 All right, we are live. Good morning, everyone. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Good to see you. Welcome to the BookMap channel, the place where dreams come alive, where dreams visualize. My name is Charles. I work with a company called Pirate Traders. We're a community of traders that get together to share insights on the ES, the NQ, and the two-way auction process. So that's what we're gonna talk about here today. Thank you so much for joining the stream. Quick disclaimer, all the opinions are my own. Don't take any trades based on anything I say. Use the information to come up with your own plan and your own strategy for the day. But I'm running a bit late this morning, getting started. So why don't we just go through the process together? Let's do Jim Dalton's top-down approach right here, right now, and figure out what is going on with the market. So we're gonna start zoomed way, way out. We're gonna start zoomed out all the way on a monthly chart. And the reason that we do this, the reason that we start zoomed all the way out on the monthly chart, is that we want to give ourselves some perspective, right? We've been trading day in and day out, week in and week out, super zoned in, super focused on the chart, getting lots of information. Ooh, it's bullish. Ooh, it's bearish. Ooh, it's this. Ooh, it's that. And we wanna just slow things down a little bit here at the start of the day, start of the week and get some perspective. So if I was looking at this chart and I knew nothing about nothing, what would I be? Bullish, my friends. You had momentum. You pulled back that momentum. You went sideways for a while. So you repaired that momentum with both price and time and you have now begun the process of breaking out of that balance. So excess leads to balance, which leads to excess. So we can assume just purely looking at the monthly chart here that there is potential for this market to keep going higher, right? This low could be very similar to this one or even this one. So there is potential for the market to keep moving for months and months and months higher from here. Okay, great. It's just some perspective. Let's zoom in just a little bit. Let's go to the weekly and see if we get any different perspective. Okay, well, it looks a little different on the weekly, right? Now it looks a little bit less like this big move that was just balancing off. And now we're starting to see that we had shorter term balance in here, got some excess, got some short term balance and now we're getting excess again. So both of these things, the monthly and the weekly are telling us that we have done a lot of balancing in the past and we are now beginning the process of excess that we can keep going in this direction. Okay, good to know. Are we seeing anything else that's jumping out at us when we're looking at the weekly chart here? Well, we're also noticing the previous highs, right? Where did the market run out of steam the last time that we were here? All of a sudden we notice, yes, we have excess, yes, we have momentum, even on the weekly. But that momentum is likely to start running out soon as this is where the market ran out of momentum before. So on a weekly basis, we are looking for at some point the market to pull back down. Okay, great. Now we'll zoom in a little bit more. Let's look at the daily chart and look for information there. Ooh, well now things are getting a little more detailed. We're getting a little bit of extra information. So again, on the idea of balance, which leads to excess, which leads to balance, we had balance, we had excess, we had balance, we had excess, and then what is happening right now on the daily? Well, now we're making lower highs, right? So now the market is telling us maybe this excess, this short-term excess, this last little push might need to roll over. Okay, we might need to balance off that excess. Well, there's two ways we can do it. We can either go sideways up here at higher prices and just spend however much time in a tight range up here we have to spend before we're ready to make that move higher, or we might need to pull back down with price, retesting the previous balance before we'll be ready to find support and go higher. So that's our mission for today, right? We're on the daily chart. If we're gonna zoom in even more than this, we're talking intraday. So let's zoom on in and we'll look at the intraday chart and we'll ask ourselves what's going on here. Well, okay, so we had that excess, we had higher highs and higher lows again and again and again. And then on Thursday, we made lower highs and lower lows. So we knew the move up was over and we were asking ourselves the question, are we going sideways or are we pulling back with price? Okay, great. So then the next day Friday came and what did we do? Nothing, we went nowhere and did nothing all day. We just literally bounced around not only inside Thursday's range, we even bounced around inside Thursday's overnight range. So that is just a sign that the market was going nowhere and doing nothing, right? It was just spending a day balancing, trying to decide what comes next. So what happened in the overnight? What happened over the weekend? Let's zoom on in a little bit more. Well, the overnight didn't give us much new information, but it gave us some and those insights will be important to carry forward. So what information did the overnight give us? Well, first and foremost, as crazy as it seems, this does technically count as a spike down because we closed one point below the B period low. So we had a spike down, we are now opening above that spike. That is the least bearish scenario. So that is a vote for sideways. Okay, cool. What other information do we have? Well, if we look at the top of the overnight range from the weekend, right? The way it traded over the weekend, it ran out of steam. It kept pushing and getting smacked down again and again and again. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Right where we spent all that time and brought in all that volume yesterday, which was right where we spent all the time and brought in the volume the previous day. So that is a little bit bearish to see. That slightly increases the odds that the market needs to go lower. They got the spike down. They got the momentum at the end of the day. They tried to inverse that. They tried to force it back up and they couldn't even really get past the fairest price to do business from yesterday. So that tell, or from Friday. So that tells us that this is a fair price to do business. So we don't need to go up here because we're happy to do business here. Look at all these sellers that are just waiting. So, okay, that's a little bit bearish to see. So we've got mostly neutral signals, but we got one bearish. What else? Well, once the market pulled its way down here, below yesterday's range, it spent a lot of time. Okay? So that tells us we needed to do some two-sided trade. We needed to do some debate down here. But then most of the volume was in that upper end of the range. Plus price pulled right back up so that now we're opening on that upper end of the range. So, as unpleasant as it is to hear, the God's honest truth is the market doesn't know where it wants to go next. It's just playing tug of war, waiting for one side to give up so the other side can win. The only nuance to me that is really valuable in this at all is looking at the NQ and recognizing that the NQ does have a higher probability that it is gonna pull back with price. Why does the Q have a higher probability? Well, because it had lower lows and lower highs yesterday. So that's a sign of new momentum down. Whereas the ES was inside Thursday's range, which meant we don't know. It could keep going sideways or go down. The NQ is saying, no, no, I want to keep going down. Also, they still have not completely filled that gap that they left behind and there's a second gap. So there are still magnets pulling on that price, trying to get it to go lower. So I would say I am more bearish for a pullback on the NQ than I am on the ES. The ES really is not showing its hat right now. So how am I gonna trade it? Well, obviously when the market opens here in about 20 minutes, first thing is assume it's gonna chop, right? It always does that. It always chops when it opens inside the previous day's range. After an entire weekend of doing nothing but chopping, you should suspect there is definitely gonna be more chop, more balance, okay? So the first level that I'm watching as a sort of important level is the overnight high, okay? That's around 45, 77. That is important to me because it was also this large volume node from yesterday and the day before. So if I was gonna draw a chop zone and I didn't even have the overnight, this would be where I'd assume they'd run out of steam and come back down. The fact that that's an overnight high sets us up for what we call a look above and fail of the overnight high. We're essentially everyone who got long in here, right? They're gonna wanna take profits. They're not gonna want the market to come back down through here. So if the market opens in the U.S. this morning and it pushes up above that overnight high, all of these traders will begin to take profits. Everyone who went long down at the lows and is going long right now, all of them will start to take profits above there. So if new traders, if new business from the morning this morning doesn't decide we are bullish and step in here and keep it going, that momentum will run out. And then the market will come right back down. That's what we call a look above and fail. So that's the first thing I'm watching is that overnight high. What happens when the market opens if we push up to that overnight high? Do we just push above it and pull right back down? Do we spend very little time? Do we bring in very little volume? Or do we push above it and then start to bring in those new buyers? Now bringing in buyers above the overnight high would not get me bullish, right? It would get me to think there's a chance we may test Friday's high. But I would only get bullish if we were able to push above Friday's high, come back down and find support. Why? Because the highest probability is balance, right? And there's two ways to balance. One is to go sideways with price. The other is to pull back. Sorry, go sideways with time or pull back with price. And so I'm assuming one of those two things is happening. There's no reason to be bullish if I think we're either going sideways or lower. So to get bullish, to think we could keep going and actually go higher, I would need confirmation. I would need to see those new buyers up there. Otherwise my assumption is we're gonna go above and come right back down because that's what balance is, right? All right, so what's the lower end of the chop zone? Well, if you wanna be more conservative, if you don't wanna have to wait around, you could use the half back from the overnight. Why? Because it corresponds beautifully with these previous nodes from the previous days, right? So you could say as long as we are between that overnight high and that overnight half back, we'll just chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, so you won't mess with it. But if it started to get some resistance down here, you could look too short to try to test that overnight low. That's if you really need to get into a trade right away. Now, if you'd rather be patient and wait for a higher probability opportunity, it's the overnight low, okay? Or really more specifically, it's this node just above the overnight low at about 45, 62. So my assumption is in between these two levels, the market is just gonna go sideways. It will go sideways in a way that is very unpredictable. It will flip in reverse out of nowhere. There'll be lots of volume, that no volume. It'll be extremely difficult to predict. All your signals will be sending you some bullish, it'll be a nightmare. But if we get above the overnight high, I would think we could at least try to test Friday's high. And if we get below this node around 62, I would get bearish for much further continuation because that tells us we can't balance with time, we have to do it with price, which brings us back to the daily chart, right? So if we can't stay up here and balance sideways, we are likely to pull back and test the previous balance area high. So that is a big move with a lot of potential. I don't wanna wait around to get into that. If that's what the market's gonna do, whether it's gonna do it today or over the next few days, if that's what the market's gonna do, I wanna recognize it right away. But I don't wanna miss it. How could that happen to me that I could miss it? Well, if I try to trade the chop, if I'm trying to go long and go short and go here and go there, by the time the market pushes down here and it's getting resistance, my brain is gonna be so confused and so overwhelmed. Oh man, it was doing this and then it was doing that. And I won't feel like I can trust it. So if I really wanna be able to get short here at the most strategic location to get short, with the highest probability, I must be able to think clearly. I must be at peak performance in that moment when the market gets there. So I will be able to recognize the opportunity and I will have the courage to step into the trade. So as far as the chop is