Worlds BEST Prop Firm Trader Reveals SIMPLE Trading Strategy - Jadecap (Full Breakdown)

Welcome everyone back to Chart Fanatics, the.

Go to channel for the very best trading strategies in the world with the very best traders in the world. Talking of which, today we have a very, very special guest. He has just come off the back of a record payout at Apex, beating our friend Trader Kane. So now Trader Kane doesn't match with anyone, I'm joking, but Absolutely incredible. Over 2.5 million in a single payout. Closing in on 4.5 million in total payouts from his career. I've always said it, a future market wizard. And we' going to break down his strategy that allowed him to do that today. And it's the one and only Jade Cap. I was about to say FX Jade Cap, AKA Kyle. It's great to be here with you, man. First of all, huge congratulations on all the continued success. Absolutely incredible milestone, you know, the pleasure I got to have of one, obviously getting to know you a couple years back now, seeing the journey as we've gone along, but most of all seeing you doing this incredible record kind of in real time, like you're sharing trades in the group chat that we have and you know, the guest, highs and lows, if you will, along that journey. But just seeing, observing it was just incredible.

Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm definitely, I'm trying to take some time off because I was so locked in for so long. I think I'm definitely feeling a little burnt out and I think now is probably a good time for me to take a little bit of a break.

Hundred percent. Well, I dragged you out of that break straight away. Straight away. But no, I really appreciate you being here and I definitely think you deserve it and it'll be interesting. Obviously we have a podcast that we're going to film tomorrow, so we'll get into those sort of things tomorrow. But today we're all in strategy. Where do you think we should begin today?

So I'm going to talk mostly about intraday liquidity and volatility. So let's write that out.

And I'm only going to talk about intraday because I feel like that's where most people want to start at.

And usually they don't like hearing when people say you should start on the higher time frames. And I don't blame them because you're gonna get more reps on the lower time frames. Let me see if I spelled that right. Volatility.

Don't worry.

Hopefully everybody can see that the comments.

Will tell us if it's wrong.

So before I get into like the actual concepts of intraday liquidity and volatility. I kind of have to bring it back to like how markets actually operate. And I just learned this over time from reading a lot of books, like Reminiscence of a Stock Operator, how people used to operate on the floor. Right before electronic markets were around, there was traders transacting on the floor. And a lot of times you could see where the order flow was, you could see where people's stops were, you could see where their limits were. You know, somebody's coming in and bidding a market, they have, you know, they might set their limits like right away. And the easiest way that people knew where stops were were just intraday highs and lows. So we might look at yesterday's high and low, we might look at the previous day's higher low. So maybe just like in the last three days, you're just looking for intraday, the highs and lows.

So you have, you know, yesterday's high and low.

You know, it's just really just the most recent ones that haven't been taken yet. So maybe the previous high and low or previous three days, we can just say, because typically when we have, when we're looking at a three day look back, there's possibly going to be highs and lows that haven't been taken yet. And the way that some of these traders used to trade was, you know, when they would take out a previous day's high or low, they might anticipate a reversal at that specific point or they might anticipate that buyers and sellers are going to continue pushing price in that direction. So typically what I'm looking for is I'm waiting for one of those highs or lows to be rated and then I'm looking to either continue the trend lower. If we don't reverse initially or if we get zero follow through, then I'm looking to go the other way and possibly target the previous day's higher low. So if we've taken out the high and failed to go higher, now I'm gonna start targeting the previous day's low. Right? Because we're just anticipating that all those stops that were above the high get triggered. Okay, so anybody that's short or anybody that's trying to get long is placing their, you know, their order above that high.

So you can mark out like this, you have a candle. So this is the previous day. The orders for any shorts will be, you know, in terms of stops will be in this section. Any longs will be in this section.

Well, even people that aren't yet in the market might not be a short, that might be a buy stop.

Exactly.

So you might have a short order or a buy stop. So you'll have just a layer of orders in there.

Yeah.

Right. And that's what we're really looking for. We're looking to see the market trade higher, to engage those orders and then see the reaction. We don't want to try and anticipate what's going to happen after those orders get triggered.

Yes.

So having patience, knowing that, okay, we've, we've engaged those orders, but now if I'm expecting it to turn around and then maybe we're going to target the stops that are below that previous day's low, I need to be able to see some information in here that aligns with that. And where I used to trip myself up a lot was as soon as it would take out that high, if I was bearish, I would just try and go short. And then what would happen was the market would just keep going higher and higher and higher. Okay. And then maybe at some point during that day, then it'll make the run. And by then I'm, I've already wasted all my bullets. I don't have any more dry powder and my mental capital is completely destroyed.

Yeah.

So I've talked about this recently a lot. I don't typically trade on the low time frames. I just don't think the, you know, you have to be very dialed in on the low time frames. You have to be able to make decisions very quickly. And I think with the higher time frames at least, let's say if we get an hourly run on the high and then it closes back in it, at least, you know, there's a lot of information inside that one hour. There's not a whole lot of information inside a five minute candle. Okay, that's very true.

So that's what's the lowest you would.

Aim to go, Typically down to like 15 minutes. I'll trade the lower time frames, but it's very rare. And if I do, I'm trading smaller size and I'm trying to be in and out as quick as possible.

Yeah.

And for a lot of people, it works against them because they're possibly not making the right decision because they're lacking that experience. But that's typically what I'm looking for when it comes to liquidity. Okay, so this is pretty much how the markets operate. Now. This could be, and I'm only talking about intraday, but obviously if we hit higher time frames that are, you know, monthly, weekly or Daily highs and lows. Yeah.

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But let's get back into this episode.

These are more important than intraday highs and lows. I mean, daily, obviously, maybe it's multiple days back in the past, because as the market moves away from specific levels right now, there's more and more time that allows orders to be built up. So the longer price spends away from those specific levels, the more liquidity is possibly being built up at those specific levels. Right. So that's typically what I'm looking for from an intraday standpoint. And really I'm just trying to position myself on the right side of the market. So obviously the bias comes into play as well.

But this is like your start.

It's really just about. This is my starting point. And it's about understanding liquidity and how to visualize that in the market. So you have to be able to see who's getting trapped, who's getting stopped out. There's a. You can. The thing with floor trading, and I've been talking with a lot more senior traders now, a lot more veterans that traded on the floor, and they said when there was a floor, almost everybody that they started to train became profitable because it was easier to read emotions in the room. You could easily see the orders in the room. You could see people panicking. You could see people, you know, I guess loading up on shorts as a high gets taken out. So it was easier to see the order flow, but now, plus you could.

See their patterns because you'll get to know these people.

Exactly, exactly. You know somebody that is consistently profitable and he's always shorting yesterday's highs. Yeah, you're mostly likely going to just hop on board.

Exactly right.

And yeah, when, when everything switched to electronic training, it became much harder because you can't, you can't really see the order flow. You can kind of anticipate it and try and feel it as much as you can, but you don't know if there's a guy that's sitting on the sidelines waiting to place his thousand contract order. That's going to shake the markets up.

But that's the thing, right? So like the concept is the same. The concept is the exact same, regardless of floor to electronic. The execution and the observation of it has changed.

It's become more vague because you can't see everybody. You don't have all the information in front of you.

Well, what you're saying though is this is essentially taking that concept and how you start to identify where those orders are resting. So then the reason why it's your foundation, if I'm not mistaken, is because from this point it then dictates the next move. Yeah, dictates how you then where you're looking to react from and then what you're looking to see there and where you're targeting from there.

Yeah, I'm basically, you know, when it comes to like strong versus weak hands, I'm looking for the weak hands. I want to see where they're going to puke their trade or fold their cards and I want to be able to buy that from them or short into that. So if we have a bunch of people loading up on longs and all of a sudden I see this run lower. You know, I want to be able to buy up the people that have weak hands. So I'm going to buy their position from them. They're going to assume the loss on the trade and I'm going to get a really great fill price. So I typically have homework lessons for my students that, you know, you basically wait for a rate of the previous day's higher low and then when you get a closure back above that low. So let's say we have the daily low here and then we get a run below that previous day's low. You're not going to do anything until we get a closure back above the low.

Okay.

Okay, so that's our swing failure. And then you're going to place a long position, right? Your stop loss is going to go below the newly created low and then you might just target the previous day's high. Now, these setups don't happen all the time in trending markets. You typically are not going to take out the previous day's low. So we can go a little bit deeper than that and think about session liquidity. Okay, so we have Asian range liquidity and then we have London range liquidity. So with index markets, those become more sensitive intraday because in an uptrending market, we're typically not going to take out the previous day's low. So again, if I had to draw a box. This might be.

