Verified $5M+ Trader: LIVE Trading Using His EXACT Strategy
Khamzhan from Gala Trades executes a live Tesla options trade during market open, entering on a break-and-retest setup and scaling out in three stages while moving his stop-loss to lock in profit. He documents every trade in his journal, emphasizing rule-based decisions and the discipline required to preserve gains.
Chapters
At this point, you'd already made over $35,000 on this trade.
Once I'm in a position, I just don't look at the P&L and just look at the chart. Even if that's going to be a losing trade, the disciplined way of how to deal with the losing trade is—
This guy has made $5 million from the markets. Introducing Gala Trades. On this episode, Gala goes through his specific simple price action strategy that he backs up with confirmation from using order flow.
So many people kind of assume that the trend is some kind of two parallel lines and the price bouncing from the upper and lower boundaries. And in my opinion, that totally untrue. Best case for me is when the price is touching, dipping slightly lower than the level, and then getting back above the level. So my rule is just not take 3 entries on the same setup. If I'm doing 3 entries, that's the break of rule, that's overtrading for me. Because—
and not only that, in this episode he goes through his exact step-by-step process but then trades it live during New York session.
Okay, we closed 10 contracts, now we have only 6 contracts left. We made $1,500 and $500 running.
So $1,200 in 7 or 8 minutes is absolutely incredible.
You know, when the market opens, I'm not rushing into a trade. I'm usually waiting for the first 5-second candle to close because the—
Carla is as transparent as it comes with live logins to his brokerage to back up his profitability. And in this episode, again, he does it live. Make sure to tune in to Chart Fanatic.
At moments like this, I'm a little bit scared, like maybe I missed the opportunity because price did not go slightly lower than the level. One of the worst Excuses that I hear from the people is when they refuse to—
We have a phenomenal trader who's done over $5 million in total profits so far in their day trading career. Today we're gonna— we're in for a treat, right? For the second time ever, we're doing live trading here on Chart Fanatics. Now before we get there, we're going to go through our usual strategy breakdown with trade examples and then live trading the markets where the markets open in just over 1 hour. Without further ado, it's the one and only Khamzhan, aka Gala Trades.
So if we start right away, let me just put a pencil. I don't have any particular name for the strategy, but let's just say price action. So the first thing that we have to focus on is the trend. So let me just write trend. So many people kind of assume that the trend is some kind of two parallel lines and the price bouncing from the upper and lower boundaries. And in my opinion, that's totally untrue because even in their, like, two parallel lines, price can be going higher or lower than those lines. So in my opinion, it's better to use the terms like lows and highs because price might be having just some different lows and highs, but you can always identify whether, when the price is pivoting. So those points, this is the high, these are the highs, these are the lows, these are the lows. So when I identify the trend, I just look at the highs and the lows because the most of the time the chart is trending, but sometimes there might be the moment where the trend is inconsistent and it's choppy. But here, even in this example, it's quite choppy. You see the lows are getting higher, the highs are getting higher, but here you have some indistinct knowledge about whether it's going to be going down, creating the lower high, or maybe it is looking for the continuation, for, for even higher high. So that's basically the knowledge that we need. For the trend analysis.
And for lower lows or a downward trend, it'll be the opposite.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And always when I'm doing the strategy, I'm always asking myself, why do I need it? So I just explained the trend analysis. So why do I need it? I need it to know which side of the options I'm going to be trading. So if the market is uptrending, then I'm going to be looking for the calls. If I see the downtrend on the particular stock or chart, I'm going to be looking for puts. So that's the simplest approach that I have with the trend analysis. I'm just going to be using it just to pick the side that I'm going to be trading and nothing less. I mean, nothing more than that. So I'm just trying to keep it as simple as it is with everything. So let's say I have already identified the trend and let's say The trend is up, uptrend. Then what's going to happen next is I'm going to be identifying the levels, the levels, and also the trend I usually identify at the hourly timeframe. So on the hourly timeframe, we might be having, let's say, some trend like this. I have already identified the lows, the lows, the highs, and highs. And the thing for me to identify the level is I need to see the pivoting points. So the pivoting point is going to be this one, this one, and this one. There can be a little bit of the tweaks of how to identify the levels because usually I might be looking, I might be ignoring the wicks of the candles on the hourly. I might be ignoring them and looking only for the bodies of the candles. Because where the candle is opening is more important for me. So If the candle on the hourly is looking like this, let's say this is the green candle, and prior to that I have the red candle, let's say. So I'm going to be drawing the level simply at the open of this one candle. So that is the horizontal line, the ray. This is my critical level. And usually I'm having high confidence in those pivoting points. That have those levels. So at those levels, I'm looking for entry in my positions during the day. So it's important for me to identify whether the price is closer to this one level, let's say, or maybe to this one level on the pre-market. On the pre-market, price is going to be closer to either the higher level or the lower level. So let's say the price is closer to higher level and having price right there on the pre-market. What I'm going to do is on my pre-market plan, I have the uptrend. That means that I'm going to be looking for the calls. I see those levels and the closest level is this one. So I'm going to be looking for the price to have confirmation, the acceptance above that level. But I'm not rushing into the trade at the moment the price is breaking that level. I'm going to be waiting for the price to break and hold. So that's the reaction of the price to that level. Because sometimes it might be happening when the price is breaking the level, not getting accepted, and then going down even further to the downside. So it's important to wait for the reaction and wait enough. So that's the point that can get tricky because I might be, even on this chart, I might be Show a couple of the examples. So price might be just approaching the level, and now I might have less of a patience. I might be scared that the price might be just going to the upside and going here, just being scared that price might not touch the level and then go for the profits. That happens a lot, but I try to keep myself disciplined and wait At least for the level touch. But the best case for me, best case for me is when the price is touching, dipping slightly lower than the level, and then getting back above the level. So that way, price is on, whether 2-minute, 5-minute candle timeframe, it's creating some kind of a candle with wick below the level, but the body above the level. So that's the Perfect entry for me usually, for the, let's say, for the breaking retest candle pattern. So that is the moment when I identify my entry as close as possible to my level. I'm going to try to get as close as possible to my level because I'm going to keep my stop loss quite tight, quite close to this. If I have the wick at this area, I'm going to be having just maybe an inch, maybe a pixel below that as my stop loss, because that's the place where price got bought up very quickly. So that is going to be my risk with that. So with that, if I identified my risk on the options, it might be a little bit vague. You have like, let's say, 5 to 8% on the stop loss end. You know, you never know if it's going to be 5% or 8%. If you wait long enough, it might even get to 10% of the risk with that stop loss. And you always want to assume some price on the option chart that is going to be your stop loss. Let's say here we bought that 1.00 at $1, the contract. And here it is, let's say 0.92, let's say. So risking 8 cents means that I want to get at least, at least twice as much as that. So that's going to be 1.16, which might be probably somewhere, somewhere around this area. Yeah. And one more thing about this type of entries is the wick itself. At this example, the wick is not big, not too tiny. That's very optimal size, but usually things are not as perfect as it is, as it can be. So you might be having the candles that are touching it and quickly reversing, making it a hammer candle. That's the type of moments when you are not having the opportunity to go in because of the speed, how the price got put off.
So one thing I was just wondering here, in terms of the trend side of things, so picking your highs and lows to then mark out your levels, what timeframe are you normally doing that with?
So both the trend and the level analysis always done for me at the hourly timeframe.
Okay, got you. And then in terms of this, then when we're looking at the entries and the reaction to the level, what timeframe is that normally?
That is usually 2 to 5-minute timeframe. And usually I'm giving more preference to the 5-minute timeframe, but if both of them are looking great, then that's even better. But if the 2-minute is looking good, but 5-minute is looking bad, then I'm not going to go because the 5-minute is going to dictate more conviction for me. Got you. In that trade. So you might ask why 1-hour timeframe for picking the trend, for picking the levels, because sometimes it can be like the daily timeframe, 4-hour timeframe that is quite popular. For me, I've been analyzing like most of my trades are having the duration like within 1 hour.
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So, and I'm also trading for only 1 hour a day. I mean, preparing 1 hour, then journaling for 1 hour, but the execution part is 1 hour. So if all of my trades are having the entries and exits within 1 hour, so it might make sense for me to make analysis for the closest upcoming future, which is going to be on the hourly timeframe. So This is the type of candle that can turn from this to that without giving you the opportunity to hope in a trade. So I'm going to be, at this point, will be watching for the retest again of the level. But if the price is going to just go, then it's going to be a missed opportunity for me. And I'm not going to be having any FOMO. I'll be just closing that chart and focusing on the other ones.
So do you want the price to go below the level? And close back above, like in this scenario.
