 Good morning traders and welcome to the book map pro trader webinar series. This is Bruce at book map today We have futures trader 71 Morad Askar You probably know who he is. He's going to talk about trading order flow in the context And getting on the right-sided trades by understanding the narrative and then use order flow and book map to fine-tune entries So risk disclaimer trading futures equities and digital currencies involves substantial risk of loss And it's not suitable for all investors past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results Let me give a brief introduction here of FT 71 he's been trading for over 25 or 20 years. He started his own prop shop until 2003 and then focus online with online traders He's recognized pioneer and the use of volume profiling. He's currently the head Trader and director at conversion trading a virtual prop trading environment for career For professional career professional traders. He's the founder of edge clear and innovative brokerage design for online traders And then FT has been using book map since its initial release More than six or about six years ago or so So anyway, if you're interested in contacting FT Here is all of his contact information his websites for both training and for the brokerage his Twitter his YouTube is his Email and then if you're interested in some special offerings For book map from FT 71. Here's the affiliate link here Don't worry. I'm gonna cut and paste all of these links into the chat for you So you can click on the link directly and go to the websites or whatever it is that that you're interested in Let me turn it right over to FT Thank You Bruce and hello everyone wherever you are. I hate to say I don't want to say good morning because it is here in Chicago, but it may not be where you are So today we're gonna focus on The the using order flow in terms of context, okay So we've come on and I'm sure many many guests have come on to speak about book map and talk about the nuts and bolts of What they do how they see things within book map what I want to do is Take a more broad view on things the markets currently Doing what I had expected and talked about in the pre-market video that I release Called the trader bite There's not much here for me to to trade off of at the moment I want to remind everyone that derivatives trading is not suitable for all investors and Past performance is not necessarily indicative future results Here's what I'm gonna cover today I'm gonna make this as quick as possible And if you have questions it is best that you type them in as soon as you think of them if I'm being unclear or if I've said something that's throwing you off just ask and We'll do our best to address it as we move along and keep that kind of part of the conversation What I'll cover today is just a brief overview Just a brief talk about what the typical online trader experience is I'm suspecting that many here are still trying to figure out what they need What tools they need and what they need to know in order to trade futures Discuss briefly why I prefer futures over other instruments What we need to do to maintain a sustainable approach the market is a story We'll talk about the narrative of the market and then talk about what pieces will likely go into The pieces that we need to put together that Translate into what I call the tip of the spear, which is book map, right? So let's take I like analogies even with my prop traders I used to get made fun of a lot with my crazy analogies, but Think of this as it's a new day and we are hunters. This is our this is our profession. We go out and hunt and Book map and the version that I use called CT book map You can find it at CT book map that pro including the special offers and whatever else against CT book map pro The book map is my spear. It is Or if you like to use a bow and arrow it is it is my arrow. It is the thing that I need to To to pull up and zoom in For the point of execution of the point of releasing the arrow And so let's put that into context because it's very easy to go and get a demo or a trial of book map or subscribe to book Map and then all of a sudden there are all these areas that appear to be Opportunity areas and and That's okay. There are people who trade like that where you know, that's how I started my career as a high-volume scalper. I Used to do about 3,000 sides a day On on regular days a lot more on busy days. I was a very very busy trader So I basically was a market maker across several products of Dax your stocks ES crude Bund and and I've moved away from that approach quite a bit since 2005. I started using book map when it was a pre released in 2014 I don't recall but it was around 2014 when it was in development So I've been using this product for six years or so But the goal here is to really break things down. So let's let's start with that The first thing I want to share with you is one second is This Some of you I don't know how many of you are familiar with Hawaii. Let me ask you Who here just type in your chat box in front of you who hears never Watch the trader bite or doesn't have a clue who I am just type in Me or something like that. You want to do that? Let's make this a little bit more interactive Okay, it's fair it's got to be many more of you So I do this video every day. It's a pre-market video We're on episode 1843 it gets about 1200 views on YouTube and about seven to eight hundred views on Periscope, which is the Twitter based live-streaming Feed This is a free thing. I've been doing it for so long and it is something I used to do in my prop shop Where we just before the market opens We used to just be in the room everybody's doing their homework and they get a little kind of prep sheet and You know all the traders get a prep sheet and then I would talk through the market and how I'm Seeing things those of you those of those traders that want to listen listen those who don't just have their headsets on With their newsfeed and they're doing their own thing today today's today's Traderbite Discussed how yesterday played out as expected mostly so what I do during this trader bite as I replay the prior day So let me show you so I you know I show what happened What I expected the prior day green is the primary scenario or the the most expected play of the day That's the green part The pink is the second most expected play of the day And then you know sometimes I have a third play. Let me see if I put one in here. I think I had scenario three No, I didn't I might have a third play like when we're out of balance or trading outside of the prior day's range I have a third play and that's usually more aggressive because the markets out of balance the response is likely to be more aggressive So you can see that for yesterday. This is reviewing yesterday's action In today's video, I'm reviewing yesterday's action and And I'm saying hey, do we expect it to pull back and in a push We expected it to go to 3308 and a quarter and pull back to below 3300 and then after that I go into What it actually did and you can see it opened it tested higher just like like like I expected pre-market This is reviewing Yesterday this morning. I know that's confusing, but you know it that's what I'm looking at I'm looking for the market to respond and I'm looking for it to go to 3308 and a quarter see 3308 and a quarter up here or half the market went to 3309 50 and then a drop below 3300 to close So I'm simply holding myself accountable and saying look when Tuesday morning started at about 8 a.m Chicago time 9 a.m. Eastern, which is when this video takes place this live stream takes place Here's what I expected and then I come back. I came back this morning You can see the dates the 23rd, which is this morning. I came back this morning and said, okay Here's what I expected. Here's what it