAQ and they took me out. And this is when the position is still valid. But you are with a tight stop loss. A potential re-entry would you look for? I don't like, like now the interaction is getting really choppy. Right. I think the speed of tape is not there. The aggressive participants are not there. And you see that they spike the top and reject. So it's, Today we are really working with bad market condition.

I wouldn't mind the reload setup here at the 60.

To go short again.

I wouldn't mind it. Uh, because zooming out, it's potential failed breakout. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That, that's what I will see.

What we see at the highs and now this is just a pop. For a potential reload, and then maybe we could target that balance range low. I know it's a little further out.

But that's the play that I was, uh, that's the play that I was trying to anticipate. The problem is that it gets aggressive on the bottom and now it's again reloading up. Oh, I like this gap.

I want to see a break of this little consolidation high here, hit the 64s, 65s.

To take a reload long? Potentially, yeah.

I mean, we have a nice little rejection, 1-minute wick here from the 65s all the way up to the 67s. I would need to see trap buyers here. This is be a trap buyer reload setup. Buyers buying this breakout. Let's see, here's the 65s filling. Strong bubble coming in. Let's see if this fails. Ah, Delta's getting hit.

You are still considering the short? I am. You know, it's beautiful from a price perspective, but the auction is really strong on the upside. They are gapping. Are you coffee addicted also when you trade?

You're coffee addicted? You've been drinking that thing like it's water. Oh, it's tea. Making the old grandpa today.

But yes, I'm caffeine and theanine addicted.

Yeah, the problem is when I drink caffeine. You get nervous. No, not nervous. I do too many things, you know. Wow, it started before us.

I'm still considering this one. I am.

Maybe I move back into 64, 65 again, but that was my entry there.

Didn't manage to fill you out.

See, like you, I don't place limit orders at my prices. When I see my entry, I hit it. You step in. I step in. Ah, look at the seller stepping in. So this is a good, beautiful example of a previous rejection and a seller reload. We rejected on the 1-minute 6865 from the original sell-off, right? If I zoom out here, we see the massive sells, we see the move back up here and the pop into this. So to me, there's a seller that was sitting at the 65s, and the market comes back up and pops into this. Look at the footprint, it looks like a P-shape on the footprint chart. To me, that's a good indication for a quick little scalp down. I mean, that lasted 10 points.

I'm marking the top of the distribution because I still think we can challenge another time the high, tap into this liquidity and reject like crazy on the short side. You take the same size on all your trades, or I'll adjust according to my risk.

So I standardize my risk, keep my risk the same dollar amount, and then I'll adjust my position size. So if my stop loss is 2 points away, I could go in with more position size. Okay. My stop loss is 4 points. Let's just say it's double. I'll cut my size in half. I understand.

And you have like a ranking for your setup, like you have really rare AAA setup that only appear 2 times per week and you take a little bit more risk on those or all days?

Every trade I take has to be a AAA plus 10 out of 10 setup.

Even if they are super rare, even only 2 or 3 trades per week?

Yeah, yeah. Because I have multiple playbooks. Okay, I understand. Maybe a setup that I take today, I see it once a week, but I know it's one out of the 7 playbooks. Okay. Ah, you have all these, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The one playbook today was the zero print. That's the main thing I saw today. Mm-hmm. You know, anything else right now is kind of, yeah, not forcing execution. But here's, we're reloading the 64s again, so. Mm-hmm. This could potentially be brewing. I mean, we're seeing the absorption and the selling at the 68, 65s. We're seeing delta building. It's beautiful. We're seeing the speed of the tape pick up. We're seeing the sellers reload and defend price here. So it's a clear rejection of the 6865s on ES. And that's a low volume node, no?

Yeah, that level is super strong. But I don't see, you know, NASDAQ is more aggressive than ES. So when they take a decision on the direction, you can see this from the order flow. NASDAQ is super slow and stable now. So it's I can expect that they want to make another push and then starting a movement that makes sense for me.

My real rules right now would be to not trade in the middle of this, you know, but—

Of course, of course. No, I was early to the party here. Yeah, you had the right idea.

You drink caffeine when you trade?

Coffee or tea, specifically if I have a long session, like 6 hours when I am, because I need to follow the position. So like in the session of yesterday where the market collapsed and you reload, you can stay 6 hours in front of the chart. So I need to keep me awake. Sometimes I just stay 3 hours doing nothing, just putting stop loss in profit and it continue to collapse. Yeah. Do you ever do position that lasts for multiple hours or you are more in and out in—

My best trades work out right away. So usually when I enter, if I look at my best trades compared to the worst trades, the best trades work out last 5 minutes, 6 minutes, 7 minutes. That makes sense. My worst trades, I'm in this trade for an hour, 2 hours and it stops me out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And an edge could be adjusting my stop loss to break even immediately. You know, if that's a statistic that I find found to be valid of best trades work out right away, maybe moving to break even right away, you know, is appropriate, but that's where looking at your data and adjusting accordingly is appropriate.

Look what a mess here, buyers, sellers, aggressive, multiple levels. We are really in a tight range. For example, you see this aggression and now everything is Stable, calm. The next 6 candles, you don't have anyone getting really aggressive.

So one thing that I look for and why I love using a range footprint chart is I like looking at the time the bar opens. So if the bars open relatively quickly, you see here at 11:03, we have a bar and the next bar opens up 30 seconds later at 11:00:40. If I see a bar maybe take 20 minutes to open and move a 5-point range, that tells me that it's very choppy or there's not a lot of volatility. Interesting. I never think about this. So I like looking and, you know, if If I had more screen real estate, I would have another indication down here that tells me how long until the next bar opens. And when more bars open more frequently, I know that the speed of the tape is increasing as well. Nice one.

They did it. They tap into the level.

It's still brewing for a short for me, Fabio.

Yeah, but also for me. I mean, they tap into the level and rejected, but still another push I want.

The problem that I have is if we zoom out, it's in the middle of the range.

I don't know, from the top to here, for me, still a really good setup. You know what's my real problem? That there is no sellers aggressive on this one. And I have really a low filter, so I have a 40 on the big time.

Are you lowering your filter as well?

I lowered the filters, but you see nothing. There's a delta divergence here. Ah, you use also the delta divergence.

Yeah. A massive delta divergence.

From the first peak to the second peak, right?

From the peak to this peak, we can see the selling, the buying was nowhere near the previous high. And on the footprint chart, we see the delta here at the bottom, right? You see this wick and then you see this one. This was like more like a hammer candle versus this one kind of bought up.

Like on Exosium. Yeah.

If this was at a level of resistance or something and it wasn't in the middle of the range, this is an A+ setup. It's almost trusting the market, right? It's kind of like, you know, if, if, if it's acting up, you know when it's acting up and you know if it's in a bad mood, maybe you shouldn't poke at it. That's kind of the way I look at it. You know, if your girlfriend's in a bad mood, you're not gonna leave her alone.

A slut. Exactly. Oh, now we have something interesting. What do you see? I see that they are really aggressive on the top and they are getting absorbed. Yeah. There is a strong liquid— and you can see also from there, there is a strong liquidity level. And that's another push-up I want still.

So to me, this, how I'm viewing it, is that these moves up is somebody absorbing and accumulating for potentially a move down.

Yeah. Totally agree with you.

And we have a low volume node on ES as well. Beautiful.

You usually trade alone or you trade with your family member, like the risk manager sometimes?

I trade alone. I don't like, uh, other people's opinions.

Yeah, they can interfere with your opinion.

For sure. I see you getting long and I want to be short. Of course. You lose, I, uh, or I lose, you win.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's counterintuitive.

But they, in the, in their office setting, they all help each other. I've seen them, you know, shout out, look at this aggression here.

Oh, I mean, it's counterintuitive because you think that more heads And it's always better it's not like this because they can also—

The best analysis is your own analysis. A lot of aggression coming in here, Fabio.

But I don't have still my execution trigger. I want this push-up and rejection. They are almost reaching the level. Here they go. Touched. 2 times, 3 times. Look at the speed of tape. Look at the speed of tape.

How big is that order? I cannot—

it's like 300 contracts on the— No, they got absorbed. They got absorbed. You're going for a few. No. You are going? No, no. Not going. I was searching for a short, to be honest. Yeah, well, I mean, sure. To look for a continuation long. But they, they are too aggressive on this level.

Yeah, this to me is no, no short no more.

No, this is, uh, I short on my hands and I don't do anything.

I think it's also important, I feel like you're the same way, is there's many different analysis you come up with in a day. Could be 10 different ideas, 20 different ideas, and maybe you only act on 3 of them or 4 of them, you know, or I mean, it needs to have everything aligned, right? Like, uh, if then statements, if this happens, this rejects and buying comes in and the speed of the tape increases, I'm in it.