Here, yeah, I would want the price to go slightly, maybe slightly lower than the level and then go back because at some point it is going to be, the moment it's going to be going back above the level, it's going to be looking like this candle, which is a perfect bouncing candle for me. So that's the perfect conditions. And also the other like moments when I hesitate to enter, it's going to be the candle, the same candle, but the wick is bigger. So, I mean, I might be having this type of stop loss because the price got bought quickly at this area. But at the same time, that's way big of a risk for me to take, especially with bigger position size. So the remedy for that is either to go with a smaller position size and keep this wide stop loss or just skip it for me. Because usually I'm quite skipping a lot actually on the trades. Okay. Because the conditions are not quite pleasant for me. And I'm also feeling a lot of FOMO because of the missed opportunities. But that's also part of the game that I recognize. So basically that's it. That's the amount of the information that I need to enter the trade. Okay. And once I'm in a trade, my goal is to patiently wait for the price to, let's say, reach this area to get to 2R multiple. And then comes the toughest part, especially for me, because price is at 2R multiple. I can just close it, quit, and then just maybe finish the day, or I might be just trimming some part of it and then leave some runners to it. And leading the runners and having patience with them is something that I'm working on myself on quite a long time. And for me, the optimal way is once I trim, I want to shift my stop loss. And the higher I shift, the more calm I can feel myself. Yeah. From this, let's say from this point, okay, chart is a little bit messy, let me clear it up a little bit. Let's say we've been having this type of good candle, good week, and having this small risk right there. So from that, here is going to be around 2R multiple. And by that point, my stop loss is going to be above my entry. So from this point, maybe to this point already, where even when the price is going to hit my stop loss, I'm still going to be profitable on the last contracts. Yeah. How I make myself less stressed about the trade during the trade. So basically, that's kind of a core fundamental information that we need about the trade, about the way how we perceive the trade. So basically, we need to identify the trend on the hourly. Then we need to identify the levels also on the hourly. Then when it comes to the market open, By the way, these two are done before the market opens, prior, when you're doing your pre-market plan. Yeah. So after that, after everything is ready, then you prepare your pre-market plan. You kind of sketch whether you want the price to break or if the price is close to this area, you might want to see bounce off of the level below that. So after your pre-market plan is ready, on the market open, you look for Usually 5-minute to 2-minute timeframe, and then you look for candle patterns. And usually for candle patterns, I have quite a few of them.
The beauty is we're going to see what this looks like live, depending on what the market, depending on what the market gives us today, if it gives anything. As always, we are at the mercy of the market. And so it'll be very interesting, no doubt.
So the simplest one is just a regular break and retest. We have some level, and if we're looking for the calls, we want the price to break and retest and have some good reaction at the retest. And for the puts, same thing, but for the opposite side. When it comes for the chart patterns, I usually want to have maybe one or maybe even more than one retesting candle. So that's going to be the level. You want to have some trending breaking candle that is closing above the level on 5-minute. On 5-minute, it is closing above the level. Then you want to see the next candle retesting. And the ideal case, as I said, is having small wick below the level, because that's kind of give you the idea where the price got bought quickly. So here, with small risk, you can have the potentially good break and retest pattern and look for the price to continue to grow, to keep, most importantly, to be accepted above the level, not going back below the level. But in case if we will be having more retests, In case, in case if we will be having more retests, that's still fine. Let's say still breaking candle, then the retesting candle, have some struggling candle, and then another retesting candle. And the best thing, the best thing, usually you have like not cent to cent, but close areas. For the wicks. You pick the lowest one and you keep this area as your stop loss. And then your entry, as close as possible to the level is fine. So let's say on the level, this is your risk and the rest is just to hold. 2R multiple. And what I'm going to say is 2R multiple is great. Some people are underestimating it, looking for 10R, maybe 5R. Like some home run trades. But for me, it's the 2-hour, or maybe 1.5-hour small trades that are making the most amount of the profits for you at the end of the year. The home run trades, they might be good, they feel good, but at the end of the year, they are accumulating to smaller part of the profits rather than the regular ones. So that's what I take on this.
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That actually, that's a very depending on how I'm feeling about it. So let's say this is trade number 1 for me to take during the day. Let's say trade 1, and I'm feeling good. I'm feeling good because the price is not hitting my stop loss, going for the 2R multiple. I might be trimming, let's say, half, half of my position.
Okay.
And then let the other half run, maybe to 3R multiples. But even when I'm letting it run, I'm going to shift the stop loss higher so that even the other half is going to be triggered at profit, close that profit. Yeah. But there can be some cases when I'm at trade 2, let's say, and my trade 1 was negative, let's say. And then on the trade 2, I'm seeing this good pattern, good setup. At that point, I'm going to be more preservative. I want to preserve the capital. I want to be more conservative. I might be just even closing 80% of my position or sometimes even 100% if I'm feeling stressed about the trade. Yeah. Okay. I feel like the trade is gonna take some time and that when the time passes, you see the decay, you see the IV crush, and that's gonna just slowly take all your premium. So it just depends on what circumstances you have when you are in the holding phase of the trade. But usually if everything's good, that's 50%. If I'm feeling, let's say, adventurous at very rare moments, I might be even like, even smaller than that. I might be even like 30% trimming and then most of the part of the position I might be letting it run, but that's quite rare happening. Yeah. I'm trying to be more preserving, conservative nowadays. So yeah. And also one another good factor for me to hold is the candles, the color of them. If I'm in this long position, in this call position, and I see green candle, green candle, green candle, no red candles, it means that the momentum is strong and I want to keep this thing. So that might be the reason for me to reduce the percentage of the trim for the first trim. So I might be even like taking let's say, 20% trim and then letting it run. But at some point I'm going to be feeling greedy. I know myself and I will be leaving only very small amount. We keep trailing off.
Yeah.
And the stop loss, stop loss, it's never at the same place. I'm trying to shift it with every, let's say, 5-minute candle. Shifting, shifting, shifting. So even at some point your stop loss is going to be at 2 multiple, let's say. So yeah. The good thing about having only small amount of the runners at some point is they're going to be stress-free. Because even if you don't have the stop loss in, let's say, your last 10% contracts, they're going to go absolutely to zero. You're still going to be profitable in the trade. That's the best state for me to be on. But still, even in those trades, I might be kind of scared and closing even those small runners at some point without letting it run fully.
When you're thinking of a beginner who's, say, trying to implement this or, you know, looking to implement this, what's like a struggle or a key hurdle they should be aware of or to help them maybe be something to focus on?
Yeah, I think the most important thing, and it doesn't matter if you're the beginner or the advanced trader, is this risk. Let me use the red color. This risk, you have to know your risk. On options, you're kind of plus/minus 5-10%. You know how much you're risking, but you have to accept that risk. Yeah. When you're going into a trade, just don't stick to that amount of the money. Just let it go. If the price is going to touch the stop loss, because you never know if the trade is going to be successful or not. So you have to accept the case that you're losing money. If you're unable to accept the risk, then it means that you either have to size down or just don't take the trade at all. If you can accept, let's say that's a $1K of the risk that you're putting into the trade. If you're okay losing $1K, if the price goes to the stop loss, then okay, you can go for that trade. If you are not comfortable, go for $500. Or maybe even lower than that if you're uncoupled.
Is there times where, I know you mentioned you might have trade 1 that loses, then trade 2. Is there times where this sets up, but then it looks great, this then wicks you out, but it still keeps closing above? Is that still something you would look to take? Or is there a certain rule if that was to happen? How many trades you give yourself? Before then saying, regardless of what happens, that's it, I'm done?
Yeah, that's a great question. I have a rule on that, by the way. So let's say I'm going in here, having this stop loss, and then I got stop loss here. Then I see the pattern is still forming, still multiple candles bouncing off of the candle, off of the level. That's actually the part of luck in the trading, because you might be opening this chart when it's having only one candle that is going to stop loss you after the next candle, or you might be just looking at some random chart and then after some time looking at this chart already with 3 candles, which is better setup actually. So that's element of luck on the trading. But my rule, if I got stop loss once, I can take it for the second entry. But my rule is just not take 3 entries on the same setup. If I'm doing 3 entries, that's the break of rule. That's overtrading for me. So maximum 2 attempts on the same setup for me. That's the rule that I try not to break. Gotcha.
And where should we go from here?
Right, so that was the simple break and retest, and now I'm going to go for the other couple of them. So the other couple of them are still quite simple. That's the bounce. I'm going to explain them at the same time, by the way.
Okay.
And rejection, because they are opposite.
Ah, gotcha.
Or maybe I should like write them in opposite way. Bounce at the bottom.
Ah, gotcha.
And rejection. So imagine this is the pre-market, this is the market open, this is the hour axis, and price is kind of making this type of move. We have the level right there, we have the level, let's say, right there. And what's important for me is to identify on the pre-market where the price is closer to, to which level. And let's say I'm looking for, like, calls, the trend is up, then I'm going to be looking at this trend either for the breaking retest of this one level on the upper side. But on the pre-market, I see that the price is closer to this one level. So that means that I'm going to be looking for the price to retrace, come back to this one level, and provide me with some entry. So for that, I'm going to be using just bouncing setup. And I need, usually optimal is 2, 3 candles. Same way, the wick below the level, but the bodies are keeping it above the level. Or it might be even like some struggling candle and then couple candles after that, having bodies above the level and the wicks below the level. This is the type of setup that is quite good for me. I can be looking for the lowest part of that to keep it as my stop loss. But I always have to check if the distance between my entry, potential entry, to my stop loss, is it big or small? Because I want to keep my stop loss as small as possible. Sometimes tight stop loss is kind of ruining some of my trades, but that's—
Of course.
The way that I have to take. I cannot be winning them all because sometimes it might be just triggering it and then reversing back up. And that happened many, many times with me. So for the bouncing setup, the optimal way is to wait for 2, maybe 3 candles, preferably on the 5-minute timeframe. That are having the bodies above the level, but the wicks are trying to go below the level. So it means that the price is quickly buying out below the level. And at some point, at some point, logically, it's the sellers that are trying to push the price down, but buyers are just resisting and keeping the price above the level. At some point, let's say, the arrow, the size of the arrow is the intensity of the sellers. They are getting weaker, weaker, and weaker. At some point, sellers are going to be exhausted. But the buyers, they're still sitting at the level. And at some point, no sellers, only buyers, and price can start to push to the upside. So that's the point. That's the goal of the setup for the bouncing setup. And yeah, the goal is to get Entry as close as possible to the level and keep your stop loss tight. And usually with each 5-minute candle, I try to, I try to, if they're trending, I try to shift stop loss from this area to, let's say, this area, let's say, when this candle is opening. So at least have like this distance for wiggle if there's going to be some small pullback and then continuation. So That's basically how it is with the bouncing setup.
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And now I'm going to explain the rejection setup.
Would you look to hold this even if you're going for 2R? Would you still look to hold this to the next level or you still follow the same rules of cutting at 2R?