did and I go over what it did Why or why why it worked and why it didn't work and so on and so forth. Why am I telling you this? I'm telling you this to say That you need a you need to understand the overall picture So let's take a step back for a moment and go back to my slide here Which isn't coming up. Oh, yeah, there it is Let's go back to the first second of my slide What is the typical online traders experience typical online traders experience? It has nothing to do with what I just showed Which is what I've been doing as a professional trader For ages since I stopped scalping in volume. I started to create this do this routine every morning It's almost like a religious thing that I do on a day-to-day basis and and and what the online trader does is they come in and they get their platform whatever it is, you know Whatever should rhythmic or think or swim or trade station or whatever you have and they just see a lot of stuff they see These charts they see these numbers they may have copied someone else's stuff And it's just like all these blinking lights and everything else or they jump into book map and They see these dark and light lines and they see all these fancy things everywhere. This is my book map screen I actually usually view it in color, but we'll do monochrome for today It just simplifies things for me at least I don't have to mess with the colors and it's so easy to say, okay I don't know what I'm doing and I need to do something because you know what? I'm useless if I'm sitting here doing nothing. So look, there's a line at 3298 and a quarter So I'm just gonna I'm just gonna sell that I'm just gonna offer that out Okay, I just offered one lot in the micros or whatever and it just becomes more of a gambling experience And and when it works what we do is we are reaffirmed to ourselves that this is actually working that I've got this And when it doesn't work it knocks us into this should I be trading is this gambling is this and we end up in this very volatile process Which ultimately Grinds us down to the point where we just start throwing risk out and start taking excessive We start to trade excessively taking excessive risk and so on because you know what? I don't know what I'm doing. Anyway, I might as well enjoy the process, which is a very poor way to approach trading Everybody's happy to take your money if that's the attitude that we're gonna have about trading So my goal here today is to talk about how do we instead of pulling up book map and talking about what it does And how I use it which I've done in the past. There are many many videos At at on book map site and YouTube channel that I'm on where I go through like some technical detail I felt that it's really important since we're coming into a more active part of the year. These coming into this this October period before we go into the law the holiday law, I just want to make sure you understand what's expected of you because because Because Most people just don't have don't give themselves the time or have the chance to To really see what's going on So the first thing the first thing a typical online traders experience is is to get a tool and just want to click I've got money in account. I know my margin is I know my commissions are I'm just gonna click and I'm gonna see I'm gonna test my luck and This is not and and the reason I have this experience is because since about 2008 while I was running my prop shop. I was also spending a lot of time online and became Became engaged with the with the fin twit with the Twitter community And and started to get a following because I was basically breaking things down to what you really need Which is the conversation we're having currently? What do you really need in order to extract money out of the market again past performance is not necessarily Indicative and you have to do your own homework and figure out your own approach and that's the thing you cannot Copy someone else. There is no way to copy someone else So just because I've watched somebody who's been hunting for a long time Follow this particular path to this particular particular creek and then sit there for An undisclosed amount of time and then finally they Disappear and then they come back with whatever prey there They're hunting doesn't mean that if I followed the exact footsteps went to the same creek sat there for two hours Like they did that I would do the same thing. I actually have to understand the You know, what's in that area is is this the right place to hunt for the things that I'm looking for Is there enough of a population here is there an edge to be to hunting in this particular area of the forest versus another What is the habit of the prey that I'm that I'm after what, you know What point does it go and look for water to to hydrate itself so that I can hunt it and things like that and really Most people try to mimic someone don't try to mimic someone don't try to mimic me what you have to do is get an understanding of what's going on and then Because of your understanding now you come up with your own unique approach if your approach is not unique It is likely to not have an edge and if it does have an edge that edge is not robust And it's likely to be blunted very quickly, you know So like a moving average crossover might work in a certain environment But you'll get chopped the pieces and you'll run your account down to zero and in in other conditions and unless you understand The market that you're trading throwing two moving averages and trading the slope of those averages or crossover isn't going to get you anywhere So first things first We want so that's the online experience you go away You think you kind of figured it out, but you've run out of money You go to work or put another stake together come back subscribe to a bunch of software Which is needed. Those are the tools that we need to hunt with And then repeat the process except get just a tiny bit closer But for a huge expense and a lot of time what I'd like you to do is take the consider a different approach Consider that the market is one long big long continuous story Okay, the market just constantly kind of Evolves this chart here. This chart here is simply a This is the ES it is what I call the composite chart each bar is the pit session bar For the day and it's you know, we can see how it's moving up and down and up and down up and down up and down We could see how the the pandemic low, you know took us from all-time highs In February brought us to lows in March and then we've rallied like Crazy since then to new all-time highs and as soon as we made all-time highs We've rolled over and here we are in a corrective phase Of the market and everybody has access to this chart, you know You go to a daily chart on pretty much any platform and you will get this sort of thing. Okay, I Don't need to explain what the little pieces are bits and pieces of the chart are But this is generally what everybody looks at in terms of what the narrative is and this is where we start We start with a bigger time frame except that I apply volume profiling to what I see and the reason I apply volume profiling is because One price is not the same as another price And the thing that makes one price different from another price is How much participation took place in between? Among those prices for example If we look at what has happened over the last couple days, let's zoom in You'll find that the market tends to move from High volume node to low volume to low volume node to high volume node to low volume node So how am I supposed to do this? How how is it that I do this trader bite every day? And I talk about what are likely targets. It doesn't always get to what I expect It doesn't actually do what I expect all the time But it gets pretty close and if it doesn't that's information that I can use as