Asia or we might have London session. Let's say London session actually.

Ranged.

Ranged. Both of them ranged. You know, if we don't get a raid on either of them, then typically what I'm looking for in New York is a raid one or the other way.

Yeah.

And usually when I come to New York, if both sides of the range have been taken out.

Interesting.

Then it's almost, I'm anticipating consolidation. So on a classic buy day, what I want to see is usually the Asian range low or the London low be taken out before it goes higher. And today is, what day is today? The 23rd.

Yeah.

So if everybody checks their charts right now, they can see during Asian session going into New York session with Nasdaq, we didn't take out the Asian range low yet. So anybody that's going long, there's elevated risk there because there's, you know, there's open liquidity that's below those Asian range lows. And I'm pretty sure if you check right now those Asian range lows have been taken. Okay. So usually if I have a bias, and I was bullish today, if we don't take out the Asian range lows, like my probabilities of success go way down.

Yeah. So is that how you then the thought process when you come into the day or even doing your sort of pre market analysis, that's where then you can know. Okay, so you need to sit on my hands for now until this gets taken. And what are you doing there? You're still watching the markets or are you setting a limit? Not limit, sorry, an alert at those levels.

Yeah, you can set an alert at the lows. So once that lows gets taken out, then you can go into the charts and see if your setup appears. But until then you don't know when it's going to take out the Asian range low. Sometimes it'll move away from this level for days, you know, and then it'll go back and take it out.

Yeah. So, so how. Let's take that as an example.

Right.

Gets left, you then on the next day or maybe the next two days, how are you then sort of not ignoring that, but let's say parking this idea so that you can continue to trade or are you not and you're waiting for this?

No. So like I will typically continue to trade as long as my bias in that specific direction is going to continue. And then what I'm looking for that next day is at least to see the Asian range of that next Day be taken out.

Okay. And then still need some form of liquidity essentially to be able to target or at least because they might not.

Ever take this level. It's just intraday. I don't have a play.

Yeah, interesting. Where do we go from here then? After we've identified the liquidity and where the volatility sits, where do we transition from?

So we can get into a bunch of different concepts. Right. So everybody by now should know that I'm an ICT trader. Right.

Really?

Yes.

And you know, to me, markets are either going to inefficiency.

Or liquidity. Right. Which we just talked about. Yeah.

And massive shout out to real weird Gene, because I learned a lot of this from him and he definitely is a good mentor and he's definitely put things into perspective that I didn't see previously. So, you know, when it comes to these two things, that's really all you need to determine the draw on liquidity. And that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for an idea that makes sense, that I have confidence in that I can hold my trade and continue trading in that direction. Because sometimes I'll take one to two positions. The first couple might not pan out, but I don't want to be able to just a bin in that idea. I want to be able to continue with that idea until something really jumps out at me and says that this idea is incorrect. Okay. So when it comes to inefficiency or liquidity, typically what I'm looking for are fair value gaps or double tops or double bottoms. So we might have. And I guess I'll just draw out like a fair value gap.

Let's just say we got a big fair value gap here.

My illustration skills are probably not great.

Looks good to me.

Let's say we're coming down into a, you know, a high time frame level. So this is a major level of support that we've just taken out. This could be, you know, I would just say a previous monthly low. This is just to make things very simple.

Yeah.

So we have a previous monthly low being taken out and just pretend that this is a daily candle. So usually what I'm looking for is the draw. What is going to be the draw on liquidity? Right. So if we've already taken out a major level of liquidity, where else it might go to? We have an inefficiency here.

Yeah.

Okay. So actually, let me use the red one.

So we have this inefficiency here. Right. So usually what I'm looking for in this next daily candle. And everything that I'm doing is just trying to predict the next daily candle. I'm not trying to go so far in the future because most people that are traders, they don't know what's going to happen even in the next four hours. Right. That could be completely random. So I'm just trying to shorten that window and just try and predict what's going to happen in that next daily candle. I might give myself one to two attempts in that specific day. If it doesn't pan out, I'll just come back the next day and reassess the situation. So after we've taken out that liquidity, right.

Where else is might it go? We've just taken out liquidity. All we have left is inefficiency. Maybe there's no more levels that's below the market that the market's gonna go to. So typically on this next daily candle, what I'm looking for is the open. Let's say this is our Asian range. We have a very small Asian range here. That's what the candle looks like currently. Let's just say it has a very, very small body. But what I'm looking for is that candle to, as it's developing to take out that Asian range and then trade up higher just to take out the previous day's high. That's really all I'm looking for as an intraday setup.

And then this candle, right, Even though it looks bearish at the time, and this is where it took me so long to try and figure out was that the best time to buy that candle is actually when it's down. But by the end of the day, maybe it's going to close like this, maybe it's going to be a massive green candle like that.

But who is going to get the best price right inside of that green candle?

If you're buying it up here versus somebody that's buying it down here, who's getting the best price and who's reaping the most reward? It's the person that's willing to step in front of the market and buy it at the lows. Yeah. Okay. So this is where you can incorporate these lower time frames into your trading. So when I dive down to like a, let's just say either a one hour or a 15 minute, I'm looking forward specific things, right? I'm looking for a rate on the Asian range lows, or I'm looking for, you know, market structure shift.

You know, fair value gap.

A liquidity rate or turtle soup as the traders like to call it.

Or a breaker. You know, there's a bunch of different setups or entry models that you can use. But everything needs to come from this. So everything is coming from this idea first.

Okay.

This is just extra first. Yeah.

And that's where this is the execution.

Yeah. So everything in here is execution.

So daily wise, in this example, daily wise is setting our bias, setting our trade thesis and what we're looking for. And then the execution comes in 1 hour 15. And we're looking at these four key aspects.

Yeah. Maybe even down to the five minute. Yeah, you could even do it on the one minute. It's just a lot of people, they have too tight of a stop loss. So what happens is on the daily time frame as that, let's say you have the candle forming as this thing is going lower and lower and lower. You know, people are taking losses. By the time it turns around on and it closes green on the day. Yeah. They've taken too many losses. So I like using wider stops. Like in this scenario, if I went long here, I would probably use the previous day's low.

Yeah.

Because I know that there's a lot of orders down.

What's your mindset in terms of. Let's take this example, right. You cleared the liquidity to the left, taking out a very significant level. We then managed to get well priced into a trade. But then we targeted the inefficiency, for example, in this case. But what's the mindset here? Let's say there's bigger picture wise. We've taken our previous monthly low.

Would you then be inclined to hold longer or is that just not within the the style of trading that you're doing?

No. So it all depends. If I have a really strong opinion of if it's going to go higher, I will hold longer. It depends the type of model that I'm trading in and it depends on the market conditions. Like right now I possibly would not be holding anything long term. I wouldn't be trying to swing positions right now. So depending on the market environment, I'm either trying to do an intraday model or I'm going to try and hold for longer positions. Because if I can get a really good entry here now, let's just say we get a daily close like that, this all of a sudden becomes a, a swing point. Okay. Because you have a low, a lower, lower low and then a higher low.

Yes.

Okay. So that next day again you're anticipating the same thing that following day. So even if I get out, and this is the benefit of intraday trading as well. Typically the rollover session overnight, there's usually going to be a retracement. In a normal market condition, there's usually a retracement. So you're actually, as an intraday trader, you're. You're extracting more money out of the market, you're extracting more points out of the market because instead of, you know, just holding through it, you're closing at a specific position and then you're reentering with more capital. Right. You're compounding that capital faster rather than keeping that unrealized profit open the entire time. And you're still trading an intraday model inside of a higher time from narrative.

Yeah. Plus if you're doing it that way, as you just mentioned, you then are essentially collecting more risk.

Yeah.

Potential risk along the way in terms of being able to risk more, you know, if you are, you know, very high conviction, a setup and maybe have an overall target. Just an example, just to make it more visual, you know, say, for example, we close like this, you then have a potential swing point and a potential bigger trade, let's just say to here, for example, the next day, then are you just looking for. In this particular case, potentially you're opening here, you've got your Asia range. Right. I'm just going to draw the candle to begin with. So let's say it was something like this and it ends up like going, I don't know, to there, for example. Right. And then on the lower time frame, if I just take this from you, sorry, are we then looking at, say here we Asia ranged, maybe popped up slightly going into London, though, we sweep the low, which then is that wick and then that expands going into New York.

And you might. It might just be as simple as retesting this previous day's high. Right? Yeah, that's what I say.