Yeah, actually, sometimes I might be having my levels quite close to my entry and that might be kind of overlapping with my 2R multiple, which is great. And also cautious because at level, the levels might be the points of the reversal. But here when I have plenty of the room to the next level, that's a good point actually. When I have bigger room for the next level, that's better for the setup. That means I'm quite far from the pivoting point. And I might be having the level here where price can pivot or here when price can pivot. So it's better for me to risk this much of the capital to potentially get this much of the movement, at least with the runners. Yeah. Rather than having like level right there and then potentially having like this move, risking this move. I mean, which is still good, but sometimes you prefer like bigger, yeah. Bigger, bigger potential, bigger reward, bigger chances. That's my stance on it. Same pre-market line, pre-market opening line. Let's say we still have the level and price opening quite close to the to the upper side. The price is coming here on the pre-market opening. And if I'm looking for the puts— by the way, bounce is for the calls, rejection is for the puts. So if we are in the downtrend, let's say on the hourly, the picture is looking like this. Here, potentially price can make the lower high. At the level. And that is the place where I look for the price to get to the level, get rejected, and create another leg for the lower low.
So overall might be bearish.
Yeah, overall.
But then this is what it would look like on the lower timeframes up here. So you want that lower high essentially to be this level.
Yeah, yeah. That's exactly what I want. Because on the trend, it doesn't matter if that's the— uptrend, or that's the lower downtrend, you want to primarily look for this move, the biggest move in the trend. The biggest move on the uptrend is basically going for longs. I mean, there are still going short at some point, but that's risky.
Riskier. Do you have like a rule? Because you have both setups where you can bounce or rejection, and you have the break and retest. Like, do you have a rule of how many trades you can take in a day regardless of? Wins or losses?
So usually I try to take maybe 2, 3 trades and 4 and above considered to be overtrading for me, actually nowadays. But I remember like in 2023, I've been trading like 8, 9 trades in a day and still been fine. But the market was different. It was, I think, easier than now, certainly easier than now. So yeah. And also I've been reducing the number of trades to focus more on the higher quality trades. To not waste my focus, my attention, my capital on lower quality trades. So, as I said, on the trend, it doesn't matter if that's uptrend, downtrend, you want to aim for the bigger move. Biggest move is this one, this one, this one, and this one. Basically, from high to low on the downtrend, and from low to high on the uptrend. Of course. So the rejection setup, it comes to the cases where I'm looking for the price to bounce off of the previous low and go to the lower high, create some pivoting point, which is going to be close to my levels. Have this the opposite setup as the bounce, by the way. You might have the candles—
oops.
You might be having the candles with the bodies below the level, but the wicks trying to push it. You might be having several wicks, several candles trying to push it, but unsuccessfully. You kind of keep some area, the highest part as your stop loss. Same way with the bounce, where you keep the lowest point as a stop loss. And you try to look for the exhaustion of the buyers. At this point, the intensity of the buyers is the size of the arrow, let's say. Here, buyers are pushing, then they're trying to push again, trying to push again. And at some point, they're not even pushing. At that point, sellers are sitting strong at the level and they start to take action. So at that point, price may start to form bearish candles and move to the downside. And in this case, I might be, I might be still trimming big part of my position at 2R multiple. The entry part is very important because if you have, let's say, bad entry, let's say at this area, not close to the level, it means that it's harder for you to get to your 2R multiple. The better your entry is, the easier it is for you to hold till your 2R multiple. So let's say here's going to be your 2R multiple, but with perfect entry, let's say, let's say here's your stop loss, here's your entry, even here is your 2R multiples. So that's the importance of the entry. And I'm trying to go for good entry or no entry. When it comes to the coaching.
Okay, one or the other.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And still, if I see big space, big area till the next, big distance till the next level, I might try to keep maybe 10% of the position as runners to see whether they can or not reach the next level. But I know myself, usually I don't have enough patience with that. And if that is taking more than an hour, I might be just closing it prematurely with no signs of the reversal, with no signs of the, like, no reason for closing, just by physically getting exhausted by holding the trade.
What does that do for you though? Do you think it serves you better to be able to sort of remove that risk, remove that emotional turmoil and the thoughts that come with it so that you can stay on process for the next day? Because do you feel like If you were to hold it longer, it would probably have a psychological impact that could negative impact your results.
So from the drawbacks, you can have some like immense move to the downside, let's say. Some people say like once in a year, like SPY, QQQ dropping and you're missing that move. Even the smallest 10% of your position could have generated you more profit than the other 90%. And sometimes you feel that FOMO when you're missing that. But I'm trying to balance between having the FOMO and just having, just calming myself down with the disciplined approach because okay, I did 2R multiple on that. Anything above 2R multiple is exceptional for me. So 2R is kind of a standard. And if I'm making like, let's say 1.5R, still, I'm okay. I did what I wanted and everything excessive I didn't catch, okay, I'm gonna try it next time. And primarily that was not the reason at the beginning because where I live market usually opened at either 6:30 PM or 7:30 PM. And waiting for longer, it meant for me just wasting all evening for the trading. So that might be just the rule that developed. Primarily from the time inconvenience and then develop into some discipline rule. Got you.
I love that. So where should we go from here? Should we go on the chart examples?
Yeah, I think basically we are done with the setups, basically 3 primary ones. And there is still one that is like a minute of the explanation. That's just the trend continuation. I mean, kind of gets involved in all of the setups because when the price is going uptrend, the trend continuation for me, it means trading it from low to high. And it can occur on like 2-minute, 5-minute, hourly timeframe, daily timeframe, at any timeframe. It's just the circumstances like that you're taking trade on. But still inside on the lower timeframes, you have to look for or candles, how they are going to set up. So yeah, basically I would say just breaking retest, bounce and rejection are my 5, I mean 3 setups that I go with. Perfect.
Okay, so let's get the laptop out and we'll do the chart breakdowns and then we're gonna trade live. I've gotta tell you something. Hundreds of thousands of traders have already made the switch to TradeZilla. And the biggest reason? The AI. TradeZilla is the all-in-one platform built to turn you into a profitable trader. And at the center of it is an AI copilot that does the heavy lifting for you. It watches every session. It learns exactly how you trade and your strengths and your weaknesses, the patterns you keep repeating without even knowing it. And it tells you in plain language what's working and what needs to change. The moment you close a trade, your AI captures it all automatically. Fully synced to your broker or prop firm, zero manual entry. You can replay any trade tick by tick, pip by pip, to see the full picture. Backtest your strategy on years of real data before you ever put up real money behind it. Your AI copilot ties all of it together, surfacing insights you'd never find on your own and guiding every decision you make going forward. Hundreds of thousands of traders One AI-powered platform, real lasting results. Now, if you want that AI copilot and see your trading excel, the link for TradeZilla is in the description below. Use the code CF20 for 20% off your yearly subscription or CF10 for 10% off your monthly subscription. Let's get back to the episode. So now we've gone through the whiteboard and shown exactly the setup and strategy that we're looking at.. We're now going to look at some trades taken from last week, you know, step by step, and show you the exact process. And then don't forget, we're going to trade live when the market opens straight after that as well.
All right, thank you. So I want to go first with the trade that I've been taking on the Monday, February 2nd. That was Tesla trade, Tesla 420 calls. Here on the chart, you guys can see The entry at this area and closing it at this area. So one thing that I want to highlight is first things first, was the trade in the plan? And the answer is no, it was actually in the put section because I've been having the rejection of $424 level on the Tesla, but then suddenly after the rejection, That never happened here. Price was approaching the level, but just never had the touch of the level. Then we moved down to the level that was having key significance. And I've been seeing other two times when the price got pushed very nicely from that level. And when price got sold to that level, even though this trade was not in my plan, I took risk, going for less position size and took some calls off of the level on the Tesla. So here how it went. That was the chart on the 2-minute timeframe. Here is the option chart on the 2-minute timeframe. So here you guys can see I've been having this type of entry, not perfect, not at the bottom. And this type of exit I've been not achieving, but just exiting the position because it was not in the plan. And I've been scared that the price might still continue to go down and drop. So I didn't just hold, didn't have enough patience because of that to hold to maybe this area. So just made some journal out of it. I've been risking $2,400 in that trade. I've been initially targeting $4,800. To make on that trade. So you guys can see I've been making slightly, slightly higher than 2R multiple, which is $5K on that trade. I'm marking it as 3 stars because I've been having mistakes. Mistake number 1 is a bad entry. The entry was bad because that was not quite close to the level at that moment. I've been having the level at, I think, this area, and the entry could have been better. Right on the level. So the mistake number 2 is obviously the biggest mistake, not in the plan, because on the pre-market plan, I've been having Tesla for the puts, for the rejection of this one level. So quickly shifting my focus from puts to calls, that's rarely happening, but when I see high significance, high relevance of the level that is about to be having some reaction to the price, which is this one having good push, good push, and it made even the small push rewarded me with 2x multiple. So that was quite enough for me to even with smaller position size to go for it. And that was actually my new experience with the 0DT Monday Tesla options because nowadays Max7, they have expiration 3 times a week. And obviously early exits, I didn't have enough enough balls to hold it to this area. Yeah. But even though I had like 2 or multiple, I could have left some runners to see how much they can push to the upside. And it doesn't matter if the price then reversed to the downside, to the stop loss. Always I have to leave at least some small portion of the position as runners to not suffocate the position, but just let it run. So that's example number 1 from Monday. The next example that I want to go through is SPY on Thursday, February 5th. This one is quite interesting. At that day, I've been actually looking for calls on the SPY. So this is the way how sometimes my perspective can change from calls to puts or from puts to calls. Here initially, I've been looking for the calls off of the level. But when market is not providing me with some entry, because I didn't get enough of a retest, I wanted to retest exactly off the level to take my entry. And when it was a missed opportunity, I decided to just wait and look how price can react to the next level. And this is one of those few times when I combining my trading strategy with the Bookmap. Yeah. So on the Bookmap, I saw this thick layer of the sellers. On the Bookmap, by the way, I have some specific configuration to have only yellow color for the big levels. So sellers been sitting at this area and on the ES and on the SPY that coincided, overlapped with this one level on my chart. And At this moment, I did not wait for the candles to set up at this area, and I've been just looking for the entry off of that level. So when price touched the level on its way down, I've been going into the position, I think, at this area. Because here on the Bookmap, I see, okay, we've been just struggling at this area after some nice push, and then price had some green bubble. At this red thick layer of the sellers, but the wall was not broken. Price didn't see any continuation to the upside. So price been struggling for a couple of seconds and then just quickly got sold out. So that was my conviction to go for the puts in that trade. The most important rule for me is just to use the levels. And if I use the level, then I can forgive myself not going with the planned, pre-planned trades. So even with this trade, on the execution part, you guys can see how much did I miss. So entry quite close to the bottom, right there at $2.40, exited at $2.95, around that, couple exits. And then price started just to just ramp up. Just, it went to $6, then even $6.7. So I missed a lot on that trade, but I'm okay, not feeling any FOMO, just because it was not in my pre-market watchlist. Otherwise, I would have had like, let's say, bigger FOMO because of that missed opportunity. Because on the chart, there was, okay, on the, let's say, the auction chart. Okay, on the chart, there was nothing, nothing That was telling me about the weakness of the move. So price rejected, been moving down, and not even single pullback before moving down to this area. And I actually saw that on the Bookmap. Here it's not visible because it's below the area, but we had some support at, I think, 6830 on the Bookmap at that area. So from that thick layer, it moved down to another thick layer of the buyers. So from one wall to another wall. So I could have had maybe, maybe more patience with that trade, but just considering the fact that it was already more than 2R multiple on that trade, and also it was not in my pre-market plan, I'm completely fine not catching all the move. So These are the 3 mistakes. The setup is obviously the rejection of the level. And yeah, the strategy here, I've been having like only 7 out of 11 ticks because I've been waiting for the first 5-minute candle. I mean, using the level, that's the most important thing, using the patterns. And I did not use any relative strength or weakness because that's for the stocks other than QQQ and SPY relative to the indices.
