 on the YouTube and Discord channel of Bookmap. My name is Oliver Sparing and I'm really excited to today give my first webinar here in English language. Some of you might already know me from my regular streams in German on Tuesdays. And today Bruce and I have agreed that we'll on a regular basis give these kind of seminars of webinars now in English too. We'll do this each last Wednesday of the month starting today at 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. So I'm really excited that you're here today to join me with this webinar. And yeah, I'm really excited about your opinions, about your feedback. So just let me know if you like it. In case you're not watching this live, please feel free to write your questions in the comments or to write me an email to mail at sparing-academy.com in case you wanna know anything for the upcoming sessions. I'm really glad and excited to hear from you. So before we begin, those of you who already know my webinars know that I've got a certain kind of plan that I used to follow. We're first starting the session with reviewing a screen-recorded trade of mine that I did with Bookmap obviously. We're gonna have a look at this trade. I'll tell you exactly why I opened it, what I've seen, how I managed it, how I got out, and how I actually used the software Bookmap to manage my trade idea. After that, usually I focus on your questions. So this is supposed to be an indirect webinar. Please feel free to ask all your questions, use the chat function of YouTube, use the chat function of Discord to tell me all your questions and as I said, in case you're watching the recording of the session, please use the comment section to ask your questions there as well and we're gonna have a look at them in the next month. Okay, obviously today this is the first session so I haven't got any questions from you yet. So what we're gonna do today is we're just having a look at my kind of trading style, my approach on trading. I'm gonna give you a few brief insights on what I'm doing in my discretionary trading style. After that, we're gonna have a look at the volume and market profiles of the ES Future, of the S&P 500 Future and we're gonna define some certain price locations, some levels where we're gonna look for trades afterwards and when it's finally 9.30 and the market's open, we're gonna jump right over to Bookmap to have a look together at the US market opening. We're gonna develop some trading ideas for the day and we're gonna see how liquidity, where liquidity lies, if we've got any imbalances in the market, what the market opening type is if we are in a trend, if we are in a range, all these kind of things. Before we start, I shouldn't forget that, a short disclaimer, let me just share my screen to you. You should see it now and let me just find the disclaimer. There it is. So everything we're telling you today, everything I'm gonna talk about today is for educational purposes only, obviously trading futures is connected to a lot of risk and each of every one of you trades on his own risk. I'm gonna spare you reading all of these notes here but it's just important for you to know that this is just for educational purposes. So before we start, since this is the first session of mine in English, I'm just gonna give you a brief overview of who I am and why I'm here, who is talking to you. As I said, my name is Oliver Sparing. I was born in 1987. After school, I first studied music until 2010. I studied electric guitar a long time ago but nevertheless, I think this was a quite valuable experience in terms of my trading career too because there are a lot of similarities between trading and learning an instrument. You gotta learn passion for what you're doing. You gotta learn patience and so many other skills that are needed in learning an instrument and also needed in learning how to trade. I guess all the musicians beneath you should know what I'm talking about. After that, I think it was in around 2011, I passed an educational program as a precious metals vendor and this was the first thing that brought me into contact with the markets, the futures markets in the first place. I started out by myself as most of you probably did and as most of you probably did, I didn't have any success with that. Later on, I learned commodity swing trading based on CUT data, seasonality and term structure with options and that is something that I'm still very active in today. So I'm a swing trader as well as I'm a day trader and later on, I think it was around 2015 or 2015, I got trained in order flow day trading in a big prop trading floor in London. This is how I first got into contact with day trading at all and yeah, since that day, I would say day trading is kind of my passion and my preferred style and approach to trading. In 2020, I founded my own company in Germany in Hamburg, the Sparring Investment Academy where we trained people, private retail traders how to trade the markets as well as investing and in speculative trading styles, swing trading, day trading. In 2021, I released my first book which is only available in German up to now. It's called Das komplette Börsengrundwissen which is something like the complete basic knowledge of trading. As I said up to now, it's only available in German but we're definitely thinking about releasing it in English too. In 2022, I released my fundamental analysis software, Trade Neon which I developed together with a really nice team of programmers and this is a specialized software which gives you market insights, COT data seasonality term structure in a very organized manner on a weekly basis. And in 2024, I moved from Germany to Dubai and founded the Sparring FZCO which is basically the same company here just with a fancier office view. Okay, so far about me and without further ado, let's jump right into the trade of the week. So some words to that. What you're gonna see is a trade recording. This is no life situation. I usually screen record each and every one of my trades, not only for myself, but of course, also for myself to actually review the sessions, to review my own trades, to see what I did good. I mean, obviously I'm in the trading business for 13, almost 14 years now but I think it's still a good idea for each and every one of you no matter how long you're in the game so far to actually make some statistics about your trading, about your