 Good morning Trader Lab. Thanks for stopping by today. I stream live Monday through Friday 1130 to one piece of standard time and this streams about integrating bookbamp order flow tools with auction market theory using the volume profile. And this is done in the intraday developing timeframe using a top down bottom up approach top down intermediate timeframe or higher down into sub structures or fractals or shorter time frames depending how you look at it down into microstructure for potential triggers in a alignment with structured trades that are available to everyone in the bookmap discard Trader Lab chat. Currently I'm having a little bit of trouble here. I just want you to know I'm going to try to rectify it right away. Let me see if I can get things how we do it in YouTube. Are you guys able to get a clear picture is a word and audio. We do not right. Also, I want to remind everyone that I'm streaming from Costa Rica and I do have an unstable infrastructure here. So if I do drop out. We will try to reconnect in YouTube but YouTube sometimes thinks the stream has ended. Yeah, pretty good right. And if that happens and I cannot get back into YouTube and you lose it. Please feel free to drop down at the bottom of YouTube. There's a link to the bookmap discard Trader Lab. It's actually to the bookmap server you can go to Trader Lab and navigate and I will be able to reconnect to discard once my internet or the power comes back up, which typically is just a recycling event. Also, I want to remind you and if you're in the bookmap discard Trader Lab, there is a form that is being provided to you by bookmap to help users get a better experience. It will allow you access to free add-ons, additional add-ons and exclusive webinars and things and it's basically going to help filter out spam and the rest of that stuff that we're all plagued with. That does need to be filled out and all it is is basically your license key and you know things of this nature. So it's not big brother. It's making it better for all of us. I've got to fill one out or else I'm not going to be able to access the Trader Lab. That's pretty good isn't it? So I am definitely filling it out and I hope you will too. Once again, thanks for visiting the Trader Lab everyone. This stream is about understanding how to integrate bookmap order flow tools with auction market theory. That's how the market works, why it does what it does and how you might get in alignment with the market using structured trades. I'm not sure if my audio is coming through out of, hold on a second here, I am having some disruption. I'm having a problem here, hold on. Sorry guys, I'm just trying to get some things going on here to throw me off. Alright, general disclosure, all bookmap limited materials information and presentations are for educational purposes only and should not be considered specific investment advice or recommendations. Risk disclosure, trading futures equities and digital currencies involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Please remember this is not a trade calling room. This is for educational purposes only. It is based on structured trades that are available to everyone in the bookmap discord Trader Lab chat. There's 60 PDFs of these trades. Now what does that mean? It means you can take ideas. These are trades I have developed. I've been doing this almost 44 years and it is the broad strokes. In other words, can you learn concept and process? Can you take an idea and reverse engineer it and make it your own? It's kind of like someone might be able to teach you how to paint, but you still have to kind of get your own style and groove and make it part of yourself. That's why there's no mechanical process. There's no quote right way to trade. But let me give you some hints. What is the right way to trade? I think one of the ways to perceive this and this is very important. It's a basic tenant. I think of potential ability to succeed in this business. Again, I'm only sharing my own experience and my personal beliefs, not to change your beliefs, but to give you something to ponder. That's all anyone can do, right? So what's right for me may not be right for you and you may believe what you're doing is okay and that's fine. Here's the thing and reflect on this and grab a pen and a piece of paper. Let's talk about and I always start this way. So if you heard this before, just be patient. The business and trading is not a prediction business. Our nature is to need to be right, want to be right. That is true, isn't it? However, attached to the need to be right is the need for certainty and predictability. Now let's make a slight adjustment to the belief of that because if you believe that you're going to continually be optimizing and tweaking and tuning your approach to get more certainty. Isn't that logical? But what happens if certainty does not exist in this business? What happens if your need to be right is born out of a more primal instinctual behavior, the need to avoid pain or disapproval, you see, the need to run from risk and triggering fear? What if that is really what's under the hood? But on a conscious level, we don't understand that. What if the process, the evolution of the species of the human species, which is to run from danger, to run from the saber-toothed tiger, the very process that helped us survive out there on the tundra back in the day, running from the risk, we have to do the opposite. We have to run into the burning building, but it's counterintuitive to all our wiring. So in order to overcome that, we want certainty that we won't get bit by the tiger or burned. Now here's the key. The key is in a gaming environment, in a casino, they are constantly sitting in the fire. They have learned that in order to extract dollars from the gamblers, those who are seeking certainty, those who have fear of loss, who are looking to, quote, get dollars in profit and avoid the pain of loss for the same motivation we have, the gaming business, it's the opposite. They are not tweaking tuning. They are accepting randomness. They are always sitting in the fire. But they know by sitting in the fire and seeing losses not as a personal failure or being eaten by the saber-toothed tiger, but that losses are overhead and cost of production, they have reframed their experience. They are now in a business. If you want to be in the trading business, you might want to consider reframing your experience. And that is not tuning and tweaking. And what keeps us on the path of tuning, tweaking, curve fitting, making it better and adjusting this and doing that and moving the trend line and tweaking the envelope and, you know, different timeframes, different indicators, pile them on, create more, quote, certainty. Is that you? I have to point this out because it's all of us. The thing about it is gamblers are doing the same thing. And what keeps us on that path, they kept me on the path for years, even when I built trading systems, was intermittent success. In other words, gamblers walk out with the cash. So that keeps them doing the same thing. The house is not doing what the gamblers do. The house is using anchored inputs. And I cover this in the primer webinar that I've done. It has over 27,000 views. It's in the BookMap Discord Trade Lab chat and you can all access that. If you're in YouTube, there's a link in the bottom of YouTube that you can access this and a library of webinars. I'm up to four hours long of real-time narration. If you haven't seen that, I think it might be worth your time to invest an hour. Now, the other part of this is I'm going to go over these structured traits. But I always start, I want to start when my time allows a top-down, bottom-up approach. Remember, I said top-down, bottom-up. And again, reminder, I'm in Costa Rica. I do not have a stable infrastructure. If the YouTube chat goes down, I will try to reconnect. If I can't come, there's a link in the bottom to go to a BookMap Discord Trade Lab and you can access