concerned, I'll let them go sideways. I'll let them go up and down. It's a big range, it's a 10-point range. I'll watch them go up five points. I'll watch them go down eight points. I'll watch them go up seven points. I'll watch them go down 10 points and I won't care. I won't feel any need to participate. I won't feel any FOMO because I've told myself right now, 15 minutes before the market opens that there is two opportunities here, okay? There is either the opportunity to make the money off that larger pullback, right? The repair with price, or to make money off of a reversion to the mean trade if we're just gonna go sideways at higher prices. But I can't get into the reversion of the mean trades right away because I gotta wait for the market to run out of steam one direction so that I can grab the move back the other. So the best thing for me to do is to not force a trade this morning, to keep a clear mind and stay focused for when that opportunity comes. So that's the plan, Sam, from the top down. We got 55 people hanging out, only 11 likes. I do like the synchronicity of the 55 and the 11, but let's get some more likes going. Smash that thumbs up button for me. Keptember. Keptember, good morning to you. Jay is here, good to see you. Jay says, thank God it's Monday, I know. Frito, good morning to you. Chillin' with Dylan in the house, good to see you. Andrew is here. Alyssa liked, why having you? Come on, everyone. Rudy says, first time listener or viewer, you're a one market trader, correct, yeah. But thank you for reminding me to take a look at the NQ because I got lots of friends that trade that. Yeah, so like I said, the NQ is very similar to the ES in the fact that the overnight just balanced inside yesterday's range, but is just significantly more bearish to me. Both the tight range here, the tug of war, that is a sign that there's been not very much speculating, right? People are nervous, they don't know what comes next. So you've got that magnet from that gap that is not filled, pulling on the market and a lack of buyers trying to take it higher, just further increases the odds they're gonna get to that magnet, that's where the buyers are. So I'm certainly more bearish on the NQ here. I would call it a chop zone between 15640 and that overnight low, 15530. So as long as they're between those two, it's just sideways. If they can get above here and start to find some buyers above 640, you could get bullish to try to test Friday's high. But anything else to me would likely lead to further downside continuation and resistance at Friday's low would be extremely bearish. So if they push down there and they start to bring in new sellers down there, you see volume stepping in, you see the ticks trending lower, that is very, very bearish that they need to head down for that next unfilled gap. So big opportunity in there. Another thing that's worth noting is the cumulative volume. So generally this market will move from one large cumulative node to the next. So it went from here on this node, straight up, boop, to this one, okay? And then kept going straight up, boop, to this one. And then kept going straight up, boop, to that one. And then it spent a little bit of time balancing, but as soon as it broke out of that balance, where did it go? Straight up, boop, to that one. And that's where it ran out of steam, couldn't get to the next one. So when we pulled back down, it made a lot of sense that we traveled from that large cumulative node back to this one. And in the same regard, if that now becomes resistance, if we push down there and we start selling, we are likely going to that next large cumulative node. But shh. So again, opportunities. But you say, Charles, why do you only trade the ES? Well, because then I can get good at it, right? If I wanted to learn to be a musician, I could try to learn every instrument there is. I'd know so much about music. I'd be able to impress so many people at a party, but I'm never gonna sell a hit record. If I wanna sell a hit record, I gotta become an expert at piano or guitar or singing or whatever it is. I gotta pick an avenue and have a singular focus and become absolutely brilliant at that one thing. So for me, that thing that I've chosen is day trading the ES. I just wanna be the best ES day trader on planet Earth. And that is my singular focus. And taking away all the other noise just makes it so much easier. Good morning to Kevin. JC says, what is the small session between Friday and the overnight? That's Friday afternoon. That's the, so I, the way I have my profiles stretched out is I do from 9 30 AM, you know, New York time to 4 PM exactly. And then I just do everything from 4 PM to the next day to the next 9 30. So because the market technically closes on Friday afternoon for a little while before it opens, that's just the gap between them. But don't worry about it. Think about all of that as just one big profile in your brain parts. Rudy says, the NQ has a lot to do with the rebalance of the top 100. Totally. So my thing is I don't ask the questions of why the market is doing what it's doing. Like I don't need to know why they're buying or why they're selling. Maybe the reason that it churned like that was because they were rolling things over, you know, buying one thing, selling another thing, buying one thing, selling another thing, rebalancing, right? Maybe that's why it stayed in such a tight range. Doesn't matter to me. I don't care why it did what it did. Excuse me, all I focus on is what did it do? It did not explore higher prices, right? So that's bearish. It's that simple. It's like so much of your time and energy will be lost trying to understand why the market does what it does. There'll be very little usable information in it no matter how much time and energy you spend thinking about it and worrying about it and trying to explain it. I know that that's human instinct, right? We as humans have to have a story. We have to have a way to explain everything. We, our brains just can't understand things without some sort of context. So it makes sense that we want to know why is the market doing what it's doing. But if you're looking for information that you can use to take trades which will have a statistical probability of working no matter what's happening, whether it's because there's some event taking place or not, like in every market, high volatility, low volatility, you know, markets that are trending, markets that are rotating. If you wanna be able to trade anything, any day, no matter what's going on in the world, the thing you wanna focus on is the two-way auction process, which quite simply is there more buyers or more sellers? If there's more sellers, market