If it retests that. But if it leaves it as an example, this is where I was going to go with this. Right. If we leave it and it then creates a fair value gap there, would it be within the same thought process of price coming down, sweeping that daily low and having that model to then go up too much?

Possibly.

Yeah.

Yeah. And that's. That's where having multiple attempts at a specific trade idea is going to come into play. Which is why now I'm so comfortable not putting the house behind one specific trade, because I know that there's times where the market makers or whoever's out there is going to be chopping price up and down, trying to Stop people out trying to get them to flip sides. And I've seen it too many times in my own trading where I've been stopped out multiple times. The third time when I decide to reverse positions, that's the one that really goes, of course. So you have to be somewhat stubborn in your analysis, but you have to make sure that you're not going to too overboard or you're too stubborn. You're too married to the bias. It's got to make sense. And from a technical standpoint, I'll always have invalidation levels. So after we created that swing point, that would become my invalidation. So unless we lose, you know, it even can be as simple as this daily low. Unless we actually get a closure below one of those daily lows, I'm going to remain bullish if everything aligns with that.

What are your thoughts here? We can wipe this out and then draw this again. But in terms of here, you can imagine at this point we've been, let's say, selling off for a period of time. Don't you think there'll be a lot of people probably looking to sell from this fair value gap.

Even though it's taking liquidity? What is your mindset? What would your advice be to those people out there who in this scenario really should be looking at longs into this fair value gap, but instead they're actually focusing on trying to short from this fair value?

Well, it really depends on the overall range. If this, if this is a previous monthly low, you can imagine, like it's probably been running lower and lower and lower for a very long time. So if this is the previous low, this is our range right here. So we go lower. Right? That fair value gap. Now that's, that bearish fair value gap is appearing at the low end of the range. Whereas, you know, let's say, you know, we took out a previous monthly low. Yeah, that's great. But in the overall range, maybe the range is much bigger. Like maybe there's more previous monthly lows, that is creating a much larger range. Okay. And if we're expecting maybe that previous monthly load to just get taken out, trade higher into that bearish fair value gap and then trade lower. It has to make sense from a context perspective. So depending where that fair value gap forms is very important.

But then also the liquidity that sits below this point, because let's say as an example, let's take eu, when we hit those previous monthly lows a couple of months ago, there was nothing left.

Yeah, there's nothing left.

Such a Gap.

Exactly.

So the only place really for it to go, even if it wants to go lower, was higher.

Exactly. So when you're looking at something like this, when it's inefficiency or liquidity, it's just how much liquidity is left.

Yes.

Below or above. Usually when it's hitting those massive extremes, there's not much left and all the liquidity has already been taken out of the market.

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Now let's get back to the episode.

Yeah, so on the lower time frame, you know that's really where all more of the technical analysis comes into play and it's really just reps. So when I run all those things out, market structure, shift, turtle soup, fair value gap breakers, all of those things require reps.

Yes.

So each one of them requires reps. So in my journal, most of my trades are all fair value gaps because I've been trading them for so long that I'm just so used to them. I've traded the other setups and I am profitable with them, but it's the most, the one I'm most comfortable with.

So where do we go from there then? So we've marked out the liquidity, the volatility, we've talked about the execution side. What would be next?

Next is honestly just the time windows, the time aspect of each specific day. And you know, I see it a lot with traders. They're operating at weird times. And I totally get it. You might have a job out there that requires you to operate at weird times, but if you just go back through data, you're just trying to anticipate, like when is that daily low or high being made? And if you go back through your charts, a lot of times, all of these intraday setups, like the intraday lows are being printed at the same time. The intraday highs are being printed around the same time. So going through your data understanding, like the low in an index market is probably going to be printed around like 9:30 to 10:30am almost every single day. So like 70% of. Yeah, this, sorry, this is EST, by the way. So most of the time the intraday higher low is being printed around these times. And everybody that else is operating in here in these odd windows, like from, I don't know, 6:30 to 8:30.

And then from like lunchtime, you have to really look at your data and understand that.

The time that you're operating makes a really big deal of importance on your profitability because you're trying to position yourself inside of a quick move that might happen intraday. And when you're operating inside of this window compared to this one. So let's just say this is the 630, 830 window. You're gonna get called out because let's say you're buying here now all of a sudden ahead of the New York open, it's coming down here, taking on all the liquidity. And now this is the real trade. So you have to have patience in knowing when should I be operating in the markets. That's, to me, was probably the biggest transition between FX and futures is because I was so used to operating at 8:30 to 9 that I was getting into my trade. And even in effect you can get in a trade at 7:30 Eastern and be okay because that volatility is going to come in at 8:30. But if you try and do it too early in the futures market, you're going to get caught in a situation where this is you and then you're going to get stopped out and then you have to reenter the trade.

Yeah.

So you've realized the loss now you might go on tilt, you might size up, you might do something dumb and then actual training patience. Yeah.

In terms of talking about timing. So we told this is like the more specific time window that you'll focus on. But then we talked about sessions, for example, like do you focus on like the midnight open or anything like that?

Yeah, so everything that I do comes from the midnight open. I don't know, I've studied both, but for some reason the midnight open just, it works very well. Yeah, it just works very well for me. Now when you're looking at a daily candle, it's always like a 6pm or 5pm open. So even if you're going to anticipate that next daily open, it doesn't really matter so much. And like when it comes to kill zones, I don't necessarily always abide by this either. You know, if, if we've already taken out, let's just say, and I have a couple examples that we can go through in a little bit if you're anticipating a large move on the week and let's say, you know, during this time window we take out previous session highs and then it rolls over and I'm expecting that next day to continue lower. I'll just enter during Asia because I know that we've seen a very large move away on the daily time on that specific day. So let's just say that this is Wednesday.

And then we're going into Thursday. Right.

So I'm not expecting any of these major high intraday highs on Wednesday to be taken. So I don't care if I'll go short here, put my stop a little bit higher here and then just anticipate that I'm going to have to sit through a bit of drawdown if it takes out the Asian range high and then close lower on the day. Right, yeah. Because sometimes the market will make that run during Asian session over during the overnight session. And I'd rather be in the trade than waiting for the perfect price.

Exactly. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. Like, rather than being perfect, it's like you understand that price is going to. Well, according to the analysis is going to move lower.

Yeah.

And rather than say one having to stay awake necessarily to the move, not pulling back, just selling off, which happens. Or free. It's it pushing up and then you trying to maybe wait for that.

Yeah.

You know, that's the worst.

And I've seen it so many times. I've seen people miss trades because they're waiting for this specific price and they're ignoring everything else that's happened already because we've already taken out a major level of liquidity on Wednesday.

But.

Right. And I have a higher time frame bias that's leading me lower. So I'd rather be in the trade. I don't really care if I get in here, here, here, here, or here. I just know that the next day is going to close down here. So if it does, anybody that sells it up here. Right. Anywhere. Anybody that sells it up here on the day is going to be in profit. It doesn't matter. And I'd rather make money than miss the trade.

That's very true. In terms of the midnight open, what is it about that that allows it to be a focus or be used?

I don't know. I mean, to me just. It's very simple to see. And my Asian. The Asian range that I have drawn out goes from 8pm to midnight. So I'll take a multiple of that. I know people were arguing with me about the standard deviations, but I'll take a multiple of the Asian range and plot it maybe two times higher. And I've just seen so many times where the market will kind of stall at one or two standard deviations higher above the Asian range. Yeah. And it all comes from the midnight open.

Is that why it's so important to test?

Yeah.

You can build this confidence because whilst you recognize that, I'm sure other people would recognize too. But someone perception wise might actually be noticing. Hey, free is the answer.

Right.

And it's important, I feel like, for people to collect that data in those reps because otherwise you never really are going to have your own confidence in the edge. Yeah.

And people will have seen me kind of just sell blindly as the market's trading higher above the midnight open. So I'll, I'll just, I'll go short without an entry model sometimes because I'm so confident that that next day is going to close lower. I mean, crazy. Some people may have seen it during When Trump announced the terrorists, like officially on April 2nd, that market just kept going higher and higher and higher and higher throughout the day. To me, that didn't make any sense because everybody should be, at least the smart money should be waiting for the market, you know, for that speech to come out before their actual hand is being in play. So why does it make any sense that the market is going to rip 3% and then continue and higher another 3%? To me it was like a huge manipulation thing. So like as the market is going higher and higher and higher, you have to have confidence to be able to continue shorting it. Right. Because by the end of that day it closed like that.

Yeah.