the stream. I will reconnect there. Discord is much more understanding than YouTube. The other side of this is this stream is available exclusively to BookMap Discord Trade Lab participants for review. Circle zero screenshots. This is how you learn if you find this of value. And thanks again for visiting the Trade Lab. Let's see if we can get this thing going. I'm having a little trouble here and I couldn't tell you what it is. It seems to be graphics oriented. I might just be overloading. I have too much going here. Okay. This is the RTH. This is a higher timeframe. You guys might think of an intermediate timeframe or a high timeframe. Doesn't matter. It's really a function of how you see, quote, time. These are RTH candles. Now, I'm taking you back to the day before yesterday, which was FOMC and also today's current developing timeframe. This is important. Now, in the stream yesterday, day before yesterday, actually, I should say before yesterday, I went over this. And I pointed out levels. Now, here's what's important to note. And write these down because you're going to see something interesting. And this is what auction market theory is about. The auction is a shopping experience. It's not an indicator-based experience. I don't use any indicators. Not saying you can't. But I think most of us start out with the idea that the indicator is going to show us which way to point the bus. The reality, at least for my reality, not yours, is that indicators are the tail, not the dog. And the indicators, the output of price and something else, right? Maybe time or something or whatever you... Any kind of derivative. So that's what indicators are. They're backwards-looking translators of behavior. And hopefully that tells you something. That's like plug-and-play. Red light, green light. Let me get enough green lights lined up in random green lights, by the way, subject to how many of those red light green lights you put in the mix. And then you have a random environment, just like the gambler. Just an opinion. Write these numbers down. 493375, this is called the low volume note. It's an outside edge of a distribution. Distribution is just where does the buying dry up outside edge? Where does the selling dry up outside edge? High volume is retail. This is just like when you go to a store. If the price is too high, somebody might buy it up there, but there's less volume. If the price goes on sale, it's not going to stay down there. Buyers may buy it there, but it doesn't stay. There's less volume. And then the price comes back to retail. This is what creates our rotations. Real quick lesson, if you will. Along the way, in a higher time frame, 4917 is our highest volume in this whole thing. Okay. From this outside edge to this outside edge. 40, and if you remember from, if you've been following the stream, 4867-ish, 6750 was a downside target. So here's our outside edge. Now I'm going to take you to the day following this configuration. We open, fiddle around, take out this high and exhaust. That is, and if you remember what I say at the beginning of these streams, often, not all the time, market needs to go up to go down and it needs to go down to go up. I also pointed out all the longs from this breakout had not taken any heat. Notice the higher low, higher low, higher low. Boy, higher low, having a great time, right? All sell stops. The market goes up to go down. Why would it go down? Because their sell stops and fuel. And what might that do? It's think of it like a cascading effect. Sellers, sellers, sellers, sellers, sell, right? Maybe. And this was our target. So too high, take out this high, exhaust, reversal. This sets up the warning will Robinson moment. And this was our target for the day for this day, low volume outside edge. Now let's go to yesterday target. What did we sell in the trader lab? Overnight volume point of control, high of the day against this 33. This was our area for a short up here, actually. And we got short. So in the first trade in the morning was a potential long. And if you follow the stream, for me, it was not a long. It was a long to get short. So I saw the long. But because of this day, I was looking for potential gap fill. It didn't fill the gap at least, you know, and then a short. And it was short, short, short, short, short. The traders in the trader lab will follow this process had a very enjoyable experience. And we don't have enjoyable experiences every day because the outcome is always random. Now we're into today. Everybody with me on the higher timeframe. Hope it makes sense. Now I'm going to move along. It's important because if you don't have a higher timeframe perspective, then what? What do you got? You're just making it up and you're sitting, you know, in the casino. Remember the casino, except you're, you're at the one arm band, the slot machine. You're the gambler. I think gambling is fine, but not in the business of trading. The business of trading is not a gambling experience unless you want to be a gambler. And most retail traders, whether they realize it or not, are gamblers. And the house, you might call them gamblers, but they play with a bit. They're a bit, have a business model. Do you have a business model? Are you just sort of impulsing in and out saying it's going up, it's going down? Some indicators are saying it's going down. Others say it's going up and you're just sort of rocking with it. And while the outcome of any trade is random, the casino understands that also. Ask yourself why the casino is a strict dollars from the gamblers, and they can afford to give you the cocktails and pick it to the buffet and, you know, maybe pick it to see Adele. How can they do that? Ponder that because that's going to potentially differentiate whether you're in this business as a career or whether you're just passing through like most retail traders. Ask yourself what most retail traders do and are you doing that? Because if you are, it might, and I'm saying it's not about you. It's about probabilities of being in the business. If you do what others do, I would suspect, and of course you might be different. We're all special. I would suspect that anticipating a different outcome might be unrealistic. And again, up to you, and again, you may be the exception. I have no clue. You know, it's not for me because I don't know. But most retail traders get a software toolbox. They all do the same thing. Why would one anticipate a different result? Because the randomness of gambling keeps us thinking we're creating an edge. So we go up and down. We have big days. We throw an indicator over a big day so next time we'll get it. That, my friends, is not the path, in my opinion, to sustainability. It's the path to, gee, I was a trader. No, you're a gambler. Different. Again, personal opinion has nothing to do with you. Just me. So let's take a look. 830RTH open. Let's look at the condition of market. I got to go over this if you have something to think about. This is the ETH high. If you look at yesterday's RTH, I can't go back and look at it. This was a low volume area. Low volume is when you fall out of a distribution. And remember what at the top of the stream, that's a rotational area. In other words, too low, too high. And we were in a trend configuration yesterday. So we fell out of it and then we moved lower. If we come back to it, it might be an outside edge. So in the ETH, this is the ETH high. And in the ETH, this was a low volume area. So this was all low volume. So outside edge. So I know this is my outside. Now there's another piece. Let's go a little further. In the higher timeframe, this is a balanced area, 8384. The overnight volume point of control is retail. Remember too high, too low, too high, too low. This is called the volume point of control is the retail price. High volume. Remember shopping. So what do I know before the market opens? Now there's another piece. Let me just get you the next one somewhere here. Where is it? Guys, I can't see it. Where is