go down. If there's more buyers, market go up. It's that simple. And when you try to have other things because you think you're getting more information, you actually make it harder to decide where do I get long, where do I get short, where do I put my stop? You know, it's, when you simplify it and you just look at one simple thing, are there more buyers or sellers? Great, then I know what comes next, then it just really makes everything easier. So why the NQ will do what it's do? Who knows? But I'm telling you, the higher probability is lower based purely on that auction process. Although now that I'm thinking about it, that is a great explanation for why they didn't fill the gap on Friday. You know, like who was the buyer who bought here when they didn't even get that gap fill? Was just a computer doing a rebalance. Walford, do I have experience with prop firms? No, sir. I avoid them like the plague. Nothing wrong with sizing up if you're a profitable trader, if you've been making money for a few years in the market and you have a system that works and you wanna size up, great, go for it. But if you're trying to find a system, if you are not a consistently profitable trader with at least a year worth of profits under your belt, prop firms are just gonna make it harder. I know their marketing will convince you otherwise, but the reality is you will waste a lot of time and energy trying to meet their criteria rather than trying to figure out what works best for you. Best thing to do, pay for trade. You can do it for free. Sign up for TD Ameritrade and you can pay for trade for free. You know, you can sign up for an account with TradingView and you pay like, I think it's like 10 bucks a month for data. You know, pay 10 bucks a month and trade and just get really good at trading. Then worry about sizing up down the line. Do usually NQ respect support and resistance areas? Yeah, every market respects support and resistance. But if it doesn't, that's information, right? Something I learned from a Peter Resnick check is this phrase, when what should happens doesn't. And this is really a key to being able to trade the auction process is knowing what should happen, right? If the market gets to this level, it should find support. If the market gets to this level, it should find resistance. When the market gets to that level, you can observe what happens. If it's finding resistance, if it's doing what you're expecting, then you know, okay, I know what the market's doing. It's going up or whatever. If it doesn't though, if it blows right through that level or it pushes above that level and then turns that level into support, well, that's new information. When what should have happens doesn't, then you know the thing you think is going on isn't and it's the opposite. So for example, this morning, my assumption is that we will not get above Friday's high. That we will either just straight up start heading lower or we'll push above the overnight range and then fail and pull back in. That is what I believe is the highest probability thing to happen. So if the market were to push above that overnight high and start to bring in buyers, it would catch my attention, right? It'd be like, hmm, maybe I don't actually understand what's happening here. And then if it made its way all the way above yesterday's high, I'd have to say, okay, the market is not doing what I thought it was doing. I thought it was going to go sideways or down, but now I've got a signal that's telling me something else. Jesus, so right out the gate, we're testing that overnight high. So now I've got a signal, what is coming next? So if they push above yesterday's high and they bring in the buyers up there, I see the support, I see the volume, I see the continuation, then I know, okay, my thesis that we're going sideways or lower is wrong. So now I can change my mind and I can start looking for options to buy. So yeah, every market, I mean, every single market respects support and resistance, but your definition of not respecting it is just the market giving you different information. It's telling you what you thought was gonna happen isn't. So now you can use that new information to change your opinion, change your perspective, change your strategy. Okay, so I would describe this as short covering. It is very fast, it is very emotional. So this is likely people that we're selling last week seeing that the market didn't head lower over the weekend and taking profits or getting squeezed out of their trades and then those overnight long traders, right? Remember, they're hoping the market's gonna keep going up today, so they don't have a reason to take profits yet, but as the market pulls back down towards that overnight high, we'll find out, are these traders gonna stay in their trade? Are we gonna bring in new buyers or is this all just short covering? If it's all short covering, we'll pull back down into the overnight range, okay? So there you go, NQ already above that overnight high. So once again, watch 45, 590 for support. If they can hold it here, we can start to think, maybe they're heading higher. But if they pull back down in that overnight range, we know what's happening, which is balance. Balance means higher probability of sideways or lower. So we won't get fooled by that first push up unless they can hold it, okay? So now the question is, we got above yesterday's high. All right, so now same thing with yesterday's high as we talked about with the overnight high. Can they turn it into support? If they can, I will change my tune and get bullish, but to me, the higher probability is that we will fail and pull back down towards that opening price. Let's see what happens. It's also worth noting on the ES, the fact that we just made a higher high from yesterday increases the odds that the way we will balance off this excess from the lows is with time instead of with price. All right, we had all this excess and we're asking ourselves, are we gonna do it with time or with price? The fact that we were able to get the high today above yesterday's high means our time is more likely. That we'll just spend some time going sideways before we break higher. So that's on the daily timeframe, not intraday. Intraday, we're still just watching for that look above and fail of yesterday's range. Oh, the games they play. They're trying to scare price away. Scooball says low node at the load too. Yes, sir, good observation. We got multiple levels here with less than 200 contracts that also increases the odds. The market will need to come back for them. I wanna see this volume, this liquidity disappear first though. As long as this liquidity is sitting here at 85, we'll come back up and tag it and see what happens there. And as soon as I say it, they start to disappear it. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. They're listening guys, they're listening to me. So just for the record, this does not feel like legitimate support at yesterday's high. I gotta see what happens with this node of liquidity. Does it fill when we get there? Or does it just disappear? Oh, here we go. So far it's just disappearing. Okay, so did you guys, for learning purposes, did you guys see how that just happened? So, let me zoom out here a little bit. The market was coming up. Okay, whoops. Market was coming up, started to come back down and then started pushing up again so they built up all this volume. Okay, that was to try to scare the price away to think, oh, there's gonna be orders up here. So no reason to go long. You're just gonna get, you know, it's gonna fill right there. But then as soon as the market came back up to it, what happened? It just disappeared. So let me zoom back in so you can really see it up close. Now it's filling. We can see with those. But prior to that, look at that. As soon as price came to it, boop, it's gone. Boop, it's gone. They're actually getting rid of it before it gets there. Now these two actually did fill. But that to me feels like it was a game to get price up here, to convince new people to go long up here. So they have more fuel to pull it back down. So I don't trust the support yet because it was all a game. And now we're playing round two. Same thing, once again. Hello darkness, my old friend. Liquidity disappeared out of nowhere once again. That means there must be news in one minute and the bots just don't want to mess with it. So we have to just step back and let the market trade. We should be afraid. They could push it anywhere. Yeah, so whenever we see the book map go dark like that, we know there's probably some news coming out in a minute or so and that that news could cause some volatility. So it's best, if you're in a trade, you can stay in the trade. But if you're thinking of getting in one, just wait. Wait till they have this whatever move they're gonna have. There it goes, boop, boop, boop. And then wait to see when the liquidity steps back in. September says, how do you know when it might reverse? Well, the things we watch are price, time, and volume. So right now, we are at an important reversal level where once it gets that previous day's high, it is either gonna keep going or it's gonna fail and come back down. So what do we watch for? Taper in volume, less and less volume at the highs, increases the odds we're gonna pull back down. The next thing we look for is volume. Now this today was a weird one because normally we would not get that much volume up there. So the amount of volume stepping in above the level and then lastly, how much time, right? When we poked up in there, we spent no time at all. So all three of those things in combination increase the odds that we don't have buyers up there. So then we start to think about the things we left behind. We never came back to back test the overnight high looking for support. We also left multiple low volume nodes in need of repair and the low is low volume. So now we know it's done going up at least for the minute. We assume it's coming down and we are looking for support at yesterday's high or sorry, the overnight high. Can they hold it? If they can't hold that, we assume they're repairing the first low volume node. If that's not enough, the second low volume node. If that's not enough, the low. And you know what that would do, get us back into the chop zone, baby, it's choppin where we would just look for support and resistance and see what comes next. Okay, so here's where we look for that support. Okay, so for now that support is holding but I just see it as one big giant chop zone here. I don't trust these buyers yet. Technically I should market generated information wise that is new buyers at the overnight high after changing the momentum on the daily because we got higher highs. So normally I'd want to buy this but there's something about the tempo this morning that I just don't trust. All right, there's the first low volume node backfilled. Was that all they needed? Did that bring in the buyers? Guess not, second low volume node repaired. Was that, nope, there you go. So now we're back in that overnight range which tells us what, we ain't going higher, we just tried. Got above the previous days high, even brought in some volume but it wasn't enough to keep going. Came back and tested the overnight high, couldn't hold it as support. So now the market just has to go sideways until it's ready to break one way or another. So it could even pull down here to this node around 45, 63 and then turn around and come right back up. So now the way I'm gonna play it is I'm gonna assume we have support in here, support in here and support in here and I'm gonna watch what happens when we get there. Do we bounce? Once we do, what happens at the half back? For whatever reason, when the market is in sort of one of these chop zones where there's uncertainty, one way that we can get it is if that half back which is halfway from the high and the low, if that holds as resistance, it tells us we're likely to come back and test support. If we break through, it means we're going up to test resistance and if it comes back down and find support, we're heading back up and we kind of just let it chop up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down as long as it needs to and we just keep watching that half back. It's the only insights we'll get. Otherwise, this is a gambler's market on the ES here for the next few minutes. Let's take a look at the cue though, not on the cue. Boo, boo, boo, boo. Bearish AF on the cue. So they got the continuation of that momentum to the downside. Third day in a row, lower highs and lower lows. You've also got your back below that overnight low so you filled the gap. The first gap is now filled. Is that enough to turn the market around? If not, they need that next gap. Okay, Charles, so how do I get into a trade? Well, now you know what's gonna happen. You know that if they don't turn around and head back up they're heading for that next gap. So you can sell resistance. Don't FOMO into a short right now at the low. Wait for the market to pull back up and when you see resistance, then you get short. First, you needed the information to tell you to get in the trade. Now you need to find the entry. Charles, shouldn't I be shorting the ES? Look at it, it's gone down. A whole bunch of points really fast. I should be shorting. No, why? We're right back in support. Right, we got support in