Live with Minotaur Trading Systems, August 14th 2026

Chief Strategist, and Chris. How you doing, guys?

All right. All right. Awesome. Paradise.

Yeah.

Again, market— Bitcoin has been a little bit flat this week. I think we're expecting some volatility soon. I know we've seen Michael Saylor sell off twice now, and I'm surprised that the market hasn't responded yet. And I am thinking that in conjunction with the liquidity that we're seeing below, that, that is going to be some news that is going to maybe some delayed reaction here. But maybe, uh, I'll be very shocked if it doesn't move to take that, that downside liquidity soon. We've been waiting for some, um, bad news, and I don't know, sailors selling the bottom is as bad as you can get in the Bitcoin world. So, um, you know, we can discuss why having an algo is so important in this kind of landscape as well. And of course, we'll dive into that liquidity and see potentially where the market can go. In the meantime, Chris is going to share his screen. He's going to show us some activity and some of the entries that our Bollinger Bands are using and how these Bollingers are a technique that allows us to get even better entries than by going into higher time frames, which tends to allow our algorithm to find a better entry because it can pick up trends better. But we've managed to add also these Bollinger entries, which I think are really exciting to look at. So do you want to share your screen, Chris, and we'll jump into those?

Definitely.

Let me know when you can see it.

Yeah, we got you.

Perfect. So as you can see, what Kosta was referring to, these Bollinger Bands, right, giving with the entries, we have specific settings that we have and we've using. What's great about the algorithm once again is, you know, you can really control the settings how you like it during your— basically your trading style. So with this entry, as you can see, the Bollinger Bands are turned on to these specific settings. And as you can see, right, right when that Bollinger Band, the lower one, gets crossed, right, order is taken. Is that— and then right when price reverts back up, you have that nice take profit. As you can see here, this is another textbook one as well. Or it's touched by the Bollinger Band, reverts back up to the high of the Bollinger Band, takes profit. And while we're running the long side, right, we're also running the short side as well. Um, so given that, right, let me see this one. Don't see the long— the short one right now, but for that long entry You can see how it just reverts back. And then once the short, it's very in reverse. So we'll have an entry like up here, for example, and then cross over, take that profit as we get to the bottom. It's more conservative when it comes to the Bollinger Bands as well compared to when they're off and on. What's great about these settings though is you can turn them on and off.

Yeah, can you show us the toggles for controlling also the deviation, the standard deviation of the Bollinger Bands and how that's fully customizable as well?

Definitely. So as you can see here, these are our kind of our settings within kind of lifting up the hood, as you will, of the algorithm. As you just kind of scroll down over here, and we have this Bollinger Band entry method where we can turn on and off given the length of the Bollinger Band. It's also the standard deviation as well. And we also have some settings up here with take profits, also hedging as well, volume. And as you can see, profit calculation, we have Trailing take profits, we have a percentage hard, hard exit, and we have an adjustment of TP. Um, so what's great about this algo once again is you can really customize it to your trading style, and obviously we'll have the guidance that we'll give you, but, um, it's really customizable to yourself.

Awesome. And what assets are you seeing, uh, at the moment? So let's say for August, Chris, that we're getting some really nice volatility, some Obviously, we're hunting volatility, right? Because we're going long and short at the same time and hedged on these assets. So what we are looking for is movement, right? So, you know, Bitcoin is kind of really, really tightening up its range. But we are seeing some activity in some other assets. I know you mentioned silver again.

Yeah. So let's go back to oil right now. So Brent oil right now has been pretty volatile in the past kind of couple of weeks I've been running it. So it's been very nice. I'm kind of going in this range. As you can see, I'm almost at that take profit right now, the short side. But on the long side, as you can see, that profit's been hit. Profit again. Take off the exit, exit, exit. Last couple of days, as you can see. And on the last call, we talked about this huge dump, which is nice how it—

Yeah.

The algorithm stopped or it exited up here, waited for the market to calm down, and then took that base order. But it's been very volatile, um, oil.

Nice. Um, do you want to add anything here, Marcus, about the, um, some of the functionality of the algo?

Yeah, go back to the Bollinger. So what you're looking at right there, right, Chris, is that's just the standard setting, right? Uh, which is going to, uh, typically take more positions, correct? And be a little bit more, a little bit more, uh, uh, aggressive as his position taking. Because it's using trend, is more looking for trend. So it's going to be it as it as you know, as anyone knows, you can't predict when a trend will start and stop. So it has to it's built into systematically take a swing at the pitches that come across the plate, right? And some of them are going to hit, some of them are not. If it doesn't hit, then it starts to dollar cost average after that. But let's as a comparison just look at the. The Bollinger. So Bollinger is a little bit more patient. It's going to allow the volatility to go ahead and play. So the other one, the standard setting of the accumulator, it's going to get in the front of that volatility more often, and the Bollinger is going to wait because it's a mean reversion, right? It's going to wait for the volatility to expand. and then take advantage of it. So that's going to give you less entries, but those entries are going to be more, uh, more accurate or a little bit better entry. So it's kind of a trade-off. You're going to get more volume with the standard setting, but you're going to get superior entries with the Bollinger Band.