approach, write everything down, not only where you entered and where you exited but also things like how you felt emotionally in this certain kind of situation. All those things are very important to actually keep the necessary objectiveness to stay in the game and to stay successful in trading. So as I said, I screen record every one of my trades on the one hand for myself, on the other hand, of course, for my customers, for my students and the education so I can provide these recordings to them, write some lines beneath that, what were my thoughts? Why did I open the trades? What did I see? How did I manage them? All these things and one of those trades is the trade of the week which I'm gonna show you in each of these sessions right at the start. So what I think is really important, I mean, you all know we're in a special sector and there are a lot of coaches out there who are very loud and who tell you things like, come to me, I'm gonna show you how to trade within two months and make you rich but as most of you probably know, this is not what reality in trading is like so I am going to show you, of course, some of my winning trades were everything that I imagined and my plan did play out just the way I wanted it to but I think it's really important to also show you the reality, to also show you some trades that actually didn't play out the way I planned and this is why I decided to start with one of those trades today. It actually, it wasn't a losing trade, it was a break-even trade but I think there's a lot more to learn on these kind of trades than on the big winners where you just enter a trade and everything happens just the way you planned, just the way you wished. So this is always easy to show and always easy to say here, look at me, I'm the biggest trader in life but yeah, as I said, these kind of trades are often the ones that are more usable to show certain things, to show how I think as a professional trader and yeah, just hopefully give you some value. So let's just dive right in. Just give me a second while I start the recording to have a short look if there are some questions up now. So everyone who just joined the session lately, please feel free to use the chat function of Bookmap or YouTube to post your questions in case you have any, you can ask me anything about trading, about using the software Bookmap or whatever you'd like. So this is a trade that I did today and this is a trade that I did around 3 p.m. Dubai time which is around, let me guess, I guess we've got nine hours difference to Eastern Standard so it should be like 6 a.m. So one question that a lot of people ask me is why do you trade so early? And I'm a morning trader. I usually, I come from Germany, I'm based in Germany and I usually traded the morning session of the European opening which is around 9 a.m. in Germany. So this should be 3 a.m. Eastern Standard time in the United States. I really like the markets in the morning, they are less volatile, they are slower, they are calm, which is something I like to trade. So what a lot of people ask me is actually basically can you trade the markets at this point of the day? Wouldn't it be better to prefer the US session, the US opening, the sessions where the markets are a lot more liquid, a lot more volatile on the other hand. I think what you gotta understand is that the forces that drive the markets are always the same. It's supply and demand. No matter which market you're trading, no matter at which time you're trading, it's always supply and demand. And those two factors are the pillars that our trading, our discretionary trading is based on. So it really doesn't matter if you're trading the ES or the GC gold future like I do, the CL oil future or even soybeans, lean hogs, feeder cattle, whatever. It's all driven by the same forces, supply and demand. So what I'm trying to say here is it doesn't really matter at which time you're trading. It doesn't really matter which market you're trading. The fundamental factors that our trading should be based on are always the same. However, you should know your market and you should know your specific market at the time that you're usually trading. So what do I mean by that? It doesn't make a lot of sense if one day you're trading the ES, next day you're trading copper, next day you're trading natural gas and you're doing so on complete different times of the day because obviously markets have characteristics and you've got to know those characteristics. Similarity to musical instrument learning, it has a lot to do with experience and I'm saying this with a lot of caution. It has to do a lot with some certain kind of gut feeling too and this gut feeling comes obviously with a lot of experience, a lot of time that you spend with the markets, if you know what I mean. You can know the basics, you can know the theory but this still doesn't make you a good trader. Day trading is a long journey and most of you already know that certainly. So you got to know your market, you got to know how your market usually behaves at the certain time that you're trading and only when you do know the common characteristics of the market at that certain time, you can realize when there are anomalies that you can then use for your trading entries. So as I said, I'm usually a morning trader, I like trading between 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Central European time, European opening, I'm trading the ES future, I'm trading the GC Gold future, which is kind of like my home market and I like to trade the CL oil future, crude oil future. Those are my three markets that I concentrate on. I definitely, when you're at the start, when you're at the beginning of your trading journey, you should actually concentrate on one market only, get to know this market perfectly and when you got the experience, you can maybe add a second or third market if you want to. I mean, there's no reason to change anything if you're satisfied and if you're successful with your one market, that's totally fine too. So let's come to the trade now, sorry for the long speech. We are in a downtrend. What you're seeing here is on the one hand, the book map software and on the other hand, here's a little five minute candlestick chart of the daily gold GC future market. What you're also seeing are those areas that I painted red, black or greenish here those are my levels that I define