here. We got support in here. We got support in here. We got support in here. This is not where you get short. You wait for resistance. You wait for confirmation. You wait for more information. Then you get short. Don't get short just because your emotions tell you to. Let the market tell you. Man, there's so much bot shenanigans happening this morning. They are just chewing up people's stops on bull sides. All right, computers say they want to push it down once more. Next major support is gonna be around 45, 65. Looking for buyers there. Rudy says it appears that the book map is set to five minutes. So book map doesn't do time intervals. So we're testing the first resistance above. Again, this is expected. It's a chop zone. They're gonna flip and reverse, and flip and reverse, and flip and reverse. They're gonna keep doing it. What we're looking for is what happens at that half bank. Or can they break this node down here at 62? So the way book map works, it doesn't go in intervals, time intervals. It's basically just a constant flow of time. So every second, every millisecond, the bid and the ask spread is showing you the pattern that it moves through. And then you can just zoom in and out to give yourself perspective of time. All right, so if I wanted to know what happened over the last hour, I'd just zoom out a little bit. If I wanted to know what's happening, this exact second, this millisecond, I can zoom right in and see, in a fraction of a moment, what's happening. Of course, I don't need all that information. That's too much. It's a distraction. Pedram, just to confirm the support resistance areas with icebergs and stops. No, so you can't assume, because there's an iceberg or a stop, that that's gonna be support or resistance, but you can use confluence. So when you're at a support or resistance level, is it real sellers or is it a bot selling? That just gives you a bit more information. One thing that Jim Dalton talks about is that exactness kills. If you're trying to find a way to trade, where you have to do, where something has to happen exactly a certain way, well, this means that if the RSI says it's oversold, it can't keep going down, like whatever. If you have a thing where it's like, you need the market to work exactly a certain way, what you will find is sometimes it'll work. It'll work great. And other times it won't work at all. And you'll go absolutely mad trying to understand, why does this system work sometimes and not other times? Well, the market is constantly changing. There are times when the market is trending a certain direction and times when it's balancing. There's times when it's got high volatility and low volatility. So what you need is a system that works in all those environments. There is no exact anything that works in all those environments. It will always take a confluence of different pieces of information. Coming together, that will give you something you can use consistently in every market. So the way that he describes it is, trading is an art, not a science. When you try to make it a science, when you try to say, if there's a stop or an icebergs, that means the market has to reverse, no, no, no, no, no. You'll be wrong all the time. Sometimes you'll be right, but you'll be wrong all the time. So it's confluence. You're looking for multiple things together. That's the art of trading, is what you do with the information, how you put it in context. Trader Carlson says, it's unforeseeable how other traders and entities will act like in advance prior to them doing so. Exactly. You're speaking my language. You can see stuff happening. You can see when volume pops in, liquidity pops in. You can see when there's an iceberg that's still waiting to get filled. You can see little pieces of information here or there, but you never know what's going to happen for sure because you're seeing that. But the more piece of information that you can use in your analysis, and the more experience that you can gain from looking at that information every day and learning to process it, the better your skill of reading that information can become. Case in point, a second ago when we were getting resistance at the opening price, a thought popped in my head. You know, I could sell the opening price with a stop above the overnight high. It's also the half-back, very likely to hold as resistance. You know, it's a great trade. I could get short right now. And so what did I think to do? Well, let me just zoom out and see what happened to that liquidity at the high. So I zoom back out and I see, nope, there's still a lot of liquidity waiting up here. So if the market is really gonna head lower, if we're gonna break the overnight lows and go lower, this should disappear, right? The desire to get short up here should go away. But those shorts, sorry, those shorts are still sitting there. So that tells me it's probably more chop. So that tells me even if I wanna get short at the opening price of the stop right here and it's a great trade, I should avoid it. Today in this market, in this moment, with this context, it's better to wait and watch. I could still get short up here if I'm seeing that resistance or I could get short at the exact same level afterward when it passes back through. But for now, the context isn't there. Feels more like chop. Like they're gonna chop the broccoli. TripDef says, I already 10xed the 145 investment in the workshop we started last week. You're not supposed to be trading during the workshop. What are you doing, TripDef? No, I'm happy to hear it. 145 bucks is only three points. You can do that right now to repair the week low. Marvel says the NQ continues to trend. Let's take a look. Yeah, so they're just testing that resistance at yesterday's low. Can they hold it? They've really got to hold this resistance right here. They've got to smack the market back down because if they drift back up, if they drift up above the halfback, which is 15551, if they drift back up through there, well, then what does that tell us? All they needed to do was fill the gap and now they're likely to go sideways the rest of the day. So if the sellers want to remain in control, they got to bring in that resistance, right, Chell? Bring in those new sellers. Top Gun says they can't hide with Bookmap. By the way, just for clarifications purposes, when I use the term they, when I'm like, they're trying to do this and they're trying to do that, I'm not talking about like an institution or something like that, a boardroom with people making, I'm just talking about the entire market in combination. So that's investors, that's short-term traders, that's all the algorithms, the arbitrage bots, I mean, everything. It all is