well So you could see is we dropped From the all-time high we paused at this 3360 area this 3360s is is the most traded price from the gap up on August 3rd to the all-time high is the most traded price We came back to it We chopped around with it chopped around it and then we broke lower and we moved to the next Balance areas most traded price that price is 32 16 75 recall the low of two days ago was 32 17 75 a New person might look at that and say but you said it should it the numbers 32 16 75 It stopped at 32 17 75 What why does that make you correct the thing to note here is We're not sitting here looking for perfection Trading is messy remember that trading is messy We're operating in zones and ranges the S&P currently has about a three and a half point Harmonic rotation or the ebb and flow the ebb and flow in a one-minute period of the S&P It's about three and a half points Okay, so that's what is that 15 14 ticks 14 ticks and we missed the balance low by four ticks That's pretty much spot-on for this product. So We want to for me to understand what it has done in the big picture. We tested One big let me pull up the pens here because you're probably wondering what is this guy going on about? So we've tested one big area We've tested this high volume node right here this black line and it's made up of Everything all the volume accumulated from June till August because we were in balance in that phase Then we gapped up we broke that balance and we ran up to new all-time highs and formed a new high volume node right up here Okay, and what we did is we failed from the high Came back we chopped around the high volume node this area We chopped around which is completely expected because if we like that price Then we're gonna trade a lot at that price if we trade a lot at that price We create a high volume node or an area with a lot of volume and all I'm doing here showing accumulating volume at price and so if we like that price then a lot of chop and a lot of Churning is gonna happen if we fail to hold that price and we break away. We're likely to move to the next most accepted price Down below once we test that next most accepted price And if we don't just slosh around and fall through then we are likely to move up and we are likely to rotate back to 33 60 50 in the December contract. That's what this price is Okay, and I have these prices memorized because I I understand the story so well almost like if you're watching Harry Potter and You've watched ever you've read every single book. You can kind of see where the story may go, right? You might you you can kind of To within a reason predict what is likely to happen next Harry Potter lost this thing and therefore he needs to recover it in order to recover it He's got to go through these these tunnels with the spiders and do this that I'm not a Harry Potter fan but my kids are and So I can within reason predict what is likely to happen next and what the market generally does is it moves from high volume node To low volume node to high volume node to low volume node to high volume node to low volume node and so on And it does this and it goes back and forth and its goal is to seek balance It's to seek balance. It's trying to find the market's job is not to take your money is not to run your stops Those are just little gimmicks within the market action What the market's trying to do is it's trying to find balance. I'm gonna translate that into book map at the end I know you're thinking hey, I'm gonna book map webinar here Why are you talking about volume profiling and showing us this chart show us book map? But I'm gonna translate this to Book map in a way that will help you become more effective using the tool and also help you to not over trade by using book map as a tool and so With that I expect and I anticipate it after After Monday was done yesterday was supposed to be a test of Monday and a push higher above 3,300 and the prediction was 3,308 it went to 3,309 3,308 quarter went to 3,309 half and you can Verify that this is not hindsight 2020 because you can verify that by watching yesterday's YouTube video That was done before the market opened at 9 a.m. Eastern and verify what it did against what the market said and so this morning Again this morning. So the the activity that's supposed to take place is it's it's likely to balance here And it's likely to rotate up to the 3340s And then ultimately come back to 3360 if it continues to drive. So that's what we call the narrative That is the story. Okay, why it happens, you know, is it because Softbank was involved with These this gamma trade and options that force market makers to cover their calls by buying stock and causing this massive And ridiculous rally in the NASDAQ and it doesn't matter it. I don't care Why my job is not to know why now if I was working at CMBC And I was a broadcaster if I wrote a newsletter or something an analysis I would be concerned with a why but I don't really care about the why what I care about is what price is trading and How much is trading at that price? That's it because the market is going although not perfect It's not a perfectly informed and a perfectly efficient market. It gets pretty close. It automatically reflects all of the thoughts that go into what's happening into price and Volume tells me how much I like it or how much I don't like it or how much I agree with it versus how much I don't agree with it. That's where volume profiling comes into play You know and for those of you who are confused I cover this stuff all the time At convergent and I've been talking there hundreds of YouTube webinars and so on that you can watch online for free But this becomes the my understanding of the auction. So You know, most of you rent a renting an apartment or buying and selling a house Or have owned a house and have sold a house Think of it that way you when you speak to your realtor your realtor is gonna talk They're not gonna talk about the technical Features of the house that you're selling versus the technical features of the houses next to it to give you comparables your your Realtor is gonna advise you on whether or not it's a good time to sell your house by looking at the overall inventory of the market The prices that are being accepted is the average the median home price in your area rising Is it falling or what are interest rates doing? How easy is it to get a mortgage? You know the cost of money all these things come into play and Then Your realtor will look at your home will do a walk-through and we'll say, you know what we need to repaint this wall We need to do this. We need to get all of your old Cruddy gross furniture out of here and and rent some furniture to show the house so we can get the best price That's the execution phase So the realtor is we're looking at the big picture. They're looking at the narrative What is the story of what the market has gone through and where are we today? So let's narrow that down. So once we look at the overall picture We look at what has happened the prior day. So that's where This comes in one second We find okay, here we go So once we look at what it did yesterday and then we look at so this is what it did yesterday So I'm reviewing what it did yesterday. Now. I'm looking at what it's done this morning. So this was this here Is yesterday Tuesday? This is what has happened in the extended trading hours We see that the market took out the oh the high of yesterday put in an overnight high at 1975 which corresponds with the key 1775 area. That's what this stock zone is That's what this stock zone is right here. This this great. These gray lines are called stock zones. They're they're lines I put up an update At least once a day These are the areas that I expect the market to react that so you can see the market topped out You can see the market topped out