the ETH low? I just want to make sure I've got this thing somewhere. Let me look down here. Oh, here. ETH low. Yesterday's, no, ETH low. And let's keep going. Naked volume point of control, which was our target, 6750. I showed you that on the higher timeframe. That was our price map for yesterday and yesterday's low. What's the probabilities? Possibility is take out yesterday's low. Check this. And if we get down, we're in a poorly auctioned area below us. But the open is what's important here because you don't know. The market opens here. We're opening at the highest volume price in the ETH. That sets up something called two-sided trade. Two-sided trade is what's called an open auction. An open auction means up, down, up, down. And what do we know? We have a high probability of getting here or to the ETH low. And since we're opening in balance, it could be either one. So that gives us, now we know, our opening that we can anticipate rotational trade and whoever takes the ball, we're going to go with. The other part of it is the trend is down. Are you guys with me? How are we doing in YouTube? Is this making some sense? I know it's a lot, but you know what? This is a lot. This is trading and at least one way to look at it. And before the market opens or the RTH opens, all this is the work that's done. In the trader lab, we have a price map. We know all these levels. Okay? So if we know the levels, then we know the potential of the open. Then we are ready for structured trade. So let's take a look. Now, I know this is like the preamble to the Constitution, you know? But this is what it takes, in my opinion, to have an edge. And it's still random, you know? Nobody escapes just like the casino does not escape the randomness of the environment they're in. The thing about casinos is they only play games that have a statistical edge. They don't make them up. They don't change them. They don't do anything different. They're anchored. And my primer webinar that you can all access in the trader lab goes into this. Because for me, when I started in the business, and this is 1980, I thought you predicted what was going to happen. It's going to go here. The high is over here. I'm going to do this. It's going to do that. It's going to. And by having that process in my head of prediction and the need to be right, I spent all my energy in trying to predict something. And I always like to mention my first, when I learned, started learning trading, was at the Chicago mercantile exchange. And it was classical bar charting. We didn't even have candles. So was bars, open, high, low, close, daily bars. There was no inter-day trading. It didn't exist. And pretty much, unless you're on the floor. And so, and the charting software was primitive, you know? So I would sit at, watch quotes. And by hand with a ruler, fill out, put bars in, you know? That's how I started. Neither here nor there. So let's look at the open. This is the RTH open right here. I'm going to show you the first trade, which is along. And let's remember the other thing. This is balance. So I have my overnight low below me, my overnight high here. And I'm anticipating two-sided trade because of where I'm opening. The market is in balance in the ETH. Very important to understand. So I'm opening. And the structure of the ETH is a balanced profile. It just says two sides. Nobody's gone anywhere. Now, we do have economic reports coming out. Also, 8.45 central my time in 9 a.m. So those are things to be conscious of, conscious. So let's look at the first trade. RTH open. This is called the developing volume point and control. I had to make up names for some of these things, not the developing value point, but the setups or the structured trades. This is called VPOC migration. It is representing volume and price. You can see the price is moving higher. And since we're starting at zero volume, as more volume comes in, more volume, it's showing the volume coming in and the price going higher and the high volume, because it's measuring the volume moving higher. This is telling me at the moment, higher. So I have to look statistically, statistically, where is my possible target, the overnight high or ETH high has over a 90% probability we will take out either the ETH high or low. Well, since I'm seeing potentially what is short covering, in other words, the market short, everybody's short, and we're opening in the middle of this range, then maybe we'll get some profit taking. That's what's called short covering and it's also what's called responsive buying. It is so probable that I get here. Past performance, not in the future results. Remember, opening and balance, it could go either way. So let's see what goes on here. So this is a structured trade, it's a long. So let me show it to you. And none of these are trade recommendations. If you're in the trader lab, it's up to your trade plan. Me, long, just saying. Doesn't mean anything, by the way. By the way, there is no holy grail. It doesn't exist. We're all looking for the secret sauce and the special indicator or combination that we're going to find what nobody else has found. I'm going to suggest it doesn't exist. That effort and energy might be spent better at some place else. Just an opinion. Why? Anything that's in the public space has been gone through by everybody who's walked in your shoes before you. It's something to think about. Are you going to find what everybody else has missed? Are you going to find and think about who your competition is? Quant, hedge funds, market makers. I mean, these quant firms that I am familiar with, billion Dollar with the B funds have basically Ph.Ds, physicists and the rest of it all working to take money from somebody else, because it's a zero sum game. A little toolbox that we purchase is not going to be differentiator. I can assure you, it might be somewhere else. Just a thought, not a recommendation. So right here, I see this is too low. This is too low. I'm seeing what I call VPAC migration, and I'm looking for a long. Now, I know this is retail, so I know I can hit this. If it's too high, I can reject it. But I also know I have a statistic, and since I'm going higher, I'm thinking the high is probably a trade and responsive buying, right, because the market is short from yesterday. So it's a long. Wherever you get long, that's subject to your skills. Let's watch. So too low, too low, too low. I'm not going to mark all of these that I typically do. Mentally, I'm following the yellow line. Why? Because it's price and volume. Is it an indicator? Nothing's crossing over. It's an indication of price acceptance, because if in the store, let's go back to our shopping experience. This is what trading is, is shopping by low, so high. You've heard that. Well, this is what this is. But the difference here is, what's low and what's high? Well, if you're a shopper and the price of your tuna is here, and then the price goes higher, but now the volume is here, that means the participants at this moment are willing to pay the new retail price and that this price is too low. You can't buy it here. New retail price. And if we go up, that's fine. We come back. Is this price too low? Because now it's higher here. Is it too low? Down here. Is it too low? Down here. Now we can do anything. Remember, randomness. So no clue. But what I know is, when it comes, I see the buyers aggressively bidding, and this is where the volume is, is it too low? Price and volume move higher. I am testing this. Now guys, this is microstructure. It will make you crazy, but the reason I'm spending time is this is narration. And what it is is language. So foreign language or reading music, I'm just reading the language of the participant behavior. That is quote my indicator. I'm speaking market. I have no indicator. I don't know. What's my indicator telling me? Is it saying get short up here? Is it telling me to get long here? What does it say? What is your indicator telling you to do? I don't know. What does mine