 Good morning traders. Can I get a audio and screen check please in YouTube and Discord? Thank you. Morning everyone. Welcome to the Traders Lab. I'm your host Tom B. Thanks for visiting today. Free FOMC. Appreciate you stopping by. As always every day in the market is unique and also interesting and today is no different than any other. I am using a so you guys know and I need to remind you if there is an issue with audio or the stream I need to know right away and if for some reason someone posts either in YouTube or in the Discord chat Trader Lab that there is an audio issue if you are not having an audio issue please post immediately that you are having that things are okay for you this way I know it's not global it is you know specific to an individual having their own hardware issue so that would be most appreciated I am trying to troubleshoot some some things here go grab a pen and a piece of paper I'll give you some some statistics and notes and then we will get into the live market but first of all take care of business general disclosure all book map 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 it's not suitable for all investors past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results grab the pen and paper let's go forward okay first of all write this down and I'm one of the things I do I am attempting to share my experience in market understanding and this stream is about integrating book map order flow tools using a tool called the volume profile which is based on price and volume the stream is about market mechanics how does the market work and many of us basically think the market is really we can define that by our indicators and that's the and by the way at times you can and other times of course you can't everything is random in the market but most retail traders are using indicator processes and time frame processes to attempt to kind of fit the market into some order and then operate in that that's call that structure the thing about that is that most retail traders never really get a market understanding they're looking for the indicator to find the market when in reality it's really the other way around the market is defining these indicators but the indicators are lagging and they're not sensitive to the condition of the market and that's I think where the kind of the conflict lies and why most retail traders don't succeed in this business is because they're trying to create a generic process and kind of put the market into a box where the market doesn't operate that way and that's why the stream focuses on mechanics understanding how the market works because the market goes into different conditions intraday and we're going to see that because that's exactly what's going on today also we had big sell-off yesterday right and if you're in the trader lab you remember we gave you a downside target in the outside target and this was at the end of the stream I said 50 was our outside I think the low of the day was 47 or something you know got 47 so there's no precision in trading but there's a reason that we might at times get in you know an indication of the possibilities so and yesterday was just short short short short and why is today maybe long if you can't answer the question then you really don't have a grip yet on market mechanics and that's the purpose of the stream and in addition the other part of this is to share with you structured trades that you can reverse engineer and apply to the market condition if you can isolate it and identify it and then the idea is to have different plans for different conditions it's not a one-size-fits-all and the best example of something like this is buying or selling the mid there are times when the market is just criss-crossing over the mid that's one type of market condition you would not be getting involved at the mid instead you'd be buying outside edges of this rotation because it's a rotational market the other times the market is in a directional move and then the mid might be appropriate you need to know the difference and if you can't tell the difference what's going to happen is you're just going to be trading mechanically with the one-size-fits-all and as the term goes get chopped up now we all get chopped up but the point is that if you can differentiate the condition of the market it may improve your metrics if you can make an adjustment to it it's almost like if you're driving a car on a flat you know if you're out in the desert where you can look over the horizon and it's a straight run on a highway it's kind of or you know pedal to the metal and off you go if now you're in the mountains and it's a narrow winding road you're not going to drive the same way are you well it's no different than the market sometimes it's a winding road uh or a rotational road and other times it's a trending or directional configuration pedal to the metal that's I mean it's a poor analogy but I hope you you understand that you don't just learn to drive and drive one way you adjust to conditions and that's part of what we do here in the trader lab is to help traders identify define and create process to identify condition so it's a conditional process and then it's having structured vetted trades that give you a statistical edge to operate in these defined conditions and there aren't that many of them so it's that part but it's identifying it that is uh challenging and traders don't understand and I for myself the most different I think difficult thing besides the emotional management and all you know the other psychological aspects of this uh was differentiating the condition of the market because I didn't understand that and there was no one around to tell me about I just didn't understand and that's part of life in the fast lane so grab your pen and paper here's a couple statistics remember if you have questions write them down I'll do my best I'm going to ask in the um the trader lab that uh do you keep your posts you know uh to questions uh and in YouTube there's probably a 15 second or so delay so please be patient if you post a question uh and I assume my audio is okay is that correct in YouTube since someone posted low audio is that right so here's the statistics in the meantime I'll wait for YouTube here um problem here hold on guys okay I'm not hearing anything from YouTube is YouTube working okay thanks thank you appreciate it okay thanks guys all right here's the current condition to mark them write down a couple statistics so what did we do let's go back to the open we opened just above yesterday's low and above the overnight low okay and um so that's the first thing I'm going to give you some stats and then we'll just run from there okay so there's a 93% probability we'll take out either the overnight high or overnight low in this configuration there's approximately a 98% probability we'll take out either the first hour high or low that's called the IB by the way here's the IB first hour which we don't know at the time this is current this is the highest volume area I'm sorry whoop wrong wrong screen you know I've got multiple book maps running and um here overnight high first hour high which has already been put in this is yesterday's highest retail price it's called the naked volume point of control there is a 70 probability we'll get there there is a 69 probability we'll take this out and the overnight high we have about a 50 probability but and here's the thing about it if this has if the first hour high has a 69 probability I don't think it's a big reach to get here do you and this was retail so the thing is if this is the fair price and fair price in volume world is defined as highest volume in other words retail the one of the things about auction market theory is that you know when you hear the word theory you know you want to you want to go and get a phd quite frankly if you've ever gone to the store and shop you're an expert in auction market theory because there's a retail price and high volume takes place at retail and then when it goes on sale and price rotates under what you put you as a shopper perceive is a fair price and it's a sale but you think this is fair retail you'll buy it because it's on sale and then the sellers will raise the price up back to retail isn't that how it works on a sale well what happens if those sellers raise the price and you figure hey this thing's worth a dollar but these guys want a dollar 10 well all right I'm in the store I'll buy it a dollar and a quarter dollar 35 I'm not paying that now if the sellers want to sell the product they're going to lower the price back down to retail this