That's kind of what is beautiful. A huge amount of absorbed sellers, speed of tape. This one for me, it's a setup, you know, loading here, loading here. This one, it's a good momentum setup for me. I'm covered up below this huge absorption, and as they reject, I load. This one is, for example, is not a level and reload, but it's a speed of tape, aggression, and absorption coherence in one candle. I have all of three, all, all of three in this 1-minute candle of Nasdaq. And they are above the cage again. And if this candle fail, for me, it's a short. Because this means that the auction flip. So I have an asymmetrical risk to reward to go to the bottom of the balance.

So if you're short 3 contracts, would you, or if you're long 3 contracts, would you then put a sell stop for 6 contracts to go to reverse or no?

No, because if I put 6 contracts, it's like, uh, martingale. You mean the stop limit? Yeah, yeah. No, I don't do this. I wait always for the candle to close because sometimes it's an effort without result. I'm reducing my risk as it goes and I'm anticipating the squeeze. I'm risk-free. Let's see if it starts. They are pumping. Expect a flip of the auction again. Okay, they are going. Second time that we attempt a squeeze. If it's another fake out.

Yeah, I'm looking for a long here for the higher day as well. You took it? No, no, not yet. I'm looking for an entry. Again, again, fake out. No, no, they're buying. They're buying.

Considering adding.

Yeah, they're buying this.

I don't see a lot of coherence in the buyers. They did a huge candle of the speed of tape. In directional day, you have a follow-through on NASDAQ, and you don't have only the way of putting stop loss to risk-free, but you have also room to put stop is profit, and now it's coming back to balance. Back to balance.

Something good on ES? Yeah. This pullback is passive buying to me.

On the 79.

You still in long or no?

I'm considering one on the 79, one on the 101, and one to load here on the 1.

They're buying this move. Let's see. Unless news is coming out and somebody knows something right now. Let's see. Let's see.

I got feel that good level, but if this is all a fake auction, we go back inside the range and we dance for other hours.

Unless somebody knows something and it's news coming out.

They took me out on this one. Let's see. You have a really long, uh, stop loss.

I'm not in yet. So the main thing I look for now is the delta to build. Mm-hmm. And if we could hold these 65s from earlier.

Oh, to be honest, this one seems so short now to me. I have hope that we are going to revisit our beautiful down level. Yeah. I see sellers getting crazy aggressive and they rejected the top of the balance that we saw before.

That's insane how much volume just came in there so randomly, right? We were waiting for that.

That's insane how much NASDAQ is not moving. In which minute candle do you see a lot of movement? In the 06 minute? One minute? This one?

Oh, let me see. In what? In, uh, in, uh, hold on.

You're still considering a long?

It's tough to say. I, like, I always go back to what I started with earlier. It's, we're in the middle of the range, right? If I zoom out, look how much volume is building here. Uh, that's what building these, uh, from today and from yesterday. The real, the result from yesterday was it moved sideways when the volume built. Today we're doing the same exact thing. Yeah. No, so I—

But it's beautiful to see a little bit of volatility.

For sure, hopefully it continues.

Now, I told you after they break this candle I will flip. I was talking, but this one, for me, it's like, you challenge a wall, if you break, you squeeze, if you fail, you go to the outside.

So for me, what I like right now, and this is another one of those 20 scenarios that I said we can make on a daily basis. How can you remember all this scenario is that we're revisiting the 6865 level. Mm-hmm. 6865, 6863 that we rejected earlier on that reload. And remember how we were looking for another reload over here and it rejected? Well, now that we're above this level, $68.65, we're beginning to support it. Makes sense. And now as we're supporting it, we're seeing aggressive buying coming in. Yeah, yeah, makes sense. And if I were to look on the footprint chart now, we see in the terms of the delta, we see a little bit of a lower wick indicating the selling really tried and now the buying is stepping in. So if this can pull back and hold the $68.65s again, $68.62s as support, I would look for an entry targeting the high of day at the 68.80s. Mm-hmm. Another potential if-then statement, right? If it comes under this and the selling builds, it's important. And it's strong. That's it. It's not a setup that you would watch.

It's important for you how it arrives. Like if it starts to get aggressive in your level, you still consider a long or?

I love the quicker the move and the more of the impulse it takes, the better it is. So when it moves down quickly, I love to see that. So now we're coming into it and now we're trying to bounce. Considering a possible entry here.

I think it's beautiful, this one. I don't have my confluence, but it's beautiful.

In a split second like that, right? You enter already. No, it moves. See how it moves up 4 points like that? In a split second, a 4-point move will destroy your risk to reward. So in a move like this, the way I look at it is if I want to buy the 65s and I see this start bidding up to the 70s, I feel like I am not paying a good price at the 70s. Whereas if I had an opportunity at the 65s, it's not as good of a deal as it was back in the 2 seconds ago.

I understand.

And that's with the way that we trade. You have to be very fast. You know, there can't be any hesitation or any, the more, the more you think, the less money you'll make. The less you think, the more money you'll make. The more fear you have, the less money you'll make.

Yeah. Well, when you take kind of an unconscious execution because you made this 1,000 times without reasoning on it, usually you have always a better positioning on it.

If I could get a little—

I like your setup, yeah.

I know, if I could get a little pullback to give me a little better risk to reward, maybe 67, 66.

Watching a crazy absorption of the sellers on this candle. Are you? It's really beautiful. My setup, it's a little bit more aggressive.

I like this.

We need to accept this.

Oh yeah, it's holding the old rejection level now as support. Oh, bid stepping in. See, where I would get this wrong now would be me chasing this, buying the 71s, having a target at the 80s, and putting my stop loss under the 62s.

I'm more aggressive than you and it didn't even filled me because it was super aggressive on the risk to reward this shit on this one.

But if they come back down, it offers a better risk to reward. I'm still considering it. You see anything on the NASDAQ? Yeah, I see a beautiful long building.

Yeah. I see really a beautiful long building. The problem is that if I need to put my out position at this low. It's too much risk. It's just stupid because the movement in this choppy day is not so explosive, so I will leave this one to you.

Look at the large aggressive bubble.

Absorbed. Absorbed. Do we need to get a— here? They're going, there's your— yeah, I think they are loading. They are loading.

No, they got it in the absorption right there.

I don't have the confluence of the Speed of Tape on this one.

I wonder what the Speed of Tape on ES would look like here.

If you start to use it, you will fall in love with it.

Okay, this is what I watch here now. Watch for a pullback into 6868 to 6862 for a long targeting the high of day. My invalidation point is under 6863, 6862. Mhm. If we're observing this price action and we're seeing the buyers really to be strong and true here, if the market pulls back, they should defend these price If we're reading this incorrectly and the market moves down, we may not get confirmation, but it avoids an early long.

It's always the balance between the probability and the risk to reward.

So what I like looking for is in my footprint chart, I like seeing delta. I like seeing an outlier in the delta. And when the volume's a little thinner, there's not as many significant delta outliers because of how fast the market moves. But I like seeing, I have it, I have it highlight, right? I have it highlight in the delta column when there's a significant outlier in the delta, when there's something different than the normal volume coming in.

Color difference.

If we were to look at the low of the day for today, right? The market came down into the low, directly at the low of the day. If we see what happened down there, where is it? Uh, directly at the low of the day, a massive delta outlier, 330 contracts. Watch this, right at the low, at the low of the day, 335 contracts when the market came into our support level. Mm-hmm. So I like looking for outliers when I'm getting confirmation to kind of confirm that significant activity similar to your big bubbles. Is confirming the move that I'm looking for.

I have the size of the bubbles. The more interesting the outlier, the biggest the bubble.

The bigger the bubble. Yeah. Same information, different visual. And to me, this looks like hands-off.

Yeah, because sellers are in control.

Sellers are in control.

So why bother? I was waiting for a potential failed auction, but sellers are in control and now I don't touch anything. There are so many pieces of the puzzle more than getting a level.

So my CLC rule is important for me. Now I guess you're considering a short.

No, no, no, no, not touching anything now. We are too far from the first level of aggression, but, um, Like if you zoom out, it's really crazy the session that we got. Like NASDAQ like this, it's one time per week.

And of course it's the week that we're in the studio.

But it's okay, yesterday they collapsed without retracing, today they need to breathe.

I wish we had a day like yesterday today.

I wish. The market makers are like, Don't move.

I was waiting for yesterday's setup all week. I took 4 trades on last Friday with the same analysis of the dump. Of course, we get the dump a week later.

The flip after the absorption of the buyers would have been Really good. I still think we go here, huh? Yeah, from how it is developing, it's like the idea of the buy here that I had, it's not valid anymore.

If you look at the volume profile on ES, same thing as the NASDAQ, the volume profile completely just a cage.

Just balanced. Yeah.