they to me. It's all they, it's all baked in. But yes, they can't hide from Bookmap. Petrim says, would you talk about your course and what areas it covers? Well, of course, yeah. So right now I'm doing a workshop, it's too late for anyone else to sign up, we're already a week into it. But there's a market profile e-course, if you head to my website, piratetraders.io, you'll see it there. And what that course will teach you is basically two things that are really, really important. How to develop a strategy as a trader. How did you actually figure out where should I be entering trades? What market should I be trading? How should I be choosing how to trade it? That's what we call the path to profitability, figuring out how you build out a system that's custom tailored for your personality and then how to read the two-way auction process using the market profile software. So what we're talking about here, buyers and sellers, it's all just an auction process. For me, the easiest tool to see that auction is the market profile. So that's what the course teaches. How do I see that auction on market profile? I've also got a membership group, the Pirate Traders Brigade, it's only 10 bucks a month. And I do these live streams every single day for the first hour. So if you're enjoying what you're seeing and you're willing to give up on a single cup of coffee this week, join the brigade, it's 10 bucks. And then you can hang out and hear me talk like this every day. Okay, so that resistance at the opening price has failed. So now we're looking at resistance at the halfback, 45.77. Remember, if they can find resistance here, it will increase the odds, they're heading back down towards the low. The fact that it was such low volume, there was only 12 contracts, make that even higher probability that if we do get the resistance, we'll get all the way back to the low. However, if we push through this level, and we can push through a little bit, but if we start to find volume above it, the market is right back in a chop zone and they can push it up, they can push it down, they can push it all around. So we're waiting for a signal. Does the market get slapped down literally right here? Nope, all right, the chop continues. Dun, dun, dun. So this to me is a chop zone right here. As long as we stay inside it, they're gonna keep doing that. They're gonna keep making you think they're gonna reverse the way they just did at the opening price, made you think they were gonna go lower and then boop, they'll pop back up. They'll do it again and again and again. So they gotta get, to get me bullish, they gotta get back above the, or back above Friday's high once again and hold it. I will say the odds of them being able to hold it are slightly higher now. Because of the when what should happens doesn't, the look above and fail of Friday's high should have sent us down to Friday's low. And it did not. So if they can get up there this time, I would be much more bullish than I was the last time when I was looking for the look above and fail. So these are all just pieces of data. I don't know what's happening, I just, this is telling me that, that is telling me that, that is telling me that. And I just put them together until I have enough to say I can get longer short right now with confidence. So as far as trades are concerned, there's just nothing to do inside the chop zone. The only two options are either, actually I could sell another look above and fail, is either we push up here, we find support in which case I could get long for continuation with a nice tight stop. Or we look above and fail, where I could get short for re-entering to come back to the half back, again, nice tight stop. Or I have to wait for the market to come all the way back down to here, come back up to half back, and then I could sell that or come all the way back down here, breakout and get new sellers. That's the fun of a chop zone. They take the market up as far as they can to squeeze as many stops as possible. Then they take the market down as far as they can to squeeze as many stops as possible. And they will just keep doing it again and again and again until they're finally ready to break. David says, what is the next step when the gap is filled? I assume you're talking about the gap on the NQ. So any old weakness, a gap being weakness, the question isn't, the question is once it's filled, what happens next? So we had momentum when we pushed down below the overnight low, right? Cause we had the lower highs, lower lows. You know, we had potential to take this market lower, but now what happened? As soon as we filled that gap, the momentum came to an end and we're back up in that overnight range. So that's actually a little bit bullish to see. At least intraday today, right? It just means the market doesn't need to head down for that next gap, not today. All they needed was that first one to get repaired. So now the NQ is the same as the ES, it's just a chop zone. And I would use the node right here around 1500, 600 as that chop zone high. So as long as they're below there, just assume they're gonna keep going sideways. But if they can push above and come back down and turn it into support, then they're heading back up for Fridays high, or sorry, for Thursdays high. But for now, too much uncertainty. They can push it up, they can push it down, they can push it all around. Petra says, your good manners alone are worth the $10. I'll take it. Thank you, sir. Alan, do you teach us to read these charts in your class? Yes, sir. That's what we do. But the important thing is, and the thing that separates me from your fru-ru is that's not all we do. We don't just stop with, what is a chart? How, what does this mean? What does that mean? It's about how to be a trader. This is what no one else teaches. Being a trader is like being an athlete. I could teach you how to play basketball in an afternoon. Like, I can teach you how to read a chart in a day. The skill that'll get you to be a good enough basketball player to be able to play in the NBA is gonna require discipline and hard work and good habits and doing the right things the right way, not just learning how to dribble a basketball and shoot. So sure, I'll teach you a chart. I'll teach you how to read it, no problem. It's really easy. The hard part is you doing all the right steps that follow, being disciplined and learning from your mistakes and developing a skill and like all of those things, that's what separates successful traders from unsuccessful traders. Not the ability to read the chart. So I love that question, I get it every day and yes, I will definitely teach you how to read a chart. But that won't make you a profitable