is what creates our rotations okay our consolidations now here's the other piece suppose we do this activity and then the participants who are interested in buying the product at retail or on sale or even a little bit higher but the sellers say you know what I think we can get more let's just raise the price raise the price and the participants can't go back here and buy it here it's no longer available at this price now there's a new price and we start rotating in here and the participants the sellers will sell it to you up here but you because you desire the product will pay up here this now becomes a new retail price this is how pricing works well that means a new consolidation and that means this is too low and this process goes up and down a price ladder that's kind of the mechanics of the market okay so let's go back to a couple other things here so 44.65 and let's let me give you some other statistics the overnight volume point of control write these down the overnight volume point of control is the highest volume in the eth same process is what I'm showing you here except here in the eth was retail so retail retail retail yesterday retail eth let's just write these stats now eth or overnight volume point of control 83 probability we'll take that and the overnight mid 83 probability we'll take that one so you're starting out down here and of course what do the average mortal retail trader think oh let's get short we're going to go and this of course has a potential statistic and these are downside targets so you know 38 make a note of these because they're still going to be relevant maybe not today or maybe after fomc or maybe never right trading and this is our outside target uh 44 20 so this is intermediate time frame high volume this is a is the same as that level above and the same as this this was retail right this is retail below us hello yesterday's low this is an intermediate time frame so this is kind of our the the area that we're going to operate it now write this down the market goes up to go down and the market goes down to go up market goes up to go down and goes down to go up so what have we done we went down what did we do before we went down we went up why does it do this write this down this is such a basic concept but we get my pick we quote expect certain things well I'm a little different I anticipate there's a difference from expecting and anticipating when you expect something your mind filters out what is what might happen so you can respond to it you're only looking for the thing that supports what you believe to be true and trading you really in my opinion you can't afford to think like that you need to think in what might happen and you anticipate it and part of a trade plan is what's the condition of market market short what are the possibilities everybody thinks the market's going south of the border and they might be right but how might it get there does the market just go straight down and of course it can or or if the market is short what's in the market by stops if the market runs out of sellers what happens to those sellers they cover that becomes buying what is stacked above the market in yesterday's range by stops is this logical it's so important you think this way are you guys tracking this is like a basic tenant of trading before you even open the door and sit down you need to know the probabilities and the possibilities so let's go take a look okay now i'm going to go into the open and i'm going to show you structure trades that are available to everyone in the book map discord trade a lab chat here we go so this is the open it's right under here we open right by the low of the day let me uh right here okay and there's two possibilities of course we can take out the low come under here and of course this would be the target or open jiggle and if we can't get under the low or even if we came under it and came back inside and we don't hit this statistic then the possibility is to squeeze here's the other piece this was retailed in the eth so it's almost like if this and we don't know if this is the fair price and this is perceived by the participants is too low we can come back here right that's why you have over an 80 probability for these two locations and then you know north so let's watch okay is everybody tracking let's watch these are now i'm going to share with you structure trades now there's other trades in here if you have a plan but in the trader lab the goal is to help you put a plan together this is not making sense to me i don't know why it's doing this always like with this thing okay so this is called the developing volume point of control and what this is is retail so this is showing you high volume remember too high too low retail now this is microstructure so what i'm going to be looking for here is i want to see the behavior coming out of the open now initially i'm thinking now don't forget market goes up to go down and goes down to go up so i'm going well we have this and we have this this is possible that's one piece and the other piece is do we just get short covering and then a responsive buying and then continuation down now i don't know so i'm going to tell you i wish i know i don't know now this is the this is the joy right the joy of not knowing so this is yesterday's clothes but this is the retail price in the last auction that's that yellow line and that's showing us the highest volume with the statistics so i'm looking at this and i'm going okay now if you get short in something like this you are very aggressive so what i suggest is and again it's subject to a vetted plan that you just wait because we might get the following responsive buying and then the sellers come back in because they go oh it's an opportunity we're above yesterday's low and we have this statistic so i'm just saying as you could it could go either way this is trading nobody knows wish i did so too low this is called v pock migration volume is moving higher this now is the new retail price saying potentially too low volume moves higher saying potentially too low now volume starts moving down saying potentially too high watch just watch potentially too high now this is all microstructure these are not trade recommendations what there's a couple pieces to this first of all the condition of the market or context market short we know that market looks like it fell out of bed yesterday of course and it looks like it's going south to the border we're looking for the acapulco cliff dive anybody who didn't get short yesterday is feeling fomo why if they didn't get involved yesterday on the short side think about how you feel emotionally now remember talking emotions and retail trader behavior you know think like a retail trader don't act like one what would a retail trader do today they'd be selling this thing right and what about the shorts that are still in there well they would be covering if they're on the hook so you have new potentially new sellers coming in maybe and you'll have the current shorts if they don't get any love they're going to be added here so right here it's too high right there watch it so here's what you have this is the rotations and down here this little high volume was that retail price that was too low you see there it is so this says potential counter rotation now who knows right so let's look at it this was too low we're going to label it right it's called the variable high volume node in all it is it's very simple it's weird the volume took place wondering why i'm having a with this aggregation thing you know it's one of those things that you go well why you know so this if you want to think about how this works this right here is too low that's where the first volume came in and the first buyer showed up this is vpok migration and you can see this high volume sitting right here so think of this remember at the top of the stream i said retail if the price is too low the shoppers can come back and check the price if it's still too low you can't buy it there and then they're going to have to come back to the store and if they come back here and we get above this opening swing high which by the way is a double top weak high and if you're a retail trader i know when i first was learning trading in 1980 uh double top was oh you'd sell that no no no no no it's weak it's not rejected it's exhaustive it's a different kind of high so if we look at this is the opening swing remember up this is the high where's the opening swing low it's right here and it's not unreasonable for this thing to pick and then come back but i know this is a location now remember there's