Do you look at the shape of the volume distribution throughout the day? Like you look at how it's developing Yeah, yeah.

When it's, I know that when it's balanced, I lose money because I anticipate squeeze. So I need to keep my loss small. And when I have a skew up P or a B, I have a trend directional day, so I can let it run a little bit more and I can add. That's the reason I always draw the cage and wait for the cage to be broken like we did. But today it broke the cage, went back inside. Second time, broke the cage, went back inside.

This is the day where I lose money. Have you ever tried trading the S&P?

I tried trading the S&P, but I will trade S&P with a mean reverting model, not with a trend following model, because also when you get super trendy on NASDAQ, S&P is always giving you— Right. You know, I noticed that S&P does push, rebalance, push. NASDAQ does push, stable, push. Push, yeah. So it lets me build better. Right.

It's amazing how we trade very similarly on completely different instruments. Yeah.

Wow. It's going to our level. Yeah.

I would like this here. See how it's holding? Mm-hmm. This aggressive buy now is support. We might get our moment to break the high of the day.

I had my confluence at this level and this aggression, but now I don't have a model to jump in now. Even if it seems good, I don't have— Look at this, look at this.

Yeah, the speed of tape is big. Yeah, you can see it on here.

You like it? I like it.

But I'm going against my rules, Fabio.

No, no, no, not for execution. I mean, you like the directional of the long. I do. It's giving me on this level an absorption of the sellers, a potential squeeze with a really small stop loss. Let's see if they break. Hmm. No. Wow. Holy— Look at the sellers. They are saying like, we don't go to your top of the day, we go to the bottom to reload. Wow. I like it now. Yeah. I really like it. Now is the time.

We reclaimed that range. If we could get a pullback into the 69s on ES, I don't know what that is on NASDAQ.

NASDAQ is not showing any interesting activity in the last two candles, but this rejection at the sensitive level that we marked, the 75, and this aggression level, it's really beautiful. Here they go. Here they go. Here they go.

Here they go. Uh, NASDAQ's moving quicker.

Mhm. But it's not giving me the, the opportunity to join the movement, unfortunately. I will use the 40 range when it's so choppy. I usually switch on the range, not on the tick, but on the range. Speed of tape here is not bad. It's not bad at all. We have this absorb sellers by this aggression. Speed on the tape, speed of the tape is there. And also some small. Wow. So let's again. Choppy. It's choppy again.

Wow, it's big size at the high.

Yeah, it's maybe. You see that too? I see the huge absorption of the buyers.

But look at this clear now level of resistance. I mean, now it's becoming so clear. I feel like it's gonna, they're gonna break that. It would be probably inevitable to be broken because of how clear that level of resistance is now.

Seller speaking out. Buyers are still keeping, um, Getting completely absorbed, the sellers.

Yeah, this is gonna go break the high.

I want to go with—

Problem is—

Se fuoi canteca momentum, certo. So they printed the aggression, so messy the, the deep effort today. This is the, the path of least resistance from an order flow perspective, and you see it's level on top of the level on top of the level on top of the level. Let me try to go to the protection level of the IVB. Let's, let's load one here. One contract here. I'm anticipating the squeeze. I saw what I wanted to see. Cool. Fill on all 3 contracts. Imagine now it goes back inside. Another failed auction. No, no, I think you're good. I see a lot of aggression. I think they are going to take the low again. The area failed and they are going down again. Now we should print a sell aggression here. Still bought. What a fight inside here.

Yeah. Uh, part of me wants to try this long just to speculate that we're gonna go break out.

That's what I'm trying, but it's really choppy also in the breaking out.

It's not the behavior of Nasdaq. This is also not a breakout market, a breakout day. This is the type of day where you have to enter where you would, for me, normally stop out at. Here it comes. We might get our shot now because it's going to go.

Yeah, that's what they are building. Like imagine they took me out at this low. Yeah, now they are building. I have a reload level on the Nasdaq Effort. Let's see if they come back. We should trade more often together when you come to Dubai.

Might try a quick little 2-to-1 risk to reward, but—

By setup. Potentially. You don't wait that they clean the high?

No, no, because my target would be a high at daybreak.

Ah, so you want to like to anticipate the squeeze. Oh, there you go.

Going here. Here's a higher daybreak.

Holding one contract here. Go with 5. I'm loading on this area that is the maximum point of aggression of the buyers. I like the accumulation and I see that they take Space. They take really good space to make.

S&P still has not taken out its high, so you're likely to go revisit that at least, which will help bring the NASDAQ. Has it taken out its high?

Let's see. Here we go.

Here's a pump right here.

But he didn't fill me now on this one with the contract size that I wanted. Took only the first one. Because when you have a momentum market, Like you enter full size in one and that's it. When you have a momentum market, I need to get a better positioning price. So I fractionalize my entry. Right.

On an instrument like the NASDAQ, it's very appropriate.

Let's see if they revisit back.

This to me has the potential for a trend later in the session. I hope.

Yeah, coming back to Phil. Let's see if we get a nice Phil. Is your performance related to the market condition or you have so many models that this doesn't affect you? So I have so many different models.

If a market's balanced, I have different setups. If the market's trending, I have different setups. When I trade a balanced setup in a trending market, that's when I struggle.

So you can almost trade any kind of market environment. Right. Yeah.

Amazing. I prefer a balance.

Today?

Yes, but today's different because today we're in a higher timeframe balance. We're not in an intraday balance. The higher timeframe is we're coming back into this range, right? If I pull up a volume profile, This is extended today's session into yesterday's session. We're long-term balancing. So for me to even participate in a move to the upside, a high probability, I would need to see it at the 68.95s on ES above the balance high.

I understand. I got filled another second one, but the buyers look really exhausted. See if we can have a nice push on this one. If we can have a breakout again of the top of the range, I will consider adding I don't like it. Let's see if they catch up.

The ES order flow looks very good for a high daybreak.

That's it, brother. You're good. Took a nice sniper with a really limited risk for an $11,000 of profit, but we are still inside this fucking range.

Like, it's— you're in full size, no?

No, no, no, no, no, full size. I don't have the market condition to go full size. Yesterday I went full size. When I went full size, it's 15-20 mini of the NASDAQ. The aggression of today, it's—

I think your position looks great.

The position was great for a 1-to-1, but they will revisit this level.

So now would you adjust your stop loss to break even? We're not yet.

It's too tight. I risk of getting taken out before the real move appear. And I did something really stupid because still it's a 1 to 10 risk to reward. I'm risking $1,000 to make $11,000. So it's an anticipation of a potential top of the day. There you go.

There you go.

Let's see if they can catch up. I have a really high, high targets. They took the high. Yes. Okay. No, they didn't took the high. They are still inside this range. If they make another break, I can put my position to risk-free. Okay. Let's see. What a day you choose for me, Ritz. What a day. It's not in a good way, yeah? It's a master level consolidation day.

I'm gonna tell you, I think you're gonna turn into a trend here.

There is this problem on the left. There is this problem on the left. I will trade. I will trail my stop loss in a smart way to recover the first risk of the day because we are covered by this cluster aggression of the buyers. And let's see if we go back to breakeven.

My deep chart froze.

Deep chart froze.

Oh, maybe not. Yeah, it's not getting data.

Try to refresh. How do I refresh? Right-click. It's data that is not receiving. It's not just the— okay. Try to disconnect and reconnect this feed. Failed auction again, failed auction again. It's coming to the stop in profit. Let's kneel a little bit more of profit on the market. Out, stop in profit, and it reversed again. We recover the stop loss that we took before, but still not catching up a trend. I can load again on this cluster of aggressive buyers. If I see an absorption, seems that now it's building the condition to long. Not from this level.

My long comes above 68.95, which we're 10 points away.

I think it's smart what you are doing. You are waiting for the cage to be clean. So you have really clean price action.

I need clean price action. Yeah, yeah. I need my trade to work out right away.

You see, when we were in the range, I took execution on the long side. I took the first squeeze. When it goes back into the range, I trail. I always pay my stop loss with, but I don't build profit. Right. So it's not the condition that—

This is a condition where you need to have a wider stop loss and just let the trade do its thing and kind of hands off. You know, this is not a trade to—

But this is not what I like. No, no. Not the Nasdaq behavior. The Nasdaq, it's I take a direction and I start to pump like yesterday. Oh, building again the Pi on fixed profile. This one is beautiful. All this aggression level is beautiful.

They are not managing to See, to me, I don't look at this as me missing the move up or move down. I look at it as— I don't need to participate.

I agree. It is only us taking unnecessary position if I load again, because they are still in the range.

It's range, yeah. In my opinion, I think knowing when not to trade is more important than knowing when to trade. Yeah. Right? You could trade every move if you would really want to. It's easy.