Right. So anybody that went short here, even if they had to hold through water, is still making money by the time the day closes down here. It's just how do you position yourself in here without taking on too much risk, without taking on losses? Yeah, right.

How do you focus target wise? Are you looking at specific R multiples? Are you focused on like liquidity?

Yeah. So a lot of people probably notice that I don't wait till full targets a lot of time because I'm more of a short term, intraday, intra week trader. A lot of times I'm just exiting based off of time and that comes down to experience and repetition as well because I can't tell you how many times where I've been in a long position. So let's say I've, I've positioned myself below the open, I buy it here and as it's trading higher, I'm deep in a profit. But now the time is like 11:11am, maybe 11:30, maybe it's noon. I'll just exit my position. There's no rhyme or reason for me doing it because my target might be here, which is like a 1 to 3 interesting. And the 1 to 3 might line up with a bunch of equal highs, but I've seen too many times. And I'll just put eqh, just as an example.

Maybe this is my target, right? And I've seen way too many times where I get close but there's not enough juice in the candle on that specific day and then it just collapses on me and I give back a lot of the profits. So a lot of times without rhyme or reason, I'll exit just based on how far I think a daily candle could possibly go. And that's very discretionary for some people. It's not going to help them a whole lot. But I, I've realized it's helped me more Than hurt me.

Yeah.

Because I've been able to. To take something off the. Take something off the table.

As you mentioned about timing, though, it's like as you're getting towards the end of the sort of more volatile and.

Liquid markets, that's what everybody else is doing.

Right.

All the smart money, they're trying to just book their profits for the day.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

Yes. Go to their Hampton beach house.

Exactly. Yeah. This I'm saying there. So what you're judging is based on where we are at the time.

Yeah.

For the day, what's already happened. So taking these things into consideration, saying it's not a likely chance that we're going to go to target today, and therefore I can always. If the target remains and we range now, we'll pull back now, tomorrow, I can then do the exact same trade.

Exactly, exactly. Exactly. Because if this. Let's say we close here, it's still a bullish day based on where we open.

Yeah.

So open here, close here. Right. It's still closed up on the day. That next day, those equal highs are still there. Right.

And now, if anything, this pullback probably induced shorts.

Yeah.

So now you have liquidity above that high.

Exactly.

To Target as well.

Exactly. So that could be your first partial.

Yeah.

So this could be TP1, you know, so the market is very dynamic. Do you find that moving?

Yeah, exactly. Do you find that, you know, you'll have, you know, let's say a string of trades where you've taken it off early, if you will, or like you've closed because you're happy with the day and you think that's enough, but then eventually it will come through to the target.

Yeah.

And because you kind of, at that point, you probably got one, two or three different trades where you profited, but still haven't hit the target yet. That last trade, not that you size up, but that last trade you end up getting as well.

Yeah, exactly. And you just feel more confident because now all of a sudden you know that.

Because it just stacks it more.

It's stacking more and more and more. And you're like, all right, well, I know it's going to go here.

Yeah. And.

And people that have followed me on Twitter, I posted about $CAD for so long. And, you know, if you guys want to double check, this is actually, actually when oil went negative. So when oil went negative, we got this massive double top.

And that's basically where like, I bought it here during COVID when oil went negative, it approached three Month highs. And I basically, like tripled my account. But then I was expecting that we're going to take that high out and I just gave it all back inside of here. But years later, I'm talking about years later, I was anticipating those highs to be ran out. So as we were approaching higher and higher and higher, I'm like, there's no way that they're not just trending this higher to go take those equal highs out. So inside of that move, I was able to build a bunch of positions and I didn't get the actual position that took out those highs, but I at least had a roadmap of where we were going.

Yeah.

So it really. You can't get married to the bias because again, this thing traded lower and it was sideways for, you know, years. But when it does go to those specific levels, it becomes like, you know, very high conviction.

Exactly. Is the same of Europe. Yeah, same with your. You had those for the last few years. You had those significant highs and significant lows. And they've just been run now. And it's interesting, though, because they were there anyway for the last few years. But then it takes an event like, you know, Trump coming back in, providing that liquidity and volatility, should I say. And yet those highs and lows were going to get ran.

Yeah.

No matter what it was just about. You just don't know when. Yeah. You just don't know when. And then certain catalysts come along.

Same thing with NQ before the election, we printed like some equal lows down at 19k and they were just sitting there. When it came back down one time, like, I tried shorting it to take that target out. It never hit it. So I took some losses. And then eventually when it was all the way up here, you know, then I was able to get short again with that target in mind.

Yeah.

So again, you can't get married to the bias, but you have to understand that you have to follow the order flow, too. Like, if they're not ready to go take those lows out, they're possibly just going to leave it for another time. It's not a guarantee that it's going to go take those lows out, you know, or these highs. But at least you have a roadmap. And that's why typically I'm not holding to full target. Yeah. I'm just using it as a draw. So even if it goes up there, I'm gonna take something off before it gets to that level. Cause I've been in way too many situations where it's gotten so close to my take profit. And this is where greed comes into play. I've seen people post like my trade was five ticks or five pips from my target. I didn't take anything off and it came all the way back on me. And you know, when you think about it, are you really greedy over the five points? You know, how much of, how much money are you making over the last five points of the five ticks?

Yeah.

That you're waiting to take that out to me, I'd rather just close it and give up the 50 bucks at that point.

It's like a huge negative risk reward scenario. Right. You're giving up 95 points for five.

Tom Dante talks about the dynamic risk people think that they have a risk free trade on, but you're risking unrealized profits is what you have to really determine.

Let's take a break for a minute.

There guys, because I want to tell.

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Now let's get back to the episode, you know, in terms of double tops for example, double bonds. I feel like a lot of people, they get so attached to it, having to get taken out due to liquidity, SMC, etc. Those concepts, and they work. But it's as you say, I think if you get attached to it, that's where you end up. Let's say in this scenario, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, and then you probably all your bullets gone, accounts gone, wherever it may be, then it sells.

Right. What do they say? The markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. That is so true. You have to make sure that you're protecting the downside.

And the thing is, if you go.

And look at so many different charts, the amount of times that double tops and double bottoms get left for a very long time is insane. Yeah, this is crazy. And the thing is, they do always get taken out eventually. You can say that with anything, but it's like you're at the right time. It's the right time. And really it's creating the position as well.

And the narrative needs to make sense too, because let's say if Trump never did the tariffs, those equal lows at 19K may have never been taken out.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Until someone came along to do it for us. Okay, cool. Should we move on to pros and cons then? Should we talk about pros and cons? We'll just rub this all out. If you want to do the pros.

Yeah.

Do the cons on this side. Again, just for the audience. Cons isn't necessarily saying it's bad. It's more so just like, what things should you be aware of, you know, when trading in this manner or, you know, looking to trade like this, I would say in terms of a con. I say con. Again, something to be aware of or something that could be a struggle. One, I think spending the time. It's not really a con, though. Something to be aware of. I'd say, again, spending the time to collect data, to understand that data as well.

Yeah.

Because again, it's not a con of the strategy and it's probably.

This is one of the biggest challenges with trading, though.

Exactly. Universally a problem. Because I've said it so many times now, ever since I started really talking to you guys and interviewing these professional traders. It's like data, or at least having your edge, which is derived from data is necessary. You cannot be profitable.

Right.

And it's just shocking to me, I think. And I think you've probably seen the same. The amount of traders. Again, if you're new, it makes sense. Right. You probably Aren't aware. If you've been in for a few years, then it doesn't make sense. Yeah. Because that is what everything. Right. If you don't have that, you will never be profitable.

Yeah. So like for me, for example, and we just talked about this before we started recording. I don't. I go through spurts of journaling.

Yeah.

Because my data is not gonna change the probability of the next trade. I already understand my data. I know it, you know, up and down. I already know the edge that I'm trying to implement on the market. But most people, they don't have enough data to start with, so they don't even have a baseline. So they can't trust their system if they go into a drawdown. They don't have enough reps with their specific entry models. I mean, it's a lot. It's a big ask. Right. It's a big ask to try and learn all these things because we didn't even talk about risk management, which I'm pretty big on.

Yeah. Well, we're going to go. We'll go into that when we get the charts out. As I say timing because as you mentioned earlier. Well, one, you have a specific window that's more optimum and if you have a job for that, then that would be something that would be a bit of a con if trying to trade this exact style.

I'm sure.

No doubt it's fractal though, so it could probably be applied in different manners.