at yesterday's 30 308 quarter stops stock zone And then when it pushed through the overnight high yesterday's high it topped out at the 17 25 stock zone so so I understand that these that my zones are still strong and they're still quite effective So I need to lean on that and then I come in and I look at it And I say I see that the market is attempted to push higher But really it is coming back to the point of control the overnight session. It's holding steady. Okay, and then based on that information Based on that information we move forward. I look at the I look at book map I look at CT book map and look at the features of the order flow. So I'm looking I'm describing this I do this almost I show book map almost every day in this video because I'm narrowing down the idea or the story to what what has executed in the overnight session and then I move forward To the narrative of today So I've used up a good half hour to get you to this point These are today's scenarios. You can go and view these just go to youtube.com look look up search futures trader 71 and you will see That these are the scenarios for today the initial scenario is to push higher and to sell off We are currently selling off right The secondary scenario is to sell off immediately But then we'd get an impulse up and it will start to migrate Towards this 3340 area if it cannot hold the 1775 from this morning The third scenario is it attempts to push higher fails and then does an open test drive And the drive is likely to take us to 83 75. This is where we are now We have we we we've kind of driven this morning 83 75 expecting the market to chop around in here And then expecting it to fall to 70 50 which was a key figure From yesterday and the night before so 70 50 becomes scenario 3's key uh key test price Okay, great now once so that's coming into coming into um The session those are the ideas for the day then the market opens and we look at what did it give us Okay, what it gave us let's switch this to a for ranko, which is what I normally use What it gave us is it opened at the extreme of the prior day So this is the profile of the prior day this chart does not include overnight it only shows It only shows What's happened during the day session so the blue profile is always the day session orange is the entire session The yesterday we opened right at 3309 in a quarter this morning, which was yesterday's high We opened right dead nuts on yesterday's high. We tested down to 04 half. We went to 11 quarter Held sideways. So that's it's an open auction. It's a two-way auction. It's chop And it attempt it attempted to break out. So this would have been scenario two It attempted to break out and what I'm looking for now is it starts to break out Then I'm looking for On the heat map I'm looking for a bid to show up below it at about 33 10 to 3309 50 For to pull back to that area and then start to push 1250 and that's what we call initiative buying meaning the market is not liking yesterday's Prices and yesterday's area that it accepted or traded at and it's starting to move away from that price Which is not our expectation our expectation today again Was that we would likely move back into yesterday's range? Remember that's what was predicted In this morning's trader bike test higher and fall back into the prior day's range to blue So we're looking to fall back into the prior day's range And that's so the scenario one and three look for reversion or pull back into the prior day's range And scenario one says It's not likely to be very aggressive when it does scenario three says it's probably going to be aggressive and it's likely to Be a trending kind of move down Right scenario two is the one that tests down and then starts to break higher and run away. So Here's what has happened So far we have Tested up we've we're solidly back into the prior day's range So what is the primary target as we push into the prior day's range? So now Seeing as it's going moved into the prior day's range and is not pushing back out In other words, it's not turning up getting above vwap the day session vwap and back out of yesterday's range Now i'm eliminating i'm removing from the table any buying So pay attention here Because people tend to want to trade from both sides no matter what the narrative no matter what's going on They want to trade from both sides and so I I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. I want to trade In the direction that the narrative tells me the market's willing to go Or I want to trade in the direction that facilitates the easiest returns for my risk There's always risk a trade Any trade at any random time may not work. I know that it's okay It's okay. I accept this as a trader as as it's the reality of the market that the outcome the next time I click and get into a trade The outlaw the outcomes completely random for that particular trade Period But what I want is what I want to go for as a professional is someone who wants to trade sustainably and i'm I'm supporting this by Getting the best data feed getting the best analytics package getting the best order flow package, which I believe is bookmap, right? and I'm supporting the i'm giving myself the best chance And so the best chance for me is to just look for shorts So that eliminates the anxiety of missing the bottom That eliminates the possibility that I might be trying to catch the bottom and losing my ass doing that which is a very Common thing for new traders to do so now we're moving into The area of what we need to maintain a sustainable approach what you need to maintain a sustainable approach Is an understanding that the market is an auction and an understanding for your particular product Whether it's crude and cube bun bobble shots Euro stocks cac 40 whatever it is. I don't care nazzak ym rty you name it Whatever that product is understand the narrative So you've been if you've been away on a week for vacation go back to the month go back a month Or at least two weeks Right go back to the week that you missed and the week before And play back the market on your bigger time frame chart I like to use 15 minutes for that or you know some sort of a point and figure chart And play it bar by bar and look at what it did. Okay. What did it form? What what areas did it accept price in the way? I can Learn how it accepted prices or rejected prices is the volume profile Acceptance means a lot of volume occurred at that price rejection shows that very little volume occurred at that price And we walk that I walk that chart forward bar by bar by bar by bar until the present and the goal here Is to understand the narrative the market story is what i'm after Because as a trader i'm trading the story Not the indicator Not the collision Not the what joe schmoe said i'm trading the story The big traders in the world who are not fully automated or algorithmic are coming in And their biggest edge is their understanding of their market Right like bruce lee said I don't fear the man Who has done a kick Uh has done 10,000 uh styles of kick once practice a kick 10,000 kicks one time. I don't fear that man This is bruce lee He says I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times And that's what we want to be we want to understand our market better Than any other participant we can possibly lose money to so I don't need to be the best But I can't be the last I can't be the person that comes in and wakes up shows up and then just Trades from the gut. I don't want to be that I want to be the person who really understands this market I know that if I don't make money today, it is okay. It doesn't tell me I don't have to quit I'm not a terrible trader. It just means that I didn't have alignment. I followed my plan and it just didn't pay off and that's normal I know that tomorrow I'll probably come in and do something