Let's say, let's say that for me taking a risk of $1,000 to cover 11, if it catches up. It's worth the risk. It's worth the risk.

It's worth the risk. Yeah. Yeah. It's also worth the risk when you're in profits as well. Yeah. You know, to have a little bit of a cushion.

They went back to the original area of aggression. No, it's catching up again. And now it's catching up again. Give me a retracement. I didn't have the time to load. This was my level. Waiting for—

what are those purple boxes?

The purple boxes are areas where the aggressive sellers are dominant. It's an indicator that is plotting the path of least resistance, and it's giving you areas to manage your trade while it's running. So this is amazing when you have a bias and you need to understand where you have control of the buyers so you can trade. No, you see now the price is stuck on this area and they have this one as a revisit level to potentially add.

So did you draw your box because of the green box?

Yes. You did. Yes. I just extended it because on this one with a wick, the level gets invalidated, but it's not broken. It's still there. The price is still accumulating on the level. And you see now they start to do ping pong between these two areas. When they clean, you have the squeeze. They're challenging the eye. They are of course beautiful and beloved. Okay, the first level of aggressive sellers got invalidated. Patovlis resistance is getting long again. You have months where you don't trade, like August or Christmas? No, you do? Like the last 2 weeks of December, I usually don't trade. Yeah, but— The market condition gets a little bit better.

With Christmas and New Year, yeah.

Last August was beautiful. Seems like crazy volatility.

What do you think is the number one thing that someone should know with a workflow?

I think the most important thing is the relationship between volume and price because the volume I see like the gas pedal of the car and the price is the direction. So the price is telling you the result this impact of volume is having. So I add my Great results in the trading career when I merged them. When I was using only one kind of information, but also if I watch only order flow and I don't watch the interaction between areas, your level, your CLC and order flow, I take average entry. Because I only take momentum entry, but the risk to reward is not amazing. This is the most important thing for me. And the second most important thing, sitting on your hands or lowering the size. If you want to take a 1 to 10 anticipating a breakout, it's good because the risk, it's worth it. But when you have the wrong market condition or you want to buy a choppy range, this one is when you usually eat the profit of the day before. So the most difficult part in my career was sitting on my hands and only, for example, I don't have 7, 20 models. I had one model which was execution. and this keeps me accountable to not be creative in the position I take. If I use only price, or when I was using only price, you see stuff that is not numbers or actual result. You see candles, no? And the candles can be misleading. You can create setups that you only can see. But an aggression in order flow, it's an aggression in order flow. Oh, okay. An absorption on a horizontal ETH-MAT level is this they are pumping up. Yeah. It's going. And for you, which one was the most important moment of your career?

To, you know, not treat every move the same and to, like you said, sit on your hands, to be able to say, journal the trade right away and be able to say, this is the trade I'm taking and this is why I'm taking it and having a reason other than Oh, because it's going up or it's pumping. Yeah, it's going. I think— yeah, using the word 'I think' should not be in the vocabulary. You know, it's, it's natural for us to say 'I think,' but thinking gets you nowhere. You know, thinking is not going to move the market up or down.

Improvising and thinking are always—

and I think a lot of traders look at order flow every second, every minute of the day. It should be around your key levels. Yeah, it should be around your key levels. You know, if your system says 20 trades in a day, take the 20 trades. If your system says 1 trade or no trades, yeah, you know, so watching price action around key inflection points, the way I look at the market is that it's an advertising mechanism, right? So like if you're looking to buy anything, right, you want to buy it on discount, right? You don't know if a lot of people are going to buy it on discount. You're not going to know if that discount is even a discount.

You don't have an area, you don't have a direction. You're just buying in the middle, hoping something—

hoping it's going to go up. Exactly. Order flow tells us, okay, when this goes on discount, are people also buying the item on discount because they think it is worth that price. And if that's the case, then buying and following the footsteps is a good point. But if the market's on sale and nobody's buying it, why should we buy it if nobody's buying it?

Oh, it's going, it's pumping.

This is good because this is developing for me.

Yeah, no, no, it's amazing. Just, it was one candle of, and didn't give me an area to join the movement.

This is developing for me. 2-0 or 3-0 prints. 68, 87. Zero volume on the bid side as the market's moving up. There's zero volume on the bid. 37 on the ask. 65 on the ask. 27 on the ask. So, I mean, the market's right here. They both filled. We got one more that's unfilled. The further it moves away from the zero prints, the better the setup is. When it, it, it hangs out there and it fills it immediately, it's, it's not even a setup. We have one that is unfilled, 6886.75. I'm gonna label this as a zero print.

Look sexy, DeLonga. Huh? Look sexy, DeLonga.

Yeah, DeLonga's looking sexy for me, but not here.

We're almost there. 68.95. I have the NASDAQ. What is the, your level?

My level, 68.95 on ES. As soon as it breaks above this consolidation. I guess because you have this huge— Huge balance, right? Look at this. It's the line of least resistance. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow, look at all the absorption on the D-charts.

Yeah, that's the reason I'm not considering long and waiting. It's, it's strike the top. Stop got absorbed. And here we go back inside the range. What a situation. Deadly field. Oh, it's printing cell areas now. Hmm. It's printing cell areas. And at the top of the range with these huge aggressive buyers absorbed. Here we go back inside.

I learned my lesson of not being patient, you know? Of course. Impatience is a killer.

I learned the same lesson was considering buying, no? But you see, I don't have a green area, so I don't have a position of control of the buyers. I have only a speed of tape that got completely absorbed. Here, the top. I have sellers that have the upper hand on this. The Fabio 5 years ago will say, let's join because bias is long. We have a breakout. Let's put a stop loss below here and trying 10 times.

Now, would you say that your losses in your earlier stages shaped who you are right now? Like, oh, 5 years Fabio would enter this and 5 years Fabio would lose on this. And is that making you better?

This one, like now we took 2 breakeven. 1 take pro— 2 take profit and 3 stop loss. Okay. The Fabio of 5 years ago will not have taken the take profit because he will wait for a retracement. So he will not join momentum. And he will lose. And he will take way more stop loss. In this area, no, I will join before. Because I say it's a clean direction, but the price you pay on big accounts, it's worth enough to create a trauma in you. Right. To make sure that— now we have a green area. Okay. Now buyers are— control. This one. If I ever revisit here, I have a long. You see, it's really systematic. It's two models, one big trades, one deep effort, and that's it. Now we have a cage that I like.

Yeah, now you have a sell signal, oh no. No, no.

I never go against the pressure. I mean, I have a cage because these buyers are in control at the moment. And when I see the price breaking out this one, this one disappear. So it's like you have a clear direction now. You don't have an aggressive sellers on the side. And I go back in the second one I can, I can consider. If I get an aggressive seller absorbed here, this is a AAA for me. Okay. Is another 1 to 10. This is the setup I'm waiting. Another area. How is it going on ES?

I see the same thing you're seeing on ES. I see that massive sell order that now potentially lines up with your— Yeah, yeah, it's a huge absorption.

They tested the, uh, they rejected on the upper area. You see, it's, it printed another area here. They are challenging this one. If this one break and they test this one, I have a setup. Okay, done. One contract I put here. 2 contract, I put in a discount. Let's join this move. It's really high profit target. I hope to get filled on both the position. Field on the first one. I have to give you bad news. I think there is the possibility that today, it's not only that we don't go up, but we go back inside the range and we stop there. I think we're going to go up or go up very slow. I'm inside the long position. It rejected amazingly on my level, but I know, like, when you take 100 setups that look all the same, no, per month, you know how they look. You know that the price action catch up really fast. When you start to 20 minutes in the area.

But momentum can build here.

Fill me only one contract.

See, to me, this is moving way too slow. It's going up and down, kind of like zigzagging. It's uptrending, but zigzagging. I agree with you.

To me, that's just I'm executing a quantitative model. It's an area, it's based on research. It's risk. And, uh, the greatest risk is no risk, right?

Yeah. So now it's really warming up to me. I think your position looked beautiful.

You know that, first of all, only one contract filled. It didn't test the real souls of the area. Second of all, I know how this setup works. If they engage the high and they fail. Coming back down. Yeah. I'm forced to take quant decision and to remove the position because look what it did. Look, as soon as I remove a position, what it did. That's good. That's active management of the position. And now you see if they really break on the downside or if they catch up, you can still take other position. So they rejected at my green area.