telling me to do? Be long. So in the trader lab, we have a two lock configuration, and it's all up to everybody vetting. Past performance, not indicative future results. So this is long. Or this is long. Me, I can't react very quickly, but this is my long. So you're in here, and your stop can go under here. Your job then is to get risk neutral. So from entry to failure, which is down here, that's your stops wherever you get in this thing. You get in here, your stop goes under there. And then your scale would be ahead of the liquidity. And it would also potentially be whatever, and that this is what you have to vet in the trader lab. It would be the distance from entry to failure is your scale. That means a minimum two lock configuration. And it's not a recommendation. You got to figure out and why, by the way. So you could leave your stop here. And the worst that happens is you scratch the trade, but allows you to manage your psychology. Remember, run from the risk, run from the saber tooth tiger. Liquidity in order book. Let's watch. What's it do? Low volume outside area. So we can pop here in reverse. We have to see what happens. And there's more. This is the target. Okay. So let's just watch. We get a seller. Where's our stop under here? Remember, right? Or I was here. I can't remember. It's one of these. We get our seller. Stop sweep. What are you doing? I'm sorry. Back up. This is all within the first 30 seconds, guys. I'm not saying you can operate in this. This is a structured trade. So now this is our volume point of control. We get a sweep of the book. V poc migration. V poc migration. What's it saying? It's going up. Will it go up? No clue. V poc migrations. These are all structured in the trader lab. This member where your stop is. Down under here. Under there, right? Everybody tracking. Going. I always go slow in the beginning because what you're going to see is you're going to see this all over the place. And the idea is not that a line is moving. It's that before the market opened, you knew that we had the potential for two-sided trade and we have statistics. And it's who grabs the ball. And then after that, it's clueless. So let's watch. Watch. Too low. Let's market. Get back here. I'm following a process. So too low. Too low. I'm just going to label this one. Wow. Wind is blowing here in Costa Rica. Kind of nice because it gets so hot. A breeze. You pay for a breeze down here. So, okay. So let's watch. So here. Now we want to watch. We have to clear this. Hold on. The wind is blowing so hard in here. It's actually blowing my laptop screen. I should maybe hold on. Remember, outside edge is here. Pull back to VWOP. Mid is here. You can get taken out anytime. Remember, trading is a random experience. No control over the outcome. But here's what we would know. You'd have your long, you'd be risk neutral. You'd have a trade management process that you vetted or you don't move your stop. That's completely up to you. That's not anything I get into because that's something you craft for yourself. VPOC migration retail price. Right here, everything is looking good, Lewis. Now, here's what we can. I'm going to take you to microstructure now. Now, I don't know what's going to happen. So I have no clue. So don't think that exists. It does not. Or if it does, you need to come to TraderLab and tell us about it. Because the TraderLab is a group of traders who understand who leverage their collective experience so we all get better. There's no right way to trade. I mean, everyone says, I get a lot. Well, what's the right way to trade? I'm going to say, can you measure it? Is it consistent? There's your answer. If it's inconsistent because you're using a mix of inputs that are inconsistent, then you're gambling, unfortunately. At least that's an opinion. Because you can't measure it then. So you don't know if you have an edge or if it's just random. Gamblers are using random inputs. It kind of ends up with the same outcome. They lose over time. So the house is using anchored inputs. That's what I cover in that primer webinar I was telling you about. That's available to all of you in the TraderLab. It's really more to psychology. And what creates our beliefs is really based on our wiring, not necessarily the business of trading. The casinos aren't doing what we do, or most of us do. So that's really your model. How does gaming work? Get a book on gaming if you want to understand gaming. There's enough books written on trading. But what about, has anybody written a book on trading and gaming? How do those two fit together, the business models? So right here, so the market's gone up, looking good, Lewis. Volume is here. There's my buyer. Conceptually, this is like VPOC migration. If volume is moving higher and price is moving higher, it is saying this is too low. Okay? Let's mark it, by the way. You'll see how this all fits in a fractal. I spend time on this because once you see this, you understand everything, maybe. Or you'll get an understanding of how to think. You guys think in timeframes, I don't. Time doesn't regulate this. Participant behavior regulates it. So whatever happens, where it happens tells me something. This here, too low. Buyers. Volume, break high. Test the micro structure. That is the same as this. Think Russian doll going down in Russian doll, Matryushka dolls. This is the little doll. There's a buyer. You see the volume. Volume, test, too low. Break high. Go in North, Lewis. Here. Test, too low. Going higher, Lewis. Break, potentially, too high. Resistance. Now watch. Break low. Volume, break low. Test, the volume. Too high. Break low. Test, the volume. Too high. Break low. Test, the volume. Break low. So when I see this and I see this and now I've taken out this structure, it is saying in the micro structure and you could see it right there. That little nub is high volume. That's a shopping. That's your rotation or consolidation. That's, let me show it to you here. That's right here. I'm opening up and this is the beauty of book map, among other things, which hides all the other great stuff. Order flow, stop icebergs, you know, everything else. And there's more, of course, in book map absorption and the rest of it. I can see something else. Order flow, 40 buy stops coming out, market comes up, 17 buy stops. If I don't get buying above here, who are the buyers? Stops, not initiators, but it's the squeeze atyria. Now I don't know this. I see sell icebergs and I have my liquidity in the book. I don't know. No way to know. This is part of the being in the world of I don't know or randomness. What I do know is if I look here, I have volume. And what is volume? Shopping. What is high volume? Retail. If the price, when I say retail, I'm not talking retail traders. I'm talking shopping. Okay. No, cruel. The yellow line is not a buy on the yellow line. It is a representation of participant volume and retail behavior. So if this is a retail price and the market's moving away from it, my assumption is this one is too low. When I come up here, I get the same behavior. Chop. The chop is an auction too high, too low, too high. And it's like the volume is drying up. If you look over here, right there, you'll see there's less volume. And then you'll see on the bottom side, there's less volume. Go to the left and you see where the white line is just below this consolidation. This is really what I'm analyzing right here. Now I don't predict anything. I only know it's maybe. But as soon as I break below this, it's saying to me as I interpret the language that this volume here, which is like shopping, think shopping, go to store. And this is your convenient mark down the street. You're buying a pint of ice cream Saturday night to watch the movie. And you know those prices can get high. Well, there's not a lot of volume here, but and there is some people who will buy ice cream at that ridiculous price to watch the movie, but they don't do high volume. They do micro volume or less. Well, if this price is