with it Or the day after the day after that and the reason I know that is because I understand my market better than Most other people or many other people You know, uh, think of the joke The way to not get eaten by a bear is not to be the fastest runner It's to be faster than the slowest runner. I'm sure you've heard that right? So our goal is not to be the greatest trader Let's just be modest and realistic here because to be the greatest trader requires a level of commitment That most people cannot pull off our goal is to be better than others and most people on the in the online world Don't do the work. Don't understand the market aren't Uh, figuring out the alignment they have with the market and so now we want to break down the pieces So once we have determined what We're likely to trade what we want to trade. It boils down to Where I engage And I'm using book map to engage right so I'm trading right off a book map. I'm using the rhythmic feed I believe it to be the best feed out there And I'm a professional. I've used ttx trader. I've used c cts I've used For a period I even use trade station and that was Really terrible for direct market access on futures. I use rhythmic. It gives me the full depth. I can see where Something is bitter offered as far as the eye can see I can zoom out and I have a live depth Full market depth. I have mbo data Which means that I have all the details that the professional shops get I can see that there's a nice offer here at 32 98 and a quarter that's been sitting here a long time I cannot recall that it's not possible for me to recall that level of information By looking at you know, the tape and the classic 10 offer 10 bid dome I can just look at the heat map and see that this person has been here a while this order has been here a while And as long as it doesn't go from white To grayish to gray to dark to black as the price moves up to it And if I want to if I believe that I have a reason to sell in this area Then I know I can lean on that price So this is where book map shines And so once I know that I'm looking for shorts, what's the next thing I need to do I need to determine what areas are going to give me an edge for my execution And I need to to monitor how my how the market's rotating versus the size of my stop Right. So harmonic rotations again if if for example Uh, I sell short And I only I only provide three ticks For a stop when the market is sloshing around in six point ranges because it's extra volatile I'm just I'm donating Those three or four ticks from my stop with slippage. I'm donating that money I might as well just pull that money out of my account and send it to my favorite charity Because that's what's going to happen. So I need to be aware Of how is the market flowing right? How is it flowing? It's got pretty wide ranges It's it's hitting about five points at the moment And I need to assess whether or not that's too much for my account size because I don't want to risk too much on a single trade But I also know that I'm going to lean short today So you can see we opened way up here pretty crowded. We finally break through areas of interest currently are Right here this In fact, I I missed it. Let me just do this again See the zipper here Which coincides with this offer The top of the zipper is right there. So for that trade, I need about five points of range five point stop I have liquidity Right here to lean against you can see that liquidity on the in the dome right here Okay, the next areas that I want to be interested in is are we going to remain stuck? Right here. It's really hard for me to draw with a mouse So this is another Area where the market battled you can see those Red and blue dots and by the way my dots are filtered. I filter everything. I don't want to see A lot of noise. So I I'm filtering my dots by 50 I turn off the smart clustering. I just want to see the dots for where they are But I filter by 50 lots And it tells me that there's a fight here. So there's a fight right here. I need to pay attention to this area I've got a bottom So this area resulted in a collision A pop to the next this is the next zipper right here This is the next zipper above The market has tested the extreme of that collision Let me choose another color. Let me just do a nice loud color for you pink Let's clear this out Let me ask you been talking a lot Have I are you following? Are you following along as to what I'm talking about here? Do you understand the point that I'm making? Everybody that you've got your keyboard in front of you just go in the chat box and say yes or no Right this This Is what it takes This is what it takes Unless you are algorithmic and you're automated This is what it takes. It is not a matter of finding some liquidity level and selling in front of it Or buying in front of it. It's not a matter of Getting that super duper add-on plugin by this guy to it's not that all Supports that stuff that supports your execution or decision-making process But trading is what I'm talking about. So you want to watch this video again Because I'm telling you what kind of what level of Thinking and commitment you need. I'm just being very honest with you About what it's what it's about. Okay, you'll notice that my chart here is very simple. I have a have a session long volume profile very important to me because I'm a volume profile person I have a chart based volume profile because sometimes I want to see the top and bottom of a zipper and how much went on I'll show you how I use that in a minute. Maybe bruce. You can remind me if I didn't cover it This here is the cloud notes column these levels are uploaded to a convergent server Uh to a convergent server and these are key areas the stock zones are key areas I want to interact with the market on so if I have liquidity within a stock zone I'm going to engage if I don't then I need to lean on something else But stock zones are very important. These are mark. These are areas that I expect the market to react at So you can see the stock zone here If I extend the stock zone out this way you can see that It received a lot of engagement in here up here Right. These are areas I'm expecting the market to engage at and these are not These pre exist the open of the market. I'm not aware of where the market's going to respond But and I'm also, you know, I cover how you create these stock zones and how you generate them and stuff within convergent for the members And the goal here is to have you map out what you're going to do for the day. That's the narrative And then come in and execute. So let's get back to execution Key area right here. See how it was just tested again Tested from above A fight happened right there Broke higher Failed tested from above Lower high if I was looking to get short and I missed this This would be the area to be looking to get short right in here lower high Lower high from the last high and lower high From the most recent high look to hit the bid Look to push look to exit before The next key consolidation area not exit but scale you could see there's a lot of a lot of dots there Pulls back a little bit breaks through then it tests This key area, which again tested here tested here Tested here from above This is the next key area to lean on. So we have a new zipper. This becomes Now the chart shifted, of course, and I got to redraw these things Now if I'm short, I'm a monitoring this area I'm going to stay short as long as it doesn't take out this region right here I'm going to stay short and my target for the short Could be the extended target for the short is 70 50 70 50 it's nine points away As long as the market does not breach the last big zipper That I'm looking at I'm not interested in getting out So if it comes back consolidates forms a zipper then that becomes the next area I manage risk with because