See, for me, I would approach a day like today where when you're in a position, let's just say that position, I would have a little bit of a wider stop loss to give this a little more breathing room. You see how it's just zigzagging up and down, right? The pullbacks are normal on these uptrends. Trends. So for me, if I was entering long the same time you entered long, I would personally have a little bit of a wider stop loss to adjust for these pullbacks. Because every single pullback— if I go to a 1-minute chart, right— every single pullback on a 1-minute chart within the past hour was bought up. In fact, every pullback since the morning open was bought up, you know. And ever since then, the market's putting in maybe not higher highs, but it's definitely putting in higher lows. And every single pullback is an opportunity today for buyers to get filled. So if I was trading this long, let's just say the same entry as you were. Me, I would have— I know you were in one contract— what, a lighter stop, uh, lighter position size and a wider stop loss, because the dips are good opportunities for buyers to get in and accumulate on these moves up. That's how I view it. If I was going for a bigger move, I would have a wider stop loss instead of trying to scalp this move. That's how I would approach it. I call it being more positioned in the market rather than scalping. Doing. You know, different conditions present conditions to scalp, different conditions present different opportunities to be positioned. In a market for me like this, I need to be positioned until the volatility picks up. If you look at the volume, it completely died out horizontally. It's not moving anything. It has died out. Like, I think you have the completely right idea. I know your model may not say that.

You know, I I am backing what I say with a lot of execution. If this one gives me an area, it's a skew on the buyers, it's a control area, and you see it's rejecting. But if it failed to break the high, they come to revisit the area down. So if I have two areas stacked, yes, I can take a higher risk. But if 6 times out of 10 it goes back to the lower area, it's not working for me.

But you could also re-enter lower as well. So you just get out right now and then maybe re-enter lower.

You know when I will consider a long-term position like this? Like you're saying, if we took the bottom, like, like, if we took this, I will keep for all the day the position.

See, that I'm the opposite, because in a position like that, I would look to scalp it because I know that's going to be a quick increase in the volatility versus trading like this. I would then do what I'm saying, be more positioned.

But we, we are on the value area low. If we— that's from yesterday.

Yeah. Yeah.

This one for me, it's a long-term reversal. If you see this behavior of price action, you would stop charting. Yeah, same.

But a setup for me is above the 95s, which are—

Yeah, I know what you— we want to get the acceleration. After the fair value surpass, because we have the imbalance reload. Yeah. Why is this?

I'm going to change my profile to a 2-day and I'm going to show today's action with yesterday's action and see how the volume really is built, which is No good.

You ever merge profile? A month profile? Yeah. No, no, merge profile like.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My Sierra on my laptop's not set up to do that. And I don't know how to do that on TOS right now. But yeah, at home, what I would do is I would add today's profile with yesterday's profile.

Yeah, that's what I do also.

And you know, it would just be consolidated in this range.

And you use the full volume or only cash session volume?

I use full for this type of analysis.

You? Only cash session. You always cash session.

Yeah. I separate mine. I'll have two profiles, one just cash and one RTH and full session.

I run statistical model on this. Like I checked if it's more sensitive, the levels on the cash session or on the full volume, volume. And I noticed that the area, if you take only the cash session, the areas are way more sensitive.

Way more. I agree.

Value area low and value area high. So if I want to have a long-term picture, more inclusive of what the market is doing, I use the the full volume, but if I want to have my areas to engage, me too, I use the cash.

That's why I reset my depth of market at the market open, because I need to see the cash session volume profile. I make all my analysis off that. When I'm doing higher timeframe analysis, I do what you said and merge the profiles for the full session. But yeah, I think it, the intraday session is more important. Yeah. They are engaging the top again.

Let's see if we have a nice squeeze or It's another fail.

I'm telling you, this thing is going to move up, but it's just going to move up very slowly. Yeah. Which is not good for us.

How long have you been trading for? The order flow or generally? In general. In general, it's around 10 years, but remember that I started with binary options. You know how they were binary options. A binary option, you needed to say if the market was up or down. Then I was a really early adopter of Bitcoin, even if now the Epstein email are creating a little bit of strange situation in the history of the asset. You're on the email list? No, I'm not on the email list. I think Ritz is there.

Ritz is on it.

But I noticed Jeffrey Epstein was an option trader. It was crazy. Yeah, I read this email because I was curious about the model and they were like doing something with the shipping futures. Nice one. And, um, no, I didn't join any party. I was trading when they were partying, unfortunately.

So now we're testing the highs, which is a really good sign to see. So now what I look for is seeing if this is going to be a failed breakout or if this is going to continue. Mm-hmm.

Ooh, look at the speed of tape. Yeah. Beautiful. And here it goes, the real movement of the day. That's good. Okay. We are reaching your favorite level, eh? Yeah, so now we're finally here.

3 hours in.

Waiting for a nice area. Um, should these are the trust candle. Area is still not there.

So now what I look for is if the market can break above it. I like to see—

Yeah, this is the real move.

Yeah, I like to see now, does a low volume node form? Do we accept the higher prices? How is the delta looking? Yeah. I want to make sure that buyers are willing to buy higher prices. If the market breaks it, buyers not willing to buy higher prices, then this could be the potential of a fake out and then balance for the rest of the day on a Friday.

You saw this reload? Yeah. Like these aggressive sellers completely absorbed on the way down. It's interesting that the effort is not giving me any, any buyer's control area. No buyer's control area. Look at this speed of tape. Crazy. Crazy. This one, it's a reload. 1, 2, and 3. This is the candle that holds everything for me. You have aggressive volume, you have speed of tape. See if we continue. I have a really small risk, $700 to make $4,500. And here they go back in the range.

It's the type of day, my friend.

It's the type of day. As soon as your risk to reward did skew crazy on one side, You do also stock picking? You have any kind of portfolio long-term? You just Tesla. That's it. Tesla. That's it. Have you ever tried to trade single stocks?

I used to only trade maybe 2018, 2019 options, only options on the single stocks.

Now it's amazing that they are opening futures on single stocks. Yeah. I don't know if you saw.

Yeah. Look at this pullback from 5,695.

I don't touch anything. When there is this control of the sellers, I don't want to be even close to the chart. But you see what I say? Now, if you buy here, okay, I have a $700, $650.

Small risk. Yeah, it's worth a shot.

Okay. If I buy and accumulate long-term and now it reverse, I take this kind of stop loss.

Yeah, but you go with less size, no?

Yeah, you go less size, but also your skew on the profit is way lower. There are always pros and cons. Going to revisit.

You think so?

You know what, what is really amazing for me, that the top of the distribution, it's empty in volume for yesterday, and this is where I have the most beautiful unidirectional move. So risking small to go for an expansion back. I love it how it's building. It's incredible. They, they took control of the area. You have 2 here and 2 here. They printed an area that usually brings to a really good squeeze.

This squeeze looks different than what we've seen all day.

It's catching up with sustained volume. And all day it was so— see how much it's inconsistent. One speed of tape, on rejection. Look now, building consistency. Yeah. Probably this is the best setup of the day. Let's see if he can get, I can get inside from a good point. On this one, I, I will consider loading more. If it fill me and it start, I put the first position risk-free. I load another 4 with the initial risk, so I'm risking the same, but I have a double exposure.

Smart.

Here's the higher day. They are engaging, and it's there when they make the good movement. I just hope they have a flush to the downside just to get filled. Here they go.

There's liquidity above on ES too, which is likely to hit.

The question is if it gets hit before we get filled.

Filled, yeah. You have a position? No, no, no, no. Above 68.

Yeah, when they cleanly break. Need to cleanly break. You didn't get filled, right? Unfortunately, no. It's, it's moving in an amazing way. If there is a level From where it's really worth to be inside, it's when it will engage the 24,970 on NASDAQ, that it's really close. It's really close. Wow. Goldfield, first one. Loading. The speed of tape, it's amazing. The sellers are super aggressive and they are not getting filled. Get me inside the second one. Come, come, come, come, come, come. You need to go a bit further. It's okay, thank you. You also rebook your flight home?

If I could take a good trade, it's not worth it.

You need to make a trade that is worth the ticket. When are you flying?

About 2 hours.

In 2 hours from now you're flying?

3 hours maybe. Nice. No, 4 hours.

I go off time.

You filled 2, no? Only 2 contracts.

2 contracts is 2 contracts. Contract is 2 contracts, but it was an amazing area and I wanted 4, but it's okay.

You might get it here. Let's see.

I don't want it to get too much because I don't only get filled, I get filled also on the exit position, but— I have another one here, another two. Can't do that. A good spike with absorption on the bottom, the one that I like. No, you don't want. No, you don't want. You just want to go up. Sing, I don't care. What are you singing? If they break this area, you see a rocket flying up. That's also what I like. Speed of tape, zero result, price stuck inside the speed of tape of the buyers. A crazy move. Mm-hmm. So the aggression of the buyers is having a result. The aggression of the sellers is stuck inside this range. I still think they can go a little bit more down.

The volume has dried on it. Yes, significantly.