trader. It'll be all the other things that I teach about the act of being a trader. That's what's important. How to develop a strategy, how to learn from your mistakes, how to track your results, all of these things. River Rock says, what should they hold now if they're going higher? The half back, right? So as long as they're below yesterday's high, it's a chop zone. Only clue we have in a chop zone is if they hold half back. So if you are desperate to get long and they come down and they hold half back, you could think about getting long or you could wait until we break out of the chop zone, meaning get back above yesterday's high once again and then you could look for the support up there. That would be a much higher probability opportunity, meaning the likelihood the trade works will be much higher up there, but you won't get to have that extra eight points of profit. So this is what trading is. Are you the trader that's willing to get into the risk when there's uncertainty to get those extra eight points or are you the trader that would rather wait until you have confirmation and you're sure and then get in a trade that's guaranteed to work? I'm the latter. I don't care about the number of points I make in a trade. I care about the number of winning trades that I take. My goal is to have as little to no losing trades as possible and then the winning takes care of itself. The profits take care of itself. If this trade I make six less points than I would have made if I'd gotten in earlier, who cares if I have a significantly higher profitability over the number of trades, right? It's thinking in probabilities. Not this one trade this one time, but if I'm gonna take a trade in a chop zone over the next 20 trades, 30 trades, 40 trades, how often do they work? In the chop zone, it'll be 50, 50 at best, right? Whereas if I wait to break out of the chop zone and then I take a trade, I'll have a 70, 80% win rate. So I'm targeting the higher win rate over the number of trades instead of targeting the larger amount every trade where I have to take on all this risk with uncertainty. But it is a personal thing, it's whatever works for you. I'm sure there are scalpers out there right now making a fortune trading the chop. It's just not for me. David says, can a gap be filled and it keeps going? Yes, absolutely, right? So what could have happened this morning on the NQ and actually I would have said was the higher probability even would have been that we would have pushed down, gotten that resistance, filled the gap and then kept going all the way down to the next gap. That would have been a trend lower, right? But the market didn't do that. It pulled back up into the balance area or into the chop zone. So that's not what happened. Sometimes all you need is to just backfill that first bit of weakness and that brings in the buyers. Sometimes it doesn't and then you gotta backfill the next one. So yeah, both can happen and you just gotta wait and see which does. Market is random. I would describe that B period high as being weak as well on the NQ because they stop so close to the opening price. They'll likely come back for that at some point. Increasing the odds of more chop. Got 118 people hanging out but only 50 thumbs up. Only 50? Surely someone out there likes me. Let's see if we can break 75. Can we break 75? Thumbs up. Ooh, 63. Bullish on the likes. 73. Damn it, I should have got in the trade. 80 likes. Oh no, I took profits too soon. Thank you guys, appreciate you. Daniel says, how are options, positions reflected in here? Does Bookmap look at options activity? They do. I don't use it though, but yeah, they do have tools for that. It's just not something I look at. I just focus on the ES because that's what I'm trading. Any effect that the option market is gonna have on the ES will be built into the price of the ES. Okay, so this is that chop zone high. This is where they should run out of steam and start pulling back down. If they can get above yesterday's high, we look for new buyers. So the printing of the C period changes everything, right? Earlier, I was saying the chop zone to me was this area here, meaning any trades inside of there is a gamble and a guess, but now I can just use the initial balance, which is the first hours trade. So it is safe to say if they can push above that over, or that high from Friday once again and find support, they almost certainly will test that A period high. If they do, it's bullish. Don't question it when what should happens, we should have run out of steam up here and pulled back down. And it didn't happen. So that tells us we could go higher. If we now get a trend, don't fight the trend. Let them push it higher as long as they want to. They've given us two signals. The first one was the look above that didn't really fail. Okay, earlier, the second one would be breaking the initial balance if they do that in the C period. So if the market starts to get bullish here, don't fight it, let them take it higher because there'll be tons of shorts that need to cover, right? All morning, anyone that's been selling in here is fixed, oops, is fixing to get squeezed if we get back above that high. So they could just literally boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, they could just keep it going, okay? Same thing, if they push down and they break that A period low, okay? Well, then I'm gonna instantly be bearish for further downside continuation rather than waiting until we test this note. So the initial balance will tell the tale. Do we break the A period high or the A period low? That is on the ES, and of course, we're looking for support at 45.77 if the market comes back down to there, because the chop, and for the NQ, oh, just straight up the A period, it's that simple. If they're gonna take the market higher today, they will push above, they will start a trend higher, they will pull back down and they will turn 15, 600 into support, that would be buyable for continuation. And if they break that A period low, they'll come back up and turn 5504 into resistance for continuation lower. So all you gotta do is wait for them to break that A period high or that A period low and then look for continuation. Do you get new selling at the low, new buying at the high? I will just say it's got low volume on the high and low volume on the low. So it could chop sideways for a while here while they have indecision. With that, I must say goodbye, gotta get ready for the workshop. I appreciate you all so much for being here. And I hope I see you tomorrow morning, because you just joined the brigade. If not, I'll see you here next Monday. And we'll hang out then. Thank you very much. Have a good one.