 Good morning, traders. Welcome to the Traders Lab. I'm your host, Tom B. Can I get a check on screen and audio, discord, and YouTube. Thanks. Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Peter. Thank you, Stan. Good morning. I'm your host, Tom B. Thanks for visiting the Traders Lab today. I stream live Monday through Friday, 1130 to 1 p. Eastern Standard Time. This stream is specifically about integrating book map order flow tools with auction market theory that's actually participant behavior, the valuation of the market, and how the market behaves based on participant behavior, using a tool called the volume profile in the intraday developing time frame. It is specifically about market mechanics, how you might get aligned with the market at times, and the process here is based on structured trades that are available to everyone in the Bookmap Discord Trader Lab chat as well as a library of webinars that you can kind of get an idea of market mechanics and how the market tends to operate at times. In addition, we also discuss the business side of trading. And most retail traders, I suspect based on my experience interacting with retail traders over a long period of time, is that they misunderstand what this business really is. And that is the other side of the Bookmap Discord Trader Lab is to put the pieces together, not only market mechanics, structured trades, but also understanding that this is a business and not a video game and not slam an indicator over a rotation and think now that you are in the business of trading. Unfortunately, you are really intentionally in the business of gambling. And the business side of trading is really about vetting a statistical edge and interacting with the market, which is a random event in the sense of what it might do based on the different participants that interact in different time frames and different modalities. It's random. So since we have no control over the random behavior of the participants in the market at any specific time, we need to have control over ourselves and interact with the market when we have a statistical edge. It is over the random distribution of outcomes that this edge shows up. And the actual comparison always comes back to Las Vegas, the house versus the gamblers. The house plays a vetted statistical edge in the games they play. The gamblers are random. Also the cards are random. But it's because of all the randomness, which is the same as what we face and using a statistical edge that has been vetted, which is what we do in the bookmap discord trader lab chat, making a business out of this. So you might have the opportunity to become a career trader versus a statistic. And of course, your mileage may vary. And this is just an idea and an overview of what we do in the trader lab. I hope you get something out of this. General disclosure all bookmap limited materials information and presentations are for educational purposes only and should not be considered specific investment advice or recommendations. Live trading is in simulation demo paper trading mode and strictly for educational purposes. Live trading executed in simulation cannot actually represent realistic trading performance. Also, go grab a pen and a piece of paper. I follow the exact same process every day. I'm going to give you some metrics, some numbers, some things that you might be able to use to see how pieces are put together in the attempt to vet and a trade plan using statistics to try to give you an additional edge over random behaviors risk disclosure trading futures equities and digital currencies involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors and investor can potentially lose all or more than the initial investment. Risk capital is money that can be lost without jeopardizing one's financial security or lifestyle only risk capital should be used for trading and only those with sufficient risk capital should consider trading past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. And just so you guys know, I appreciate your patience yesterday with the stream. I had substantial technical problems. I suspect most of it is resolved, but potentially not. So do my best. So can somebody confirm that yesterday's value area low is 4975? That's where I'm currently having an issue. I want to make sure we got something value area low. Anybody else? Can somebody else please post a number? Okay, thank you. Bernard, what software are you using to come up with those numbers? 49, 49 half. Okay, great. Thanks guys. All right. Make sure if you're using a software product that it is accurate, it is important. Just saying. Okay, guys, let's think about this a second. I posted in the bookmap discord trade a lab chat. I think it was yesterday or this morning, you know, things, things get a little murky, but we had three neutral days in a row. A neutral day means that both the first hour high and first hour low were taken out. It also means the markets in balance. And that's why those days can be difficult to trade. If you have a problem or challenges and it was difficult, it's because it's chop and balance. Balance basically means two sided trade. And the market really had no new input to change its valuation. And remember the purpose of the market and write this down is to discover what is the thing worth? What is an ES worth? And the market rotates back and forth based on the participants interaction. So rotations, trying to figure out where these outside edges is. And in a neutral day, basically it's sloshing over both sides. And what tends to happen on these neutral days, unless it goes extreme and leaves that balance area, they tend to come back inside. And basically it stops and squeezes on both sides. Basically balance is a consolidation. So when you look at these RTH days, even if there's a WIC or whatever the heck there is on it, if it's taken out both sides and it comes back inside, pretty much it's two sides. And there hasn't been a change in valuation other than checking and taking stops on both edges. Now the other part of this is, and write this down, this, that context where you take out first hour high, first hour low, the statistics, here's some statistics. And again, you have to vet anything you hear, pass performance, not necessarily addictive future results. And any kind of statistic is something we call ballpark. No precision in the market. It's all random, but it's like horseshoes and hand grenades. So there's about a 29%, 27% ish probability we'll get two neutral days in a row. We had three neutral days in a row, which is a very low probability. I don't have a stat for it, but it might be 12% or I mean, I don't know 8%. I don't remember. But I'm saying the probability of three is really low with that. And here's the other element. And you guys, please write this down if you find this, if you're interested in this, what is on both sides of these balances stops different timeframe participants stops swing trader stops, they're at outside edges. And some depending on the frack of their timeframe they trade in or further outside. Well, when we break out, it's a breakout of a three day consolidation pretty much or at least a two day consolidation, the last two days or three, depending how you look at it. And that being the case, who's ever offside becomes fuel. So that's why I posted the probability of a breakout was coming. Now one day don't know, but we know we had key report this morning. And that was your catalyst. So let's go from there's everybody tracking. Yeah, big cap 46 five is not yesterday's value very low, at least based on IRT, which is probably one of the most accurate software products for getting levels. So if you're not using a highly accurate product, and