On Nasdaq, it's sleeping. They are breaking, they are breaking. There you go. I understand what's the model. Maybe you take some break-evens, some stop-loss. For sure. When it prints 2 or 3 areas, you are inside with 6 contracts. Total, and you have a skew on the risk to reward that is crazy. It's crazy.

It's too much. Okay. Back. Up, down, up.

If this area breaks, I'm risk-free. Come.

You got filled your other two?

No, and if it goes back. Oh, you're risk-free. Yeah, risk-free. But with this dance, he will visit for sure back to base 3 because also the speed of the— what is giving me the confirmation to have the drift directional is when the speed of tape is catching up. Today we only have an attempt, fail, attempt, fail, attempt, fail. The speed of the tape indicates that there's interest and follow-up in the move. And here it goes, another break-even. And now you see when he takes a break even, he usually goes to the next area. That is still a good area that we still can try to buy, but it's not the best condition.

You have the right idea. You know, that's what—

It's catching up another sell area on the top. Now I don't like this one a lot, but before.

Do you have a model that enables you to enter or reenter where you would normally stop out? Out, like instead of entering where you want to enter, maybe enter where you would normally stop out.

No, I don't think this kind of model. And you?

Depending on the conditions, if, yeah, I will. If I see a good confirmation signal, I won't enter there. If I know it's a condition that I'll get faked out on, and what I'll do is I'll enter when my stop loss would have hit if I entered that position originally, and it'll just give me a smaller risk, better reward. Nice. But it depends on the conditions. A day like today, Probably would work better. You have the right idea. That's what I'm saying. It's back to the high of the day.

Let's see, because it's the fourth time that they go here and they reject again. If they print the area, I can still jump on it. Because if we break this level, we don't have a small movement.

It's going to be a big one. Yeah. It's going to be a big one so I can capitalize on the explosion. I'm thinking. The tighter the compression, the bigger the expansion.

That's the point. And today it's only compression. Okay. No idea.

Hey, we're going to go break the high on ES. Oh, you broke the high on ISM?

I don't have a single area, so I don't have a level to jump in.

Okay, here we go.

I still have only the level on the bottom. You have model to jump in when it's unidirectional?

No, no, no, no, no. I'll wait for a directional move.

I'll wait for a pullback. Yeah, we wait always for their load. This one was the final take profit of the first long that I took. This one here.

So you had the right idea. Yeah.

Now printing another area. Here we go. But you know what, I think it's more educational for people watching this session then, because in directional section, it's super easy to make money. This session, you reason a lot. You didn't have any setup. You didn't took. I took only the high probability setup and I'm back at breakeven. So they can learn a lot by the reasoning process.

Right. Yeah. I mean, the reason I haven't taken a trade was because I didn't see a trade, you know, it's my, my job is to not just trade because the market's going up or the market's going down.

Another area here.

It's building the delta, no?

Yeah, it's building the speed of tape. Is that 618 or 68? 68. Nothing special, but it's presenting again my model in direction of the trend following. I just don't see any absorption.

See, in a scenario like this, what I would do is because of how clear and consistent this uptrend is, right? On a 1-minute chart, we see the dip, move up, dip, move up, dip, move up. What I would like to do here is wait for the 6895s to be broken, confirm that buyers are willing to lift us up, and then classic retail pattern would be a break of the downtrend line. Let everybody get short and then screw those shorts. Yeah. And then reclaim back above for a long.

Yeah, it makes sense.

Well, maybe I come back to Dubai until on a good trading session. Yeah.

Maybe we take one day with some, but yesterday was perfect. Believe me, I was sitting at dinner on my phone. You were watching.

I was watching.

I thought it was buyers failed.

For me, I need to observe above, above 6895, but there's nothing above 6895. There's nothing happening. There's no volume, nothing. No strong break. Tons of liquidity above the high of the day. You know, that could be trader stop losses. That could be just—

this is the reason I expect them to— it's also, it's also the $25,000 level. So we have a confirmation of the area. I was super tight stop loss on this one. I have the area, I have the rejection on the area. I'm anticipating a squeeze. Let's see if they start. If from this area they go back inside the range, my goal, no, my goal is protecting the account. So I'm done because I see that.

Would you stop trading at that point?

Yeah. If they don't break this level and they go back inside, it's not in the model too. Maybe they break now, then they reload. Like when the setup don't play out is because the market condition is not trending. Even if we are going up, but it's not an expansion move. It's still slowly building a con—

compression, compression, compression, compression, compression.

Taking a $780 risk to make a potential $5,000 on the way up, but still, back inside the range. The area is still holding. No big trades on the candle.

Yeah, on the ES, there's no big trades on the ES candles.

The level is still good.

I still think you have the right idea, but it's just—

You see, now if I was with a long stop loss, maybe I will lose 3 or 4 times more to get taken out by this wick. So that's the reason I'm waiting for it to reload the level, and then the idea is back valid. But I need to— speed of tape, nonexistent. Big trades, nonexistent. Little bit of volume we have in 1 hour at the power hour. You understand why? Either I'm right fast. Yeah. Or I go out.

That's a scalper's main objective is being right fast. If I'm right fast, good.

If I'm wrong fast, it's better because I take smaller stop loss. But I have areas where I do what you do, what you say. Yeah. Law of the cash session, I don't close that trade. I run. Like yesterday, I took the shot from the up of the cash. I took till the—

Yeah, because you have a volatility, an expansion.

They rejected the area.

Yeah, well, no, it's feeling well.

Convert this one. Now it comes to the Expansion. They take all this heatmap level and they reject everything and they go back.

And it goes back again, yeah.

But I have this feeling. It will happen. It will happen. It will happen. Here we go. Didn't fill the full contract.

So now where I think risk comes important is let's just say you finally catch the move that we're trying to catch, right? Because you're not in your full position, that reward still be great, but it may not catch up to those losers. Let's just say that's the problem, right? It's not a problem.

Like when I see that the movement is not catching up, like the movement is catching up, I have a trend following model that lets me enter in on all the retracements. Okay.

Oh, so you would add, if this thing breaks out, you would add—

Because now the direction is clear. Right. So I will not say I traded in a choppy and I don't benefit from monetizing a directional move. That's what I'm waiting because when we have a directional move, I think we will rebalance all the void of the day before. Yeah. So I have even more opportunity because I use the profit of the first one to capitalize and its momentum. Like maybe we took breakeven stop loss. $1,600. The good movement makes $20,000. Just, it's not common during the day. Now they are breaking, no? Here is going to get the expansion move right here. Let's see. It's too fast to put my position at breakeven. I will just reduce risk. I have less than $1,000 of risk. Let's see if we catch the interesting move of the day. I have only one chart. I want to go to the rebalance level. I think it was the 25,050. No, I have marked here. Yeah, 50. It's a really long move.

Imagine this is a fake out.

Well, if it's a fake out, I'm blessed to lose 0.0-something percent of the account in a day like this because it's the worst condition that we got this week. You didn't trade any day this week?

This is the first time I opened up my computer this week.

Okay, it's building what you're saying, it's building the fake out scenario. Acceleration shorts. This is looking like— let me check here. Gear is still valid. They are coming, eh? They are bouncing again on the area. Now, you know why I didn't close the position? Because it engaged the eye and it broke from the range perspective. So this is, this is a sign for me of still continuation. I'm more afraid of the 25,000. That is the level where the major liquidity is holding.

See, the way I look at it, I know you say you have models for when it does expand and, and continue.

Mm-hmm.

When you do have that one trade that you're right, if you don't add to a trend continuation, that one winner where you are right may not be big enough to supplement the, let's say, 3 losses or 3 breakevens. Yeah.

You know, Totally agree with you. That's the reason when the movement catch up, I use the profit, the compounding, the continuation. I'm never out of the big movement of the day. Just before it happens, I load multiple times and I have breakeven as stop loss.

See, that is better to do on the NASDAQ, I feel like, versus the ES.

On the ES, I think the same model will not be rewarding so much because it's more expansion rebalance, expansion rebalance. They are challenging the low again. Let's see what they do.

There's our pullback. Yeah.

I'm $800 on risk on this one. They are really close to the stop loss now. Either the area hold, or if it breaks, they go to the next one. When they challenge again the high, if we have a thrust up and the speed of tape, I'm considering taking the risk out of the position. They are building the short, huh? Yeah. They are building the short on the area. Ah, this one accelerates lower. Just, I'm too close to take it out now.

No. So you wouldn't take it out early? No. No.

If it's still valid, the setup, I will not take it out early. You see the area failed and now what you see usually is that they accelerate. Right. So taking a smaller stop loss on this one, for me, it's worth. Right.

With the potential of reentry, we get another thing.

Potential reentry of the movement. Yeah. You know what's the day where I lose the most amount of money?

Like here, when you keep entering and entering?