no precision in trading it's horseshoes and hand grenades so we could come to a level it could come through it it could you know or keep going right don't we know that it's random so let's watch right here is too low now at this point let me show you a trigger and i'm only going to show you which i'm showing you potential trades i'm not saying these should be your trades um they're not even necessarily my trades but if you're in the trader lab you would understand what this is now i'm going to take you into microstructure for the trigger now it takes guts you know you're right above yesterday's low what's the words that can happen to you by the way take a stop right so right here we already have a location that was too low we have a weak high this is how you kind of go if this than that if not then what this is how you narrate if this than that if this is a weak high and i rotate down and i check this level where the buyers come in you see how you put the pieces together and i can't or i just you know bump this and come in above here then it's a long so we're looking for a long where where let's look now i don't know i'm as clueless as everybody here's a triggering structure let's look at okay here's how this works and again it's all random so there's nothing mechanical it is all these pieces i put together which give me the idea of either an aggressive short which is no which might work or a long and it could be either one if you took the short this is a structured trade in the trader lab this could be a short but if you're thinking who's on the hook and this is what the context is about the market is short there's buy stops you have to look at it from two sides here's the buy trigger i'm down on the stops micro high volume this is high volume think of it like this too high too high too high i'm showing you the short side so you can gotta get a sense of it right here high volume too high microstructure volume too high break low too high break low pull back too high it's checking the volume oh i'm not selling it to you there come down too high going lower right here what happens this is the book map stop an iceberg detector it reads what's called mbo data from the cme which means all orders are tagged right they gotta know if it's a stop a limit market order iceberg whatever it is right so they're tagged mbo data let's book map read what is here well indicator world we know about divergence right well if we're coming down and i'm looking at this and i see the sellers the sellers the sellers the sellers and i see only one stop go off and i'm still looking for you know because i don't know right here in the microstructure here so too high exhaustion break high pause potential long here or let me give you the or or break high pull back here you know now this is too low because we rejected the volume so right here where that's labeled is too low now this is not easy i'm not saying it is because you're going to be conflicted but what i think about is i before i start i think and i don't know what the market's going to do so nobody's got that well it's about knowing what it might do that's what you need to do in a trade plan so i don't know what it's going to do but i might do this and i might do that and it's an if this then that process or conditional process what's the condition well the condition of the market then what's the conditional process i get selling and if if it doesn't you know go and i see my buyer see the bubbles that's delta so exhaustion buyer let's look i want to show you this there's your seller there's your test there's your seller here's your buyers look at the range of this rotation versus this this was your support low you see so we come out exhaust long now what uh oh what's up is this too high or is this too low let's see so too low now watch so your long is either in here or on this pullback this is your support and the north first target next target overnight mid now it gets real interesting here i'm going to show you this let me just make sure i've got the right locations here now there's no way to know what it's going to do so don't even think about it now in the eth this what's is called a low volume node and i'm not going to get into too much detail about it but in the eth this was an outside edge think about too high too low and retail in the eth was here see so this was an outside edge here in the eth in other words this was too high and then the market was rotating down towards that overnight low and around and this was retail well now we're coming back outside this is retail in the last auction which is eth this was too high i have liquidity in the book up here i this is important because right here if i can't get through this i'm going to rotate back down again so i don't know let's see what it does so you'd be long now next target let me show you here this is the next target this was yesterday's high volume location or retail so in the eth retail that's why it's a target you get above it what's the next target here and then we have this and this we're targeting on the long side now i'm going to show you a couple other structured trades now some of what i'm going to show you is countertrend so i'm not suggesting this to anybody i'm just going to show them to you and then you guys can sort it out as far as how you build out your trade plan you know so let's look this is the remember how the market works what's too high what's too low what's fair the market is an auction its job is to check what's too high what's too low what's fair and the rotations and all fractals and time frames are a function like here here let me show this one too i'm just going to show you i'm pulling this out of left field because i want you to see microstructure here the market here's volume buyer it's saying you can't buy this here and you can see the little nodes sticking out there i'm in this fractals i'm in very short time frame and it's only a way to try to read let me turn this off here so like here chop chop is an auction volume is here you could see it over there we break away from it that's saying no you can't buy it here at the moment now we pause here we have a little chop going on consolidation that's what these are and that's like they pause and they go too high too low retail high volume break away from it there's the buyer too low see the similarity too low too low now here chop chop break away from it too low test it too low see up here now we're balancing here break high too low test it too low break high volume pull back test it break high you see what i'm kind of what i'm doing here this is how you might try to stay in alignment with the bank and you have to decide or vet how you might use a trade management process and that's uh becomes and the solution to all of this is statistical it's not how you feel about it it's not g if i do this i miss the 40 point rotation it's all the trades guys it's all of them it's not one trade and most of us when we start out as retail traders we build our life around the big trade you know oh what indicator would have caught that and you know all this right we've all done that so we're all the same here's the volume here's the buyer right too low look where we come too low now i can't tell you where you trade you know trail your stop it's really a statistical answer right here this price is too high and there's your counter rotation as soon as you see the seller you just might want to be out i don't know it's up to you what time frame do you trade so let's look so too low now remember this is our next target why because it was our retail price from yesterday next target is everybody tracking these this is the long this is the target now we have the bonus round this has over a 98 probability first hour high or low will get taken out and the overnight stat this one so in theory you could be done here or you're holding a runner for this and i'm not sure what's above us this this area up here and we'd have to take out yesterday's high you know good luck with that but it's possible you know so these are targets up above not trade recommendations notice 80 has liquidity in the book but these are the primary interday targets based on the auction now i'm going to show you a short that i took not and i'm not saying anybody should do this because this is definitely countertrend but you'll understand why if you understand the auction so these are all longs you know up to here and then i'm going to show you the change in the context and and how this changes now we're through this low volume area from the eth so that can go we can jettison that and there's one other piece i