too high and we don't know until we reject it, now that becomes resistance or an obstacle. Now for me to go higher, now let's go, let me pull this in, microstructure. Where was the last location the price was too low? It's here. So this is too low. And instead of pushing off to go to my target, which is that, not over 90% probability to get either the first, the ETH higher low, past performance, not indicative future results, you got to vet that. So I'm going for that. That's my trade. As soon as I come under here, warning will Robinson come under here. It's over. And if you're using this for trade management, you'd be taken out of your long and you'd have a few burgers or whatever, you know, subject to how you manage your trade. So now what? We pull back here. Watch. This was too low because we left it. Watch what happens. So we move up. We're looking for this to push off. It doesn't do it. I don't know what's going on currently in the market. I see buying. I pulled back. This sets up a potential long here. This is where it fails. You got to scale ahead of this micro volume that was up here. So if you get long, you got to have enough range or you do nothing, you know, it's up to your plan has nothing to do with me. Absolutely not. This is just narration. Notice how it comes back and checks this. So all these are still valid longs with the problem being this and now this. So and there's a report to don't forget. So we know there's a report at 845. There's a report at 9am. So you would know that if you're in the trader lab, all these reports were all discussed and you have to have that. So right here, market breaks down, market comes back up and it's a question as far as what is it going to do? So what we were looking for was outside to here, which did not happen. And then we fall back under here. This is a context called mean reversion. It is rotational trade and it gets very muddy now. So let's just look. Mean reversion. So where do we come? Let's come back. And this is not easy trade. This is a specific trade plan, by the way. We come out. We take out the opening swing low. All the stops come out. This is off the 9am report. You can see it here. Blows everybody out right here. I'm looking at this and I don't know about you guys and I'm not saying anybody should look at it, but I was looking at it and I see stop sweep. I see liquidity in the book. Now I'm going to show you one other little piece. Market pulse. I think I could show it. Let me see if I can do this. Okay. We have a down leg. This is the delta. This is showing me everybody now is short and this is the coup de gras short into liquidity. Cell stops coming out. That's all the longs. Thanks for playing. And remember what I showed you at the high? 489 stops. Cell stops come out here. Only 30 come out here. This is the only thing I use from indicator world. That's something called divergence. What's diverging? Sellers. Liquidity. Less cell stops coming out with the lower price. Divergence. What else do I have? Shorts. This is CVD, volume delta. And I look at it based on the swings. Not for the whole day. It doesn't matter to me that if it's up down or sideways for the day, it matters to me because I'm a day trader. I trade rotations. I mean, if the market's going down, I don't need a number. I don't need this to tell me the market's going down. In fact, I don't even need CVD to tell me the market's going down. I could just look at the swing. I don't need it. But for you guys, this is the market pulse. What it's showing me is the pressure in the order book. Okay. And we're at an extreme pressure and everybody is short. And if I see buying, then what is my condition? It's called mean reversion. That's to come back to the mean. This is a specific trader lab process. Now again, nobody knows. So this is, now watch the trade. So right here, I'm looking at this and it looks like it's going to do the Alcapoco cliff dive, right? But look what happens. Let's take the concept of high volume, right? Volume. Where does it happen? Right here. And I'm thinking, oh, this is terrible. Look at the volume. Break. Return going south. Watch. I have market pulse showing me an excess and divergence in market pulse and a divergence in the stop and iceberg detector. 365, 111, 365, yeah, 365, 13, 29, 1. What is that? Divergence. I mean, the more I open this up with book map, I get more detail. Here's micro high volume. Now I am clueless. Here's the high volume. Remember what I just showed you at the high? I don't know. I see the buyer. How do I get along on though? I don't. Why? Resistance. There's the volume here. So volume, divergence, liquidity, watch, volume, too high. There's the test. Looking for that. Now, if I'm short, if I was, I'm managing my short behind the structure. If I was trailing, I'd be taken out. Okay. That's fine. That's what the trade plans for. This is a suspect and I'm clueless. What I have is other things saying to me, maybe, and that's all I have. We are oversold. And if I get a buy structure or trigger, I'm looking for to come back to the VPOC or retail price. In other words, oh, it's on sale. Now, we don't know. This is the tip off. Watch. Remember, too high. We take it out. Now, how do you get into along? Let's see if we can see that. Where was the dividing line here? And of course here. So let's watch. Where was the dividing line? Here. There's the volume. Let's go back. I want you to see what a trader lab trigger looks like. Where was the volume? There. 82 quarter. Now, there's no precision in trading. Don't hold your breath for that. Doesn't exist. 82 quarter. Where did I come? 82 quarter. Where did I break out? 82 quarter. Where's my volume in here? Let's watch. I'm just going to drag it so you can see. Well, you kind of get the idea, right? This is your area for the long. Got it? Sorry about that. But I'm dragging stuff around and book maps are gone. What are you doing? Are you guys with me? Is this making sense? So that's a long. This is trader lab. Now, where does it go? You ask here. This is called mean reversion. It is a specific trade plan. And this is what we do in the trader lab. Is this making sense? How are we doing in YouTube? Apologies, YouTube. If this is too long, I hope you're not drooling and your head hasn't hit on the desk. And please give a thumb up, by the way, either way, if you have to go do something, take the laundry out of the washer and put it in the dryer, please give a thumb up in YouTube. It keeps the stream going. So what we have now, and this is important, it's only 9 a.m. So I'm showing you this is the long and this is the target. By the way, mid, what's above the mid? Think about, think like a retail trader. Don't act like one. Stops, stops, retail. So in a fractal, when I talk Russian dolls, this behavior here, where it's testing, in other words, this is too high. Break it, take it out. It's now too low. Come back and test it. All I'm doing, just to give you a sense in all fractals and timeframes, it's kind of simple because trading doesn't, we all think it's complicated. It's actually simple. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying it's simple. If this is too high, there's my seller. When I come back to it, I need to push off, right? Well, if I do the opposite, then this is saying, as I interpreted, that down there is too low, which there's no way to know. But this one is also, because we took it out, too low. There's my buyer, so I can come back here, which is a trigger in the trader lab and get long. Then what? Using the same concept, return to here, fractal, because this is the retail and like the higher developing timeframe. I hope that's logical to you guys. So this is the target. Then what, you ask? Let's look at the then what. Then what? Well, if, where's my fuel over the swings? Look left. Let's look left. Where are, where's the stops? Over this. There's my lung. Who's on the hook? Everybody in this leg, the shorts. Now, and this was too high, remember? Well, now this is my next area. I take it out. And where am I trying to go? Here. Target, remember? That's all I can tell you. That's a long secret. So what did we have? Longs, failure of the longs, potential short or not. Wipe out long to here, to there, and to an outside edge, this. Now, I'm going to go to, if you don't have any questions, I'm going to jump to real time and let's just see what's going on because I haven't seen it. Gondolo, what's difficult is, if you have a trade plan, what's difficult is managing your emotional state and following your plan. That's what's difficult. The casinos just play their games because they know they have an edge. They deal with cards. They come out randomly and the gamblers play the cards randomly. They can't predict anything. I mean, I certainly can't. I gave up on predicting. Unfortunately, it took me too many years to figure out, I was trying to, trying to fix something that was a defective process. Most retail traders, because they are getting random outcomes, you know, like gamblers do, they think they're doing the right thing. And I understand it's a belief. So you work hard, and I call it Trader Groundhog Day, and you come back and you do the same thing, you know, you go, well, this envelope, if it was a one and a quarter instead of one and a half, it would have fit really well. I'm going to adjust it. The VWAP, if I anchor it here instead of there, it'll work better. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. If I have a Keltner channel instead of 20 SMA, maybe if I make it a, use a smoothing on it or use an exponential, look at that, it would have caught this move. I'm going to use that. Or let me put a MACD over here, and let me also use a stochastic with a fast K, or I'm going to adjust the K to a different period. Anybody here ever do that? Raise your hand. I won't look. We typically do that. And what we're really doing is really a function of called curve fitting. I mean, I ran into this when I built trading systems. I'm just saying this. I spent a couple of years doing it because I believed, and here's the truth. Belief. This is the word. Belief. I believed that if I did take data, chunks of data, and did optimizations, and then walk forward testing, and it was positive that now in the future, they would do the same thing. And of course, that's not the case. But we believe that's how systems work, and maybe they do. And for some, I'm sure they work great. You can buy systems all over the place. There's more trading systems available out there in trade calling rooms, where you just basically sit at your desk and you have an ATM in the basement. And I'm going to suggest, is that real? Or is that just someone potentially taking advantage of our need to be right? What is it? If you can't do it for yourself, you're not a trader. If you can't figure out how to do it, you might as well just give your dollars to an advisor, because that's all you're doing, except you get to push the button. It gives you a good feel. Or buy a black box or the latest system. I mean, I'm not no different than you. I go in on the web and the internet or Instagram, pick one, and I see all this stuff. And we've all heard the term snake oil. Well, they invented snake oil as soon as they discovered snakes. It's been going on since day one. And it will always go on. If you want to be in this business, treat it like a business and approach it like a business. Because in the end, nobody can do it for you. There is no solution, because you're part of the equation, you see. So this is the where I started streaming. Okay, nice. Okay, let's go see what's going on in this thing. Two-sided trade. How nice. Where are we? Whoa. This is a target. This is yesterday's retail price right here. And let me take you back. This was yesterday's Al Capoco cliff dive. Yesterday, remember, this was the target. And these are all on the price map before yesterday. Okay? So that was our downside target. This is yesterday's retail price, or high volume node at 4912 half. And we can also get to 4917. This is our upside target. And nobody knows. Remember, we're not in a prediction business. So this was too low. This was too high. How does the shopping experience work? It's on sale. You can't buy it here at the moment. Who knows? We don't know. So where might we go back and check? I'm not paying that. Let's go back and make sure this is still too high. Now, there's no precision in any of this. It's an area. So this is a target in the trader lab. This is a target in the trader lab. And if we get down in here, then we can rip. Because there's no auction here. This was a trend day. Trends are the market is out of balance and says, what's it worth? I don't know. Let's just keep pushing. Here. What's it worth? I don't know. We're all out of here. And remember at the top of the stream, sell, stop, sell, stop, sell, stop, sell, stop, fuel, sell, stop, sell, stop, sell, stop. That's why we were looking for this. Now, where to? No clue. Not our job to predict, right? Except we had this as a target. And if you're in the trader lab, this was our primary target yesterday. And since we've now come out the top end, this is our primary target for today with a backup over here. That's all on the price map. And I actually reviewed this morning. I had no idea though to reverse, but you know, it's not my job. Well, I'll get back here. So let's get back to real time. What do you think? Our shoes and hand grenades, by the way. So if you're in the long, let me actually, I think I have some structured trades I can show you here. Let me see if I can find them. Should be one here. I got to take you here. We have two trades here. One might be coming along right now in RTE, in real time. And there's this one here. Let me just see if it's set up. Trader lab, did you guys have an IB continuation trade over in here? Did this set up for you guys, or is it just the one that's setting up right now? Things are slow. I think I kind of messed with my graphics a little bit here. Did this set up this long, were you guys able to get on this long right here going for the naked volume point of control? Okay, there was no trigger. Let's just take a look at it. Let's see if there is a trigger. So this is called the IB high, initial balance high. It's the first hour of RTH. So it's 930 central time is when this is put in. We came back, we took it out. Now we have a trade called the IB continuation trade. Let's see if we get it. Well, this would be aggressive. You could take it, but let's assume we didn't get it. Okay. This is something subject to your trade plan. This is a long for me, but it doesn't mean it should be a long for you. It doesn't mean anything. And the reason I would get long, see here's the thing about getting long here. The trade is called the IB continuation trade. And of course, every trade can fail. For me, I know the market's short. So there's fuel and I have a range up to there. That's my trade. So if I get long with that range, that's risk reward. It's over a 10 point, you know, it's 10 points. Am I willing to risk entry to failure, which is under this or that? And then in the minimum to lock configuration, I get scaled hopefully before taking a stop and then get risk neutral. So you could see I would be scaled and my stop could stay under here. And then I'm hanging out. Now let's assume I didn't take that trade. Let's come back. Now we're going to go to real time. Same trade. We're looking for the same trade. It would be down in this area. Not a trade recommendation. If you're following the stream guys, I do not call trades. Everybody takes stops and trading. There's no secret sauce. Here's book map order flow. Look at the stacking here. I've got icebergs accumulating and I want to see the behavior. These guys can pull. They may have no intention. They may be pushing it up to sell or they are. So we got to see. I'm looking for a long not a trade recommendation and it would be in this area. I got a little lag going here. I don't know what that's