No, no, no. It's the days where I never I have an expansion phase. Like days where I have marketing consolidation, challenging the breakout of the high, failing 20 times in a day. This is the day where I accumulate position, but I never monetize them. Right. Right.

You're protecting yourself. My worst days are days like this where I'll try to catch this long 3 times, 4 times, 5 times. And it's always unsuccessful. And I'm just completely wrong on the analysis.

I still think I'm right on the analysis of the—

See, what's interesting is, yeah, you're right on the analysis still. You're longing the market in the uptrend. It's not like you're shorting it and going against it every single time.

But you say if you enter with low risk and you have a bigger stop loss, you will be right more time. It's right. But if I can enter heavy sizer, okay, when I have a AAA confirmation with a really high risk to reward, maybe I take less positions that are successful during the day. But at the profit and loss of the day, I have the good days that are really 25 worst sessions. So it's like, I noticed that in the month, 5 to 6 sessions make 70% of the money.

100%. 100%. There's somebody I know that 5 days out of the year makes his whole year and everything else is just a wallet pattern, you know, like—

Like a direction like yesterday, it's a monthly profit maker. Exactly.

But it's an outlier. Right. It's not a daily occurrence. Yeah. I don't know, Fabio.

It's going back inside. It's back inside. I'm happy that I took out the position early.

Yeah, this is a trade where you're happy that you're wrong, right? Yeah.

You're happy that you're wrong fast. Yeah.

For the past 2 hours, it's done absolutely nothing but move up in a slow way.

That's the price to pay. It's like the commission you pay to play, no? Yeah. It's your entry fee. This one for me is 1 hour. Yeah. Like the risk that I take per position is $2,500.

What I know is going to happen is the move is going to happen later.

Later. Yeah, in 1-hour and DOLF.

For me, if I'm back home at 1 o'clock, there's no way I'm trading this. No? No, no way. I'll set alerts if the volatility expands, the speed of the tape goes up. Yeah.

I will try to engage in 1-hour and DOLF only if I see this high broken. Right, me too.

The setup can still come. Uh, what's it?

If you want, just kind of, uh, what we were saying earlier, like maybe just wrap up with, you know, key mistakes you notice traders make, especially during maybe a session like today. Sure. Um, and then, you know, key things that allow you to read the order book like you have You want to start?

So I feel like a day like today, yeah, you could easily just take 20 trades and just lose on them all. Yeah. And I feel like, I don't know, you know, the move may come. I just think that transacting in this range and in this manner with how we trade at this point is not not really appropriate. And I think the difference between— compressing— yeah, it's compressing way too much. And I think the biggest difference, right, between someone that will have success on a day like today versus someone that may struggle on a day like today is the ability to sit on your hands, like you said earlier, and the ability to say, hey, listen, the market's moving up, we're in an uptrend, but do I really see a setup, or do I really see a pattern? And it's human nature for us to always want to engage and just transact and open up a position because we see green and red on our screens. And I think it's important knowing when not to trade. And I feel like the better move for me, but not really seeing a good setup other than the first 10 minutes of the market moving down, is sitting on your hands and accepting that you don't have to trade every single day or don't have to trade every single move. The money's made by waiting. I agree with you. The money's made by sitting on your hands. And the way I look at it is in terms of like ammo, and I want to deploy all my ammo when the target targets clear in front of my face. And if I deploy my ammo when nothing is super clear, I really can't understand it or can't read it, then I'm not going to have any ammo remaining when a clear target is in front of me. Yeah. And I feel like today, you know what, you could have deployed all your ammo, and when maybe really something occurs, you have no more ammo to deploy.

Yeah.

And that means in terms of your account, maybe you could have taken a huge hit. You did really well protecting yourself right now.

And in this case, uh, you have a maximum drawdown for the day. Like, if it If you see that the model is not respecting, but you have another opportunity, but you are at, you have a maximum loss for the day, or just you continue to execute till you have opportunities?

Yeah, so some of my worst days would be me trying to short this move right now. Let's just say it was a level of resistance and I kept going against the trend, trying to short it, short it, short it, short it. So what I do to protect myself is I have a 3-loss rule. If I take 3 trades in a row with the same analysis. With the same level? With the same level, same analysis, usually I'm just completely wrong about that idea. Idea, and I try to shut down. There's days where I'll take 4 trades, 5 trades, and go against that rule, and those are my biggest losing days. But I do that to protect myself because sometimes I get emotional where I'm trying to catch this move. See the speed of the tape picking up or not?

He gave me the area. Like this one, this one, it's a long, but I'm not taking it because you see that the behavior of the price is changing. An expansion, and now we are closing the same compression for the last 30 minutes. It's not common on the NASDAQ. It's not giving me an edge. And on this topic that we were talking about, I think in trading, you need to pick your fight. You need to understand if you are a directional trader, if you are a mean-reverting trader. And the thing that you need to understand is that you need to click only when you know that in the long term, you have an edge. If you are able to keep your losing day concentrated with 1, 2, 3 hours maximum, and you are able to detach yourself when the market is not rewarding you, and you have a trend following model, it's important that you understand that the market will not pay you out the majority of the days in profit. And if you have a mean reverting or low risk to reward model, 1:1, 1 to 1.5, it's important that you understand that you cannot afford a revenge trading or taking your stop loss a little bit lower because you want to be right, because you will see a skew that goes lower to 1 to 1. Yeah. Risk to reward, that it's exactly what I don't take. I don't take 1 to 1. Right. So this is the biggest adver— and where the errors that I was doing in the beginning. And also not having a fixed loss for the day. Like I have a really clean fix.

You have a daily drawdown? I have a 4R stop. 4R, sorry. What's a 1R?

If I close $10,000, okay, that is 4 shots of 1R, that is $2,500, I'm out.

So 1R is at $2,500. Yeah. So would you say about your average losing trade that if it hits your stop loss without you adjusting your management, Is around $2,500? Yes. Yes.

The maximum lose I can take each one and the exposure that I take when I have a directional move, it's $2,500. So let's say that I took 4 contract here. Okay. It start to go. I have my position at zero. It start to go. I take other position to bring the risk to $2,500. Always 1 hour. Yeah. When I have the explosion, I get paid out on all the accumulation that I did during the day. Today, there was all the movements that were invalidated by the next one. You see, we don't have any stacking green. Like, I built here, I built here, and they get taken out here. I built here, I built here, and they get taken out here. So you don't have a directional—

Now, what an argument be then would be the model adjustment on a day like today where we're having compression, maybe to not adjust your stop loss. Would that be an argument to this point where maybe you have the right analysis, analysis, because you entered, you entered here earlier, you entered here earlier. So you had that original entry point. You would be up significantly right now.

Yeah. And the point is that it's easy to say after the session that it was a compression day, but I cannot predict if after this move, we get parabolic. So I want to load size. And that's where risk comes in.

You have to take the risk. You never know.

Like you need to decide your fight. If I want to have a super high win rate, I will be really relaxed, low contract size, and let it run. I will have more profitable days, but I will not have days of 10R, 20R.

And do you think traders have the capability, like at least beginner traders have the capability of having that right mind, that mindset? Or do you think that's a tough adjustment for a lot of inexperienced traders?

It's an adjustment that you need to do when you understand how the model works. Like that's, that's the reason I never advise to go live. I advise always to have a virtual account to practice for at least 90 days. Keeping the same risk management. I'm not saying that you need to keep the same execution model, but keep your risk stable for 90 days. And also, I don't have the same risk for each setup. Like, if we were— Interesting. The cash session low, I know that I can take higher stop loss so I can let the market breathe a little bit more. And I don't need to load while it goes up. I load everything below the cash session. Okay? But they give more room for moves.

So would you make your position size lower? Would you keep your position size the same?

The same, but always $2,500. But to explain you that I don't add when the market goes up, I load there, and when it closes inside the Value Area Low, I run all the way up to the Value Area High.

I think that's a big point because a lot— what I see and what I do is I standardize my risk like you. I keep it $2,500, mine's around the same amount. A lot of traders would have $2,500, then $5,000, or, and then $10,000 risk.

They like this, like, well, will be closing $20,000.

Negative, right? Yeah. So standardizing your risk, I think, is important for traders to protect themselves on the days like today where they're completely wrong. Yeah. And any other day where they're just wrong. Now we're moving back into the range.

It was a good decision to not engage this long. I think this market condition will not change. It's Friday. On Monday, the market is closed. We had the CPI. It's not catching up in a directional phase. I think we should accept— I should accept the losses.

He did a great job and not engaging any setup, you're going to have some people that say, Fabio, you shouldn't have traded 7 times like you did. And you're going to have some people that say, Carmine, why'd you sit there and not make any trades?