I'm not saying you're not, I'm just saying is you might want to always check your levels against someone else just to be sure. And you can do that. Yeah, Ninja. Okay. Well, you know, if you're in the book map discord trader lab chat, always put your levels out there to get them confirmed, because it becomes, they're very important. So let's take a look at some stats. Now, we opened two ticks out of yesterday's range here yesterday. So now in theory, I'm going to give you this is lower outside of range. So statistically, it lowers the probabilities of getting, for example, to the overnight mid. Now this is going to be a little confusing. And I'm not going to spend much time on it. In this condition, based on two ticks below yesterday's low, you'd be looking at a 68% probability of getting here. Okay. However, if we opened in range, in other words, two ticks, three tick difference, the probability becomes 83%. How do we reconcile 68% versus 83%, right? So for me, I'm basically looking at both. But here's something else to write down guys, and I'll get right into the developing, you know, what's going on here. Write this down. How do you prioritize your inputs? And for me, and I'm just saying me, and not saying it's right, it's this, in other words, the actual distribution of participant behavior, it's represented, so you know, in the session, in the volume profile, remember, it's price and volume. And this all resets at RTH open, which is 830 central time. So then it's how do the participants behave starting at the open? If they head down, fine. But if I see them going north, I'm going to look at my stats that are closest, just saying. So let's go take a look. Let me make sure I've got 830. There you go. So this is our RTH open. Is everybody with me so far? I hope you wrote that down. Remember, there's a big cap. If you're locked out, you know, send a, let me know what your name was in Discord, maybe I can help resolve that. Okay. Okay. I'm not familiar. I'll see if I can do something for you on that. I don't know what the story is. So let's get back here. All right. RTH open. Yesterday's low. Overnight volume point of control. Let me give you a stat on that. And again, clueless 83%, depending which way you lean, 83% for the overnight mid. And again, these stats are skewed a bit. So I, when I'm looking at this, I'm thinking both stats, only because it's a two tick difference between which stat are you going to look at. So my thing, and again, remember my priority of inputs is the participant behavior. The statistics are secondary. I'm going with the prior, the primary input is what do the participants do, not what the stats says. So let's take a look. And I'm going to show you the first trader lab structured trade. And what we do in the stream here is I review trader lab structured trades. These are available to everyone in the bookmap discord trader lab chat. There's 60 PDFs of these that you can download and ponder and then see if you can relate to it. It's not for everybody. It's just a piece. Okay. So here's our open. Now there's something else we often consider. If we have a gap, we anticipate something else, write this down. If we have a gap, we can anticipate since the market yesterday was took out the previous days high, which takes out shorts. The market, write this, there's two things. The market goes up to go down. The market goes down to go up and that's based on fuel or stops. The other piece of this is remember three days in a row of neutral day, which means balance and compression and a coil. If you guys know what a coil is, think spring energy to be released and then responsive buying. If anyone is hanging out short, you get a gap lower. What might you do? You might buy and cover, right? Take some profits. So that's, those are responders. So we'd be looking for a couple of possibilities on an open like this. One would be gap and go. In other words, gap and they drop the anvil on it. And we go south of the border, which would tell me the lower side stats or responsive buying. And then if the boat suggests north, then these stats because they're closer. I hope that makes sense. And again, this is, you know, there's no black and white. It's only maybe, but I always think and write this down, anticipate what might happen and basically be ready. So you would come in today based on the open and based on the gap for the potential to gap and go south of the border. Everybody runs for the exit. It's horrible. We're out of here or responsive buying and what does the first behavior that the participants give you on the open? That's what sets this up. And I know it's a lengthy explanation, but this is in my opinion, one way to or at least view the behavior. So RTH open, let's look. This is minutia. And I always suggest in the trader lab that this is the last place you might want to operate because of speed. But it, but you need to be always write this down, narrating. If this, then that. If not, then what? If this, then that. If not, then what? Open. This is the develop. Now this is minutia, guys. Developing volume point of control. This is where your retail is. It shifts up. This is suggesting this is too low. This is now retail. And you could see it here. This is why what the volume profile is showing us is the volume and price, not vertically. Horizontally, because we want to know what the participants think about price. This in the micro structure right at the open is too low. There's your yellow line. It moves up because there's more volume. It's very logical. This is retail too low. Watch. V pock moves up too low. This is a potential long V WAP. Are you guys with me and mid so mid V up alignment potential long. This is too low. I label it. I call it a very, and I'm going through minutia, because this is how I'm reading the open and the first structured trade in the trader lab. And there's another piece here to order flow. Let me show you that. This is how you use book that to start putting pieces together. So we're using a combination of tools. Right here, liquidity. Market opens. We have buyers green bubbles. That's your delta. Also, we're anticipating the potential underline of responsive buying liquidity comes into the book. Volume point and control moves higher. Volume point and control moves higher. And you have this coming under you. Okay. Potential long. This was too low. Market has the potential to come back and check it. Let's see what we do. Didn't do it. That's okay. So too low. Right here. Too low. Retail. Check of the mid V WAP. And we know this is too low. And we know now this is too low. So let's watch it. And since we're up north of the border, price check right here. This is a variable high volume node, right? It was too low. Watch. This is narrative based on using the volume and price. So we can try to organize it because the market, this is a language of the market. And what the market does, if you can try it speaks. Now what it's going to do, I mean, it might say something to you that you don't want to hear, but basically we are observing participant behavior too low, too low, too low, too low, too high. We don't know. Liquidity is in the book. This is how you use book map. This was too low. Pick the stops at the mid in the V WAP. Do you put your stop right under the mid? How's that working out for you? That's typical retail trader behavior. Write this down. Think like a retail trader. Don't act like one. Where's the stops? 