In this instructional video, Trading Louie walks viewers through a recent profitable NASDAQ trade executed on September 12, illustrating how to trade profitably by focusing on fair value gaps (IFVG), liquidity zones, and market context rather than rigid risk‑to‑reward ratios. He begins by emphasizing the need to avoid "robotic" trading and to adapt to varying market conditions, using higher‑timeframe bias, daily analysis, and the identification of all‑time highs. Louie explains the importance of checking economic calendars (red‑folder news) and avoiding trades before major releases unless experienced. He then details the trade setup: a 1‑minute and 2‑minute bearish fair value gap that inverted with a fast displacement candle, supported by a bullish SMT divergence on the ES chart, and reinforced by higher‑timeframe bullish fair value gaps and all‑time highs. Louie outlines his entry criteria, stop‑loss (candle close below the inverted gap, ignoring wicks), and take‑profit (target high), noting the option to trail profits. He discusses position sizing decisions, why he entered lightly due to the gap not inverting on ES, and the resulting 1:5 risk‑to‑reward outcome. Throughout, he promotes his Discord community of ~38‑39k members, live‑trading streams, mentorship, and paid courses, urging viewers to engage, comment, and stay disciplined to become profitable traders.
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Stop being a robot if you want to become a profitable trader. In this video, I'm going to be breaking down how you can actually learn to trade properly with just fair value gaps and liquidity to become a profitable trader and to not be a robot. Because guess what? If you want to become an absolute best trader that you can possibly be, you need to learn how to adapt to the markets and adapt into different trading scenarios to to catch the most amount of profits. One example of that is targeting liquidity instead of targeting a fixed risk to reward when you are looking to enter into a trade, okay? That's one example of how you are going to actually learn how to trade instead of being a robot. This is going to be a full trade breakdown of this winning trade that we caught on Friday, September 12th, okay? Now, a bit more information about me if this is your first video watching. I am Trading Louie. I have a Discord community with over 39,000 members, or over 38,000 members, a stupid amount of members. I've been live trading for around 4 years now. I've been trading in my Discord community for over 2 years. I've never missed a single day when streaming. So firstly, if you do want to watch me trade live, you can watch me trade live. The link is in my bio, make sure you check it out. Now let's jump straight into this video, and of course Whenever you are trading, the first thing that you need to do is look at the higher time frame. The reason why we look at the higher time frame is to find our higher time frame analysis, otherwise known as our daily bias. So if we're looking at the daily bias, let's just go back one candle because we have not swept all-time highs out at this point. So let's say the day looks roughly like this. What was your bias going to be? Now, if you're unfamiliar with what bias means, it simply means where you think the price action is going to go and why. So So if I'm looking at this daily time frame, what I'm not going to do is see that we're in an uptrend to be bullish, okay? That's one very, very mis— one big misconception when it comes to trading. If we are in an uptrend, do not be bullish. Or if we're in a downtrend, that doesn't mean that you have to be bearish, okay? That's one robot way of trading. What you really need to do is look for fair value gaps and look for liquidity. So as you can see, this is all-time highs right here. We've inversely— these bearish fair value gaps to the left. We've swept sell side liquidity right here. We drop to the 4-hour time frame. Boom, it's a bit more clear on the 4-hour time frame. We have clearly embossed this bearish fair value gap. Where should we go for buy side liquidity? The only way that I would be bearish in an instance like this is if we had context, for example, inverting a bullish fair value gap. Where if we look, we are failing to inverse any bullish fair value gaps. Price is coming down, respecting the bullish fair value gaps, and still heading upwards. This shows me that price wants to be bullish, especially because right here, this is not just any old high. This is all-time in the market. Now this is very important because this will come into play when we start talking about the trade that we entered into. So this right here is all-time highs. Now let's jump at market open today. So again, we're trading Friday at Friday at 8:30— that's Thursday— at Friday at open, we actually had at 10 AM on Friday, we had red folder news. So again, another important piece of information when you're trading, you always want to check out forexfactory.com And you always want to make sure that you avoid trading before the red folder news, okay? If you're a beginner trader, simply avoid entering into the market before red folder news. The reason being trades are less likely going to work. If you're a bit more of an advanced trader, then you can look to enter into the market, but just be a bit more careful. So at open, as you can see, we came very close to this all-time high but failing to hit it. We came straight down, taking out some sell-side liquidity. Um, at this point, there's obviously just no trades in the market. The best way that you're going to learn to become an actual profitable trader is by being patient, okay? Normally when we get a big drop down like this, it's very hard to catch long positions unless we get some sort of retracement. And now what I mean by that is we come down, we come back up, then we come down, and this is where you look to get your longs from, targeting breakeven points here. That's usually— of course, again, we're not being a robot, but that is usually the best types of setups that you're going to get when you are trading. Now, as you can see, we come up right here and just sadly no entries. We had the 10 AM Red Folder news, so that was Red Folder news at 10 AM. We come up, we have this 9:30 high. Now, another common question that I get asked is, is the 9:30 candle high a strong draw on liquidity like a news high? Now, the simple answer is no. The open candle is not a news candle, so it's not as strong as a news wick. But again, if it creates an obvious high in the market, that is still a very nice swing high that we can potentially target when we are trading. And again, right here, as you can see, we're slowly, slowly coming up. So even though my daily bias is bullish in this instance, and I want price action to come for these all-time highs, and we're clearly, clearly bullish, even though we're bullish at very close to all-time highs, I'm not just going to