Yeah, I imagine the comments, okay? Ah, Carmine didn't took any live setup. He didn't want to take the risk. Fabio took too many setup, but it's easy to say after. Like, they don't know how they skew the profit. For example, yesterday I was live trading, okay? I was live trading with the community and we did $17,000 loading small position. But why? Because the market was in the correct. So I can take more risk when the market takes me right. And that's the reason I have a rule. You notice that as I go into a drawdown, my exposure gets lower. Because the market is telling me, your model is not working. Why I should do martingale or why I should increase my position size or why I should risk the same amount. Okay. When I'm right, it means that the market is explosive. So makes sense to add additional beef. Because because I'm right on this. And I tried during the years multiple way of managing risk, and this is what works for me. I think every trader should develop his own personality because we are all different. The trading model can be the same for everyone. Right. If you approach order flow, but then it comes to risk tolerance. I'm really okay with having small days of reds waiting for the big run of the week, but there are people that want small wins consistent and only one day that maybe lose a little bit more, but they don't see floating in the equity curve that costs too much. I think this comes to personal preference.

Right. Yeah. I mean, that goes back to your risk to reward and making sure that your trade has good risk to reward. But look at this, it's moving back.

Yeah, it's, this is the first, and I told you from long way up, he plotted another level of Nasdaq F for The levels are not holding. We are in compression. And usually, that's what I want to say. When you have an area that don't get revisit, usually you have other, you see this one failed, this one failed, and this one failed. No, they go back here. Okay. And then maybe they start loading. Okay.

Well, they have to pick up liquidity. They have to sell it off, attract shorters. That's the point.

It's an accumulation and distribution phase. So in the correct scenario, If I see this one failing, I will not engage in this middle. I will wait for this one. But if we were above—

Are you mad at any of the trades you took? Those are all good trades.

No, I think they are all excellent trades, right? In the risk management that I took, they are all amazing trades. In your model. In my model. Like, consider that the breakout phase that we took was a $1,000 risk to make $11,000. It reached the final target. Right. What's my error? Adjusting bringing the stop loss in profit too fast. I can be mad at myself for not—

I told you that in the second or third trade.

Not letting the price breathe. Right. Because—

Letting it breathe. That's a good—

For example, if an area is right, okay, I consider the area invalidated when I have a close, okay? But sometimes it wicks down and reject. This is the situation where my model is not not working. Okay. The position that paid out for the loss that we took was this position here that's stacked. You see it's stacked in NASDAQ F4. Okay. We monetize this one. We make the $2,300 back. Okay. And then when it fail, if this gets building up and you have this, when you have a clean breakout, you can have 20 stacked areas here. And it lets me load 20 contracts. 20 contracts can give me a session of $50,000. Massive. Yeah. Today we didn't have the conditions. Yes, today is different. You know when we had? This is the example of the market behavior where I make a lot of money.

Right. Your expansion.

Expansion. Okay. Okay. And I was expecting an expansion up. So it's my error, like the target was right, but I did an error in market condition because if the model is right, but the regime is expansion, retracement, expansion, retracement. My model doesn't. Yeah.

See, I'm not mad that I didn't take any trades because I'm actually happy. I consider that a win that I didn't force anything. Yeah. I agree. I didn't see anything.

I agree with you. The beginning that you—

That would've been beautiful.

Yeah. It would've been—

It never goes fast. Yeah. What was it like trading live next to another trader?

It's good. I only suffer from having only one screen because at the setup at home I have ultra wide and two and like here I need to have on the same screen the Nasdaq F4, the profile that I get really slower at executing.

Yeah, I think it's very almost impossible.

For a scalper this is really important and with a trackpad it's the same stuff that I suffered the other time but I think For sure. I will be really honest with this. Even if I had done my setup, I will still be at the same result because there is no setup that I didn't miss for not being fast, but there are setups that I just miss in position management. So maybe I would have lost $1,500, but this one for me, there is no way would have been a positive day.

I would agree. I would agree on that. It's hard to trade from a laptop, truthfully. A lot of traders always say, oh, you know, travel, trading from a laptop. But the way that we trade and the frequency and how fast it is, it doesn't work. It doesn't work, especially with a trackpad. And then going back and forth between applications. Yeah, you are slow. It's too slow. That 2-second, 3-second delay.

And today we are in compression. If we were in an expansion day, this can make a $3,000, $4,000 difference.

Like that trade at the low of the day that I was watching, it happened in 30 seconds. And being able to have to go back and forth between two different different applications. The difficulty is different. In 10 seconds, it skews my risk to reward. And that may sound silly and like, you know, an excuse, but— No, no, no, it's not an excuse. When you come to New York, we come to my house in my studio and you have two widescreen monitors there. Amazing.

Let's do it. What was it like trading next to each other? It's nice. We trade really similar rates. I just have more high frequency because if my model presents I don't overthink about it. You have really specific setup, and if the condition doesn't align, it's, uh, I really like the way he trades. I think it's more high probability setup. Yes. Better to be out. I like this approach. Uh, and, uh, I think our execution is not so different. Just I, I have, I, you have a different management system.

Yeah. Trade management.

Different trade management system, but the execution and what we wait is the same.

It's the same thing. Interesting. Sometimes I'll take trades and watch your stories and stuff. And we take, I mean, the same time about. Yeah. And it's crazy how some stuff that I'm seeing on the S&P, you also see in a different, like visual, like visualization on there.

Use the same logic. So that was good. If you were in the studio today, do you think you would have taken the same trades or that somebody you would have liked? Like someone will be covering and say, no, I would have traded different. I would have taken the same exact trades. Maybe I would wait still the power hour to see if we have an expansion. So I will not finish the session now. Now I need to pack the bag, go home because what they are building at the moment, for me, it's an accumulation. Okay.

This thing is going to explode. This thing is going to explode.

And I, I know that I can monetize and not only make the money back, but I can make a huge reward on this. But I will not be home probably because this will happen as always when I'm in the car. Let's see if I do something else for the day, I will share I will share with you the recording so people can also know how I'm managing the power hour. But as of now, the price action is really garbage. And, but no, my result would have been exactly the same at Omritz. I would agree. Just the final words of like wisdom or the message to the audience at home after watching this, the key lessons you'd like to share, if you will, from this session. You just do it down each of your cameras. So yours, it'll be opposite. Which one I should be watching? The one I want? Okay. So today you have, you had a live trading that it's really transparent on how I manage my trade. I took a hit today and I'm happy that you can see also how I manage the position in a day where I don't get paid out. And this is exactly the setup that I would have taken. Live with the community or by myself. And each single setup, if you notice, it's always based on an execution trigger. So I have a bias system, I have an execution model that can be the Nasdaq Effort on the big trades, and I have trade management that it's always the same. What's the difference? The difference is the, is in the price behavior of the day. Today we had a compression upward range, and this one is the days where I give back money to the market. Market, and I would expect the regime for the day of yesterday, but I will still have traded today. So this is how I engage the market. I hope you like it. And this is the confirmation method I use. I'm really happy to see that other professional traders use the same execution method. I will wait for the late session to see if we have a catch-up movement on top, but for now I'm done till we don't engage the top and I leave the word to Carmine to see what he thinks.

Yeah, I mean, I agree completely. I mean, I think the biggest thing and you guys all saw it in my trading today, even Fabio's, is that sitting on your hands is important, like knowing when not to trade. And we could sit here and say that I wasted 4 hours, 5 hours of not placing any trade and doing all this analysis, but for me, that's a win and showing that I could be disciplined enough that when the markets open and me creating all these plans and all this analysis, to me not to act on it if I don't see any signal or any execution that my system provides, right? It's— I'm trading my system. When I look at the charts and I am observing price action, I'm locating my trading setups and I'm not trying to create setups. I'm not trying to force things. I'm looking for my patterns that are repeatable, that when I see it, I know to act and put risk on and yet stay links sitting here for 4 hours and watching Fabio have some great setups and some trades that he went to scratch on and seeing him be active on it and maybe me not being any active on it. But having the analysis is one part of it and executing is the second part of it. And without each other coming together, it's not a valid trade to, you know, have on. So for me, I look at a day like today with no trades as a win, um, because it would have been a loss not only on a monetary loss, me losing money, but also a loss, be not being able to control myself in terms of my discipline. So I look at not taking a setup and winning on my discipline as a, as a, as a win in my trading as well. And I'm grateful to share with Fabio too, because amazing session, brother. It was, it was a good session. And, you know, I definitely learned from you, and I'm sure there's things that we both look at that is so identical, you know. And maybe on another session, I was telling Riz this before, that I'll look at your trades and I'll take the same trade that you take on the S&P that you did on the NASDAQ. Yeah, off a very similar analysis but a completely different type indicator that you use.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's the beauty of the market is that there's no right way to do it. It's just your way. And finding your way is important and sticking with your way and not letting anything deviate you away from that.

I agree with you. Good session.