from. Oh, I know what it's from son of a gun. Hold on. Got to turn up the turbo charger. I have this thing in slow poke mode and now it should be smoother. Yeah. You know streaming. This is a laptop by the way. So hopefully it'll be smoother now. So we're watching the liquidity. We got stop sweeps and I want to see absorption now. So let's just watch right here. This is my area and there's no precision. We're watching to see if we get along cable. If you're still here 99 as far as how to do this, this is what the trade lab is about. It's understanding market mechanics, how the market works and how you might get an alignment. And I share structure trades. I've developed 60 PDFs that you can reverse engineer. There's not a there's nothing mechanical and trading. Unfortunately, we all want red light green light. Trust me on this. I try to build systems for that. I didn't who wants to go through this, but everything thing is we're trading in real time. So we have to adjust to what is happening right now. So a structure trade in the trader lab is in this area. This is low volume. If we think of a distribution like shopping, this was too low and outside is too high in this fractal. The target up here was retail from yesterday. It might be too high. I don't know. It's not my job. So I'm looking for it to pull outside somewhere to get long to go here and it doesn't have to go there. So how do I know? How do I deal with this? Once I understand the condition of the market, which is random, then I'm looking for structured trades that I have vetted that have a statistical edge. That is getting long out here somewhere and it could be right here. My stop has to go below the volume. This is still a long for me, but you or anyone else may not take it. It's up to you. This is a long for me. The one I showed you over here, what you, when I say you, I mean a trader may or may not take. Now, what do I know? Let's look at what I know. I know this is retail from yesterday and it might be too high. That's the market's job. If it's like, I'm not paying that. We could run out of buyers before we ever get here. I don't know the answer to that. Here's also what I know. This is too high. I found my seller. So we may never come back here today. This might be the high of the day. I don't know. So my job, just like the casino, is to only play games to have a statistical edge and accept the random distribution of outcomes and be willing to deal the cards. The cards coming out of the deck is random and the way the gamblers play the cards is random. Whatever happens, happens. I have no control. The only control I have is over how I play the game. That means, if you're in trader lab, that you're only interacting with the market when you have a vetted structured trade or the way the casinos interact with the gamblers with a vetted structured game. That's why this is gaming theory-based, not prediction-based. There's no way to know anything. So if you accept you're in the business, let's think of like gaming or like a casino. Losses are overhead and cost of production. Every business has expenses. Oh, hi, Coca-Bolo. How are you doing? Let me answer that for you. So for me, I just sort of look at it and I go, well, where's my trade? If I understand what creates these levels, what created this was this rush. This move, let me take you back to how it's created. This, which creates low volume. In other words, we, okay, so we're talking about the IB continuation trade and the possibility, there's two possibilities, right? This price is too high and we reject it here. We see our seller. Liquidity is in the book. This is an outside edge or low volume area. The market can come down here or not and we're still going for this. If we fall through here, other than testing it and we can't get back above it, then we can come back and revert back to here. So that's the trade. And Coca-Bolo, you were asking me only the first time. I got to say it depends. Yeah, I don't know the right answer because this might be it and we rejected this. So if I got long, I'd be looking at this volume up here. This is my obstacle because this was too high. So if I get out here or even here, I got a scale here. Now let's see what it did. It was so rude, disconnected. There you go. So the long would be here and you got a scale there. Coca-Bolo, you see what I'm saying? And then, so this was too high in the microstructure there and then if I clear this, it opens up this. That's my trade. And I was, I think, I hope you guys heard the narration before monkeys jumped off the tree here. Actually, yeah, they're coconut trees, you know. Are you guys tracking? Is this making sense? And book map support, thanks for the help with the stream. The thing here was we came out of distribution. We accelerated through the stops at the high of the day to squeeze Atteria. This is the price that is retail from yesterday that we may or may not get to. We pulled back. These guys came into the book. This is how order flow can help you. And then it's put your helmet on, you know. So this is a long for me and this is a long. And you had to reach a little bit and you're going for this. So that's all. Now, depending how you manage your trade, you just sit here and you put your helmet on and it's got to fail. And you give back, of course, the MFE, open trade profit, maximum favorable excursion, or you manage the trade, you get out here, you get taken out there on a trailing stop and then you just put the trade back on again. It's all a function of trade plan. You see? I think IRT is having a conniption here, as they say. Hold on. Remember, yesterday, too low, too high. So this is our world and maybe here. So, you know, I don't know. It's not my job. I don't worry about that. Remember, I can't predict anything. The only thing I know for sure is I don't know. And if you're in, if you're new here and you're thinking about what's going on here, remember, yeah, first you're welcome. So let's see what it does. Kind of nerve-wracking with the monkeys. Can't really blame the monkeys. Sometimes it's just the wind blows or somebody trips over a wire. I don't know. Now, remember, this liquidity was here, blocked it. 913 sell icebergs. That's what that was. Now, we got to watch this guy in the book. Do we rotate off this or do we get to our target? Yeah, first, the liquidity stacking is because of what happened here. So there's a few ways you can play this. You could scale here. And this is your target. It's, you know, but the fact, here's the other part of this, the fact that we came back, and remember, where was our resistance? Let's go back is this, which is created by this volume here. So for me, if I get long, I got to scale ahead of there, then I'm going for that and maybe that. So then it's still, so what it is is risk management to the probability, which is I'm not paying that. That's what that says. This is language. And then is this still too high? Target or target? And you notice there's nothing in the book up here. And then maybe this. So we're going to see how this plays. Okay. Because I'm clueless. I don't know. You know, the thing that I think is important, especially if you're on YouTube, is to know you don't know. And then it's a matter of, you know, having a plan and just, yeah, connection, yeah, and follow the plan and accept the randomness. Kayden, it's all the same. This is just plan. Kayden, if you have a plan, you'd be participating, period. And you've edit and you've discovered where your edge lies. If what you do and doesn't work, you might want to consider changing it to something that gives you an edge. That's just the reality of our business, you know. So here's our target. And there's the next potential target. And again, I can't predict anything. I just follow the yellow brick road. But I hope I'm sharing and showing you something of value here in the trader lab is this, you can, I think anyone can learn to trade. I'm not saying everyone can learn to trade. And then can you trade? That's