Okay, yeah.
My stop loss, I think it was tight, quite tight, close to that. So consistent position size, size was small, just to mitigate the risks involved with something that's not in your pre-market plan. But that was not planned. So that's something that I cannot avoid. I use the Bookmap. That's one of those rare cases when I use the Bookmap and I take this box on the trade. I've been streaming at 2:00 and I did not wait for the reversal. There was no reversals, just straight to the downside move. So this unticked cost me maybe some additional couple thousand of the profits at least. Yeah. So that's one other mistake, one other profitable trade that I made the last week. And another one. Trade on the QQQ that I've been using the Bookmap actually also. So here you guys can see on the 1-minute chart, it's 2-minute chart, it's not quite visible without the levels on my chart. So here I will try to expand it to make it more visible. I'm hoping it's okay. So initially, initially on my pre-market plan, what was there? Let me expand this one as well. On the QQQ, the bounce of the level 607. So again, as the price moved up at the market open on the QQQ, it didn't provide me any entry. So just straight pushing to the upside. But then I've been just waiting for the level to hit. Actually, before that, before that, I've been trying to, I've been trying to catch the reversal of this one level because I thought that, okay, price might make this type of breaking retest that I can take, which is aligning with the direction overall with all my trade on the plan. But that trade was actually unsuccessful. That was on that day, minus $6.3K on that trade on the first attempt. But then after closing it with the stop loss, I waited for the exactly pre-market planned level, 600, which is this bottom level. And again, on the Bookmap, I saw that these are the buyers that are kind of protecting this area. It's a thick layer because other than that, most of the space is just black and blue. There is no orders. So I used that as my navigation. I use Bookmap as just a confirmation tool, not as a core strategy. The core strategy was remaining the same, same plan. So basically, from that bounce, I've been taking it to the next level because I didn't think that the price might make another move up to the upside. So I've been quite conservative, making this small move from level to level and then just taking profits and closing it. But if you just take a look, you see when I already closed the trade, price went down to the level again, bounced again, which is this area on the Bookmap. And on the chart, price actually moved way higher. So this is the moment where I have to put the mistake of the early exit. Early exit, because I didn't quite wait for the price to move. Maybe I should have even considered some re-entry into that trade. But okay, when the trade is done, that's none of my business. But okay, on that trade, 150 contracts, the stop loss was at 195. The entry price is 220, and the target was 2.8. And I made 2.87R, which is beyond great for me. Everything above the 2R multiple is beyond exception for me. So I'm very glad, even though I felt some FOMO, missing some money on the table, but still great. I'm glad that always the analysis is right, even when I'm missing the trade and it's not giving me the opportunity to go in. And but I just see the the analysis being right, it just makes me, makes me kind of feel better when having like bad feeling because of the FOMO, not some missing. That makes me feel better for sure. Yeah. I think we're done with those 3 trades and I might be going through some couple of other trades. That might be, for example, the Tesla right there. So this is one of those moments when I've been just putting a lot of effort into the journaling because I have the preparation phase, have the execution phase of how I feel, how I am act— acting during the trade, and then the journaling part, which is the most important part. So basically, as I remember here, this was the picture before market, before the trade, I think. So I have seen the downtrend. And even though we've been having this type of gap up, we still kind of maintain the downtrend because as long as the next high is going to be lower than the previous, this one, we are still maintaining the downtrend, maybe with some equal highs. Yeah. But still maintaining the downtrend. So that was one of the main arguments. And then on that day, Tesla was the only name for the puts. Everything else was for the calls. Interesting. So that was the 5-minute timeframe. We've seen the price rejecting this area and on the 5-minute timeframe, we've been rejecting it again. So initially on the pre-market plan, I've been looking for the rejection of this lower level actually. But price kind of opened not here, but here. So it moved up and I started to look for the rejection of this one level, the higher level. So that's slight change to my pre-market plan, but still aligned with the overall direction. So here was actually the execution of the trade. Price was going down, making some retest. Even though it didn't touch the level, I was just going in and we caught the move down on that trade. And here is the trade breakdown, but I'm going to be even going for the replay. That's nice that we can have the replay on the Tradezilla. So just to be fast, I might be using just 1-minute intervals. Okay, let's Okay, so here was the entries when price was going down. Let's pull up the 2-minute timeframe. On the way down, some trim and price is moving even lower. Another trim.
Oh, nice.
Another trim, trim, trim, trim, and out of the position. So it might be just not quite visible because of the 1-minute timeframe. Interval of the shift on the replay. But basically that's how it went. And another one that I would like to share is probably this one. So this is the Microsoft 52% win on this trend continuation and bouncing setup. So again, Okay, again, this was the trade breakdown, but it gives a little too less information. So here on the hourly, we've been seeing the uptrend. If I say uptrend, why do I need it? I need it just to see the direction that I'm going to be trading the calls. So Microsoft was in my pre-market. So let's just look at the replay of this thing. Okay, okay, after getting some entry, we're pushing. Adding up to the position before the move. We have a couple of the trims, price is moving, another trim, another trim. And by that moment, I have already shifted my stop loss from this area already for maybe to this area. That's how important it is to scale out and just to keep the last contracts disciplined. And yeah, I think I shifted my stop loss too much because here it already triggered the last contracts with the stop loss.
So at this point you'd already made over $35,000 on this trade, right?
Yeah. I mean, when I'm in a trade, I just remove the P&L bar on the take profit thing. So, and I can focus on—
Was there a fall where you didn't hide it and it was kind of like the fluctuations you would—
I think I almost from the beginning, I started like, uh, I noticed that I'm quite distracted by the P&L, because I see that, okay, the numbers are moving. It's quite disappointing when you see it's moving from green to red color. Yeah. And yeah, just to focus more on the chart, because you have to speak with the chart and just reflect on how chart is behaving. And sometimes the P&L can dictate you like, okay, take profit here or like like close the position in loss here before it reaches the stop loss. But in reality, you have to wait for the TP or the stop loss to hit. Be patient. So that's just it. And maybe the last one of the replay that I would like to share is, you can pick anyone.
I don't mind, eh? Whichever you pick.
Okay, maybe this one. All right. So I saw the downtrend on the Tesla. This is the regular trading hours because I don't use any extended hours. So market pushing, market pushing to the downside. And this is the opening candle of that day. So lower high is quite close to that area, but we still respected that. So at that point, we moved to the downside. I think here my plan slightly differed from the, from the plan here on the pre-market plan. The most important thing is just to review the pre-market plan, whether I had it planned or not. So the only name again for the Tesla, for the puts, and here was the execution actually. I've been initially, initially planning on the higher level, this one level. But as price did not give me any opportunity, I saw the hard break to the downside and I stopped looking at the 5-minute. And on 2-minute timeframe, I saw this break and retest. Good break. Let me use another color. So good break, good retest close to the level. And even those two small not small, just 2-minute candles, they provided me with some good profits because of the position sizing, good entry and good exits.
Yeah, because it's so close to the level on that one, right?
Yeah.
So would the stop loss on that one be just above the candle to the left?
Yeah, I think it was somewhere like here.
Yeah.
Having like smaller risk right there and having like, here is like even visually more than 2R multiple, let's say even 3R, let's say visually. So that's basically how usually I do the review, do the breakdown. And even for this one, I have the replay. I think that's going to be the last replay for the Tesla. Even for that, like 2-minute candles, $14K of the profits, which is impressive in my opinion. But Still, price is quite nicely respecting the levels. And for the rest of the move, I didn't get any entries. So you have to balance between the FOMO and like being humble and being grateful.