It is hard though, because I did. I tried the intraday thing while I was working my job for a very long time. It never worked out. The only way I was able to leave my job was when I started swing trading and I started putting more money behind those swing trades.

Interesting.

So I was able to focus on my job. So not only did my income at my career go up because I was more focused at work, my income with trading went up as well.

That's an important distinction, I think, as well, because I remember same thing. I was trying to trade and do my job and then both suffered.

Yeah. Because you don't have full focus on either one.

Exactly. And plus the worst bit. But same with this. That's why I took such a break from trading. Well, one of the reasons, not the only one, but one of the big reasons, was I was worried that because I wasn't focused on the charts and therefore probably have a negative experience, I would then come into a podcast with this negative energy, you know?

Yeah.

And like you're there talking about this, these wins and I'm there like must be great, you know, must be amazing to have these wins.

Right.

So that's why I took a large break because I knew, hey, I really want to focus on this part. I'm not probably going to be able to do both and the last thing I want to do is have negative energy on both of them. And you know, that's why I think.

Swing trading, I mean it's not for everybody.

Right.

Because I sleep better at night when I don't have open positions on. So when your P L is just fluctuating, that's something. It's a skill set that's entirely different to what's intraday but you have to get used to it if you are working a full time job in my opinion. I mean I think yeah if you can focus your efforts to the most income generating, you know, stream that's very important.

Yeah.

And then trading will eventually catch up.

Yeah. I will just put top down analysis in. Meaning there's layers basically. Yeah, there's layers to.

It's not just, you know, show up and follow mechanical strategies.

Exactly. There's layers. There's a little bit of discretion in there as well I'd say like with the re.

Yeah.

Is that right?

Ion, thank you very much.

This is why you're the master. Yeah, that's cool. In terms of cons though so again not necessarily bad things, more so just.

To be aware of.

So you need to have your data. That's universal timing. That is something like if you are working a job then of course the timing wise might be an issue but it is fractal so there are ways around that. Top down analysis, not really a bad thing, more so just understanding that there are layers and then of course discretion, which some people is a big no no. But in reality discretion is a huge part of trading and where we talked about that most was in terms of the take profit scenario. That's more discretionary based in terms of pros though I think it has a great understanding of the market itself. So going back to the original point, liquidity, volatility, it's fantastic.

Yeah. So I think to me a lot of my trading is just about the story that's being told. Like the charts have to tell me a story otherwise I can't build a picture around it or a narrative. Right now I can't tell where the index markets are going. We're gapping up, we're gapping down. We've already taken out major levels to the downside. I don't know where it's going to go. So the context for me is just not there. Right. So I need to be able to read the markets and get a story. What is it telling me? Where does the market want to go and when? I can't clearly determine that, that's usually a sign that I should be sitting still.

Interesting.

And it's usually when I avoid that and I go into the markets anyway, that's typically when I compile losses. That's when I usually have the most losses. Because I'm basically just trading in chop. I don't know which direction the market is going. I don't have confidence in what I'm doing. And you know, it's part of the data as well.

I'll say like fractal and then also.

Multi assets. Like it's universal. The concepts.

Exactly. So multi. I'll just put multi asset, I guess.

Yeah, that's fine.

And you know, this was, the multi asset thing was something that I guess comes towards the end of your growth curve.

More advanced stage.

It's more advanced. But once you, once you start working with multi asset now you start really understanding money flows. Right. Where is the money actually going? Is it leaving the us Is it going to foreign currencies? Is it going to gold? I mean gold has been pumping extremely hard. You probably take a look at yen. Yen's probably been going up too. And in those scenarios, those are safe haven assets typically. So when they're safe haven assets, usually everything else is not really a good investment because investors are chasing yield. What's going to provide the most yield? So when gold is pumping like that, you're typically not trying to invest in like the NASDAQ or something, you know, so multi asset, fractal market context, I think the simplicity of it. But again I would say so when it comes to simplicity, it's really all building into what is my bet. Is it going to go up or is it going to go down? And that's really all trading is. Trading is just a vehicle that either goes up or goes down.

Times that by your position, size equals profit. That's really all it is. Right. And it's just breaking it all down to get the best fill prices. And I think that's probably a pro too is getting a proper.

Fill price.

Because you don't want to buy. And just today is a perfect example, you don't want to buy the market when it's already up 3% overnight. Yeah, right. Because you're putting yourself at more of a risk. The people that already bought it already in profit 3, 3.5% on the day. So understanding that you're looking for specific scenarios, but these don't occur all the time.

They don't.

Yeah. So that might be a con as well. It doesn't occur all the time. You have to wait and be patient with it.

Patience is on every con list alongside it.

Is it?

It is. Because it's like every strategy, even if you're a scalper or a swing trader, has. You need to be patient for yourself.

Right? Yeah.

So that is always there. Because it's good, though. This is what I love about doing this style of video, because we're really seeing patience is universal. It doesn't matter what you do.

I think Tom Dante posted that thing. It was like your idea.

And then trade signal.

And then anything in here is where you F up.

So waiting for your idea. You have an idea. Waiting for the trade signal, though, is where you.

No, it's so true. Because you see it so often. Like, if we just. You. The classic case I always say, is people do analysis on Sunday, right? Or on the weekend. Market's closed. Okay. This is what happened last week. This is where we're looking to go. And then I'll just draw it out a little bit here and we'll get onto the charts. So, like, let's say, you know, the week's done something like this, you know, right. This is where you're starting your analysis and your mindset is, okay, we've had a bearish week. So I'm looking at, okay, fair value gap here. I'm looking at maybe a daily high. Sorry, that's just below it. So for my bias for the week is for price to come up here and then sell, but then market opens here, right. And then suddenly by Tuesday, markets here, you're trying to sell.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, or you're trying to buy. And that's exactly what you're talking about here, what Tom Dante is talking about there, you know, and it happens.

There's nothing wrong with it. Just know that you're making. Let's say if you have, like three things on your checklist, right, and these are the boxes for them, just know that maybe two of them are getting checked off, but this one's not. And you just have to understand that you have a higher probability of taking a loss. And if you take the loss, just be comfortable with it.

That's what it comes down to.

I take losses all the time. Like, you just have to be comfortable with it and not let it put you off track. Where you're going to start risking more or trading more. And I see it too many times where traders, they just sit at the desk and I totally get what it's like to go on autopilot. You take a loss, can't get off the screen, you want to make it back, you're taking the same trade again.

Yeah.

And it's just, you know, it never works out like that. You have to be patient. You have to just understand I'm going to give X amount of attempts on this one idea for the day. If it doesn't work, I'm, I'm gone.

I'm done. Yeah, that's it. I think it's the acceptance of, of the reality of trading, you know, accepting to like you say, I'm going to be, I'm willing to give this many attempts. So accepting that if those attempts get used and they don't work out for you, that's fine, you know, you move on to the next.

Yeah, it's a hard thing to do though. It really is because you have to be comfortable losing all the time.

That's it. We will talk on. Well, I think by the time actually this comes out, the podcast will be out. So we will have talked about, if you, you haven't seen that already, more processes mindset, especially the journey over the last year and especially over the last few months with what you've done. So I'm sure, obviously that'll be really, really enjoyable for most people. But let's go head into the charts.

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Now let's get back to the episode.

All right, so these are pretty much multiple days of examples of NASDAQ selling off. And what we're looking at here is really just previous day's high. So if we draw like a previous day's high here.

It's very simply, let's say if I have a bearish bias, I'm looking for a scenario where what, the Asian range hasn't been taken out yet and we're taking out that previous day's high. Now let's say if you, if you missed the short initially there was an opportunity where we had this bearisher value gap, right? And this is all occurring without taking that Asian range low yet. All right, so even if you didn't short it right at the previous day's high, this all of a sudden Becomes a turtle soup scenario. If, let's say, if you miss that now this becomes an area where you can short that fair, fair value gap. And then you're just expecting it to close on the day. And now you guys can see here, down here it's 12:15, right. So 12, 12, 15, that's really where the intraday low gets printed. And if you're not exiting at that specific low, you have to sustain all of this run higher just based on time. There's nothing down here. We're not even really taking out any level of liquidity. We're taking out Asian range lows. Yes, we have deviations down here, but there's nothing down here that would initially tell me exit the trade. Right. It's really just based off of time that following day.

But then look. Exactly. Well, yeah, not just the following day, but as you said for price, let's say you get out here on average on towards the lows and let's say, you know, the rest of the day went up and then came back to the same level. Because this happens to me and I always think about in my head as well. It's like, what was the point of holding it.