all up to the individual, your tenacity, your willingness to put in the work. All the work in trading is done outside of market orders. That's where you're going to do market hours. That's where all the work gets done. Not here. This is all done beforehand. That's what's called structured trades or setups, as you guys think of them. It's all done. Then if the trade shows up, that's your job, then is to execute the trade. Because you've studied it, you understand it, and you also know anything can happen like the casinos do. That's our business. So now we're through this and our next, this is our next area. Notice the liquidity resting in the book right there, 397 and the location. Next area. So now what do you do with this? Here's what you do. My opinion, trade management. You're trailing your stock. This is like the bonus round. And it can reverse anytime because we've hit our target. So in trader lab, you'd have an order resting here, and you'd be done, and you'd go with Rod, and you go to the gym and work out. But if you're like me, you'd go for lunch. Or you're looking up the price ladder. This is the area of the next target, not a recommendation. Trade plan is very much a statistical probability. You guys know if you're in the trader lab what the statistics were for getting here. You know that, right? You already know all of this. All this is shared in the trader lab. If you know this, and you have an IB continuation trade, wouldn't you be trading to this? This is the trader lab. And again, no crystal ball, no magic eight ball. I do like the magic eight balls, but that's what the trader lab is. And if you can understand market mechanics, then you have the opportunity to participate. But you have to be able to anticipate to participate. What does that mean? That means you know where your trades are before that you even get there. That's what having a trade plan is about. Because if you're in a random environment, we have no clue that we're going to be coming out the top. We could have just as well come out the bottom, right? And as far as the trade management, I'm getting a question about trade management. It's a separate piece. In the trader lab, my objective is to help traders understand how the market works, why it does what it does. And with the 60 PDFs of structured trades, how to start building out a trade plan with structured trades. Structure trades are not mechanical trades. This is the thing that gets most traders thinking that it's a, you know, oh, across the yellow line or did this? No. It's all context dependent, which means what's going on here. Because this, I call this the chassis. Everything is overlaid on the condition of the market. That's why most retail traders are kind of like red like green light, and they just trade it the same way. They don't understand that sometimes you can sell the mid and the market goes down. Other times you sell the mid and it's like the mid, what doesn't exist? If you understood how the market operates, you would know there's a time to sell the mid and the time that there isn't. That's the problem, right? And most of us who use indicators and fixed time frames and multiple time frames are trying to fit the market in a box. And then we adjust things to get it to fit better. You know the term fit, you know what that's all about. It's called curve fitting. It doesn't work. That's what retail traders do. They don't stay in the business either. There's a reason. You have to ask yourself, see they answer lies in why. Why do retail traders not succeed? You already know the answer because if you're a retail trader, you're doing what they do, probably. And if you're not, that's great. Most retail traders believe they're on the right track because of the random distribution of outcomes like gamblers still. Yet the house who doesn't use that process extracts the dollars from the gamblers over time because of the random distribution of outcomes. And that's what I cover in my primer webinar. It's only an hour long and it has over 27,000 views, which I find pretty interesting because I was never intended as anything. I just sort of threw this stuff out there and then BookMap asked me, would you mind maybe be sharing this with our users? I said, of course. I just think about what I went through. I'm going on 44 years of doing this. Unfortunately, there was nobody to tell me to help me because what I did didn't really exist at the time. Off-floor trader. Everybody was floor traders. So if you see the target guys, is everybody tracking? This is as real time as I can get. And this is not a sell recommendation unless it's in your plan. But why would the market come here in here? You ask, can you answer the question? If you could answer the why, you might be able to change your outcome if you're not satisfied with it. And it's very simple, by the way, though random. Why? Because the market is made up of shoppers. What's too high? What's too low? And can we get in alignment with it? What's too high? Let's come back to something here. Let me try to show you this if I could do this without blowing things up. So 49, 20. 49, 17. Where was the 20? 49, 20. 49, 20 should still be on here. It's on the other one. So 49, 17, 49, 12. Those are our primary targets. Let me just look at something here. Curious. Okay. There's your 49, 17. So is this target and this target? This is an intermediate timeframe. This is yesterday's RTH. They're both valid targets for the exit the long. They're also valid for short. But that's not something I discuss in this stream. I hope you guys are getting something out of this today. And please give a thumb up in YouTube. Apologies for the disruption. Costa Rica and things happen as they say. So thanks for visiting Trader Lab. If you're in YouTube, please give a thumb up. There's a link in the bottom of YouTube. If you want to come to Bookmap Discard Trader Lab Chat, you don't have to be a Bookmap subscriber now, ever, never, and you'll never be solicited. You can, if you download the 60 PDFs of structured trades and there's a library of webinars that up to four hours long of real-time narration, just like what you saw here, but four hours of it, if you, I suggest you order pizza and drink some caffeine and you'll see this in real-time. Not only in real-time, but the change in the configurations, which mean different trade plans inside of trade plans. Hope you got something from this. Start with the primer webinar. If you're in YouTube and you want to visit, you can go down. There's a link in the bottom of YouTube. Come over, visit Trader Lab. You don't have to be a Bookmap subscriber now, ever, never, and you'll never be solicited. And you can take advantage of all the free education in the book that Bookmap offers. Stocks, options, crypto, order flow with a high-tier tool like Bookmap, swing trading options, hedging, market maker behavior, algorithmic behavior, and a lot more. Thanks again for visiting the Trader Lab guys. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow. And again, apologies for the technical problems. Costa Rica, you know, wind blows, monkeys jump out of a tree. What do they know? I should maybe leave some more bananas away from the tree. Maybe they'll stop messing with the internet. Have a good one, guys. Hope you got something out of this today. And Trader Lab, thank you so much for being part of a great community. And by the way, if you're in YouTube, the community is a group of like-minded traders looking to leverage their collective experience. Our senior trader has 54 years, and we have new traders who are just getting started. They are the lucky ones because they can skip all the brain damage that the rest of us have gone through or are going through. If they find this process might be advantageous, and they vet and come up with a trade plan with an edge. This is a short, if it's part of your trade plan. Why you ask? Too high. Have a good one, everyone. Look forward to seeing you soon. And thanks for visiting the Trader Lab.