the market has to work really hard to break through these zipper areas And and if it does break through the zipper area tells me that okay the idea my idea is probably done Okay, so oftentimes I'll scroll out and I'll see what is next in terms of Firm liquidity remember. What was the level I just mentioned? Does anybody remember? What was the level I just mentioned? Wow, some of you are listening Good job So 70 50 so I I mentioned that before I scrolled out What do we have here? liquidity at 70 70 50 long lasting liquidity at 70 50 So this gives me confidence in my short that I need to hang in there Market generally moves towards liquidity. I can explain the reasons why but we don't have time for that So I see that 70 50 this confirms to me that this stock zone here is meaningful The 70 50 now becomes two things one It is an area. I really need to either get out in front of or scale in front of Or it's an area on a first test in other words It tests pulls up puts in a higher low starts to rotate up It's an area that I might be able to get long for a scalp long late in the day scalp long Because structured trades are only short. Do you guys remember why I said Why I'm saying structured trades are only short Do you remember that? You remember why I'm saying structured trades are only short I know a lot of you are probably really lost. It's like drinking out of a fire hose when I go over this stuff But remember that based on the narrative That the market created early on the big picture We are the plan is that we're only looking short. We're back in the prior day's range Do not forget this do not get caught up In the tick action and forget what the big picture is Stick with the big picture. Keep the big picture in mind. So structured trades These are trades that I'm looking for sizeable returns meaning five to one eight to one ten to one risk reward or ten r five r eight r Structure trades are the real trades and then scalps Are just little anomalies where I'm just trading the flow. I'm trading against the structure So buying today is scalps. These are going to have Smaller size smaller risk smaller reward and they are just participating in the order flow Opportunities as they show up But structured trades are short based on the big picture narrative They're in order to in order to be to sustain yourself as a career trader Which is really the goal behind convergence. It's why we created convergent right opening up how you trade as a professional to to any trader that wants to have it The goal is to have a robust plan or a robust approach to the market and In order to have a robust approach to the market. You need to understand your market. That's your edge That's your edge And then you need to and then what you need to do is do is use whatever tools you feel help you find your spot within that edge Okay, my edge has been the same for 15 years. I started looking I started moving from scalping super high volume basically market making to looking at MACD's ccis rsi's all this stuff because I needed to move out of the scalping realm because HFT was had taken over scalping the CME changed the rules so that it wasn't reporting The the the quantities on the tape the fills on the tape the same way. It was breaking them up which Rhythmic allows you and bookmap reconsolidates those by the way really important So I need to move out of the tick scalping realm and move higher. So I looked at everything fibs again All this stuff like wipe off Just I was running a prop shop and I the future of this prop shop was in peril I need to find something better. So I moved to market profile Which immediately made sense to me the auction and then after a while market profile because it was built on time 30 minute brackets of time It didn't make sense to me because I was using x-traitor and I had this tick volume and it was accurate And x-traitor was forming a profile to me So I started to look at volume profile when nobody else was talking about it And so I looked at volume profiling and I looked at how it responded the market responds at high volume nodes versus low volume nodes Okay, and and then I started to distill that into a plan And that hasn't changed since since 2005. I don't need to change what I'm looking at all the time I might change the tools But the overall the overall market view remains the same. It has remained the same. Okay, so What are we looking at right now? Actually, I think I'm over my time So we broke down the pieces and we translated it to the tip of the spear a hunter spear We engage with the market how? If of course this this sell-off is now extended, right But if I wanted to engage with it I know that I can potentially lean at 87 with a 90 stop If that doesn't work, I can lean on 92 with a 95 stop And if if if I'm still convinced that the short which at that point I'll probably start re-looking at this And considering that the short's probably not the best thing Uh, the next big area I'd look at you can see it on the profile over here on the left The next big area that the market's likely to battle in this big zipper which formed this high volume node is likely to be In the 94 95 area with a stop above 3,300 If it breaks 3,300 guess what well, let me ask you since you've been listening so Intently and paying attention. Here's your pop quiz before we take questions If it fails above 3,300 If it fails above 3,300 All right market comes in Fails above retests and holds Where's the next most likely place it'll test according to what you've learned the crash course you got today In volume profiling. Where was it likely to go? Right on see you've been listening If it fails to get to to hold this area and it breaks higher Right What is the next logical price that it's going to test? Most of you got it The next most logical price is the high volume node because it's moving from low volume node to high volume node to low volume node to high volume node So the next big area so if I get stopped out at 3,300 or above And I see an opportunity to get long i'm going to hold for 3309 3,310 That is the Area that was accepted before Okay inversely if I am looking for whatever reason to get short up here You know in this area right here 3,307 Then my stop has to be above 3,312 not because that's the high from this morning But that's because but it's because it's a high volume area It's the next high the top of the high volume area above Right, so that has to be my I can't put my stop in here because this is acceptance It's likely to come up here and chop around But if it breaks above the high volume node that I know i'm wrong because if it was really going to hold This area it should not be able to get through all of this volume Okay, so anyway, uh, I apologize. I ran a little long Are there any questions bruce that I need to address before we skip out of here? um, I think Some there's tons of questions in here. I've been answering most of them and trying to answer them for you, but a few questions on the Stop iceberg tracker If you're looking at the market by order data, and if there's any sort of confluences that you're getting from that I'll be honest with you. Um I don't use it. You could see it's turned off I don't really use it and here's here's why I don't want to talk about it I have not put in the work and it's hours and hours and hours of work. I've not put in the work to understand How I can use that as an edge and so my preference as it always has been is to not talk about Not show something I don't use because then I just become a salesman as opposed to a trader, right? So that's why it's turned off. I normally have it turned on. I normally look at it, but I'm not putting in the effort I'm a statistical study kind of person. I'm not putting in the effort to extract the data and You know replay it and see how it's responding. So I really cannot