38 stops coming out. Thanks for playing. What's 49? I'm sorry. I've seen something at 49. What is that? One second, guys. Okay. So my level is correct. Is that right? Okay. Thanks, DNT. Okay. So since we have the buyers and we see the test too low in the trader lab, so you guys understand, we have a couple of ways to enter this. Remember here, this says north. This says north. If we rotate down under here, this is how you can narrate too high, break below it, test. If you don't clear it, potential to come wherever. This was too low. Observe the alignment. Observe the liquidity and observe retail trader behavior. Stopped out if their stops are here. Or here's the or. Or structured trade in the trader lab to get long here. And this is the target. So let's watch this target. Again, clueless. However, in the trader lab, we talk about two ticks ahead. So you'd be out. And then you get this, right? Like, wow. So all of a sudden, things change if you might have noticed. The right here is a structured trade in the trader lab long, playing statistics. And this is based on the context. You can see the continuity. This is called VPOC migration. This is the test of the volume. This is the mid. Thanks for playing. Get the stops. No fall through iceberg buying. You see the icebergs on the other side. Important to note. Why are they getting long? It's not a buy signal because you got sellers up here. It is based on volume. Remember, priority of inputs, it can be very confusing if you're just randomly picking an input. Oh, I saw an iceberg seller. That's not a reason. What's their timeframe? What member I said at the top of the stream? What is the agenda of the different participants in the market? They're all operating with different objectives, different metrics, different everything. Well, this iceberg 270, 270. Do we notice something symmetrical here? Buying 270, selling 270. Is that a reason for you to do anything? I'm going to suggest, maybe not. Different agenda. So inputs are random, you see. So is everybody tracking? How about you two? Are you with me? Is this useful? So, we got our statistic. Again, I don't know which side given the gap, but responsive buying is often what we see. Remember, responders. This had a high probability from the long side. Now, here's the other piece. If we kept going, this was the next target. And as they say, no bueno. And the other part of it is no way to know. So what do you do? You know what you do? You follow your trade plan. That's all you do because there's nothing else you can do, assuming you want to be a professional trader with a career. There's nothing else you can do except have a trade management process if you had a runner beyond this. Now, in the trader lab, I keep it kind of, it's not, I don't want to use the term basic, but let's say primary. Primary means running a minimum two-lot configuration and you have to vet this idea so that the first contract, wherever you get in, the job of the first contract is to get you risk neutral. In other words, buy the stop where this would fail. You could leave your stop under here. You get this test. If you didn't get long, you would get long here because you have this, and then you would scale and go for the target. Or your long here, you would scale, stop could be under here, test here, go for the target. If there was more range, and this is subject to how you do risk reward, you've all heard of that. This is an ad. If you have range to get risk neutral, because if you would initiate here, if you didn't get here, why wouldn't, if you were already long and risk neutral, why wouldn't you add? The worst that would happen is if it came down here, you would probably scratch if it came under here. You see, I'm not, I'm saying you have to vet that, but the process would be to your next target. And again, range. You don't have range. This trade would not be qualified. I'm hanging out with you guys here because this is a structured trader lab trade. And even this is an ad or an initiative trade. If you have range to target to get risk neutral, and then your extended target is up above, is everybody with me? Just want to make sure. Hector, I think I just answered your question on where I would exit. This is your target. So if you add it in here, you need to get scaled before here because this is your obstacle. And then if we break through it, then here, and if not your, you know, you pack up your, your suitcase and you leave. Hector, is that answer for you? Okay. Everybody in YouTube, how you doing? Are we conscious? Are you getting something out of this? Or is this, is the minutiae helpful at the top of the stream? Because I can skip this. You know, I just don't know. So you guys can give me some feedback, you know? Okay. So this was our stat. Now let's go on. Watch. Once we fall out of here and take out the opening swing low, it's a River D'Archi Roma. In other words, what happened? That's life in the fast lane. So let me show you. This is a variable high volume node. It was too low. This is a variable high volume node. This area, it was too low. This is the overnight volume point of control, which is the same as this. This is developing structure in our developing time frame. This is the ETH volume point of control. And what a volume point of control is, is retail. So highest volume, that's all it means. Point of control to market profile term. And it meant where the market spent most of its time, which meant where most of the volume is. And that was before we had volume. We had time only, back in the day. And also unbalanced volume was the proxy we used for volume, which was based on ticks, if you remember that. That's what I used when I started in 1982. But now we have volume. So we know the highest volume. Think of volume like shoppers. What's retail? So when we are criss-crossing this level in the ETH, this is where the high volume was in the developing. This is the developing high volume. It moves around. So, and this is the highest volume as it moves. So as this moves, I label them, I keep track of them. So this was too low, too low. Now, here's the interesting thing. Support and resistance, one on one. What is too high? Too high, because we fell out of it. Too high, too high, too high. Pull back. Yesterday's low. What do you think? Might it be a short on the retracement? Let's see. Is everybody with me? Into the levels. Into the levels. Into yesterday's low. Test in yesterday's range. If we can't regain it, then south of the border. Everybody tracking. Great five. Hope you guys get something out of this. What I am doing is I have no indicators. What I do, and it's just one way to slice and dice it, you know, there's no right way. I found that indicators didn't work for me because they create a conflict. So I got rid of them and it wasn't easy. It's like a security blanket. And I found my nature being risk adverse was to add more indicators to try to squeeze risk out. Now, this is in the early days when I started, early 1980s. Okay. So, indicators were kind of new. Wells Wilder, you know, we didn't have the software for it. And I got something called the TQ 2020. It was CQG's first iteration, I think. And it had, oh, you know, things, Wells Wilder mostly ADX, DMI, you know, and then I worked with George Lane, who created stochastics. I shared an office with him. And that was kind of the pretty much the godfather of oscillators, or as you guys think of a MACD, CCIs, you know, all that. So I thought the holy grail showed up. So I'm telling you, I went down that rabbit hole and built trading systems that were all math based and backwards looking. So it took me a while to get away from that because I actually believed, why would they have all those indicators in here? They must be useful. And yeah, they're useful, you know, but inconsistent. So anyway, I'm just talking a little bit about me. I'm not saying it's right. So back here, location, think of trading like real estate, location, location, location. When we rejected this area up here, it is saying too high. Right there. Too high, too high, too high. Here, now I'm going to take you into minutiae and show you a trigger for a short. Also, what did we have here? Remember, this is the mid, this is the VWAP retail trader behavior. Remember, what did we do when we were getting long? Wanted the stops to come out. Think like a retail trader, don't act like one. What about coming the other way? Stops come out 77. Well, now here's how I use to stop an iceberg detector. It's just one way. It's the only thing I have now that I keep from indicator world. And it's called divergence. Now, this is based on tags from the CME. You know, when you put an order in, they got to know, is it a limit order? Is it a market order? Is it a stop? Right? Well, they have a tag. So they know what it is. Well, rhythmic data and the data that we can get from the CME shows us the tags. So coming up here above the VWAP in the mid, you see the Delta, the green bubbles are Delta. Buy stops become market orders, right? Those are your buy stops. 