Um, and then the point of that is to stop buying— prevent us from buying local tops, right? And DCA too early. That's, that's really what we're trying to solve here.

Absolutely. The reason we installed that is, um, the, the Bollingers allow us to— it's kind of like having the autopilot or the training wheels on the bicycle. The Bollingers allow you to run it mostly almost all the time in the void. We call it the void because there's really almost zero oversight from the operator. The standard accumulator, more experienced operators can run that one because they can kind of match it to the prevailing trends. But the Bollinger version is built to, to do just that. It won't catch because the Achilles heel of any DCA type of system is tops and bottoms. So if you're using the Bollingers and you're waiting for volatility to expand before you move, then that's going to help you not catch tops and bottoms. You're going to catch the meat of the move, which is what you want. The bondages will— it's kind of like the bondages that keep you safe. You can sleep at night all the time with those.

Yeah, yeah. And, and that was an update that we added probably, I think, at the beginning of the year. So again, when you're a client of ours and you have access to the algorithm, you also have lifetime access to all future updates as well. So basically, when we do a release, we release this to all our clients to make sure that they have the additional features, um, that we've added to the algorithm as well, because obviously we want everyone to get the best results, and having the latest features helps people be safer and get better results. So we're happy to update everyone, of course, when those changes are made.

Yep, Jim Simons would be proud because that's— that version is using mean reversion to the max. It's running on mean reversion, waits for the extension, and then it acts.

Nice. All right, did you want to add anything else, Chris?

Um, I'm okay, Marcus. Uh, that's been a while.

Awesome.

All right, Marcus, let's take a look at—

all right, what's going on in Popeye's Chicken place? Let me, uh, share my screen here. Let me know if you see this. I'm gonna keep it real short and sweet because, uh, I could make it more complicated but probably waste of everybody's time.

Sure.

Um, can you see that?

Yeah, we got you.

Yep.

All right, so when in doubt, zoom out. So I'm going to start off with the overall picture. There was one observance that I wanted to highlight here. So what we're looking at now is kind of like the full cycle. So I always like to start with the cycles. So as we can see, this was the uptrend or the mark-up cycle, which is the— it's actually the second phase. And then we had the, uh, distribution phase where the major, uh, bigger players are offloading inventory. They're selling up here, and these trapped, uh, shorts are buying at high prices. And then it goes into the markdown phase, which is the downtrend, which is what they call in retail a bear market. So, and we're looking to come into the accumulation phase, which would be the Phase one of the cycle, so and that's the accumulation. So we're getting ready to come into accumulation. But here's one. Here's one detail I identified here. I want to bring to everybody's attention. So we go back to the bear market of 2022, the bottom, and I'm looking at 3x liquidity, which is the Pretty much as close as you can get to almost 1x other than 2. So this is the bottom of that bear market right here, and we had 3x liquidity that got left behind. So, um, in a marketplace, there's not all liquidity is taken. Something has to prevail or you wouldn't— the price would not move. So there's a 3x liquidity that was left behind, and then eventually from profit taking as the market moved away positions were closed naturally, organically. So that, that pool is gone. But the point that it makes is when the bottom comes in, it becomes a pretty good signal. What we call— and Chris and I would call this the knock— a level is addressed but not taken. It's kind of like the market, the composite market makers will knock. That function is when they are trying to determine the density of the order book. So they'll— in some circles it's called inducement. They'll run the price right to the edge of that particular leverage, and that way they can assess the order book, and then they'll pull back from it. But it becomes a really good signal. So we use that signal to predict our major turning points, and at 3x, that becomes practically the bottom of a bear market. So knowing that, let's come over to the current situation now. Which is right here right now, the one everybody cares about. So as you can see, this, this particular pool that was started in 2024 is still in existence, right? This is a big massive 3x pool and it's in existence right now. However, we know that not all 3x has to be taken, right? Because if it was taken, we'd be looking at right now the edge of the universe is about $40K. And you know, there's a community, there's people out there that says, okay, we'll hit 40, we'll hit 35, we'll hit 47, 50. There's a number of different, uh, predictions. However, if we are consistent with what we did last time, then the top of the 3x pool would be also a viable opportunity, uh, a viable scenario, which would put us at about $50K, maybe dip into $49K a little bit. Because if the price does something similarly, right, it'll come down here and eventually knock, and then that would be your bottom. As we also have further evidence that these pools tend to survive, because even in 2024, when we had massive corrections in July, we also knocked and went away from it. So that could very well happen again. You know, the market likes to do the same thing differently. So that will put us there. And really quick, just to get a confluence, let's take a quick peek at the 5x. What's absolutely also good about it is the 5x tends to be taken, right? So all the 5x was taken in 2024, and if we take all the 5x in 2026, that puts us right at the front door of the 3x, which— that's your knock. Knock knock. You either come in or you don't come in. So that is the observation. And then, Jazz, for a good GP here, we'll also look at it at the bear market of 2022. What did we do?

Took the 5.