have to add back in here for you remember now this out here when you see this kind of move this explosive move we are basically leaving this consolidation in other words this whole area over here we're leaving it behind and we're running this is too low so where's the outside edge this is always the thing we don't know and trade it well there's one here at 53 i'm going to put it in here and you'll see why it might matter and i say might because who know so it's called the low volume note let's let's put it in there takes time but i i got to do this by the way if i don't label things uh i forget all about because i'm my open my brain you know i'm kind of like right here you know that's kind of where i am because i'm managing and i'm actually interacting with the market here but i so i don't want to forget these locations here's another outside edge here around 55 56 out in here low volume area i'm going to label this one and you'll see why it matters and this is based on the auction remember how the auction might work and i say might because everything's random is if the where's the price too low and how does the market tend to operate it tends to seek out what's too low and if the buyers perceive it's on sale relative to what they perceive to be a fair price they buy it and then the market might return back to a fair price and then if it gets too high the market might come back to the fair price so i'm not paying that oh but it's on sale yeah but this is retail so that's what creates the rotation all right so let's now take a look so we're coming up this is target all right and there's more but the fact is this is the key price so targeting and then that that was it for me at the moment for the longs and then i'm thinking the following if this is yesterday's highest volume or retail price is it too high if it is too high we can come back down and let's look at this microstructure and this is not something i recommend anybody do because you have to already have your game on if you're going to be a counter trend trader okay if you in other words your job at least the way i see it i'm just and i'm not saying your job i'm saying if you're building out a business of trading in a trade plant you want to go you want to take you want to go with the strong hands who's the weak hands well the shorts but are they done is this price too high that's the question it was retail yesterday and what does the market tend to do it tends to come back and check prices remember the shoppers this happens in all fractals and timeframes so i know that the market if this is too high that this could be it and i don't know so let's watch let's look so right here you see liquidity in the book you see buy stops coming out you see the location let's look at the structure this now becomes our high volume and it's created by this right here i see the seller i have the liquidity i have the target and the location so let's look i'm looking for a short so the short would be here or here and i don't know watch we pull this down i took this short uh and like everything i took it and i said you know this but it's the reason is in the auction the market tends to come back and check now what i'll do i'm as clueless as everybody else here it is again so we have this structure i see a seller i have and here's the key thing location here again the volume i see the seller i see the seller i see the test i see the seller i take a short v-wap so i took the short scaled v-wap and then i'm looking for it to come out watch now we have another setup in the trader lab called the v-wap to the v-pod now i'm thinking the trend is up but i know this might be too high that no clue right so i and i have the ib stat so i'm looking for longs except i took a short why return to the mean so this is the mean from yesterday and the mean means were the hot mean means where the high volume was in the developing time frame this is the same thing except it's developing so if i get short against this then the target is back here to the mean and then if i come outside it's if where's too low and then i can return to the mean this is called mean reversion mean in a higher time frame back to the mean so i'm mean reverting that's why the long this i get back to the mean in this time frame too high and again i don't know and then i come back to the mean in this time frame then i come outside structured trade v-wap to v-pod back to the mean in this time frame looking for this is everybody with me so far is it logical stand it's full the fvp column is the full volume profile so what that is showing me is all the volume starting from 5 p.m central time yesterday so it's the eth so when the when rth opens there's no volume here because this is only measuring rth the one on the left fvp would show me everything in the eth then as the rth fills in it just adds on uh to the fvp i hope that answers that for you so let's so the short so here to here for the long we're here looking for this okay because i have an i b stat and overnight stat so this is outside in mean reversion i took this i scaled and uh than that you know that's life out now i'm looking again where's my outside edge here and here so i'm looking now remember the concept if this is the mean from yesterday then and this is the mean today which is why i took this outside in mean reversion i'm still thinking long from somewhere what else do i know if this if we don't come back to here or here which is the low volume outside edge at the moment then the possibility is to take the stops same reason we went up was to take the buy stops now we have longs in the market where's the stops well this was a good long because it's structured once we come under here then you got the mid and you've got whatever's below us and who knows so now let's come back let's go okay we're coming outside do we think the trend is up at the moment well i did so i'm trading from the long side until it breaks what i don't know which is the magic of trading is from where now this is at the time this is the mid but i'm not thinking about the mid i'm thinking about where the fuel is retail trader behavior they keep their stops at the mid and they also activate at the vwap in the mid so this to me was valid once this happens then i'm looking for the stops to come out and then it's either a long back here or not and i can't tell you what it is because i don't know but i know i have to get back above here that's why this is labeled and i don't instead it breaks pulls back can't get above the mid and then i'm going what's going on this is my next outside level so let's look there's my volume and this becomes mean reversion so you know it's sorry about that so basically now this is a potential triggering structure if it's not your trade it doesn't matter let's just watch the behavior i got on this one and i will tell you i didn't get on i can't get on it over here because i can't figure out what's going on i wish i could but i know this was too high let's go back to this too high too high too high so i'm narrating i'm going yes it's going down i'm looking for remember if this than that if not then what looking for this i get this change in behavior too low you see and there's the micro high volume now for me no clue you know could just keep going i have no idea break high there's my buyer this was resistance and what's the saying resistance becomes support support comes resistance this is a long here and now i'm going back for mean reversion which is rotational trading so it's outside and trade outside is here you see does that make sense guys right here can you see it this is makes sense how we doing in youtube now i know this is slow and meticulous i get it and i also understand um what's happening right now um you know it's not a trade calling room if you can't do it it's a waste of your time because this is for you to do it it there's not a right way to trade there really isn't it's all metrics driven you may find this nauseating to activate in this back to here you may go i that's scalping i've had conversations with guys that think an eight point swing is a scalp you know and to me i only do use the structures because i can read them i know what they mean because this is a language and if i get long here my stop can go here because i know what made it and i know what this was and why this happened i don't know it's going to turn here see that part i don't know but i can look out here and look at levels and go well this is this outside edge here and if it's too low we're going to come back to retail if i fall through here which you can then where's you know where's it going