138. Thanks for playing. We'll send you a parting gift. Now, right here, in alignment, remember, alignment, we're looking for exhaustion. Let me show you now a trigger. And guys, this, if you're in the Bookmap Discord Trader Lab chat, I suggest you go back and watch this. It's, remember, it's only available if you're to you for review for 24 hours if you're in the Bookmap Trader Lab in the chat. So screenshot. This is how you put a trade plan together and you develop the ability to translate, read the participant behavior and anticipate it. Right here, so 138. Five, potential exhaustion. Up here, watch, only seven. Now here, I see this and I'm thinking, well, there's a lot of stops. This might be a selling structure. We come back here. I'm looking for a short here and here against this micro structure. Breakdown sellers. We come back. This is the high volume in the micro structure. Let me show it to you. Once again, I know I'm doing minutiae, but you might get something out of this. Let me open it up again. So right here, this is how I use Bookmap, among other things. Here's high volume. Here's alignment. Here's alignment. Watch. 138 stops. Thanks for playing. High volume. This is the same as this, as that, and that, except this is a fractal. So this is, think about participant behavior. And I think of this like shopping. This is like Saturday night, the convenience store. There's not a lot of buyers and sellers in it. And yet there's a retail price. And that retail price might be high relative to the actual full day developing timeframe retail price, which is here. So we know this is too high because we fell away. And again, this, this, right? Everybody with me. So here we have shoppers. This is your convenience store. Remember, there's a retail price. And if it's too high, the participants will leave the store and travel back to the next higher fractal. So let's watch. Let's see the trigger. This is a triggering structure. Seller, seller, micro high volume, right there above the arrow, right there and location. So you got what's called consulates. Let's watch it. So here we get buyers again, and we come back to check the volume right here. So you would be short here, would have stopped over here. Or when we come back here, watch your stop would not be taken out here. You can, you know, this is assuming you put it here. I don't put it there. I'll give it a tick or two ticks. Remember, I'm risk adverse and I'm below my levels seller. So you have here, short, here, short, break against here, short against here, short. These are all shorts. Watch. Pull back to the micro structure. There is your volume. Short. Watch. Target. Too high. Let's go back to the next fractal. Retail. Watch. Watch. Pull back where? Mid VWOP. There's more. Too high. Break. Volume. Too high. Break. Check. Back to here. Different location. Higher fractal. More risk potentially. Are you guys with me? Can you see how this works? Remember guys, this is all based on structured trades available to everybody in the Bookmap Discord Trader Lab chat. So I don't do real time until I get into it, you know? So if I do, then we're there. We'll do it, as you guys know, if you've been following the stream. Back to the mid. Let's see. So the idea here is to get risk neutral here, because it's micro structure, fractal, retail, too high back to retail next time frame, developing time frame up. All I do is move back and forth in structure. Now we have another stat. We have a couple, actually. We have the overnight low stat, wherever that is. Let's see here. So this is our next structured stat. And the overnight low, let me give you this stat on there. Remember, you got to vet these. It's about 66% probability, depending, you know, which way you're leaning. And, you know, there's a little mixed bag here on the overnight. So because we opened like three ticks at a range. But since we're going down, it's about a 70% probability or 66%. And I'll clarify, I'm not going to go into it top of the stream. I talked about what the condondrum was with the stats. So now we broke out of the upper distribution. This puts this on here. And since I know we're broke out of a consolidation, remember the context that we came into, there's a lot of energy under us. So the potential to, as they say, do the Acapulco cliff dive. In a higher timeframe, this area was retail going up to an intermediate timeframe. Remember, fractal. But this, because the more recent auction was ETH, so this is the ETH low. This is our next target. So if you took the short, you'd be scaling here, you'd be using counter rotations for management. You might add at the test of the mid, not saying, right here, this pull back to this. So watch this too low, break below, potentially too high. Let's just see what it does target. All right, is everybody tracking? These are structured trades in the trader lab. Just hope you get something out of this guys. Let's watch. This is an intermediate timeframe high volume. It's the same as the overnight volume point of control. It's the same as these micro structures. It's the same as the variable high volume nodes, but it's a higher timeframe fractal. I trade fractals, the way to think about this. So you can kind of orient yourself and think about, well, what's it saying? Remember, this is language. The market participants are speaking to us. We're not waiting for an indicator to tell us, is it going up or down? Is my moving average? Is it crossing? What about my oscillator? Oh, my envelope? Oh, my Fibonacci, please. Been there, done that. Not saying it doesn't work. I'm saying it doesn't work for me. And if it's not working for you, I'm going to suggest you have a meeting with yourself and think about it. So this is too high in the intermediate timeframe. We pull back and check it. It's the same as pulling back and checking this same behavior. Too high. We pull back to the overnight low. Let's see what happens next south of the border volume. Watch here. Now let me try to explain what's going on here. I trade and I look at this can certainly be confusing. You are not the only one if you are confused. What creates confusion is when the market changes behavior from this to this. This is called context. And you can read about this in the Bookmap Discord Trader Lab chat. It's a very important piece because when the behavior changes, it does it in multiple timeframes and fractals. So this is the bullet train range expansion, right? Getting our stat. Okay. Thank you. This is all important. But now we chop here. Let me tell you what that means. It means and we don't know how far back it will come. Remember, we don't know anything. I'm in the I don't know crowd. I don't know about