address Uh anything to do with the stop and iceberg indicator at this point maybe at some point in the future I can come in and talk about it once I feel like I'm Proficient at it, but at the moment I can't address those Okay, uh, let's see here. Um Let's see. Ian is asking about uh, please talk about uh, what structures You use to hide your stops behind So stops can take one of two One of two texts um Not sure if you've heard the term zipper before But the market goes from imbalance Where it's it's actively seeking price That that's what trends are okay to balance So balance looks like this Here's balance Here's balance. Here's balance. Here's balance. Here's balance. Here's imbalance to balance to imbalance. Okay When it goes into balance it forms what I call a zipper A silly silly term that I invented But on a candlestick chart it looks a lot like this kind of like Your pants zipper Right and we there are many things that people call these they may call it a bear flag and whatnot And then the market will zipper up and continue or will zipper up in reverse Um, I look for zippers to support my trades Because if if there is a consolidation where the market showed acceptance like right here We could see that there's quite a bit of volume that occurred here. See it on the cvp Okay, and i'm short. Let's say i'm short right here Hypothetical because I think there's a continuation to 70 I'm short right here and the market manages to walk up To this zipper trade this volume And then somehow push through I am wrong Because if this balance Has any meaning or the zipper has any meaning or the market lacks strength Which is what i'm expecting it has to lack strength for it and I sell off My short side to work Then it should not be able to break through All this volume and go to the other side If I don't have a zipper, for example, I got short somewhere And there's no zipper then I use a fixed stop and the fixed stop is based on Again, the harmonic rotation of the product. How wide is the product trading and harmonic rotations are a statistical Thing that I look at and I have a chart that It actually gives me that information I can pull up any product And on any time frame and look at its harmonics like here. This is the es Using 10 sessions 10 trading sessions So a shorter time frame less than a month usually a month in whatever time frame I can switch the time frame to No, I want 10 sessions And I can switch the Time frame to one minute I'm using one minute charts Recalculate and what it does is it finds a swing high swing low swing high swing low swing high swing low Gives me the magnitude of those highs and lows and it gives me a profile a statistical profile And I know for the s&p The most common rotation right now based on 10 bar 10 sessions one minute bars for the high and low That the harmonic rotation or the ebb and flow of the s&p in the day session remember 8 30 to 3 15 chicago time I'm in chicago Is 4.75 points. What does that mean? It means that if i'm using a stop that is inside of 4.75 points I am well within reach Of the of the s&p just doing its ebb and flow ebb and flow ebb and flow That's that's a harmonic. I need to be outside. So if I don't have An area to lean against let's say I got short right here Say at 32 78 Then a minimum stop I have to use Is five points because I don't have a structure to lean against But if i'm short against something and there's a zipper there And the zipper has you know, it's within that five point range or less. Hopefully less like two points Then I will use the zipper the lesser of the two I'll use that zipper because I expect the market's not likely to break to the other side of it So harmonic rotations are very important Because they immediate this this is in real time. This is real time information. I'm not using an atr Which is an average true range and the atr Looks back a certain number of periods And takes an average but the market is not a normally distributed Entity in fact life everything in life is not normally distributed. So an average generally does not describe What's going on the average? Asset value of In the united states of an american citizen You know if if if everybody makes a hundred grand if if a million people have an average salary of a hundred grand and then you put bill gates and and Buffet and musk and Whatever The amazon guy bezos in there all of a sudden the average american makes you know Three hundred and eighty million dollars. No, they don't they still make a hundred grand It's just the data is not normally distributed. It's fat to the left It's it's got a fat tail in it and that fat tail is going to pull the average Towards the middle where nobody exists. There's a huge gap between The average american and the billionaires Uh that represent, you know the tech sector So I don't like using averages I like to use whatever the market is yielding in real time And i'm looking back 10 sessions because I got to look back at something. I don't look back at history and and I plot it in a profile and then the profile tells me that you know the most common rotations 4.75 but 70 percent of the time or one sigma of of this this Um this kind of look back period can be up to nine points So it's not that hard or what we consider normal, which is one sigma or 68 percent of the dataset Can be up to nine points. So technically I should be using a nine and a half 10 point stop technically But i'm only interested in what's most common because that's what's reasonable I can't use a nine or 10 point stop on a one minute time frame. That's too Too wide. I'd have to cut my size Wait, wait. I may have to trade a one lot. Yes to be able to sustain that maintain Uh a reasonable risk versus the value of my account To to reduce my risk of ruin anyway I think i'm mixing a lot of different lessons or a lot of different lectures or webinars into one here because of the questions But you understand my point here Will play a stop placement is dependent on a lot of things your account size The nature of the product, you know the tick value of the product The harmonic rotations of the product that you're trading in the time frame that you're trading it So for example, if I use a 15 minute chart I switch this to a 15 minute chart Okay, I switch it to a 15 minute chart and recalculate the harmonics Well, the the trade count will be 20 and that's too low. That's not statistically significant. So I'd have to go back a year So if I look at rth 15 minute bar chart going back a year I should not be trading with less than a 13 point stop because in a 15 minute bar the rotations are much much bigger Much bigger and has nothing to do with the product's volatility It has to do with the fact that you're looking at a much higher time frame So all of a sudden it went from 4.75 or 4.5 whatever it was to 12.75 So if I'm trading a swing or a bigger time frame, I got to have a bigger Stop I've got to have a bigger account Because every time I get stopped it shouldn't represent more than 1 percent of my account value I cannot risk more than 1 percent of my account value per trade. Otherwise my risk of ruin increases dramatically I won't be able to have that many trades before I have to stop trading because I've run out of money All that that's all stuff that I cover a lot of convergent and many other Videos and I can't get into here and I think we're way over our time right bruce Yes, there's just a few more questions. If you if you don't mind If you have a few more minutes So Well, one question was getting back to you wanted me to remind you as well as someone else asked about it The chart range volume profile in book map and how are you using that? Chart range the CVP column. Oh, yeah, okay. Good. Good. Thank you for that Let's say I'm examining a I'm examining a zipper Let's say I'm looking to figure out where in the zipper. I