I can imagine. Yeah. It's like that constant, you know, you could always have more, could always have more, but in reality, you know, the trades that we've seen are more than enough. Yeah.
So here, basically, just been waiting patiently for the entry. Let me even like slow it down a little bit. So, okay, it kind of missed the point. So basically just on the retest, we've been getting the entry and price starting to go down. On the way down, we are getting some trims, some trim, another trim, and then, of course, shifted the stop loss. Shifting the stop loss, and then stop loss is, I think, hitting. Yep, yep. So here, stop loss already hitting below the entry point. So still in profit. Yeah. Basically, that's how it is. That's how I operate. That's how Dollar Trades trades.
I love that. No, thank you. Then now we're going to go into live trading just ahead of the market open. Perfect timing. So make sure you see exactly what's going to happen live. So guys, now that we've gone over the whiteboard section of what we look for and why, then we went through some actual chart examples. Now we're going to trade the markets live. We are just over 20 minutes from market open. So we're actually going to go through the whole process of the market prep to then trading the open to then even post-market, what we look to do, journaling, etc. So we're going through a full trading cycle, if you will, today. Thanks to Carla being here and you're willing to do so.
All right. So first thing first, that's my choice. Usually I look for my charts on the Wibble. So as I said, the first thing is to— first thing is identify the trend and the levels. I'm going to start with the levels. If I see some candles piercing through the level, that means that the level is invalidated for me. So I'm going to be just deleting those levels, this level as well, and I'm going to mark new levels. So usually I'm going to look for the places where the Price kind of pivoted. And if that's the opening price for that day, for example, this one, I'm going to mark it a different color, the opening price color. So here I see that the price kind of perfectly rejected this one level, like cent to cent, by the way. And what I'm going to do here is I'm going to look for the color change on the hourly timeframe. So that is another small pivoting point. But this higher level is more important for me. So that's it. AMD, that's ready. I'm going to be going for levels only right now. And then we'll be looking for the trend and then doing the pre-market. All right. The chart sometimes has some bugs when the levels are getting displaced on the Webull. I'm trying to fight it with the support, but they're not doing nothing. So I'm going to delete all the, all the levels and just start from scratch. So pivoting point here, locking it, pivoting point here, and pivoting point here as well. So the chart is for me ready. Couple levels above, couple levels below the level. That's fine for me. AMD ready. Amazon. It's a pretty wild chart, I would say. Many levels got invalidated, even this one. But I'm going to be marking just a few pivoting points. I think this level is enough for me, and I think this one as well. So the level is ready. Going to go for the next one. And I'm having only like 10 names, I think, pre-market watchlist, nothing else. I don't trade any other names usually. So here is the opening price level for that day on Friday, marking it. Oh yeah, by the way, when the levels are getting pierced through, for some time they still have the relevance and I can keep them as a dashed line and Dash line means that the level is invalidated but still has some relevance. So basically I can put the level on every color change, but I'm going to focus more on the major ones. For example, here I can put this one level and then delete the invalidated one because they are quite close enough. I can actually put even the level right there, put a color change, some kind of a Pivoting point on the Google. And going for the next one, the Microsoft, quickly deleting the levels. For the next charts, I might be a little bit speeding up.
That's okay.
Just to be ready for the market open.
So if you have 10 things on your watchlist, how do you go about deciphering which opportunities you will take?
Just the chart. If the chart is looking good, I'm going to go for it. If the chart is looking weird and I don't know whether it's the trending or choppy, then if I don't know, just skip it. All right. So for example, this one chart on Nvidia with this big wick on this candle, I'm not sure if that's the dark pool orders being getting printed or some, some kind of bug. But I don't, I don't like it. So I might skip the Nvidia. The next one is the Palantir. I'm gonna mark a couple levels. Ready. Now the important ones, the QQQ or the SPY. Okay, here is the opening price for the Friday, Friday levels on the SPY. So one more thing is like, why do I differentiate the levels by the colors? Is it comes from the level of confidence that I have in them. If that's the solid, like purple levels, the regular ones, I'm having, let's say, 5 out of 5 confidence with them. But if that's, let's say, the blue level, the opening price level, that's only like a 3 out of 5 confidence for me. Same goes for the invalidated ones. That's like, let's say, 2.5 out of 5 confidence that I have in those levels. And why do I need it? Why do I need that scale for the confidence? It just goes for the position sizing that I'm going to be using reflected on the confidence that I have. In the, in the, in the level. All right, so I think the levels are quite ready. Now it comes to the part of doing the analysis. So I'm starting from the Tesla, that's the bottom one on the list. Here I just see the clear uptrend. We have the Lows getting higher and potentially prices making the plus half percent on the pre-market, almost close to this one level above. My take point on the extended hours, by the way, if you, I think you kind of notice that I'm not using any extended hours. I'm using only the market hours to mark all the levels and the trends. The extended hours, everything I take as, let's say, one candle, as one candle. So if the price is, let's say, at here, it means that for me, from the moment market closed to the moment market is going to be opened, it's going to be just similar to having this type of green candle for me, which is kind of forming here the higher low right there. In price after having several, several rejections from that level. We might today have the opening quite close to the level. We might see the break, retest, holding, confirmation, and then calls. So that's actually the first one and the, for now, best case that I see. I'm going to write it down right there. So the Tesla, um, break and retest of the level 420.68. Okay, so one name is in my pre-market watchlist already. The next is going to be the SPY. Same uptrend. By looking at the extended hours, I see that the price is Price actually can make similar move to the Tesla. Price is making just small move like, like this. If price is going to push to this one level, it means that the price is going to create the higher low right there. And then from that point, breaking at this one level that got rejected twice, we might see another break and retest of this one level. And we might even target the next level. Or maybe it can push to the new all-time highs today. So that's the second name in the pre-market watchlist. I'm trying not to have too many names on my pre-market watchlist. We still have 15 minutes before the market opens. QQQ, SPY, they usually have quite similar pre-market plans for me here. Price is kind of consolidating on the post-market, pre-market, we might be having similar plan for the KQQ. Same price, breaking it, retesting, and going for the calls. So 616.25 is the level of my interest. Right now comes the fun part, the skipping part. So the Palantir, oh, Palantir already breaking it actually on the pre-market, post-market. So Price is already making this type of move. It means that we are on the uptrend, we are continuing, and it means that I might be looking for the bounce. For the price to be bounced off of the level 144.83 here. And as I said, I might be looking for maybe 2, 3 5-minute candles that are bouncing and staying above the level, which is going to be great for me. Okay, this one is looking good. NVIDIA, the chart is just looking odd. I just don't like it. Even the, even if the level is quite close to the level, I just don't like how the chart is looking. Yeah, and I'm going to just skip it. If I don't like it, just skipping it. Okay, here is the Microsoft. One thing that I don't like about the Microsoft is the price is already approaching the level. I would have been looking for the same setup as the Palantir for the bounce of this 414 and target the next level. But here the price on the pre-market, let's say making already too much of the move, going to the area where the price got rejected like numerous times, like 4 hourly candles. So I would say this can be a good setup for another break and retest, but the way that the price made already this much of the move on the pre-market kind of makes me worry about it. So I think that's just my opinion. I think that's giving like less odds of the successful trades. So just don't liking it is enough for me just to skip it. All right, and another one is here, the Google. The trend is inconsistent. If I don't see the clear uptrend or clear downtrend, I can just skip it. And also, it's going lower, which is weakness, because the market, QQQ, SPY are going up on the pre-market. This one is going lower. So if I'm not looking for downtrend for the puts, then I shouldn't be looking for it. There is no clear downtrend, so just keeping it. The Amazon, after bad earnings, there is just, just choppiness right there. Even though the price is approaching this one level on the pre-market, I still hate to see this type of big wicks on the previous days. So I'm going to skip Amazon as well. Here comes the AMD. I'm also trying to be unbiased about all the all the trades because, because of the stock positions that I have on the AMD, on the NVIDIA. Sometimes I like the way that the price is pushing and less like willing to go for the puts, but it's okay. All right, here one more interesting chart on the AMD after I wouldn't say bad earnings, but just negative reaction to the earnings. Price got rejected from that level and went down, just been bleeding, and made its way up again to that level. On Friday, got rejected from that level again, and today making small move to— towards that level. So I do like it. I Do you want to see the price breaking the area that it was unable to break yesterday on Friday? I mean, on Monday, that's Monday. Today's Tuesday, I forgot. Okay, so I'm going to be including AMD as well. Sometimes when I don't trade, especially here in Dubai, I kind of forget the days of the week.
The days of the week, yeah. I feel the exact same.
And the last name is the Apple. The trend seems to be just shifting to the downtrend. I might need a couple of the levels below the price. Say this one, this one, that's quite enough for me. But the chart is just not looking good for me. I would have wrote down the Apple for the puts if price was quite close to the level 271, let's say, for the continuation of the downtrend from the high to the low, creating the lower high to potentially break this and go for another lower low, let's say. But the price is just looking weird for me. If I'm not confident, then I just skip it. So yeah, basically, my plan is ready.
Nothing for the puts, just 5 names for the calls and So you do that. So then that way when the market does open, you're ready, you know the levels you're interested in and what setup you're looking for.
Yeah. Sometimes I even write like which contract I'm looking for because Tesla for the break of 420.68, where's the Tesla? For the break of that level, I'm certainly going to be looking for the closest call strike price. And that is going to be, which one? That's going to be 422.5 or maybe 425. So nowadays I'm not writing the strike price because sometimes from that point I might be willing to hold for a larger move and go for 425 strike price, which is placed here. Because with the strike prices, you're getting the most out of the strike price. When the price is approaching the strike price. Let's say I'm looking for 422.5, which is here somewhere. That's just the Greeks on the options. From here to this area, I'm getting the most out of this strike price. But after that, I'm getting the most out of 425. Strike price, because this option is going to get in the money and it's going to just slow down its increase in the price. But that's just some non-critical stuff. Okay, so the pre-market plan is ready. I just post it in the Discord so that I don't forget where it is. Here it is, daily, posting it. And yeah, so I'm just going to keep it here so that during the market hours I just come here, look at it, and remember what is my plan. Still 9 more minutes before the market opened. And one thing that I forgot to check is the economic calendar. I just simply use the econoday.com website. For today, after the market opened, I Don't say anything. These numbers are gonna be delayed. So nothing within the first hour that I have to worry about.