you. This now changes. This is called the low volume area. And what creates volume is chop, you know, auction too high, too low, too high, too low, too high, too low, you know, what is going on and high volume. These are structures we can work with. When this happens, there's no chop. So it's not auction. This it's represented by this out here. You'll notice when we fell out of what was above us, we ripped, we started a new auction down here. In other words, what's too high, what's too low, and that's consolidation. That's what these things are. Well, at the outside edge of consolidation or stops. Now where, how, how far that's the joy of trading. But we know this, which was created by this can be checked. We don't know where. So that's the fun. So this is a different context. Let's talk about it. We fell out of the higher timeframe balance the last three days, right? We've broken out, sellers are on the hook. I should say the longs are on the hook and the sellers have taken control. Shorts are coming in the market. And if we counter rotate, there's going to be buy stops above us. That's what I know. Other than that, I don't know. Here's the outside edge that was an auction. Now we can come back outside somewhere. And this is now called mean reversion. We're in a down call it a on the developing daily timeframe of downtrend. Do we agree we're going down? The next part is if we rotate, it becomes something called mean reversion. What it means is, means down developing timeframe rotation up to get short for this. It's the same. Let me show you what it is. But you know what it is that we're doing. It's the same as this outside in, except we're doing it here outside in to here. Okay. Is everybody tracking? Is this makes sense? Maybe. So that was a short, right? Scale. Look. Break. Potential trader lab short. Watch. Overnight low, wherever that thing is. I think I missed it. I think it was out further somewhere. I'm getting confused, but you get the idea, right back here. Chest too high, short scale. Now you come out here, wherever it is. Let me make sure I'm in the right place. I want to stay current. I might have gotten out of whack overnight low here. Okay. This shifts down. This is retail. What's above us is too high. I got to label this. Now I'm getting caught up. Okay. Variable high volume. No. Now I'm going to be caught up and we can continue. Sorry about that. But when I scroll back, you know, get lost. Okay. So this is retail appears too high. We're following the auction. We had the bullet train. It left this outside edge. If we go into rotation, which is where, guess we didn't do it there. I don't remember. Is it here? Guys, I lost my place. I'm not going to spend time. I want to take you to the next trade because I can, I don't want to waste our time with that. I think I explained it. Now this, we fell out of this distribution. This is retail in the developing timeframe, but the market is moving away from it. It is saying at the moment again, at the moment that this is too high. This is the first hour low RTH. So first hour of RTH and we have a statistic. You'll like this. Taking out either the first hour high or low is around 98% probability. Past performance, not indicative future results. Of course. So if we know we're going south of the border, we know everything that I've already mentioned about context, then the possibility is at 930, let me make sure I've got this right. So I'm not out of whack here. 930. Okay. See my timing is a little out of whack. 930 is the first hour. Now I'm back in the game. And here's where it's located here. So here we break it exactly at 930. That's called the IB extension. And there's the stat. So if we break it 98% probability, if we pull back to it, let me show you what it looked like at the time. I'm going to show you how this works. So this, once you break through, so if you were short, now don't forget this was a target. But here we have high volume. This is another potential short. We tested the, and it doesn't have to be. Look what we did. This is retail in an intermediate timeframe. This is the outside edge. This is a potential short for the 98% probability scale and then lower and lower to where this is the next target for me. Let's watch. Next target. Now the next, so now we have the IB extension, everything else. We broke the IB low, which was over 98% probability. Now we're looking for something called the IB continuation trade. Let me show it to you. This was high volume, micro structure. This is a potential short if it's in your trade plan. If you're done at the overnight low, get breakfast delivered and have a cup of coffee. It's all up to you. This is, again, in the intermediate timeframe, retail next level up fractal. So outside edge alignment, this and then wherever. We don't know where wherever is because this is trading. So let's look at the next structured trade. 930. We come back inside. This sets up a potential continuation trade against this volume, this volume. Now let me explain why you would not take this trade. Here it comes back. Now I can understand you might be looking to sell this, but let's look at why not potentially. So we come back to the IB. We only one ticket. So far, this is qualifying as a potential short. We break down, we pull back. The volume is here. You could, I'm trying to remember this. Actually, I took a short here so don't feel bad now that I'm thinking about it. Stop here. And I'm thinking, okay, now continuation, not so much out there. See, it happens to all of us next layer of volume here. Watch, pull back here. I'm still looking for a short, but I see this right here. I get the buying and I'm confused. Watch confused. Now VWOP is up here. The volume point of control shifts saying what's above me is too high, but I also know something. I know there stops at the VWOP and I know there stops at the mid. The VWOP is up here and so is the mid and this was too high. Now if you, and we're coming out to an outside edge. So there's a few ways to think about this. It's either mean reversion back to here, one way to play it. The other way to play this is let the stops get taken VWOP and mid, which was here. And again, subject to your plan. Watch. Let's look. Needless to say, I did not trade this. Because I'm here with you guys. Let's look at this. There's no way I can operate here. I have nothing to do. In other words, there's no entry for me. If you can, that's great. I can't because I need structure and location. To me, this is random. And I think this is what we call the bomber. There's been an actor in here. And here's what is the selling iceberg? Let me see if I can see what this is here. Selling iceberg, almost 2000 icebergs got dropped here. You can kind of see 135 went out here. Almost 2000 dropped here. That's like somebody dropping a anvil on the market. Okay. Are you guys with me? So this right here is our actor that's been disrupting the market. And we call him the bomber, you know, because he bombs our trades and there's nothing you can do. Remember randomness, right? So this is retail. This would be a target if we had a short, which not really, you know, so let's watch the behavior. And maybe we'll get into real time here. I really can't tell. Where are we this? So this is an anomaly. Okay. Here's this. Let's go back. What do we have? This is the volume point of control. This up here is too high. Here we go. So now we're back below the initial balance. This sets up our IB continuation trade here. Watch same trade. Remember the one that got run over? This is this is the real world. You know, so we come down too high. And, you know, it looks like south of the border. Where is our next trade? It's here. Now, let me show it to you. So here, let