to go i don't know i see this and i know there's all stops and everything under the mid right but then we exhaust you see that's what i know i don't know this is a reversal point until i see the buyer that's what i know so and it's just one way to slice and dice it you could do it anywhere you want you know it's there's not a right way to do this but here's the other thing i know right here let's go back into the microstructure right here you let me just show you this because this is what's the this is like russian dolls it's all the same right here we have this rotation right and it was created by the excess here this volume you see so there's the volume in this structure let me show it to you i just want you to see how you might narrate this here remember which is where the short was up against there this is the logic of the auction here's the volume here and there's the high volume node that's too high so and we reject it i'm not paying that narrate well if we reject it so here was an outside edge we went higher here's the volume here's the break here's the test of the volume and there's the seller so we know that's rejected in alignment with that right there is the high volume and when we fell out you could see this is a distribution it's representing the volume in this this consolidation so this is an auction too low too high and then in the fractal too low too high volume volume fractals out of here too high so now i know this is too high and this is potentially too high i don't know and if i come back from the outside i anticipate if we can't get over this at the moment we're not going anywhere we might only come outside and then come back and this becomes a context called mean reversion it's rotational trading it's a different context so i got outside right i got up here i got short just coming back here don't know here to here now watch so all this goes on and down we go then what is the context outside in mean reversion there's the mean so that's why it's a long then what's too high this if i come back to the mean what's the possibility outside edge this is where it was too high so we can come out here also you have something called the developing value area high which is where most of the volume for the day is at the moment so that's another level to observe so this is the outside edge so long to hear and remember what's here by stops shorts come in at the mid oh it's going down it's all over maybe so you never know take their stops take their stops back to the mean now right here it could just bounce off and continue or the this leg with by stops above this which is a weak structure you see these tops this is just like your double double pop it's a weak structure these are exhaustive structures what's above here stops outside watch outside edge now now for me now there's a couple possibilities i'm gonna give you the possibilities now i'm still looking for the stats so i'm looking long so i'm holding longs now i also know that if i can't get through this volume that the it's not so good you know but i'm thinking i have over 90 probability you know these so i you know want to get there where do i go here where is what's that isn't that what we checked before wasn't it too high no i don't know i wish i did and look what happens watch the behavior so now this is retail this is our outside edge this thing is no good anymore because we took it out we're going to take it out of here this is what's called rotational trading this is mean reversion so it's outside in now at this point there's no way to know i mean we're waiting on stats right so there's no way to know what's going to happen this was too low this was too low what do we do this is too high this is rotational trading it's called mean reversion now i'm thinking long so for me it's scaling targets hold you know yes trade management you get taken out where's my last place it was too low here out here it comes out and it holds my level there come out watch outside edge is here 53 so watch too high seller too high seller here's the volume seller volume you know seller volume buyer go back to the volume 53 is my area and i there's no precision buyer mean reversion watch this is your level remember this is this is this is specific context it's called mean reversion and where do we go here is everybody tracking i can move on from here but i want to show you how it changes now nobody knows right here remember this is our target primary target and we're looking for this to get taken out and we're looking for this thing you know and uh you know you know how that works right now changing behavior here we break out of this consolidation this was the outside edge if we fall out that suggests what we'd suspected too high but you don't know now this is maybe too high let's watch it watch we fall out warning will robinson moment where do we pull back here what's that this what's that the outside edge that we fell out of support becomes resistance short and you might here's the thing about it when we fall out and we come back you don't know i wish i did but here's what i see micro structure seller oh it left without me what does it do comes back and checks micro structure retracement location short helmet i'd be stat overnight low next target and we get rolling so this is the next target not a recommendation and and this and this is what i gave you at the top of the stream and of course none of this happened you know it's happening i don't even know that we sold off but the fact is this is trading the auction it's a way to slice and dice the market i'm not saying it's better than anything else or i have no opinion except what works for me and the reason i can do this is i'm not using any indicators and i also accept i don't know what's gonna happen so i'm off the hook on knowing what's gonna happen my job is to try to stay in alignment with the market and when it changes its condition i try to stay in alignment so you'll notice what we had longs to hear looking for statistics and you do notice that the statistics favored the downside versus the upside but i don't the statistics are only one piece of this the short squeeze remember the market goes up to go down and goes down to go up we went down so now we went up and now we went up since the market goes up to go down we got the shorts out the weak ones and now what do we get the sellers are picking up the uh the inflated prices for the trend to continue down that's the logic and that's why i go over these ideas at the top of the stream it's conceptual because we're in a random environment so this was the last short subject to again your trade plan now depending on how you do your thing you could be rocking and rolling in this if it's vetted you could be trading rotations you could be managing your trade with this see the selling here's the high volume there's the seller we stay below here this is resistance notice the test now you know this and this is the target no not a recommendation so you can kind of see what happened here we had the ib stat remember we either take out the first hour higher low nine almost the 98 probability we take out either the overnight high or overnight low 93 probability taking out the previous higher low 85 probability let me take it a little further the previous point of control 70 probability you see the overnight low 66 probability yesterday's low you find it 53 percent you see oh this is left over from the last time we traded down here we haven't been here in a while and this is down below here is a key target eventually and it's not a recommendation this so this is on the hip parade and again it's a ramp these there's no way to know how the participants will price so this might be it or this or wherever is everybody with me we're now current and remember what the purpose of the stream is to help you understand market mechanics that's primary uh market mechanics means understand the condition of the market you notice that we went from long to rotational long to two sided up against here that was a short staying long for mean reversion back in to hit this statistic and maybe go higher failure and it was outside in trading which is called mean reversion leaning long the short was strictly to wipe the stops out and come outside to come back in you see so you could be you could be countertrend if you're let's just say have a statistical edge and maybe more experience and skilled and or you don't you just use this for targeting for exits and then you're going to stay with the perceived trend because when you recognize two sided trade so it's only longs when you come out to the low volume area