Yeah.

For the next like two or three hours.

It's not the same price. Yeah, exactly.

So I should have just closed it originally.

Exactly. Now there are days where it continues running, but when it does continue running, I'm totally okay with that. Like I'll be comfortable and content with what I've taken out of the market. Because now all of a sudden I free up my mental capital to do whatever I want for the rest of the day.

Do you think it's also understanding, like as we talked about, accepting the reality. So like you're a day trader. Right. Sometimes maybe you get a scalp position, but mainly, let's say day trading. So you need to close your trades and take your trades as if the day trades, you know, a day trade shouldn't just randomly.

Exactly. You should not turn your day trades into a swing trade. Right. I mean, if your model is to be a swing trader and you're using intraday to position yourself. Yeah, go ahead, go for it.

Of course.

But now all of a sudden you're operating outside of your model and now your data is skewed too, so you're not getting good data. If you're trying to trade an intraday model and you're not following the rules of that system, now all of a sudden the data that you're collecting is completely useless. Yeah, right. You don't understand that there's specific times of the day where I'm exiting is maximizing my profit.

Okay.

So when you have that data over a course of time and you look at it and you say, oh, the majority of money that I'm making is because I closed at this specific time. All right. And the following day, let's say, and very simply put, when I'm looking at intraday price action, even when I just look at this, I'm just looking at what the story is telling me, I can visibly see that there's a lot of bearish price action in here. And just based on the way the candles are moving. So when you have large up candles and very narrow shallow down close candles, usually I'm looking for that continuation. But if I have massive bearish candles that on this day, so let's say Monday, all I'm seeing is a lot of selling at like 19K. Yeah, right. @ these, at these levels. So the following day I'm looking for more positions to go short. So right around here, when is the intraday high being made? 9:30 to 10:00am Right. What is it doing is really just taking out intraday liquidity. And it's another scenario where this is not Asian session liquidity, this is like mid afternoon New York session.

Liquidity.

Yeah. So to me the liquidity doesn't, it doesn't necessarily matter as much. But what I am looking for is just a continued run to maybe just the previous day's low.

And if we just plot out like the Asian range lows, we can see how it's reacting at the lows and highs. But again it's the timing aspect of it. Am I exiting in profits? Because let's say you're a London trader and you went short here. Yes. You have to be able to take something off the table before New York because we've already taken out the Asian range lows and then it goes and takes out this intraday liquidity up here. So you have to be very in tune with the markets to trade the low time frames like this because you have to be able to make decisions based on intraday levels. The higher time frames to me are easier because it gives you more time to analyze what's going on. It gives you more time to manage the positions and things like that. And then on the. Obviously this is a scenario where if you shorted it during New York session, you have to just kind of sit in this chop and this is where it comes into play. You know, at most future problems you can't even hold this.

Overnight?

Yeah. So it'll gap down and you know. But what is this intraday creating now? All of a sudden it's creating a gap. So now we have a gap that we're possibly looking at for the following day. So we have this gap, we can see the gap fill. So usually again, this is where I avoid a lot of bad trades is when we have the Asian range and let's say you're a London trader and it just comes down like this and you want to short.

It.

Yeah. Well, the Asian range highs are still there. It's going to go take out those some level of liquidity before it continues lower. So you have to be able to time it properly. But let's say even if you took a loss, you still have the same bias. Right. Just still trying to go short, position yourself short again. And there's plenty of time to position yourself short after you've taken out the agent range highs. You don't have to necessarily short the exact top, but there's too many times where if you're using a 15 minute or a 5 minute or 1 minute stop loss, there's too much noise in here and you're not catching a run like this. Yeah. Where now all of a sudden at like 2:30, and I believe pal spoke at 2:30 or 1:30, this is the candle at 130. So if you're not okay sitting through all this sideways price action, you're not going to be able to hold it to the end of the day because you don't have the conviction. But if your daily conviction is lower. Right. It's building up all this liquidity intraday. So we have all these lows in here. Right to.

Target.

Right. So even if you didn't want to trade the New York session and you wanted to trade right before the speech happens, even this is like right at lunchtime, you see all these, all this liquidity being built up for a.

Reason.

Yeah. Right. It's just enticing people to go long in the market. Not only that, but you have this massive run up. You know, a lot of people are going to look at that and be like, there's buyers down here. But when the market's predisposed to go lower based on the gap overnight, based on a high time frame, bearish narrative, all those things are just traps. Every bullish candle that you see is just going to be a trap. So every time it's pumping higher should be an opportunity for you to position yourself.

Short. Yeah. So again, going back to your very first point of the liquidity side, when you have that understanding in moments like this where that push up would definitely get people trying to.

Buy. Yeah, exactly. But it's just creating the double bottom.

There.

Yeah. So this is what I used to do for a really long time was just, you know, mark out liquidity. So I would mark out liquidity on my charts and just watch it. And sometimes it would hit it and sometimes it wouldn't. But it's important to over time to train your eye to see.

It.

Yes. Because if you miss this and you're just trying to go long, well, you know, there's a reason why you're possibly going to get stopped out. And it's just some people, they don't, they're so zoomed in on what they're trying to do that they don't see the bigger.

Picture. 100%. 100%. You know, again with this particular short example, what we've looked at from this perspective. But is there also like a higher time frame reason why it's going down.

Too? Yeah, exactly. So if we just. There's probably an easier way. Let me just pull up the daily candles, actually.

So really.

As we were trading up into this is the gap that occurred from the tariff.

News.

Okay. So anytime we were retracing into these levels, you're looking for a reasoning, just maybe trade through them. But if we don't get that reasoning, then there's possibly opportunities to continue shorting inside of this, you know, daily gap. Right. But that's really just an intraday model because you guys can, you can see here that yeah, we took out the previous day's high trade lower. The next day though, there's no follow through. Right. So yeah, it's, this is just kind of choppy price action up and down. There's no real direction.

So when there's real direction, there's going to be less. I think it's going to be a lot cleaner for you to be able to determine which direction is going to. Right now this doesn't make a lot of sense to me because we've left Asian range lows two days in a row. So I don't know how high this thing is really going to continue going.

And there's a lot of liquidity that's being built up. You don't see lows being taken out. So as it's churning higher and higher, I think the risk for me goes.

Up. How important is it to be able to sit on your hands in the moment side this, like you said, where you're not sure why we keep moving higher, you know, so you're gonna wait for clear bias to. Yeah, for.

You. To me, it's extremely important because there's times where, you know, let's say you've had three, four, five weeks of really great trading and then the market goes through a month of just sideways price action and you've given it all back. You have to just really clearly see when the markets are possibly gonna go sideways because there will be periods where the markets are just not doing anything or not doing what you want them to do. And that's kind of where following a bigger watch list, like my watch list has grown quite large. But I'm not trading everything. I'm just scanning them at night very quickly to find the best opportunities. And the thing, the interesting thing about the Asian range is as they, you know, as the market forms and as there's ones left behind. So this one is formed on Thursday, but we didn't take it out now that this has run lower and taken out the sell side liquidity. As soon as we get a close back above that low now all of a sudden my gears can possibly shift to possibly target. Okay, agent range, liquidity, what's coming up? Yeah, so like if this market starts rolling over now, all of a sudden I have two low, two Asian range lows that I can possibly target. So I have all that session liquidity that's being built up in this case.

Though. So let's say, let's take this as a great example. If we look to the left there, would you expect, have we taken that high to the left.

There? Not.

Quite. Okay, so if we, if we were to take that out and then we see a nice reaction, is that when you then say, yeah, that's when.

I'm gonna try and get on board with.

Short. But right.

Now? Yeah, for right now I'm not trying to do anything. And there's a lot of traders that are trying to pick tops and bottoms. You don't want to be the first person into a market. You want to wait for it to turn around and roll over and start trading your direction because it's much easier to catch the trade when it's already in.

Motion. You've seen me over the last few weeks trying to pick tough.

Yeah. But sometimes you catch the absolute low or the absolute high and then.

It just turns around again. It's like you said earlier though, it's not a swing trading market right now unless you were already positioned really well a couple months ago. But yeah, can we look.

At. You want to go over some actual trade.

Examples. Of course. Yeah. I'm never going to say.

No.

So here's one that I can bring up real quick. So as you can see here, I wonder if I can zoom in a little bit. Is this good enough or.

No? It should be okay, I think you can zoom. Yeah, there you.