me take you back to what it looked like at the time. So this is retail. This is too high. One of the ways to think about this is the market auctions too low, too high. Remember retail in all timeframes and fractals. This once we fall and we come up here and we get the mad bomber and okay, nothing to do with this. But this is now too high, not tradable just the way it is life in the fast line. Remember, if you're a professional trader, your job is to wait for your vetted trades, not to make it up in the middle and not to respond the FOMO to wait just like Las Vegas. They play the game exactly the same way. So they can extract their edge. They don't make it up. They don't change the game. If if a gambler walks out with a suitcase of cash, it's cost of production and overhead. That's the business of trading. If you're doing if you deviate from the way Vegas plays their vetted edge, then you're you're on the wrong side of the table. In my opinion, you're now the gambler. And over time, the house extracts the dollars from the gamblers. You have to decide which side of the table you want to sit on. That's what the trader labs about. So nada, no bueno. Now what? Too high. Distribution. Breakdown. So watch. Okay, too high. Next trade. Watch. So now we start putting volume in here. This is becomes a distribution. And at the moment, while this is retail, it might underline be too high. And we're moving down. You can see what we're doing. We're moving lower, balancing, breaking too high. Then we auction in here. Break to potentially too high. We can always come back. We can do anything. Write that down. Markets random. Who knows. So it's not your job to know, not your job to do anything that follow a vetted trade plan. The reason that it's not your job to know is you can't. Outside edge, IB. This is the same thing I showed you earlier. It's called the IB continuation trade. It's a structured trade in the trader lab. And again, it's in it's part of those 60 PDFs. If you have any interest in these. So this is your short, right here, high volume, right here, volume, break, check, break. Stop has to go above here, above the IB. And since you have low volume, remember it can get picked. You need to be above the IB a little bit. And of course, you can, you know, you have to think about logic. Write this down. If you, if you didn't get this before, think like a retail trader. Don't act like one. You don't want to do what they do. So don't use a shoehorn here. You could get taken out by one pick. So volume, break, pullback, short, stop above here, break, check, too high, break sellers. And then off you go. Where she goes, nobody knows. Where is she? There she is. I don't mean not a she, but you know, so let's talk trade management now. Is everybody with me? This is the IB continuation structure trade. Everybody there? Are you with me? This useful guys, you know, I don't want to waste your time if you're not getting something out of this, you know, and if you're getting something out of this, hopefully you'll give me a thumb up in YouTube. We like the thumb. So this is the next structure trade this. And now let's talk a little bit about using book map too. Because I, you got to use all the tools and all of these are pieces. To me, and it's just my personal opinion, you got to overlay the market on a chassis. In other words, a sequencer priority of inputs. How do you sort it out? In other words, this happening, these icebergs and all, how does that fit into the picture? Well, maybe you prioritize your inputs. I use a top down, bottom up approach in all of it. From higher timeframe fractals to developing timeframe, what, and it's all based. Remember volume and prices participant base. It's not indicator base. It's like, what's happening now? You know, what's happening here? I want to know what happened here. And I can read this. I can't do that with my indicator because my indicators backwards looking by the time I get short, if I'm using this structure for short, where's my indicator going to get me short here? I don't know. Do I want to be short here with a stop up here? No, I want to be short in here with a stop over here. That's what I want. Why? I'm protecting my account better. I'm entering better. And based on the minimum two lock configuration we discuss in the trader lab, if I can get risk neutral, I can keep my stop back here and not micromanage it. You see, that gives me the opportunity to get to targets. And then the other pieces, how do you manage the trade, right? And that's another piece that you need to vet. Okay. Is that useful? So let's look at this. Where do we come back here? Now, is there a structure here? Let's go take a look. We had our sellers here. So we know those guys definitely like being short. We know in the microstructure, or let me show you the volume, this area with this volume, remember what it says? I'm not paying that. I'm shopping elsewhere. Too high. High volume. There. See the alignment? Microstructure. Remember, this is only showing me the volume that's right here on the chart. So I can isolate this. This is the full day. But I want to see inside, because the process that creates the whole day is the same process that creates this. So I can see inside. It's called the fractal. So this was too high. So where do we come back? Let's just see. Is there any symmetry here? Too high. So watch now. Now here, I'd be looking out here. And I know my low volume is out here outside edge. I also know we already had a short up here, right? So pull back, watch. Now, if you can't trigger on these, it's no problemo. It may not be your trade. It doesn't matter. Watch. I'm going to show you a little something. Now, some of this is advanced. And the only thing that's different about it is really being astute at reading this and understanding what it says. Remember, this is the language of the market, all on its own. It's the participant language. That's what is showing you. Let me show you. Buy stops, 44. Buy stops, see the delta, 33. Buy stop, only four. Only four. There's your divergence potentially. Volume, only one, only four. Is that possible divergence? If the buyers are being squeezed, it's the buy stops, not buy yours. Logical? Maybe? Perhaps? What do you think? Could be? Maybe not. It's always maybe. Write that down. The best you have in trading is maybe, but subject to your ability to translate. And I'm not saying this is, and this is not a structured trader lab trade. This is a fractal inside of the structured trader lab trade. So I'm just showing you the same behavior in midair. This is kind of like dancing, you know, dancing without a net. Too high, seller, pullback, test, short, or not. Right? Where are we going here? Oh, okay. Anyway, this is our next target, 17-ish. This is a high volume area in the intermediate timeframe. This, remember high volume, micro, high volume, same thing. Trail of stop here. See how it works. High volume here. Break up, can't get below. You might be out, not to even think about it. Or you're trailing your stop here, up to you. What's your trade management plan? How far back? 18 to 22, four points? I might lose my breakfast. Or, because this is my target and there's no precision. It's all random. But this, what is this by the way you asked? Intermediate timeframe, high volume area. The market tends to come back to high volume because at some point in the past in the intermediate timeframe, this was where the highest volume was and this acts the same as that, except this is a fractal. I'm going to make you crazy. It's my job to keep you crazy. That retail, next lower timeframe, IB continuation, which was way back here, same thing. And when we were long in the morning, it was the buy side of the