it was only longs you see when you break below here you turn the barge around and now it's only shorts is that makes sense are you guys with me how we doing in youtube yeah and seven thanks for visiting um well i'm doing something uh that i don't i can't have an opinion on it you know i'm take this is raw market mechanics without indicators and it's really what indicators are built on indicators are built on price and they're they're backwards looking they measure price or some other elements but they're all pretty much derivative of the same thing and it doesn't matter how you slice and dice it and you know like everything it's random so indicators work really good at times when we slap them over a big rotation we think now we're going to do you know it's all going to work out and it kind of works that way if you think about how gamblers operate sometimes you know they bet and they they get a big win but over time the casinos extract the dollars from the gamblers and we're in the same business we are the casino hopefully and not the gambler um most retail traders are just gamblers and that's why they're uh they don't have longevity so what i attempt to do in the trader lives just share my experience and it doesn't mean that i have great experience or anything it's just a lot of time and a lot of mistakes and a lot of dead ends i call it trader groundhog day doing derivatives of defective processes that are random and conflicted uh i had to go in the other direction and it was because i couldn't measure things because if it's a little of this and a little of that and you're making a stew that's not how the casinos operate casinos operate strictly in a disciplined fashion only playing games if you will with a vetted statistical edge they don't change the game they don't change it a little bit they don't mix it up they just do the same thing well that's our business and for the casinos the losses are cost of production and overhead because they have an edge they're not concerned as long as they don't change the game they don't get emotional if somebody walks out with a suitcase with a hundred thousand cash that's cost of production and overhead that's the way it works anyway let's go back to real time so i'm saying is this is a process and all it is it's simple you see i i know myself when i started trading i thought it was really complicated and i guess it is if you don't understand it it's real complicated so i thought the secret lied in the complexity and i just had to find what nobody else found except everybody has done the same thing so maybe the thing to do is not do what they do and not find something secret but find something that you can narrate that becomes simple the tough part is actually taking the trades and doing work knowing where your trade shows up and that you stay out of the market when you don't have an edge the casinos don't play games without edges thank you and they don't make them up as they go they don't get emotional so let's look at this now remember how we were trading outside in and this was retail well we rejected that area now we rotated in here this is retail too high now we're down here this is our outside edge we're under yesterday's low so we can come up in here take stops or let me look a little further right here was the last location it was too high right there so this is an outside edge and these are not trade recommendations this is our targeting don't forget so i'm looking theoretically for this and maybe 4420 fish too high go back a little further so you can see it remember this is the short this was support you see where it is lvn this is the last chance to mean revert it does the opposite it breaks below so now this is the outside edge here is everybody with me can you see why this was a key location is everybody tracking 53 so if this is now rejected it's like the the shoppers say you know what i'm not buying this thing oh it's on sale you can keep it and this is where it changes from the long side or you could have been short remember i'm trading both sides but let's assume you're just playing the long side once this happens it shorts only and that's this right here you can see the line you can see the behavior and here's your micro high volume here's your seller this is questionable here that's the test there's the seller this is the might now this is how you get into the trade and this is where you got to have discipline and patience so right here you would know you want to be short do you sell it here where do you do you sell it here i need to sell it here and i have to have the patience and discipline to wait and it's very hard for us because we're wired you know foam on all that jazz but this is the story so in a fractal too high that's lvn we're under it in the microstructure micro high volume retail seller test short here or i'm back and test short here so short short stop helmet that's the last trade now where's the next one possibly out in here if it shows no no where are we oh yeah here we are not a recommendation let me how that happens watch this is your micro high volume structure this is a potential short not a recommendation just saying let's just see what it might do this is not a trade calling room it can easily come back here so what we're attempting to do here is a dent and this is hard where's the outside edge now yesterday's low the ib low we have a couple trades we have structured trades in the trader lab by the way this is called so what you have right here is this is a potential short and this is a which is structural and this would be called the ib continuation trade which would be up here back here okay so we have two structured trades this is catching the falling knife and mid-air trade and this is the more structured trade in the trader lab which is called the ib continuation trade for me there's no long you up to you me not so much so I know if I come up in here this is an area remember horseshoes and hand grenades so there's retail stops above here I know that remember think like a retail trader don't act like one I know this is micro structure I had my sellers I know this can be a aggressive short and it is aggressive and I also know there's stops here so this is an area so let's observe it and remember where our targets are these are not trade recommendations you know that this is our target and then 20 so you know and don't forget FOMC so all bets are off I don't trade FOMC I trade after it so let's observe are there any questions while we're waiting for this to ferment and by the way if you're in the book map discord trader lab chat this stream will be available and it's always available exclusively to the trader lab participants for at least 24 hours so you can review the stream and see you know kind of line it up with what you were thinking and doing and see if you can create conditional statements the issue for all of us is trying to recognize the current and developing condition of the market and where it might change that's something that is the bigger issue for all of us it was long this morning then it went rotational then it broke apart and it turned short how can you define the changes that is the main obstacle the structured trades there's 60 PDFs you can download and it's available to everyone in the book map trader lab chat of these structured trades so you can reverse engineer those but if you can't align them that's really the bigger problem you know but you're zigging the market's edge now we all take stops we all give run over it's just part of the joy of taking risk and managing risk but what happens where might it happen and where's the probability of an outcome so this is what we want to be watching this is the area outside now remember it can come up here because this was too high or it could just come up in here pick these stops off and if we get exhaustion this is called the id continuation trade so we're going to watch this is a structured area now by the way what is the structure trade their locations and then you look at microstructures for triggers okay because it's all built on the same process where do retail traders keep their stops in here and there's the open also so we want to just see the behavior here and these are not trade recommendations you shouldn't be doing any of this because every trade is random so you know the fact that this is a structured trade doesn't mean anything because we all take stops so the thing to do is let's be looking now we're in a location so let's try to see the behavior and i'll look at your questions while we're waiting for this thing stop the virgins potential triggering structure