Go. So this is just from my discord. So I'm trying a long NQ here based off of this five minute fair value gap. So we had this five minute fair value gap, we inverted it. This is really just a low time frame analysis. So we've taken out liquidity here. So this is our pre market liquidity. This here is our run lower at the open. So if we've taken out that liquidity and possibly inverting this, I'm just targeting the Asian range high because I can see here during London we barely, we didn't even, we didn't take it out. So there's a lot of buy side liquidity there. And I was only looking for like a, you know, like a one to one and a half. It wasn't even anything.

Crazy. Does anything. Is there ever like a too low of a risk reward for you.

Or. Yeah, I think anything under like a one to one and a.

Half.

Okay. If it's like a one to one, I'm typically not taking.

It.

Okay. Because I need to be able to have the losers pay for the winners. Of course in the long term. And you know, I've been in too many situations where I'll have a bunch of wins. It might be small wins and then one big loss and then all of a sudden, you know, I'm kind of back. All that time and energy and you're back to break even. Does not feel good. Let's say if you get a one to four. And for me I like scaling in. I don't believe I have any trades in here where I've scaled in because this is towards the end of my run. So I wanted to just protect the capital not doing anything crazy. But when I scale in I can turn a 1 to 2 trade into a 1 to 4, possibly nice. Or a 1 to 5. Right. So that same trade, let's say if I entered long at this level here and then it came back and I entered another long. Yeah, well if it goes to my target now I have two positions on maybe my stops are all adjusted to break even and I don't really have too much risk on to be able to reap a lot of reward. Right. So as I'm scaling in I'm adjusting my stops so I'm not exposed to more risk. So this was really just the liquidity level I was expecting to.

Hit. How helpful is it for you to see the daily candle when you're on the low.

Side? For me, it's very important because all I care about is if I'm trying to go long, I want to actually see the candle be bearish because I know I'm getting a good fill. Whether that candle closes below the. Whether that candle closes higher on the day or lower, I don't really care because I know I'm gonna get it at a good.

Price.

Yeah. But so if I buy, you.

Would want it to be, you know.

Bullish. Exactly, exactly. And that's. Those are the best trades that you're ever gonna have. Because if you short a market and then it flips bearish on the day and it closes bearish now, all of a sudden, you possibly could hold it for however.

Long.

Yeah. Right. And those trades typically will run for a long time, especially when you have a clear, high time frame level that's going to run to.

So I don't know how much I made on this trade. I'm pretty sure it was a good amount, but. Yeah, so we can see here that as soon as it ran out the liquidity, I just exited. I wasn't trying to reach my full target. I was trying to target the weekly open. And usually when I am trying to position myself inside of a weekly candle, if I see like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, do something like this, where it's just like going sideways. Yeah. And I see a lot of build up. I'm usually expecting us to get back above the weekly open and continue higher because that's how the bullish weekly candle is.

Forming. Yeah, I hear.

You. So, yeah, this trade ended up being quite a big one. I don't know, you could do the math.

There.

Over 100k.

Yeah.

Yeah. And how long that trade lasts, though that trade.

Lasted. That trade was very.

Quick. That's five minute time frames. Talking about maybe two hours, if.

That. So from like 11, 11:30 to like.

One.

Yeah. So like an hour and a.

Half. Yeah. See, it sounds great when we say it like that. Right? Sounds amazing.

Yeah. But it's years. It's years and years and years of practice and.

Repetitions. Right. As well. Not just that that's most important, of course, but it's equally understanding which we'll go into on the podcast. No doubt. Or have at this point. It's so hard. It's like Inception. But what I'm getting at sorry is just like the mental capital and fatigue and energy to be as dialed in as you've been over the last few months and just generally as a trader. So not even just the last few months, but you had a goal the last few months and there was a real focus on a higher level than usual. But even then I know on a day to day when you're trading and actively trading, you're always like that anyway. And that's the most important thing.

For me the focus really comes from having a strategy that's simple that you can understand that you don't have to think a lot about. Because all my mental capital is going into trade management. I'm not thinking so much about the analysis. The analysis is very easy for me. When I look at this I know it's going to go to those equal lows. At least I have a very good idea that it's going to go to those equal lows. The rest of it is just trade management and risk management. But that, that's where the brain power.

Goes. Confidence come not only from the reps you've done but also as you said, keeping it simple but also having that foundation that you started with understanding the liquidity.

Aspect.

Right? Because then if you know, hey X liquidity has already been taken from one side, that's where your confidence comes from. To then tag the other.

Side. Exactly. Or inefficiency. So here, this is a great example because we have this sell side inefficiency, right? We've already ran out that level of liquidity here. Very. You know, this is, I'm pretty sure there's a four hour chart. Okay. So this is, this is a situation where I'm swing trading this example. But if this were to appear on the intraday chart, I would trade it the same way. I would trade it the same exact way. It's just your time horizon has to be a little bit different. Right. So I pretty much just entered short, I'm pretty sure during Asia. So after we got the run on these highs here, we traded up into this sell side imbalance. I just went short and put my stop at a level where I thought made sense which is kind of like these wicks of these candles here. And then I'm just holding it and then all my brain power goes into, you know, do I scale into this trade? Do I adjust my stops? You guys can see here that I adjusted my stop and took half my risk off the table. So if I wanted to at this current moment, you know, in this Specific trade example, I could add another 0.5 R in risk to that trade. So if it does go to my.

My. Is that how you operate your.

Scaling? Yes. Yes. So like I'm usually never, I'll never add a trade where my stop loss hasn't been moved and risk taken off the table. Because if I move one R on and I put on another one R, all of a sudden I've taken a two hour.

Loss.

Yes. And now it takes, you know, one to two winners to make up for.

That.

Yeah. But if I can, you know, have my open exposure at 1R. So let's say if I want to risk $1,000 now, my open risk is $500, I can add another $500 of risk on. And now all of a sudden my initial position, if it goes to my target is going to pay me much more than if I didn't do anything. Right. So yeah, the trade and the risk management I've seen adds the most edge to anybody's system if you can possibly, if you.

Can. So let's do about being a perfect trader of like strike rate needs to be this high or your execution needs to be this precise. It's more so the trademark, it's.

More so the trade management. Yeah. Because you can give a trade signal, a proposal, a profitable trade signal to 10 different traders. The person who's able to add into the trade and manage the risk appropriately is going to come out way far ahead of somebody that just has one entry, one exit, one target. Right. Well you have to have confidence in the trade and it's not just adding on any, on any.

Specific. This much.

Confidence. Yeah, yeah. So like, you know, so when we zoom in here, it just says short me. Basically this is right, we have our Asian range, we've taken out the Asian range and now we have a nice fair value gap leading up into New York session. So right here, you know, this is right about 9:30am and then we get a massive run towards that.

Liquidity. Very, very, very little to no.

Drawdown. Very, very, very quickly. Now this is where, you know, a lot of traders just need to understand that we destination. When you have a destination, you don't know how long you might be on the bus. Right. Let's say you're going to buy a bus ticket and you're trying to go to Denver. I'm just saying Denver because I just came from there. You don't know how many stops it has, is going to take a long way. But you just know that your final destination is Denver. They don't tell you how many stops are going to take. This trade could chop around for days on end. But I just know that this is the destination. That's why I haven't marked.

Out. That's a great analogy. Because taking that same analogy, because this is where a mistake that no doubt I've done, I'm sure loads of people out there have done, maybe you've done in the past as well, is you have your destination, but then as you get there, you're like, maybe go to Vegas instead. It sounds like we're going to get there, you know, but no one does.

That. You don't do that.

Right. You don't do that on a, on a bus trip or anything like that. And the reality of it being that if you have something planned, stick to.

That. Exactly, exactly. And my plan could have been exit intraday. Maybe I'm not going to hold to these lows. Yeah. But I just know I'm going to make that decision and live or die by that 100%. Right. And that's what trading really is about. You have to make your own proper decisions and. And live or die by that decision. If I decide to over leverage on the trade, I'm going to live or die by that decision. Yeah. Right. So this specific example I did not add into the trade, but going back through your data, this is a great example where I could have. Right. And it's just about. It's just about accepting the fact that you're not going to be perfect. Nobody in trading is perfect. You're going to make mistakes all the time. I make mistakes all the time. And it's really just about going through the process and having confidence in what you're doing day to day and not be, you know, derailed by one losing trade. So here's just another example. Let me actually see if this was. This is, this is the first one I wanted to point out. So this. I was, I was bearish. You know, you might look at this and be like, why, why are you bearish on this specific setup? But just based on how we had this very large wick.

Here.