randomly enter into the market. You know, there's literally no positions to enter. There's not a single 5-hour gap, a bearish 5-hour gap on any single time frame that we're looking at. Yeah, I was about to say we did have a 5-minute bearish 5-hour gap, but no, I would not enter from the 5-minute time frame. Especially because that inverse before the Redfold news as well. But in my opinion, just want to wait for a, a clean trade. Now remember what I said earlier, the ideal trade that we want to see is where we get— we come up, we get a retracement, and then get a long position. And looks what just happened, we have this bearish fair value gap that's just been created. This 1-minute fair value gap is also on the 2-minute time frame. Now remember, when you are trading, the fair value gaps that you enter from Ideally you want it to be on as least time frames as possible, ideally just on the 1-minute time frame. So as you can see right here, we have this 1-minute, it is on the 2-minute, it's failed to create a 3-minute, a 4-minute, and a 5-minute. So that's very good. So ideally the best case scenario for if we're going to inverse this 1-minute is that we inverse it with displacement, meaning a fast moving candle, and we inverse the 1-minute and the 2-minute fair value gap at the same time. Okay, that is the best case scenario. Now let's look for some extra context, because of course when you're entering in a trade, we're not just looking for fair value gaps to be in burst, okay? Yes, we have all-time highs. Well, yes, we, um, potentially might inverse this fair value gap, but is that enough to enter into the fair value gap? It could be, but ideally you want more context. What context we had right here, which was amazing, we had what we call a bullish SMT. Now do you see this low at 10 AM? If I was to look at the same low at 10 AM on ES, we would have actually swept this low. What this creates in the market is what we call a divergence, meaning that if we now get a long position and a long entry, that means that that trade is most likely now going to work. It plays in our favor. It's extra context. Okay, so when you're entering into a trade, if you have a bullish SMT and you're entering into a buy position, that is very, very nice. Now it's the opposite for a bearish SMT. Of course, if you have a bearish SMT, it's nicer for short positions. A common misconception about SMTs is, let's say we have a bullish SMT, that doesn't mean that we now have to go up, okay? Just because we have a bullish SMT here does not mean that price action has to shoot up. It's just an ideal situation if we get the actual setup. Now let's also look at the higher time frames here. Let's see if we can notice anything for extra context. As you can see, there's nothing crazy, crazy going on on the higher time frames, being the 15-minute. What, what is quite nice is that we came down, tapped into this bullish fair value gap right here. Tapped into that nice value gap. I believe we tapped into a nice 5-minute as well. Yep. So again, right here we tapped into this very nice 5-minute bullish value gap. Again, this is all just adding context to the long positions. Most importantly, what's the most obvious I would say is that 1, we've came down, had this bullish SMT. 2, we have respected this bullish fair value gap to the left. 3, we have all-time highs on NASDAQ. Again, we're not just targeting any highs on the market, they are all-time highs. And 4, would be the displacement. Okay, look at this displacement candle right here. With this displacement, I say all the time, I'll be so, so surprised if we did not come up and wanted to take out this, at least this breakeven point. Okay, so this is where I entered into the market. My stop loss— now this is very important— my stop loss is only if I get a candle close back below this inversion fair value gap. I do not care about the wick. Then of course my take profit is simply this high. Now, in a situation like this, you can of course trail your take profit because we're at all-time highs and there's a very nice chance that price action might want to keep pumping up and up and up. But what is also important to note about this trade is, yes, we inverse the 1 and the 2-minute bearish fair value gap on NASDAQ, but on the ES chart, we actually did not inverse the ES chart fair value gaps. Now, this could be a reason why you might not want to enter. And the way that I played this trade, again, because of all our context— we had the SMT, we had all-time highs above, we had displacement— I thought if I entered— if I did not enter into this trade and it came up for the highs, I'll be so annoyed with myself. So that's the reason why I entered into this trade. I did enter a bit lightly simply because the fair value gap did not inverse on ES. But that is all that you need to ask yourself when you're entering into a trade. Would you be happy with taking this trade? Would you be happy with taking this loss? If you can answer that question and the answer is yes, then enter into the trade. Break-even point right here, all-time highs above, and it was as simple as that. I took my profits here again because I entered a bit lightly, because I didn't enter— because ES didn't embark. So I took 100% profits. If I entered my full position size, I 100% would have only taken partials here, then held for higher. And as you can see, the price keeps going up and up and up. And I know lots of people in my Discord managed to catch a lot more points by trailing their stop loss, which is absolutely amazing. And look at that, I end up going over a 1:5 risk to reward if you're leaving runners. So absolutely amazing work. Again, if you want to be one-on-one mentored by me, or if you want to get my training course, or watch me trade live every single day— we do this every single day. I'm not just saying this information to you and then leaving you in the blind, okay? What I'm teaching is exactly what I trade on a daily basis. All of the links are in my bio. Make sure you join the links. Also, if you've watched this video to the very, very end, comment below a nice message and leave a smiley face so I know who the real people are watching these videos. To the very, very end. And these people that are watching this right now, you— well, you, you are who are watching it right now, you are going to be the ones who become profitable by putting in the time. You know, it's a Sunday right now, most people don't want to be watching trading content. And well, yeah, I, I do want to be making trading content because I love trading, but you get what I mean. Especially when you're unprofitable, it is a lot harder to be putting in the time and time and time. But well done for watching this video if you did really make it to the end. And yeah, I'll see you all next week. Livestream tomorrow, Monday. Make sure you're in my Discord starting 9:30 AM New York time, and I hope you found this video useful.