before I start my trading sessions and these are the levels and price locations where I actually look for my trade. I say a few more words on my trading style after the review of this trade, but this is like the first very important and basic pillar that my trading style is based on. Market analysis, levels, price locations, I guess that's something that most of you are either already using or have already heard of. So we are in a downwards movement and obviously the market went into this kind of upwards movement here, this kind of price correction and this is a location where we've got an area where not only we've got this black dark pool level, but also we've got this anchored VWAP coming from above. We've got the monthly VWAP, which is the blue line here and this is an area where I was looking to enter the market on the short side in case that the price action that the order flow is telling me to do so which is the second pillar of my trading style. I don't just put some limit buys or limit sell orders to those levels. This wouldn't make a lot of sense in the end. It's always about where do I want to trade and what should happen there to actually make me press the buy or the sell button. So we are having this pullback of the markets in a downwards movement up to the dark pool level and what we're seeing there is that we've got a little stop run of 30 contracts and afterwards the market is ranging here on the level. So what I was waiting for is either the breakout of this structure or as we're seeing here, the attempt of the market to actually fill this liquidity here at 2037. So the market went up to this level and immediately on the first try of approaching it, sellers entered the market and rejected this level. So this is some thing that I like to trade and that I like to look at, especially when I see the delta is not visibly coming up again. So we've got the first attempt of the buyers to get the breakout here in this situation and then afterwards if I don't see any further buyers and instead see the sellers coming up, I want to enter my short trade here. This is obviously a good location to hide your stop order, which was around, where was my entry? It was here at 366. Should be six ticks of a stop and what I was trying to do here was I was looking for the down move to the next level, which would be the dark pool and negative gamma level down here at 20348 around this level. So what I wanted to see is a really fast follow through in this situation. So I don't really want the market to tend sideways afterwards after entering this trade. When you're playing this rejection set up here, you want to see a fast and quick follow through. Otherwise you have to reevaluate and stay objective and that is something that I actually want to show you in this trade, which is really important from my point of view. So let's just click the play button. Oh, by the way, this is not, I recorded this in Norman temple and afterwards I loaded it into Da Vinci and speeded up the recording because actually I think the trade was like 20 or 30 minutes long. So this would actually be much too long to view in these sessions. So I just don't want you to wonder why the market moves faster than you're used to. So I entered the short trade and the first thing I saw is that my plan seemed to work out pretty well. Here was my entry and I immediately saw some active sellers entering the market, pushing the market down again to the dark pool level also to the anchored VWAP. And what I wanted to see now is a short and effective stop run beneath the 35 ish around this kind of level down beneath this price. So let's see if this played out. We've got some new orders coming into the bid. And now we see those trades getting filled. And on this point, something happens that as someone who is short in this trade you don't want to see the market moved some kind some ticks downwards around seven to eight ticks in my direction. And then immediately new buyers entered the game entered the market and pushed the price up again. So this is of course not what you want to see in a short trade. And this is something where you have to stay as objective as possible, which of course is not always easy, especially when you're in the trade over a long period of time. So this short snippet of the markets that we're seeing here is actually already 15 minutes. And just imagine you're entered the trade here. You're waiting for 15 minutes just to see how the opposite of what you hope for is happening. And of course this is not easy to stay objective in this kind of situation. So market comes up again, approaches this liquidity at 37 again, and again the front running algorithms entered and pushed the market downwards. So what I was thinking here, okay, if now the sellers enter the market again and they are capable of pushing the market down with some momentum, my basic trade idea that I originally had here is still active. I can stay in the trade, but however, what I want to see now is that this liquidity at 35.8 is getting filled quite fast. And we're not further ranging in this small range between 35.8 and 37.2 here. So let's see what happened. So what you can see now is some game that bigger market participants are playing. We've always got these trades in the bid coming up here. They're getting filled. So this is not just simple spoofing. Those are actually orders that we're getting filled. And on the other hand, we see some active buyers coming up, we barely see any selling anymore. And we also see some orders coming up here around 37.8, new liquidity coming up in the ask, in the offer. And we've got this larger order at 35.8. So when I entered the trade, I saw that there was liquidity pulled above the price and that there was actually liquidity added beneath the price here and down here, which we can see now. So now the situation is a complete different one. And this is your task and this is maybe the biggest problem that we have as discretionary traders to actually stay objective in these kinds of situation. It's similar, I think it's similar to a relationship that you've been in for so long and neither of the partners still wants to be in the relationship. However, you decide that you're gonna keep the relationship up just because you were in it for so long, you've put so much effort in it, you've put so much time in it. And I remember this, I remember these kind