same process. Can you see all these pieces? And if you can vet the ideas and build out starting with structured trades, you can build these out and your job, if you're in the business of trading and you don't want to play a video game or be a gambler, which is certainly okay if that's your choice. I'm going to suggest the business of trading is waiting for your vetted trade and having the discipline. One of the hard parts of trading is not trading, because you're sitting here and you're thinking, oh, that could have been a short or gee, I should have got long there. Oh, I should have got out here. I knew it was going to go up. No, you didn't. Here's what you know, vetted trade plan, vetted trade management process, same exact process vetted with statistics. Trading is not a 20 point rotation with an indicator curve fitted over it with a belief that somehow next time, your indicator is going to put you in the 20 point rotation. The business of trading is really different. And from the business point of trading, it's over a large sample size of interactions with the market. What pieces give you the highest yield? Not what happens today, what happens every day over thousands of trades. You may find that the 20 or 30 point outliers are not where the bread and butter is. You are going to capture them at times. But you might find, by the way, 1200 sell stops, 600 icebergs buying, see the liquidity, this is the absorption detector showing it's being absorbed right there. You can kind of start, book map gives you pieces. So as an aside, the business of trading is finding out what processes give you the best yield, not the 20 point rotation, because that may become an outlier, let's call it 30 point rotation, an outlier. However, if you follow a vetted trade plan, you will participate in those at times. But you may find your bread and butter, which is the only way you find that is over a large sample size of interaction, in other words, you got to do the work is with a different process that maybe takes you out. For example, this is a potential reversal structure, which I mentioned to you. You can see this down here, this little consolidation with its high volume, right where this white line is and where it says HVN, that is saying too low. If you know what it says, might you, if you're trailing here, exit. This is a buying trigger. Now, not a get long trigger. We're going south at a border. Where are we? Key location, micro high volume structure. Let me open it up. I just want to show you a thought process. What does it say? Now, if it breaks down, it's going lower. What does it do? Break high, pull back to the volume. Might this be an exit for a short, just a question? Anybody? What do you think? Useful? Logical? Can you read it? How about at YouTube? Give me a little help here. This is what the Trader Lab is about, guys. It's translating participant behavior, not indicators. And I'm not saying you can't use indicators. That has nothing to do with me. I only share my experience after designing trading systems and growing up on indicators. It was so exciting. The Holy Grail has arrived. Have you ever wondered why a software package has 50 to 100 indicators in it? Do you think other retail traders haven't looked for the needle in the haystack or the right tuning, you know, getting the screwdriver out? Gee, if I make this Keltner channel one and a quarter standard deviation instead of, you know, one and a half, or instead of a 20 SMA, maybe I go to an EMA. Look how good that fit this time. I'm going to suggest that's not the business of trading. That's the business of curve fitting. And you're always going to be chasing the market versus anticipating it. And depending on an indicator overlaid on price and participant behavior to kind of give you the red light, green light. I'm going to, I suggest that might not be the business of trading. I'm also going to suggest that if you understand context, you might at some point be able to align indicators subject to the specific behavior. Because I think when we start out in trading, we think it's just that the market is a generic, you know, in other words, that it's just one size fits all. And we're trying to just have something solve the issue for us. But the bigger problem is understanding the context of the market and that it changes behavior. For example, down now what counter rotation, where to? Well, I don't know. That's not my job to know because I can't know. What I know is this was too high last time up here. I also know the outside of this consolidation is up here. I know there's stops here and I know there's stops here. I know that. So if I have a structured trade plan, I already know where my next trade might underline show up. Does that make sense? My job is not to make it up as it goes. My job is to sit back, work on my crochet and wait for a location that I've vetted. If I have no trade at this point, do you know what my job is? Not the trade. Does that make sense? And again, you have to vet. In other words, what I do is not necessarily what anybody should do. But I think you might get the idea that if this is too high, that we can come back, pick stops, and then if we exhaust counter rotate. Now these are not trades, they're narrations. The way to learn to translate behavior in my opinion, and it's just a suggestion, is to narrate. In other words, this is not necessarily actionable, right? But if you know what the language is, you know this was too high. Here's the other thing you know. You know there's stops above this consolidation, and you know there's stops here. So the reasonable thing to do and write this down is write this down. Where's the fuel? Which means where's the stops? Think like a retail trader, don't act like one. If you think like a retail trader, where might you have put your stop? Do you think it might be there with everybody else? Well if it is, is it reasonable to think that we could come here, pick, and I call this a stop pick. And if there's nothing above here, which is only picking these guys off, thanks for playing, and we get the sell trigger. Sellers, is this a potential short? Now where's the obstacle? Let me show you, right here, a high volume. So if you're playing micro, and this is not a recommendation, you can read it too low, too low. So let's watch the behavior. Is everybody with me? Is this useful? Yeah, trader peed, you know. I'm just trying to give everybody from falling asleep. How are we doing in YouTube? Are you getting something from this? By the way, if you're in YouTube, and you're wondering what this is all about, there's 60 PDFs you can download in the Bookmap Discord Trader Lab Chat, plus a library of webinars narrated in real time like this. I start out pretty much the same way where I kind of open it up, because the open is such an important piece. So it's how you interpret, and we have structured trades for the open. This is your scale. Now this is minutia, this is not a structured trader lab trade. This is advanced. All this is, is moving down into more micro structure. And the thing is, not to trade this, your thing is to trade the last structured trade, which was this, right, to this. This is our structured trade out of here, 26 to 17. That's 10 points-ish. I don't have a problem with that, do you? In the meantime, knowing that this was too low, I'm showing you fractals now, after the stop pick above this volume, no bueno, selling structure back to here. And then maybe here, maybe not, low of the day, clueless, not my job, watch, watch. This is trading in fractals. And I'm going to suggest, I don't like showing this in the screen because this is advanced, but all I'm doing is moving down to another level, shorter. And this is based