need to put my stop what I do is I expand that zipper I'm looking for this zipper right I expand that zipper And I'm using the CVP to to see exactly what kind of volume I'm dealing with here This is why I use it. It gives me a very clear view For example, I want to know what the bottom looks like. Let's go take a look at what the bottom looks like Here's the bottom Using the CVP I know That this zipper down here at the low Has this kind of a distribution So much of the volume is 74 and a quarter. So if I'm really pinpointing a stop I would put it beyond that 74 and a quarter on the long Right. I would hate for the market to get through 75 here at the top of the zipper But really my stop can't be at the top of the zipper and I'd rather not have it be the new low I know that if it's if it gets through the point of control the point of control Which is the highest the point at which there's the highest volume That's the point of control also in statistics statistics called the mode I know that if it gets through the mode here at 74 and a quarter and starts trading 74 I know that it's very very likely to get down to 72 75 So the CVP to me is more of a um A refinement tool, right? So, you know, it just tells me what's happening within a range. So if I look at the last 60 minutes Basically, I'm looking at a 60 minute Profile when I set it to 60 minutes or if I want to know what the profile looks like for the last 15 minutes I have a 15 minute profile The SVP is giving me that same information For the entire session from five o'clock chicago time when the market reopened until now And that's that's important But it's just that the CVP really just gives me a way to refine like what's going on in here Okay, I see that there's some volume here that went off at 80 and a quarter and 81 and a quarter um And that's that's what you know, that's what it it traded in real time and with rhythmic as a data feed um The data is just incredibly accurate as I check it against my IQ feed and other feeds that I have It's incredibly accurate so I can lean You know the tick data I can lean on these volumes that we see here. That's how I'm using the CVP okay, um, so Let's see. There are some other questions. I I try to answer most of the questions in there for you And I think we're kind of at the end of the session here um if you Want to reach out directly to ft the Contact information is in the chat there. I put it in several times for you guys. That's info at conversion trading dot com You've got all the website information the special offers from book map His websites, etc. That's all all in there any anything that You got kind of parting words you want to leave for for everybody ft I I would say that I've had so much experience. Um, I I straddle the two two worlds I straddle the world of prop trading and like doing this professionally right here in chicago And for the last 12 years, I've been exposed to the online what they call retail, which I hate I hate that term the online independent trader world And I've learned a lot about what goes wrong because I've talked to so many traders and we do these Group mentoring sessions and stuff at convergent. We get to see what everybody's struggling with and I would say this to you Don't just trust what somebody's saying. Don't trust what I'm saying. Don't believe me Verify it for yourself Observe replay charts one of the best features of book map is the replay feature record your live sessions and replay them and by replaying and replaying You get to see Some stuff that just repeats and repeats and your job is to sit down quantify that edge figure out Okay, in order for me to exploit this piece of information. How much do I need to risk at the end of the day? At the end of the day your stop is nothing more than the cost of a ticket It's like a lotto ticket, but it's not gambling because gambling implies a low low low probability of winning It's not gambling. It's Wagering, uh, it's taking a uh an educated Guess using your money. It's it's an investment You know, it's like starting a business doesn't guarantee you'll make money Trading is the same Your stop is the price of the ticket The price of the ticket in order to see Whether you're right or wrong So your goal is to quantify what you're doing Combine that with really just really stringent risk management. You cannot let your emotions get in the way This is why it's important to understand and the reason I went through this Lengthy process of putting book maps usefulness In its place in my book Right, if you pull up book map on its own, it's this is a formidable tool I wish I had this when I was a prop shop owner, right? I would think that I would have doubled the returns on my traders with this easily That's just my opinion because there's so much we used to memorize that you don't need to anymore We can see we can examine we can zoom in Wish I had this, okay But if you go and use this on its own And sit here and just beep bop beep bop beep, you know Bounce in and out of trades It's really hard to sustain that as an edge. So understand that You need to find some repeat that the market has these repeating patterns because it's it's it's a living thing It's like a hue. It's a it's the accumulative it's the cumulative consciousness of all the Participants in it the traders in it So humans are have a certain way of thinking and it's reflected in the market It's not all automated like people tell you to yes the volume is Automated because it's executed by computers, but the decisions are made by humans which result in computers making decisions based on that but Take that Find something that kind of repeats itself. I discussed one or two things here and then Apply some really stringent um Really stringent risk control because your job as a trader is to be here tomorrow. That's it my job is to Pay up Just to see the next card like on a poker table Try to pay up as little as possible to see the next card But keeping an eye on the fact that I can't pay too much because I need to come back tomorrow and do this again and again and again It's unfortunate over the last 12 years I've seen people make a huge effort and then go out in a blaze of glory. Just go out blowing up Completely um Blowing up completely when I felt that they were so close They've invested a lot of time and they just get tired of it and they just like Take a bad trade and then they're like, you know screw it. I only have a thousand dollars left in my account I'm just going to triple down on the my on the micros and just let it ride It's unfortunate because as soon as you give up that risk control You're kind of you're going to wash away So Pay attention to that. You know, you need it. You need an edge You need some risk control and understand that losses are a part of this losses are welcome I'd rather take a thousand dollar loss on a trade than to be stubborn or attached and risk 50 thousand dollars on a trade and then I can't trade tomorrow and and use this tool to be able to pinpoint or snipe The locations where you want to trade you want The order flow to be on your side to simplifies the ability to read order flow So that's it the the um, I know that uh, you can just I think in order to see Oh, the book map deal. I think that's that maybe is no longer valid but To get information on what I'm doing or to ask questions you can just go to convergent trading.com Forward slash contact. I'll do my best to help out But that's that's the place to find me. Okay. I'll leave you with those words. Sorry, bruce. We went way over But I hope I've impacted everybody here positively in some way That's really the effort I've been making for the last 12 years for the online trader I just want to impact your trading in some positive way. It's good for the industry Take care everyone and thanks for having me on bruce Thank you ft