of situations when I first started trading and when I had my first stock portfolio, I don't even know which stock it was. I think it was Starbucks, Skyworks. I don't know, whatever, not important. But I was playing around with the stock for quite a long time. I always used to make some real strategy plays with that cash secured puts, covered calls and so on. And however, the stock didn't really move over several months. And there was the time when I had to ask myself, does this stock really fit into the criteria that you've set up when you first bought it? Is this really the stock that you still wanna have? And what applies to long-term investing, of course, also applies for day trading. So if you're in a trade for more than 30 minutes, maybe even more than one hour, and it's just ranging, it's just not doing what you first expected it to do, then you gotta ask yourself, is this really the trade that I was trying to play in the first place? And what I can tell you is, the longer it takes to actually run in the direction in your desired direction, the less are your chances it's actually doing so. So if you're entering a trade and it's just running sideways and sideways and sideways and it's ranging and ranging and ranging, the longer it does so, the less are your chances that your original idea actually plays out. So there are two choices now. You can either stay in the trade and just hope for the best, but we are traders, we are professional traders. We don't wanna hope, we wanna have a plan. And we actually wanna have a plan before we click something, if you know what I mean. We wanna know what we're doing and we wanna stick to that plan before our decisions in trading get too emotional. So what I'm trying to do in these kind of situations is I'm just having a look at it and I'm just saying, okay, is my basic idea still active? I could answer this question with yes, because actually the price is still beneath this monthly V-Web. So my basic idea somehow is still intact, it's still active, but the chances that my trade is running out as a winner are much more decreased than they were at the beginning of the trade. So what I used to do in these kind of situations in general is just reducing my risk, which is always a reasonable thing to do in these kind of situations. What you're gonna see in a few seconds is here, I just took off one contract down, did I already? Yes, I already took off one contract around here, here it was. I think it was around three, four, five ticks, three, four, five ticks in the winning zone and the stop of the second contract, I've just put down three ticks. So actually I'm risk neutral now. Even if I get stopped out above here, my trade is going to play out break even. So this gives me the comfort that I still can stay in the trade, so it still has the chance to break out and to play out as my first intention was. I don't have to close it at all, but on the other hand, I also can't lose any money anymore, which makes sense in this kind of situation because I didn't get the follow through that I initially wanted to see. And what happens now, it's the following, I'm getting stopped out. Why doesn't it show it? Sorry, give me one second. There. Price comes up, approaches this big liquidity again and I'm getting stopped out here. It's a break even trade. You can see zero, zero, nothing happened, which of course, it's not the best feeling because as I said, I just wasted more than half an hour of my lifetime for this trade, but this is business as usual. Not every trade plays out the way you wanted it. This is something you have to deal with as a private retail trader, no matter if you're doing this as a hobby or if you're doing this as a profession. So this is the trade of the day. So some nice break even trade and I'm just gonna have a look at the questions to ask Oliver a question, please use his dedicated channel. Oh yeah, okay. Sorry, I'm only having a look at the chat of this voice chat right now. I didn't even see that I have my own dedicated channel. There it is. Okay, I tried to have a look at both chats so I can answer your questions. And in case you're having a look at YouTube right now, you can please feel free to use the YouTube chat as well. Okay. Some words on my basic approach in trading. So it consists, as I said, it consists on, or it is based on two pillars. The one is the question, where the other one is the question, what? Where do I want to see it happen and what should happen if the price is there? So what I'm doing in the first place each morning at 8 a.m. Central European time is I am making a market analysis together with my customers, together with my students. And we are gonna define certain levels in the markets based on certain factors. And those are the levels that we do not move within the day. They remain as we've set them in the morning hour. And those are the locations where we actually look for our trade entries. We do not want to trade in the middle of nowhere. We always want to have certain factors on our side. And obviously we always wanna have the big players on our side. We wanna position ourselves where the big institutional players are positioning themselves. So this kind of market analysis is based on different perspectives. We're using liquidity, which is a very important factor. We only wanna trade where liquidity is because liquidity shows us interest. We are using the market profile and the volume profile to actually define certain levels, to have an overview over the market structure, to have an overview over the auction process, which is very important in trading. And we also include dealer hedging levels, gamma levels, banner levels, charm levels, Fibonacci retracements. We are using dark pool levels, which play a more and more important rules. And the key factor is to combine all these things and get a very specific view on the market. Actually, right now at the moment, we only offer our educational programs to our German audience, but we're currently working on a program which deals with this kind of market analysis and which we will publish in English language too. So I'm gonna keep you updated on this. So here in these public streams, I have to excuse myself, but we only have time to do a very fundamental, very basic kind of analysis. We only focus on the most common and widely regarded levels to do this kind of analysis without diving too deep.