let's watch okay well you know uh yeah i coca-cola i see what you're saying um you know the i think the learning doesn't come from like what i'm doing right now i'm narrating live yeah i understand but if we can't go back and see process and understand interpretation then i don't think we can put pieces together so that when we come to structures that might have an edge or might not that we can activate we need to know why we might want to get short and where but the why is the most important thing it's not that this might work or not work it is not that you know this is a potential short we know that this is our triggering structure this is our location and we don't know i mean like any trade we put on you know it could do whatever it does it does right and if you're in the trader lab you know what this is right i'm not speaking to you i'm speaking to everyone what is this if you're in the trader lab what do we call this i'd be continuation trade correct and it's available to all you guys in the book map discord trader lab those 60 pdfs that i you know offer to you guys and you don't have to be a book map subscriber you'll never be solicited you can take this and reverse engineer it and its work of course and you need to know where these pieces fit this is the thing that most traders get wrong i think at least what i i'm only going to talk about me but i got wrong because i was kind of like mechanical without any sense of understanding the condition of the market was just like oh i always do such and such at the mid you know like coming down to the mid when we were falling out of the structure i'm not buying the mid but i can assure you many retail traders did because why stops are under the mid now in this context where do retail traders keep their stops here what do i want to see i want to see potential micro structure and exhaustion i have potential exhaustion now all i have in a trade is potential i have nothing more than that but here's what i have you know trade and structured trades are like you know it's like real estate location location location you know isn't a location here's the liquidity here's the potential exhaustion here's the micro structure here's the seller this is my high volume if i come above here i would take a stop and i'm perfectly okay with it now emotionally i'm gonna be annoyed how about you but i have to be okay with it because i'm the house and i'm playing against the gamblers and the gamblers win over time if i have an edge in this setup in this structure over time i extract the dollars from the gamblers not necessarily this time but over a large sample size what's my job now to get risk neutral to buy my stop so that if it comes back up here i scratch that's my first objective what is my probability if i take the structured trade in this context of getting risk neutral before my stop gets taken out that's the first question do you have a positive expectancy if the answer is yes it gives you the courage to put the trade on when it's an alignment accepting that you will take full stops when you don't get scaled that's the reality and you need to get used to it too high seller too high seller microstructure here check seller microstructure here seller is everybody tracking your initial stop is here the distance from your entry subject to how you want to play let's say you got in here this is your stop your distance to get risk neutral you take if you now only talk about two contracts as a primer process to understand risk management risk neutralization and emotional management if you know you have a positive expectancy to enter with a structured trade which we identified before the fact right then and this was another area right this so this was the area right retail trader behavior oh let's put our stop here thank you we want you there so we can fade you now you get risk neutral what's your probability is a positive you open to your trade plan you're waiting for this trade you're not making it up you know where your trade is you anticipate it now what's going to happen flip the coin it's 5050 if i get risk neutral here's what happens first of all the worst that happens is if my stop is here and it comes back and takes me out i scratch and my broker sends me a gift basket or or i take a full stop or i have a trade management process because i have this is my next target you can be operating with a two lot this is how you build out a trade plan you need to understand the condition of the market it changes continually and remember there's no way to know you know where's this thing going i don't know it might just come here might just test this liquidity and here's the other thing you can anticipate if we do come down here you're gonna you can anticipate profit taking scaling ahead of the low why it's normal don't you anticipate that get out ahead yesterday's high take a profit take a scale why profit taking so we might underline get back here and this is the target now here's the other thing to remember right here is retail in this distribution so this was outside stop pick continuation trade this is retail it was too low right here this is too low right here this is retail from the last time we were here and it's the same let me take you back it's the same as that so it's like a bracketing structure so this was too high you know high the day who knows wouldn't you like to know i'm waiting for that as the magic eight ball this is too high from yesterday and this is too low last time we were down here so that's why if this is too high we have the potential to come back and check is this still too low i suspect it is not too low but i don't i'm i can't predict so i target and then if we take it out i got this okay is everybody tracking does this make sense and now in the fractals this is retail so if i can get under here i then i have this and this any questions hope it makes sense um hi joe well the stops i take them you know for me the stop uh i should say the icebergs are kind of incidental unless they're significant so they're not and again it's personal i i think um the way i look at this i and if you come to trader lab by the way there's a primer webinar that i did that i think addresses this in the sense of it's a priority of inputs so if you think about a decision matrix where does the behavior of an iceberg come into all of us this is the chassis because this is the basis of what creates the market the icebergs don't create the market they're in the market right what actually reflects the market is the volume and the price because if you get high volume and the market says no i'm not going to pay that think of it like shopping that's too high when we pause and rotate and we create volume if we leave it it's mispriced now down here is retail we left it when we came up here so we can come back here we can come back here so how does the iceberg fit in all this well for me it's not a primary input when i notice icebergs is when a three thousand go off you know uh you know and i'm not here's 700 down here you know well what am i supposed to do with that information i don't do anything with it only if i see behavior and then it's not all it tells me is that's um a level that's important to those participants does that make sense so i hope that makes some sense joe um i i really try not see one of the things in the trade call it a decision matrix or a process and i'm for me it's process driven because if i start changing pieces around i'm doing what most retail traders do is i'm mixing and i'm flipping around a decision process or hierarchy of inputs so this is my chassis that i build everything on because it's telling me what the participants which is really the basis what the market's all about it's not about indicators it's not even about incidental behavior there's so many different participants active in the market um hfts hedge funds uh market makers calendar spread you name it they're in here algos right everybody we don't know the time frame these guys are operating in you know i don't know i mean right here is this guy selling and then covering here what about this one is he getting long or is he covering a short from some place out see there's no way to know so i have to put that kind of in the back burner because i don't know what it means my truth comes from the participant behavior right here too high too high break volume break too high volume break remember and i'm anticipating potential bouncing around here and where's my volume too low too low all it means is it can rotate off here go a go do whatever this is our short structure trade so the icebergs are not part of us they