Is that good or bad?
That's good. Yeah. Because sometimes there can be like consumer sentiment, some core CPI, maybe some Fed speaking, FOMC, some meeting, Jerome Powell, which can affect the way how market is behaving. But right now I see that we have nothing for today. So these numbers are delayed or either delayed or before the market opens. So we're quite good to go. No need for the browser now. 8 more minutes before the market opens. And usually on the white monitor, I look for several charts, but here I think I can reduce it to let's say 4. So that's for me, usually that's 5-minute timeframe, SPY and the QQQ, that's must-have. And then that's going to be Tesla, let's say, and the Palantir. And I'm missing only the AMD from my pre-market plan, I think. So just for the sake of having like better visual, I think I'm going to be looking at the 4 of them, not 5 of them. Okay. Right, so I'm ready. I'm ready for the market to open. And when the market opens, I'm not rushing into a trade. I'm usually waiting for the first 5-minute candle to close because the first 5-minute candle have, can bring a lot of volatility, big wicks to the upside, to the downside. And that's where I kind of had some troubles at the beginning of my career. And now I just skip it. I used to skip like first 30 minutes of the market at the beginning, then 15 minutes, then first 10 minutes, and now just first 5 minutes that I skip and then make decisions. Okay. Recently even like been thinking of skipping only maybe 2 minutes of the market open because let's say I'm looking for this level to break on the Tesla and it might be breaking it or retesting on the 2-minute timeframe. Mm-hmm. But still, first 5-minute candle not closing, and then price is just going there without providing any entry opportunity, which is giving me some FOMO sometimes.
Of course.
So yeah, hopefully market will reward us with some opportunities today.
So there you saw the market prep, exactly, you know, how to identify the levels, what setup we're expecting. And then there was about, I don't know, 10 minutes until market opened. So we just quickly had a short break there. But market's going to open in 2 minutes. You can already see some of the candle movements and volatility starting to pick up a little bit. But just to let you know, we're going to try and execute from the desktop, but usually you execute from your phone for the speed of it. So he's going to try to do the desktop just for the recording and for you guys, which I feel sorry for because You know, at the end of the day, we should still follow the normal process. But for any reason, if it's taking too long to try and do on the desktop, we may execute on the mobile phone accordingly. So let's see. But the market's going to open literally in 2 minutes' time. We already have 5 symbols that we are interested in. We have 4 on screen just for, again, visually make it easier to see. And we know exactly the setups that we are looking for. And it'll be interesting, like just with this one here on AMD, would that change? You have seen such a— seeing the market do that. Does that change what you would look for in there?
Yeah, usually when I see this type of move that are kind of ruining my plan, because I've been looking for the price to open up here, break and retest. But it might be still respecting this one level and still keeping the uptrend and move from that level as well. So that might be less of a priority for me, this setup, but still on my pre-market plan. Understood. And also when the market opens, usually I just wait for the first 5-minute candle to close because the first 5-minute candle is usually the place where the battle is and then everything is set. Okay, market open. Market open. There is no rush, just patiently waiting for the first 5-minute candle to close. Hopefully it's going to be a winning trade today, but even if that's going to be a losing trade, the disciplined way of how to deal with a losing trade is also success in my opinion. So some couple crazy candles here on the Tesla, on the AMD. I'm hoping, I'm hoping just that they're not going to be just shooting to the upside without providing me any opportunity to go in for the trade. But just even from that information that we have, just look at how precise the level is right there. It just touched the level on the open and just shooting. I'm afraid that's like uncatchable move. So what I do like right now is the way that the Tesla is breaking the level. It might be breaking, closing above the level, and then create the bouncing candles that go for the retest. But if no opportunity, then no opportunity. I'm not going to be forcing anything. Still, I'm going to be looking for other plans that are left, which are Still SPY for the break and retest, QQQ for the break and retest, which are still aligned. That's how I operate. Like usually some plans are getting invalidated, some are still valid. If I have like zero plans left, if everything is invalidated, I have to ask myself like if I want to stay or am I going to be doing a mistake by doing something unplanned. So yeah, usually I just finish and leave with no plan. So still just first 2 minutes.
This is the reality of trading, isn't it? They have to be patient.
Yeah.
You know, do you think a lot of people make the mistake of trying to find that excitement and rush from trading?
Yeah, I'm one of those actually. I've been making all kinds of the mistakes. I've been going into the trade at the market open. Having like a couple times success, but more times of like losing, failures. It all, it all was some lessons for me. So even at this time, I can just highlight the way that the SPY is approaching to the level, which is kind of making it my favorite pick. And the AMD, I think the original plan is valid right there because I've been originally looking for the breaking retest of 217. Yeah. Even though the price quickly rushed from 215 level. But the Tesla, that's another story because the price is already not making the breaking retest, but moving to the next level. So it might maybe take some time for the price to retest and provide entry. But if the price is not going to retest and then go up, I'm certainly not going to be using this one level. So I'm going to be just I just let it go.
Mm-hmm.
Anyway, the other name that I had, that was the Palantir. Okay, Palantir, I was looking for the bounce. So looking at the hourly, still price opened just above the level. Now going down, failing. But if the price is going to go back up, I'm going to be looking for some solid signs of the holding and still interested in calls. Right now we're having lows at this area. So even going in at the level, this is a big risk for me. I'm certainly not interested in that type of trade. If the price is going to go up, create some good pattern with some tight stop loss available for me, that is going to be a go for me. But for now, nothing. So how long do you think we can spend on this live trading?
I don't know. We gotta see what the market provides, eh? The beauty is that we can speed up, you know, if there's like large gaps in between, or we'll go however you want. At the end of the day as well, if for any reason you feel like, oh yeah, market didn't really do anything, we don't have to have the live trading in here though. You know, so we can, uh, we can decide, we can decide based on how it actually goes.
All right. One good thing right now is that Tesla is breaking one level, not two lows, but just one level, which now allows me to look for 2-minute timeframe. I do not like the way that the price is looking good for taking position off of this one level. I'm still going to wait for the price to go here, take position, and be patient. On the AMD, actually, this thing is actually looking like a, how they call, like an inside bar, 1, 2, 3 pattern, when the price is trending or resting and then continuing. But that's just a 2-minute timeframe. That's why I give preference to 5-minute, because 5-minute, that's just a breaking candle. Still didn't close above the level. Still can close below the level if sellers will push the price down. One more negative thing is indices are getting weaker. Okay, this one is looking quite promising about the Palantir price. Quickly bought from this area, going back about the level, but bad thing is the SPY going down. Usually I try to Avoid going against the market.
Hmm.
This might be looking good for the calls, but this is looking like a bleeding. So my chances are low to go against the market usually. So again, with the AMD, looks like a perfect break and retest, but that's actually rejection happening on the 5-minute. Okay, I think at least I can just not look at the QQQ at the moment because QQQ is just quite far from the level that I want and replace it with the Palantir that I have on my pre-market watchlist. Now I'm kind of having the sense of the indices and still looking for the setups. The pre-market plans are highly, highly like subjective. Like they might be sometimes biased, sometimes they're wrong.
Do you ever have the plan and then based on the market change it? Or do you just, if it's not following the pre-market plan, you just regardless leave for the day?
Most of the time I just leave for the day. Mm-hmm. But sometimes I might see some good pattern, good levels, good reaction to the levels, just no pre-market plan on that certain setup. I might go with a smaller position size because I know that I'm going against my rules, but at least to minimize the damages if the trade is going to go wrong, and also not to reward myself too much for doing bad stuff, for breaking the rule. That's the remedy that I have. You might get bored.
Hey, this is trading. Yeah. This is trading at the end of the day. You know, what we're trying to do here at ChartFinatics is show the reality of trading, you know, and this is the reality of trading, you know, whether people, I'm sure people will respect it, you know, at the end of the day, because, you know, easily We could pick a day that might have some crazy news and then we know we'll have movement, but that still doesn't mean we'll have a trade.
Mm-hmm.
You know, that's the difference. Just 'cause the market moves doesn't mean there's a trade. The trade has to, as you say, follow your system. And yeah, it would be a disservice to you and the audience if we were live trading just for the sake of live trading.
Yeah.
I would rather we follow a system or a plan and then see there's no trades, no matter how boring or, you know, whatever that may be. Because at the end of the day, our whole focus is live trading, you know, real trading, the reality of trading. And the reality is you get days where there's no movement or there's nothing that fits the criteria set out. And this is what it's about, you know, we went through your pre-market prep, we identified 5 potential trades and then what that should look like. If at the end of the day, the market doesn't follow that plan, our job is to do exactly what he said, is which is sit out, you know, no matter how boring or how much we need to make money. This is the thing with trading though. There's no guarantee that you can take a trade every day.
Yeah.
And even if you do take a trade, there's no guarantee you'll win. And that's why it's so important to make sure that you are trading with money that you can afford to lose and having a nest egg and savings because You know, if this was your full-time thing, not being, you know, identifying 5 potential trades and then maybe the market not presenting any of them. If you need the money from trading, that's, that's the recipe for disaster there. 'Cause that's where you start to chase or say you're adapting, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if you're adapting because you need to take a trade, then it probably is a bad thing.