Interesting. On Monday. I was expecting to, for us to protect and hold that Monday high. So I didn't draw it out here, but you can see here that we have a very large, I believe this. Yeah. Hourly fair value gap.

Here.

Yeah. Very large bearish hourly fair value gap. Yeah. We've already taken out the Asian range.

Highs.

Yeah. And we haven't taken out the Asian range lows. So very simply, like, mechanically, I'm looking at a possible short entry. Now, the other thing that lined up with this trade was we had SMT with es. So if people aren't understanding what SMT is, it's when The S&P 500 takes out its previous day's high. So I can very visibly see because I have multiple monitors. I'm monitoring multiple markets, which, when I moved down to Florida, I thought I could simplify my trading, but I just realized I lost so much of an edge being able to see all those different markets. I just have one screen and now I've got like four. Because it was so important for me to be able to monitor all those markets at the same time, especially when you're you. For me, it's quite.

Important. Which says more.

Advanced. Yeah, to me it's quite important, but yeah, it's more technically advanced. But it's also because I'm following more markets. Like if you were just following.

The money flow, like.

Very.

Yeah. Carefully and closely.

Right. So, like, if you're not doing that, which does add a lot to your trading, you don't necessarily need to, though, if you're just only going to be a NASDAQ trader or you can just look at ES and nasdaq. But I'm looking at gold, I'm looking at the bond markets, I'm looking at the yields, I'm looking at $. I'm looking at currencies. So it becomes a lot when I'm trying to just do it from one.

Screen. It's about knowing your goals as well. This is what I've always said and something, you know, from the day pretty much I met you is there's a different level of passion for trading than the average other traders I speak to. And it's not that they're not passionate by. They love doing it, but they love doing it almost not for the money, but there's an element where the money is important. But with you, no, not to say the money's not important, but I've always got this sense that you just love this.

Game. I just love the game, man. I just love the game. I think that was like, I. I kind of noticed it right away because I was never the greatest student. I was always like the black sheep. And I never really got good grades. I just could not pay attention to any subject in class. But when I started reading about trading and I just found that I couldn't put a book down, I wasn't a great reader. Like in class, they would assign books for you to read and stuff. I would Always just go to Cliff Notes. Like, I would never spend time reading like a fictional book because there's no value in it for me. I'm not gonna read Grapes of Wrath five times and be like, this changed my life. But with trading, I just found a passion for it and I love doing it because I think it's such an interesting.

Puzzle. 100%. Yeah. The reason I said that though is just to go back to your point of, you know, the multi assets thing and the tracking so many markets that is probably more reserved for someone who. Yes, is one trading multiple assets, but also has that level of.

Passion. Yeah.

Right. And again, I think it's so.

Important. I've been trying to highlight it if like not everyone needs to be a nine, eight or nine figure.

Trader. Yeah.

Right. It's amazing. I get that a lot of people, that's their goal. But it's just like you really have to understand what is required to reach that.

Level.

Yeah. The level of detail when it comes to your knowledge and the level of detail that you're tracking markets, but also the level of detail of your process, the level of detail of your performance and your focus on performance like you're doing, you know, and like a lot of these professionals, like Lance for.

Example, does, it's an entire skill set. You know, you have to think about whole lifestyle and you could be the specialist. Right. They hire people in the NBA that only shoot threes. Yeah, right. But they're not superstars. You know, they, they put play a role and they do it very well. If you want to excel and elevate and continue learning and growing and becoming a superstar in trading, I think you have to try and learn everything. I think you got to try and learn every single day. I'm always reading new books on trading just because I enjoy doing it. I enjoy hearing other people's stories, like Linda Rash, how she like went bankrupt essentially on her first trade. That to me is insane. It's a crazy story that I think a lot of people can learn from. And you know, when I get to translate the markets and life and see how they all come, how it all comes together, to me it's the greatest puzzle in the.

World. It really is. It really is. Can we quickly, very quickly look at Euro just so we can look at the higher time frame that we talked about those lows and highs getting.

Rated.

So I usually like looking at like the quarterly chart. Yeah, for me, the quarterly chart is definitely underutilized in my opinion. But one thing that I was definitely looking at was Just, you know, what do we do on that last quarter? So Q1, right. This is, this is really all you're looking for from a technical perspective. Q1 close. Bullish. Right. What you're looking for is that same concept. Who's going to get the best fill on that next quarter? Anybody that's buying it below the quarterly open. So as soon as April starts, if it trades lower and if we could, you know, just keep this in mind, guys, I'll mark out these highs here and you can mark out these highs here too. Even if you want to mark out this quarterly high here. To me, all of these levels would have been targets to the upside. Now if we drop down to like an hourly chart and go back to the 1st of April.

Right. Who's getting the best fill for the entire quarter? Possibly, let's say if the quarter closes. Bullish. And this is our open price.

Right. Anybody that's buying it below that quarterly open, and then now they're just holding it. Well, maybe it might come back now, but I don't know. Hopefully if it ran up this much that a lot of people took their profits off, at least because we've taken out the liquidity that we mentioned. But again, it's a timing thing. Let's say you miss this run and then you miss this run. If you are continuously trying to shorten here, yeah, maybe you're going to make some money, but at some point, when is it going to roll over, turn higher and then eventually make another run? Right. It's. To me, trading is a lot of it's timing and it's risk management. Because I would rather take three losses in here trying to go long than.

Short. That's.

True. So I'd rather take three losses and then on the fourth trade, make it all back.

Right. For the most part, anyone shorting there, for example, they're not going to be taking profits because they're probably going to want to get it lower and lower and.

Lower. Unless they're just trading intraday.

Right? Unless they are, yeah. But for the most, what normally ends up happening is though, they'll do that, get really overconfident, short the last time, give it all.

Back. Yeah. Like, look how close it came to that previous quarterly high. And then it just came back and it just. All the sellers back in the.

Market.

Exactly. You know, if you're trying to sell it, expecting that it's going to go back below the quarterly, quarterly open when the quarter closed. Bullish. And in my opinion was only bullish. Right. It's Just you're kind of playing with fire because at some point that market is going to run and it's probably going to run without.

You. Yeah, 100%. And we have your trades at the dashboard there. I know, obviously, since you've been on this run. Not. Not. Well, there's so many accounts to try and attach if you were to do.

That. Yeah. So I only did one account. Otherwise I would. Otherwise to me, it wouldn't. It would be way too much work. I didn't. And to me, it's all the same.

Data. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Like, if I look at the R value, it's. To me, it's all the same.

Data. It's incredible, though, like, to be able to visualize and look at, like your zealous score, for example. There is incredible. And then the stats overall has been, you.

Know. Yeah. And this is. Honestly, when I look at the stats, I don't really care so much about the win rate or any of.

This.

Yeah. This to me is really the only thing that matters, the average win to loss. Because if I just look at this, like, that's all I'm really cared about. If I have, like, I had a pretty big loss here, but compared to all these other days, like, my losses are very, very minimal, as they.

Say. Right. Keep your losses small, your winners.

Big. Yeah. And I do that by adjusting my stops aggressively. I do it by adding in the trades when I possibly can, and I do it by not, you know, making the mistakes that I used to make previously, which was why didn't my stop as it got close to my stop. So when we started approaching my stop, I would think, you know, this trade is definitely going to pan out in my favor. I would widen the stop and take on a bigger loss than I originally planned for. I think one thing that I worked with Rodrigo on, like when I first started working with him, was just visualize yourself taking a stop. It's so hard to do if you can't do that. Go into a sim environment and just punt trades and just watch it here. Stop over and over and over. And when you can do that consistently, you can take a stop loss and say, I'm wrong on the. On the trade. That's really where you're going to start progressing in your. In your trading. Because I have a bunch of losses in here. As far as, you know, this.

Streak.

Yeah. Because you were mentioning that your win rate during this.

Was. Yeah, this was just one month, but my win rate overall. So I believe this was March. I didn't keep track of April again. I'm like on and off with journaling but from January up until April, Yeah, it's like 35% crazy. It's not, you know, it's not anything.

Insane. We'll just show that. I'm sure that blows people's minds. I know in the podcast we go deep into that so check that out if you haven't watched it already which feels weird because we haven't recorded yet recorded tomorrow. But man, I really appreciate you going into all this. Honestly, like the the detail was incredible. Any comments in terms of questions or any comments in general about the episode, drop them in the comment section below. Myself and Carol will be checking them out. Links for Kyle however will be in the description below, so check those out for sure. Hit like hit. Subscribe. Other episodes are on screen right now and well it's been sharp fanatics. Until next time, take care.