might be now if i if we come down and i see five thousand icebergs go off then i have a different thought process okay i don't get long because the market can easily go under the that iceberg buying because they're in a different business than us they don't care you know and i can tell you i've worked with guys at run hedge funds you know quants i understand there's different processes and participants so i don't i don't treat these pieces equally because i'm not in that business i certainly notice it and if you study iceberg behavior and one of the streamers scott pulsini who's in the discord book map discord has a channel where i think it's every thursday he um specifically how he uses icebergs and he actually has built process around icebergs now whether or not that would work for you everything you know is different um he trades large swings so for him you know big targets big risk and again large risk or large targets is really relative to account size you know trade management and all that neither here nor there what i'm doing is really i think more structured for retail traders who want to learn how to business the trade again i try to take a global approach to it you know the plan context understanding if if you're in the trader lab you would understand why this is a short and i think that is something that maybe is useful you would also understand why this is a target you would also understand why this that was at the high of the day that i pointed out was also a target i don't think most retail traders have any idea what this is all about because they they have gone down indicator world which is what we all do because we get a software package and we think it's a matter of time frames and indicators alignment and that the indicator translates and i always come back to why do we use indicators well we're looking for translation well if we don't understand market mechanics we're going to let the indicators do the work it's almost like a red light green light process and i'm going to suggest that uh for most retail traders the outcome doing that is not so good that's why the failure rate for retail traders is astronomical to use a very soft firm so i found over time and i'm only talking again about me that i was approaching this like everybody else and then it's logical why should i and why should i think that my outcome will be different am i going to find the needle in the haystack that everybody else has been looking for since technical analysis came out into the retail space i started 1980 and i can tell you i've done a lot of looking under the hood for you know for the quote secret sauce you know for me i never found it and that's it i'm telling you and i'm talking in depth and not just the regular stuff but system design and the rest of it i was a money manager so i'm going to tell you i've done there done that and and you know i've done a lot of things in trading and the learning curve is horrendous because i didn't certainly didn't understand market mechanics i thought market mechanics was indicator based you see it's not the case it's participant based so we use indicators to try to translate that's really what an indicator is all i'm doing is using the participant behavior to translate i don't have an indicator i have volume and price because it reveals shopping and if you remove all the mystery of trading what is it what's too high what's too low and if we can come out to a price at a location that is vetted and we get a structure in micro so i can enter and put my stop behind it i now have a structure that i can manage my risk with then if i vetted and i'm in alignment and i've a vetted trade plan what's my probability of getting a scale so i can now have the risk neutral before taking a full stop is it positive well if it's a positive expectancy it means over time i'm going to probably scale more often than i take a stop i'll take stops of course i do who doesn't but if i have a better chance of getting the risk neutral remember i said we didn't anticipate a reaction here why retail trader behavior and you got this but where's our target here and then right is everybody tracking let me show you what these pdfs look like guys and i appreciate you visit the trading lab today you know it's fomc you know so you got to wear a helmet i don't trade fomc i trade after fomc and whenever doesn't matter but i also risk management is job number one so these are available these are structured trades that i refer to here and they were i'm not a vendor there's no trading course i don't there's nothing to sell it's all free you don't have to be a book map subscriber you won't be solicited you know so here's why you know and some of this you know these were done haphazardly these were done before i ever started you know book map asked me if i would stream these go back to 2020 you know i mean they're just things i tossed tossed out here october 2020 you know illustration you know anyway it'll give you some ideas about the auction how it works here's the ibf setup this is a countertrend trade which is not you know appropriate in this configuration today but you're all welcome to that and there's a link in the bottom of youtube that says visit the discord chat um you don't have to be a book map subscriber now ever never you won't be solicited you could download the 60 pdfs and there's something else there's a library of webinars in there that i've done over the past year i guess some of them up to four hours long and i do get requests for real-time narration those are real-time narration um and you just have to strap yourself in you know have a pizza delivered and uh maybe a cocktail it might be helpful and you'll have those trend configurations uh and then transitions when you go like for example how do you trade a day like today well it was long and then it's outside and trading that's what we were doing that's called mean reversion that's a context in the context if you and most of us don't understand how to operate inside and yesterday was the opposite downtrend and then mean reversion outside from the top down and our target extended target was 50 on the downside and i that was at the end of yesterday's stream we got the 47 remember there's no precision in any of this and right now what was the target ahead of the low why retail trader behavior and then what you're holding for 38 or you're done with the trade subject to your trade management this is as complicated as this is as long as you accept that it's random hope you got something out of this come visit the trader lab if you got something out of this in youtube and i hope you get something from the time we visit together and i appreciate you coming by um please give a thumb up and visit the trader lab download the 60 PDFs it's a community of like-minded traders looking to leverage their collective experience we've all done the same stuff we all think we're unique but i have to tell you we're really the same the difference is if you're waking up in trader groundhog day doing derivatives of a process that doesn't work so you try different things which we all have and it doesn't work and you're experiencing trader groundhog day why would you keep doing it i mean it's just a question i certainly spent years doing it i wish i could get that time back but i there was no computers there was no streaming there was no internet when i started trading so it was a different time a different world no volume no domes nada i think and no computers we had dumb terminals when i started so i'm just saying you know i had a horrendous learning curve and uh it was very painful and it was expensive but over time i started eliminating what didn't work after i figured out i was only replicating a process that was defective and i didn't know that so i kept doing the derivatives of a defective process and most retail traders i suspect are doing the same thing and that's why i call it trader groundhog day so let's remember this was our short risk neutral stop here potential trade management up to you you have to vet it know what over time gives you next target and if things get absolutely nasty next target there not a recommendation follow a trade plan if you don't have a plan visit the trader lab if you're not getting the results that you want you might be able to pick up some ideas from trader lab there's no right way to trade but if you can't measure it i'm going to suggest that's not the right way to trade thanks again guys have a great day fomc so mind your risk be patient there's always another bus coming by thanks again thumb up please and youtube and i'll see you guys tomorrow