on a very simple concept, think Russian dolls. You know what I mean, Russian dolls, intermediate timeframe, let's call this the higher timeframe. The developing timeframe, you're going down in fractals, you know, smaller doll, smaller doll. This is the little doll, triggering structures, triggering structures, the little one that's in alignment with everything else. This is a higher timeframe Russian doll from another direction. All it is is higher timeframe. It is acting the same as these little structures. This is a micro structure pretty much this fractal, which is this outside edge. This is a intermediate timeframe same process. So this is our target. If you struck, if you got in here, can you work with this range? That's part of your, your structured business in a sense of vetting trades. You got to know risk-reward ratio. You can add these if, and I'm going to stress this, you can vet this. And let me explain the idea of having structured trades. How do you get the experience to deal with your emotional state? The biggest obstacle you're going to face is discipline and changing your mindset about what the real business of trading is. We all come into this business thinking it's the magic indicator, the secret sauce, the special chat room, that little Instagram post, somebody who says, I've got an indicator makes 90% over four minutes. I hope we're all mature enough to know that that's nonsense. So what might we think here? If we understand fractals and this is going again to a more advanced aspect, this was your target ahead of it. By the way, you got to leave some for the sweeper. So short to short. If, if it's part of your plan, do you have enough range to get to here from your entry risk neutral stop goes above here. And then once we have some triggering structures, we can begin to trail our stop going for this and wherever where is wherever. Let me see if I can find wherever down here. Not a recommendation. Is everybody with me? Are you getting something out of this guys? So guys, the business of trading is a statistical game. It's nothing more complex than that. If you want to think about Las Vegas, which is I think our parallel that we can compare and write this down Vegas, how do they work? What's the business of Las Vegas? They play a game. They only play the games with the statistical edge. They don't have the table that says let's make it up as we go. They don't. If the gamblers walk out with cash, the game does not change. They don't change the game. They play the game the same way because they understand the outcome of any hand is random. Write that down. They only play the games with the statistical edge. They don't make games up. They don't get triggered by FOMO and they accept the losses as overhead and cost of production. And let's remember we're in a business. Businesses have cost. They have overhead. What makes you think the random rotations are any different than any other business that gets paid by most of their customers, maybe, but not all that has problems with deliveries, that has random issues that come up either in production and everything else? Can you think about a business and the variables and the randomness of the elements that impact the bottom line? But if you know over a large sample size of doing business that you have a net that comes out on a random basis, what makes trading any different? Write that down. It's the same. And that's what I'm suggesting to you guys. Learn the business of trading. If you're not getting the results you're interested in, I invite you to visit the Trader Lab. You don't have to be a bookmap subscriber. You won't be solicited. There's a lot of resources there. 60 PDFs of these structured trades plus other ideas. A great community of like-minded traders looking to leverage their collective experience. We have all gone down the same road. The question becomes, do you want to wake up in Trader Groundhog Day doing the same thing? And if it isn't working, maybe it's time to kind of reevaluate, step back, and see if you're only doing derivatives of a process that is not statistically valid. If that is the case in your experience, I invite you to come to Trader Lab and participate. If you have a vetted trade plan and an edge, I invite you to come to Trader Lab and help us all get better. And there's also a library of webinars that are posted in the Trader Lab that you're all welcome to take a look at. There's no one right way to trade. There's only a way where you can extract a statistical edge and that comes from a consistent process operating like the casinos do in a random environment of interactions with different participants, different timeframes, different agendas, et cetera. I hope that makes sense. And by the way, I'm not a vendor. There's nothing to buy. You don't have to join anything. Not like that. What this is is traders working together and we're all trying to get better. I've been doing this 43 years and I will always try to get better and I can get better. That never leaves. That's always on the table. But in the meantime, I've paid the price of tuition. There's our next target. Guys, a thumb up in YouTube. If you found this useful, subscribe to the channel. There's a lot of additional free education, stocks, options, market maker behavior, algorithmic behavior, of course, order flow, which is a really key tool for me. Notice the icebergs accumulating on the way down. They're not supporting resistance, different timeframe. They are accumulating. Isn't that interesting? Liquidity was resting in the book. Isn't that interesting? Alignment with auction, high timeframe, retail in an intermediate timeframe. Isn't that interesting? What do you think? Coincidence or is there method and is there process that you might find usable? I have found in my experience that the ultimate truth of the market, and this is just an opinion, is based on participant behavior and the goal and purpose, go back to the basis why we even have a market, is to figure out what this thing is worth. What is it worth? That's why we have a financial or any kind of market. Even in the supermarket, it's on a slower timeframe. We are in a market that's highly liquid with multiple timeframe participants and it trades in fractals. It's all the same. Shoppers, what's too high, what's too low, et cetera. Does that make sense? Hope you guys got something out of this. If you're in the Bookmap Discord TraderLab Chat, this stream is exclusively available to you to review for 24 hours. Screenshots, homework, triggering structures, get it together, put it together. You only need one structured trade to start on your journey to becoming potentially assuming you do the work and it is work to becoming a career trader. When are you going to start if you're not getting the results you want? I suggest do it today. What are you waiting for? Why keep repeating something if it doesn't work? And again, if it does work, come on over to TraderLab. We all want to get better. Go to bookmap.com. You'll see a link. Join the Discord Chat or there's a link in YouTube down below. Click that. Come to Discord. You'll go through the welcome package and introduce yourself to TraderLab and then we can help you get the 60 PDFs and introduce you to everybody and it's a great community. I hope to meet you there. Thanks for visiting the TraderLab today. I'll see you guys tomorrow. If you have a trade plan, follow it. There's always another trade coming. Anticipate it. Be prepared for it. Follow a vetted trade plan. Don't make it up. Let's get out of the gambling side of the table. Let's sit on the house. Thanks again, guys. Appreciate you visiting the TraderLab today. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Trade safe.