Yeah, we took it. So that's your— that's what we're watching very closely, that conditions, because, uh, at the end of the day, the commercial participants in the marketplace, they're just conducting their business. They're not looking at moving averages, RSIs, MACDs, Bollinger Bands, any of that stuff. They're just moving to and from liquidity. They're doing their business. And when they do their business, they leave footprints, leave trails, paths, and they stay on those paths. So that's the observation. People profit from it.

All right, awesome. Actually, one thing I wanted to look at, Mark, is if you share your screen again, something that I observed which is kind of, um, interesting for the short term. I just wanted to look at the 15-minute 100x, 50x, because we can see that the range is really tightening, but the liquidity, the high leverage liquidity, is really building up just below the current price. And that, that's where I'm expecting some violent move pretty soon. Do you want to see 15 minutes? Yeah, let's go have a look at the 15.

That's gonna be an arcade. Yeah, get your joystick out.

Let's have a look at the— yeah, let's look at the—

so as you know, we do watch the 15 and we trade from it from time to time. So yeah, we're all over that too.

The 50, let's have a look at the 50. The 50 and the 100. Yeah, we can really probably just see it better on the 4-hour.

But yeah, yeah, 4 hours, very busy on 15. You can just see, uh, even on the, uh, the 25x is as far as we can go here, but you get a good perspective on it.

Yeah, here you go.

All right, here's a 4-hour. So what you're referring to is the massive amount of liquidity below us right now.

Yeah, just coming in here. Nice. That's, that's really building up, at least down to that. That's going to give us that quick, quick move down to that.

Yeah, watch this. Yeah, look at that. Now I bring it, bring in more here. That— yeah, there's a lot of liquidity. I mean, look at all that liquidity.

Um, to think that people have been longing for this long and the last moves, that that's not going to get taken out. It's where the money's made.

I mean, look at this. I'm just going to draw some lines. Heavy concentration right here is the 10x. I'm just going to draw some lines. Heavy concentration there, 25x. Heavy concentrations here, 5x. That, uh, let me put the 5x on here. Look at that monster. So there's heavy concentrations here. ReX, look at all— I mean, once then when I overlay them all together, it's just a red wave. It's more red than the Republican Party, right?

Have you seen it this dense before? I'm sad to say that this is—

it's, it's rare and it builds up like this. And yeah, it's Pretty, pretty, pretty thick. And the thing of it is, the market is a leverage. It's a deleveraging engine, right? It's a liquidating engine. It's all debt and leverage, right? When there's too much leverage in the marketplace, or just like in real estate or anything else, when there's too many bubbles, that's what happened in 2008, right? The housing crisis, right? When there's too much toxic lending, then that's going to be a problem. It's going to be a lot of bankruptcies and liquidations, right? So this is overleveraged. And what happens is a lot of times the commercial traders, they can see all this data. They're not just going to run down here. They have to offset this data. That's why it takes a while for them to balance their books and get ready for all that imbalance. So not in a hurry to run down there because that's a lot of— remember, there's always a counterparty. So when all this inventory gets released All these positions get liquidated, who's going to be on the other side of that volume? Massive amount. So they have to get prepared for that. It's just like money in the bank for them, but they have to be ready for it when they move down there. You know, their businesses, they don't want a lot of toxic inventory. They go out of business themselves. They have to be careful. But they see it and they're preparing for it. Probably why we've been consolidating here for so long. They're getting ready for that move.

And we still got a bit of time, do you think? August, September, October, next sort of 30, 60, 90 days.

It's funny how all these correlations always come back together. It's kind of like some people believe the cow jumped over the moon, that's why it changes colors and it goes up and down. You could, you could say whatever you want, it moves because it's moving, because it, because it, it is the moon, right? So there's a time that commercial traders have to move their balance, their books, move in and out of inventory. That it— so the time is almost to the day or the week, right? There's time, there are levels between the levels of leverage, how much leverage is in the market, how far it is away from price. And remember, time— the further it is away from price, the longer it takes for the price to reach it. But during that time period is also the longer time it has to build up. So all those things correlate together, which become amazingly, uh, accurate. You know, it's just the most accurate thing once you add all those factors together. You have business cycles in there, uh, Fed cycles, lending cycles, interest rates. All those things just align themselves perfectly. But it comes down to— really what it comes down to is not because of an RSI or it's overbought or oversold or whatever retail is saying. It just comes down to The players that are moving the markets are conducting their daily business. This is what they do every day. Yeah, every day. So it just, just becomes a cycle.

Yeah, and this is why we have the algos, right? Because we need to be able to move like these institutions move, you know, like move like them.

The algo doesn't sleep, it doesn't eat, it doesn't have emotion. It's always on, always waiting patiently, moving in and out of positions in confluence with them. Our algorithm doesn't move the market. It just follows the ones who do. We just tag along. We don't fight them. We just follow them. That's why it works.

That's the reason why it's put in there.

Awesome.

All right, guys, thanks for that. I think we've covered a few things today. Anything else you wanted to add?

Happy hunting.

Happy hunting.

All right. Hey, all I would add is why would you cut down a tree with an axe when you can get a chainsaw? Get— even though if the volume is 95% algorithmic, then it would stand to reason you probably want to get your own algorithm. So it just makes all the sense in the world to do.

Awesome. All right, fellas.