You know, sometimes I might be just going from calls to puts, changing perspectives. But that takes like, like very, very like trending movement from the indices. Usually, usually let's say like this, or maybe even, even harder than that. If the price is bleeding, maybe some news dropping in, only at that point I might be, just might be shifting my focus from calls to puts and look for some setups. But still not going to be using any big size, any full size, just tiny size. Some adventurous feeling, let's say.
Is Tesla still on your cards, you think?
Yeah, I'm still going to be looking for the price to slightly go underneath the $420.68, hold it. And the important thing right now is the indices because they're bleeding. Not bleeding, let's say, just going lower. So if Tesla will somehow resist this move, hold this area, then I'm going to be entering. At that point, if let's say miraculously the market is going to pivot, shift, some reversal, then it's going to help my position. So the market conditions are important to identify whether market can help you or or just ruin your position. Even now I see that the SPY overall is red for the day, but Tesla is overall green for the day. So that's the relative strength that the Tesla has. So usually when it comes to setups like this, let's say I'm anticipating Tesla for the, for the touch of the level, then I quickly just configure my order here on my phone. But for the, for the podcast, we will be doing the Tesla one. So that's going to be Tesla. I'm still not ready to trade, but I'm just in case, just preparing the order. That's going to be the closest expiration, I think. Oh no, I, by the way, Tesla has the expiration like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, which is quite dangerous. So I'm going to be using the Friday's one. The MACD 7, they've been having the new expirations. It can be, it can be dangerously volatile. So as a regular trade, I'm going to be using the Friday's expiration on this one. I'm still going to be waiting for the Good.
Actual level.
Good, yeah. Good setup. It might be feeling weird to have like this type of rejection pattern, by the way, on the Tesla, on the 5-minute. I see 1, 2, 3 wicks that are rejecting this one level. Yeah, but I'm still having the calls in my plan because this level is the level of my interest. And even trading from this level to that level is going to be rewarding for me. So after that, none of my business. So my target is going to be from this one. Maybe tomorrow is going to be even closer than the level, but after the level, I'm going to be very cautious or just out of the position. Okay, uh, I think that's gonna be— oh wow, they're expensive. Okay, the way that I'm aiming for that, for that move, the 22.5 is like here, and I'm aiming like for this one, so I might be looking for 425 strike price to get the maximum delta squeeze out of it. So $4.25, this one, if the spread is okay, 10 cents of the spread, I think that's okay. I might go even with the market order for that. When the spread is okay, I might go with the market order. So quickly calculating the price for that. Where is it? 6.8. I think I can go with— let me go for 10K position size. That's going to be roughly like, I think, 16. Yeah, and I've been— I'm going to be still looking for the price to get to the $420 level. There's the cheaper options for tomorrow's expiration, but you'll be having much more volatility.
So what do you do? Aim for that sort of middle ground?
Actually, I usually aim for the closest expiration, but just to be a little bit more conservative on the on the podcast, I want to go for this one. I actually tried only once the new expirations on the Tesla. Other times I've been always using the Friday expiration. The term expiration might be something new for the futures traders, for the forex traders. That's the moment when the contract is expiring.
But when trading this on futures, do you just look for the exact same?
It's just—
not really the options flow in terms of picking the contract, etc.? Do you trade futures with the same setup we've gone over today, or is it slightly different?
Actually, yeah, when I'm trading the names, I'm looking for it. But when it comes for the SPY or the QQQ, I'm just not opening up my Bookmap because the prices are quite far from the levels. So just to save my screen time. Right now I'm looking for just Tesla. AMD, I think, is invalidated because of the hard rejection, and the Palantir is still struggling to go back above the level. So right now the only valid one for me is still Tesla. So on the Bookmap, there's no point on using Bookmap with the Tesla, in my opinion. It's better to use with the SPY, with the QQQ. So usually when it comes to the futures, I trade ES and the NQ, so I just use the Bookmap with the heatmap right next to me. Right, I'm gonna do one more thing. I'm gonna do Tesla Radar and the indices, as I'm not gonna be focused on the other ones. All right, so the price is like this. I think I'm still gonna be going for 16 contracts. Price almost touching the level, like just 20 cents away from that. At the same time, QQQ is making the low of the day. That's something to worry about. SPY stronger. I would love to see some move slightly below the level to have maybe slightly lower than the level stop loss. Like this. And once I'm in a position, I just don't look at the P&L. I just look at the chart.
Is that because the P&L can be, uh, can be distracting or like pull different decisions?
Yeah, you might be even aiming for some round numbers, like, okay, I want to make $5K, $10K, let it be like $20K of the profits, or Or sometimes people are scared about the losing amount. They might want to kind of cheat and lose less than the desired stop loss. All right, so here price, okay, 10 cents away. Okay, how much was it? Okay, let me look at it. Price was just 4 cents away from my level. Okay, let me just look at it in this perspective. Just a single chart. At moments like this, I'm a little bit scared, like maybe I missed the opportunity because price did not go slightly lower than the level. Yeah. And I'm here just one click away. Just one click away from going into the trade. So if you just zoom at it, this thing was just 4 cents away from this.
But it has to hit the level for you.
Sometimes I might be flexible with that, and sometimes I might be even like going here, like half size, and for the touch, the other half size, so that somewhere in the middle, I'm gonna be having the, like the average entry for the trade. If I'm too scared to miss the trade. I'm still hoping, still hoping though, that the price will present the entry for me. Okay, one more thing that I would like is, okay, 425. I put this chart of the option contract. So I see roughly where the price is, where my stop loss is going to be.
I'm guessing at home as well, you have multiple screens.
Yeah, like 3 screens, like everything very, very convenient. By the way, that's the reason why I'm not going full size, because I'm a little bit not comfortable trading outside of my office. That's why today only like $10K position size instead of $40K, $50K, but still decent size.
That was very good size, yeah. Yep.
All right, so the price is approaching to this area. Wait, and I'm gonna go.
Okay, this thing is, is it?
Yeah, it's looking good. I'm going. Go, now getting rid. Here's my position.
Uh-huh.
I'm in at 575. Price is at 587. Right now, and I'm going to keep my stop loss here at roughly this area. So I'm going to be targeting the level. It might be maybe slightly less than 2R multiple, but I'm going to be— I'm going to try to be patient with this one. Okay, the good thing is that the indices are reversing. That's a good sign.
Is that normally how it goes, like on an average day where you, we had what, 5 on a watch list? And then in this case, so far 1 has been the one that's presented itself forward.
Usually, yeah. I mean, not exactly. There might be some days where like 2, 3, 4 of them are doing good job and I'm looking at something that's gonna take me with the stop loss, but the other one, which is looking the same good, but that one is going for like, like to the moon. All right, we are approaching the level. I'm gonna, where is the, I'm so not proficient with the, with this one. Create the closing order for, let's say, 10. At the market price. Okay, we almost touched the level. Okay, we're going for the level. Just a little bit more, just 20 cents more, I think.
The market loves to do that.
Yeah, we actually were— okay, we're touching it. Okay, we closed 10 contracts, now we have only 6 contracts left. We made $1,500 and $500 running right now. Now let's shift the stop loss. Let's reduce the amount of the stress. The important thing for me right now is for the price to keep it above the level. So if—
If you were to break back above there, would you look for another retest of that?
No.
That's it?
No. Usually after the winning trade, I am like I'm on a preserving mode. Okay. I made profit, I want to kind of keep it. And usually I found myself like in a great place recently having like great one-and-done days, like one good trade, you make the profits, you don't spoil them, you don't waste them, and you're good to go. Okay, let's see how it's on 5— looking great on 5 minutes actually. See the— Candle is going to be closed in 2.5 minutes. I really want to see the candle closed above the level. But same time, I'm aware of the fact that we might get rejected from this area that was rejected multiple times. Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's why my stop loss is shifted. So I think it's going to be like, like what, breakeven or maybe a small profit. Mm-hmm. Okay.
So if we were to sustain above, would you then be looking at price to get to that level there? Uh, 426.34.
I would look to slowly start scaling out again and then just slowly start to shift my stop loss again.
Okay.
Yeah, I'm gonna maybe close another 2 contracts. So 2 contracts at the market. Is it still good? Still good. Okay, another 2 contracts closed. Now we have only 4 contracts. So the candle is going to be closed in 1.5 minutes. I just want to see the candle closing above the level, but I'm not going to be shifting my stop loss immediately to the level because that's going to be just a small room for the price to wiggle. So right now, prices here. And also, I certainly don't want this green candle turn into red candle. So that's why makes sense for me to move to the opening of that, of that candle. If I didn't see like this big wick, right now this kind of looks like a rejecting pattern for me. But that's why I've been kind of ready for that. I've been prepared. Okay, let me have the order ready just in case it will hit the stop loss. The market order. It's way faster with the phone, by the way.
I can imagine.
It's like It's like once I'm in a position, I'm swiftly configuring the closing order, market order, and I'm just, just finger on the trigger, just one click away from closing it. Right now it is approaching. The candle is going to close in 5 seconds. All right. Candle. Candle here. This is still a green candle, but still rejecting this one level. So we might, I mean, I like the way that we scaled out of the trade and—
Oh yeah. Well, it's a great example of why, you know, don't trust a candle till it closes, essentially. 'Cause that, you know, if you were looking at that a few minutes back when we were scaling out, everyone would probably think, why aren't you holding it? That's such a bullish, You know, such a bullish move. And then this is a good example as to why you got to follow your rule set.
Yeah. And also, my entry was not perfect, by the way, because I've been entering, I think, here or somewhere like here.
Yeah.
And I could have entered here, like 4 cents away from the level, which could have gave me more profits, better entry. So if this thing is going to go to the red zone, I'm going to be closing the trade. Sometimes it's kind of bouncing like that off of the stop loss area. All right. Closing. Okay, closed. So a little $1,200 on that trade, just because of the smaller size of the trade. But yeah, out of the trade and then what happens next is none of my business.
Definitely. Yeah. So how long did that trade last? It lasted about 10 minutes max?
I would say, how much is it? Uh, just 3, 4 minutes. Oh, wow. No, no, no, no. I think, where is the entry? That was 7 minutes, 7, 8 minutes.
Yeah, so $1,200 in 7 or 8 minutes is absolutely incredible, you know, but it just goes to show though, it's easy to say that $1,200 in 7 or 8 minutes, but the reality is that's years of hard work, is the preparation beforehand, which took about 10, 15 minutes as well. Then the patience to wait for the entry, which took about, again, similar, 10, 15 minutes. And so these things add up. And then there's also the time afterwards, right, of making sure not to give those profits back and being disciplined and walking away. Like, what do you normally do after? So we're going to go through, you know, sort of documenting the trade.
That's the most important part, actually. So now—
And normally you— what would your normal size on that trade be just for— if we weren't here in the studio?
$45,000, maybe. Somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000. So just multiply this number by, let's say, 4 or 5, and that could have been the profits on this regular trade.
Of course. So it just goes to show as well, when developing this skill set, you know, that could have been, in that same 7 or 8 minutes in terms of the trade length, could have been $5,000, $6,000. Yeah. Right? And again, it comes down to just really want to highlight that preparation, the time and the effort that goes into years of study, developing these systems and rules, and then following the rules, of course, is the hardest bit, but not when you put in the time to do so. Like the preparation again is really, it was really good to see the pre-market prep. We listed out 5 different opportunities, but those opportunities with what we were looking for at the levels as well, the price. Within the first 5 to 10 minutes, we had already ironed out one or two, right, that now no longer fit the strategy, and then boiled down to one that fit. The one that fit then met the criteria, executed, and then managed accordingly to the rules. And look, you know, again, why, you know, a lot of people no doubt in real time might have thought, why do we need to scale out here? This is looking really strong. Well, then look what, look what's happened. You know, you would've gone to stop loss, original stop loss. And that's if you then had the discipline off the back of that poor decision to then hold, not hold, sorry, close your trade as you're meant to. A lot of people probably would then look to try and hold it longer. And who knows what's gonna happen next? It might go lower, even lower, it might go back higher. But then at that point, you're no longer trading, right? You're doing something else.
One of the worst excuses that I hear from the people is when, they refuse to close at the profit and then they see the price going from green to red.
Yeah.
The dumbest thing is they say like, okay, I still have 2, 3 days till expiration. What if the Tesla is gonna make like some booming move like tomorrow or the day after? But that's not how it is. That's the day trading. You have to be here and now. You should not be taking chances of what is gonna happen over the night. Yeah. And that's also the importance of shifting the stop loss because here touching the original stop loss, it could have been more than I originally expected because of the decay. We already spent like maybe like from that point, like 3 5-minute candles. So it could have been already less of a value at this point. And also one thing that people ask me sometimes is when the price is going down to your entry area, are you like going in again? I said, no, if I done the trade, then it's a done deal. Nothing else matters to me. It's none of my business. If there was—
You essentially use the break and retest. That's exactly what happened, right? We broke.
Yeah.
And then we retested. And then that was what we were looking for. Because now it would be invalid, right? We could break again. But it's like, how valid is that after the initial break?
Yeah. And also the precision of the levels. I mean, they're not like cent to cent perfect. Like sometimes they might be, but here it was just 4 cents away from the level just here. But I took my entry here when it was like been having a little bit of the distance. So here to here, the profits could have been bigger.
Yeah.
And that's something that I'm going to be highlighting during the journaling. Of course. So let's move on to the journaling part.
Yeah. Okay.
So while everything is still fresh in my mind, where was the— I think it was account statement. These are the orders, exporting it. So every account statement is here. Now I don't need anything on my thinkorswim. Adding the trade. By the way, that's the reason why I'm not syncing it, because usually syncing it might take it till the end of the trading day to appear on your dashboard. All right, so here it is, just one trade, 13%. So I'm going to start with the stop loss amount that I had. So going for the option. So here was my entry, the market order. And I've been having the stop loss slightly lower than the level. So that was probably maybe 5.5, maybe. My entry was 5.75. So 5.5. Let's say, okay, no, the stop loss. So now I think that's too low. I think I've been looking for slightly lower than that. So maybe 5.3. Okay, something like that maybe. So I've been risking $700, small amount because of the small position, and been looking not for 2R multiple, but for the level. To be hit on the chart. And we can actually see it. This is the option chart. Price been going here, triggering the level. And we actually took that from basically from level to level. So sometimes I'm leaving this page blank. One good addition that Tradezilla made recently is added partials. So I'm going to use that. So I've been trimming initially 12, or how much was it, 10, right? Then I've been having like 2, then I've been having the 4 of them. So for 2 of them, I think I did not shift the stop loss at that moment. And for the last 4 of them, I've been hitting it exactly at the stop loss. Which is like here at 585 or something. And look how my risk changed from 700 to 500. So for the last 4 contracts after—
That changed because of the scaling out on the—
Yeah, because I trimmed 10 contracts, trimmed 2 contracts, and then my stop loss shifted from this area to this area. So that's why I'm having reduced risk involved in the trade, which is awesome. That's the new feature on the Trade Zone that I absolutely like about it. So now it comes for the tagging. What setup was it for me? That was just a simple break and retest for me. So nothing else. Maybe I can include the trend continuation because again, on the hourly timeframe, We're on the uptrend. The trend is continuing. So other than that, I have to mark my mistakes. Mistake number 1 is going to be the bad entry because I didn't go in at right at the level right there. My entry was a little bit higher than that. So bad entry. And then what can be the other mistakes? I've been patient. I've been waiting. So early exit is not the one. The pre-market, everything was okay. Yeah, I think there is no more mistakes that I made with this trade. Yeah. I always have at least one mistake or two, maybe. Usually that's like the early exit when I am going out of the trade as soon as possible. So I didn't— feel quite the exposure for the decay. Sometimes I mark the decay because sometimes when you wait too long, price might start decaying, melting, and that's bad for you. My rate on that trade is going to be maybe like 3.5. I think for 5-star, it should have had like clear entry right on the level and then no rejection on the 5-minute timeframe. Like this one that we see. Yeah. So that two factors, and then it could have been like 5-star trade for me. And all the way, it's kind of a bouncing here and going for the level again. But as I said, none of them is this. So adding the strategy. So I kind of call it like Gala rule. I just mark what are the rules that I've been following. So I waited for the first 5 minutes of the candle, 5-minute candle on the market. Yeah. I've been using the level. I've been using the pattern. On the pattern, not the ideal one, but still, we have several wicks, but the bodies are kind of keeping this area. It would have been also perfect if they had like gone to the low, wick below the low and the body is somewhere here. That would have been like like the dream, like the awesome one. But still, that's the bouncing pattern right there that I see. So I'm going to mark it as a tick. I've been using the pattern, using the relative strength because Tesla is overall, it's been going up when the market was going down at the beginning. Stop loss, I think it was tight. Maybe it could have been tighter, but okay. Consistent position size. Okay. I think that's okay because I didn't oversize. And trade was planted. Okay. We had it on the pre-market plan right there, breaking retest using the Bookmap. I didn't use the Bookmap. Usually I use for SPY and QQQ trade or NQ and ES trade. So I've been trimming at 12 candles, started to reverse, and then I respected my stop loss. And the move up overall, it was aligned with the move up on the SPY and the QQQ on the chart. We see We see the bottoms line up. Yeah, from this moment to this moment, that's this moment on the indices. So yeah, if I been in my maybe office trading setup, maybe I would have considered like looking for this breaking retest, SPY and QQQ for my pre-market one. But for now, I think it's quite okay to leave it as it is. Like one and done. Good trading, good session. And it doesn't matter how much we made or lost. The important thing for me is just to do things right.
Of course.
If you do things right, then results will not wait. So yeah, by the way, marked as reviewed and yeah, that's it. That's how my trading routine goes.
It's perfect. No, I think it's amazing to see, as I said, in terms of, you know, to see the reality of trading, you know, I know a lot of people always assume that trading has to be this, you know, super hyper engaging thing, or that's what they assume. 'Cause even, 'cause bear in mind, a lot of people always assume scalping and day trading is very exciting and impulsive. And then swing trading's the thing that's kind of a bit more hands off. When in reality, like, even the right methodology of scalping and day trading, there's a lot of waiting, planning, like the actual execution bit is minimal. Like, like we said, we, we spent more time planning the trade and more time then recapping the trade than we did actually in the trade, which is actually very, very interesting. But I really appreciate you coming on here 'cause you volunteered yourself to trade live here. Yeah. So huge hats off to you, and I really appreciate you doing that because You know, again, it shows the reality of trading, you know, the reality of trading. And again, to walk away with $1,200 in 7 minutes is incredible considering the average salary even in America is about $40,000 to $50,000 a year. So to do $1,200 in a day, not even a day, well, in 8 minutes, but let's say call it a day, is an amazing opportunity. And that's why we love trading. That's why people try to trade, but they need to learn from people like yourself and learn from resources like this where they can see the reality of trading and what it actually looks like. So I really do appreciate you being on here today. So everyone at home, drop a comment with your biggest takeaway from this episode. A strategy that works both on options and on futures. We've shown you trading options today live with the market open and made $1,200 in the process. Whether we would have won, broke even, taken no trades, or lost, we would have shown you all the same. But thankfully, the trading gods are on our side. But the links for Galo are in the description below, so make sure you check them out. Drop a comment with your biggest takeaway. Any questions you may have, throw it in there as well. Other episodes are on screen right now, so make sure you check those out. Hit like, hit subscribe. Well, until next time, this has been Chart Fanatics. Take care.
