 Good morning, traders. Welcome to the Traders Lab. I'm your host, Tom B. Can I please get a screen checked in YouTube and the Bookmap Discord Trader Lab chat? Great. Okay. Thanks, everyone. I am having technical problems here. Internet has been going up and down again, and it was pretty calm up until just a few minutes ago, so I've been dropping in and out. So, Steve, if you keep an eye on things over here, by the way, if you're joining the Trader Lab and visiting today, thank you so much for stopping by. I'm streaming live from Costa Rica, and I'm in a very small community with them, and a monkey jumps off a branch onto the cable for the Internet. It goes down, and it's been going up and down, up and down. So, if I drop out, you can either have support. We'll hopefully get another link up into YouTube so you can reconnect. If you can't, there is a link in the bottom of YouTube on the channel. If you scroll down, it'll take you over to the Bookmap Discord server where you can then access it there in the Trader Lab, where I should be able to reconnect. I apologize for the situation, but this is Costa Rica. The other part of this is that the streams are recorded and are available to everyone in the Bookmap Discord Trader Lab chat. So, if you want to review it over the weekend, if you find some value, it will be available there, and you can access it in there as well as a library of webinars on this process. Plus, recorded situations or scenarios that you can reverse engineer. Take a look at 60 PDFs of structured trades you can take a look at that actually go over here in the stream and just generally get an idea of, you know, what is this all about? This is auction market theory. In other words, using a high-tier tool like Bookmap and order flow tool to integrate using concepts of how does the market work, why does it do what it does, and how much you get in alignment. And when you put the pieces together, it might give you an edge over other traders who do not have plans and are pretty much playing a video game. If you want to be in the business of trading, it's very much a gaming business in my opinion. So if we step back from all the rotations and the noise and the bounce up and down, what is the business of trading? Well, it's an organizational process. It is a gaming process. And if you can organize it, then you can measure it. If you can measure it, you'll know where your trades show up that have its statistical edge. And then if you have the discipline to actually follow a vetted structured trade plan, just like the casinos do, you then have an opportunity to maybe be in the business of trading, just like the casinos are in the business of gaming. That's what this stream is about. And of course, like everything, you have to always be aware of the past performance is not indicative of future results. It's up to each individual to determine where their fit is and to deal with the psychological aspects of fear, greed, and all the emotional triggers that disrupt the best intentions. General disclosure, all book map limited materials, information and presentations are for educational purposes only. And should not be considered specific investment advice or recommendations. Risk disclosure, trading futures, equities of digital currencies involve substantial risk of loss. And it's not suitable for all investors past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. And please remember the stream is based on structured trades that are available to all of you in the book map to score trail of chat. So you can not only follow the trades as they develop, but also anticipate them. And if it makes sense and you find value in this, you can also reverse engineer these processes and fit them into a process that works psychologically and emotionally. In other words, what range are you a trading a very short term ranges, you know, and I don't want to use the term scalping because that's not really the case. But let's just say short term rotations. Are you trading long, you're trading short, you're trading upside down, you're spinning around, or are you just trading with the trend and using the counter rotations, not to get short, but to reposition longer to add, you know, what's your plan. This is why trading, there's no one way to operate. But I will say is that you need to understand market mechanics, then you can determine how you operate. And if you can measure it, you can also determine where it is your edge. Do is there an edge for you to get out of position for counter rotation, or is the edge just to take the trend, you know, for continuation trades, can you determine the difference between the two conditions, in other words, rotational trade like we had yesterday, and a day like today. Now, yesterday, by the way, it was a mean reversion day and we always like, I mean, I went over and I reviewed at the end of the RTH session, I did a, this is exclusively for the trader lab participants, an overview of when the market reversed out. And I think it was down at 4775, I can't remember 4875, one of these. And that was a reversal and set up what turned out to be the trade of the day, which was a neutral day that turned out taking out the high of the day and going neutral extreme and extreme neutral day leads to continuation often in the ETH that follows in the RTH and here we are today. That's where we are. So let's go take a look at what's going on. Now, I'm going to just show you the lay of the land very quickly and then get into the trades. And remember, these are structured trades and past performance is not indicative of your results. You got to, you know, vet everything for yourself. And I also want to remind everybody, remember, if the stream goes down, you can reaccess it in the Discord trader lab chat. And this stream is available for review over the weekend for trader lab participants if you are inclined. Let's see. Okay, so this is I'm going to show you a price map. Okay. And what the price map is, is basically levels that are important. So let's look at the levels. This is 4815 was yesterday's naked volume point of control. And this is auction theory terminology. All it means is high volume. Think of high volume like shopping. So it's retail, you know, high volume in your store, wherever the buyers and sellers agree on a price. That's where the volume goes. That's called buying retail. I call it retail price. Same thing shopping trading is shopping. By the way, let's remove all the mystique from this thing. It's shopping. The purpose of the market is to figure out what's too high, what is too low and what's retail. And the other aspect of it is the market reprices as more input or participant behavior comes into the market. It could be just buyers and sellers. It could be economic reports, cause repricing. There's all kinds of random inputs. Write that down. Random. Think casinos. Think alert. Okay. So let's watch. Oops, sorry. I've got distracted over here. So this is our targets. Yesterday's high. Okay. We have this, which is the retail price. We have the overnight volume point of control. This is retail in the ETH. We have 35, which was a level that was retail and you're going, how can you have all these retail prices? I'll tell you why. Last time we were up here. Last time we were up here, this was too high. We said, I'm not paying that. Think of going to a store and you go and you see the price and you go, and you pick the thing up and you look at the price and you go, I'm not paying it. You put it back on the shelf. You leave. Well, everybody else goes, that's too high. Off we go and we leave. Okay. Now yesterday, don't forget we were lower. We came up and this was our target for our longest yesterday. You do remember this was on the price map. Yesterday's high is here. Now, is it a coincidence? I'm going to say yes and no. How do you like that for an answer? Yes and no. Random yes. Coincidence? No. Random yes. Then what's our next location? Here, this is our next outside target. So the way this works is this might be, if we come back to this price, which was fair yesterday and we check it and it's now too low, where might we go being the astute shoppers? Well, let's go back and check what was too high last time we're up here. So this sets up our levels to operate. Now, there's more. If we open higher, let me just get my brain working here a little bit. I can't see my open. That's what's throwing me off here. That'd be like right here. Guys, where's the RTH open? The price? You can give me that. 22. Is it covered out? Okay, that's why. Okay, thanks guys. So this is your RTH open. And let me give you a little bit more so you know what else. And there's just a couple of little things we'll get rolling right here. This is the ETH overnight volume point of control. Same concept as those other locations except this is the most recent auction. So left behind from the last time we were up here and then we'll be ready to get going was this. So that's a target in the most recent auction, ETH. This is high volume. That was retail here. So if I open lower, I have possibilities. I'm going to go potentially here. Is that really too high? If I get through it next level, is that too high? Let's go to the other side. 15. Is that too low? That's our price map. Is everybody tracking? Okay, how we do it in YouTube? Are you guys conscious? Always worry about YouTube. Okay, so that's our price map. So now let's go take a look. Now let's get in the RTH open. That's an ignition logo coming down right there by the way. That's your wonder, doesn't it? Okay, so we're anticipating. Remember, a locations here. Yesterday's high. We open at 22. We open in a gap coming down and filling the gap. And don't forget we had a reversal day yesterday. We had a neutral extreme day. You got to be here at the top of the stream so you get all the pieces. Then we can anticipate, is this still too low? Let's fill the gap. So if I open higher, well, of course, anything can happen. This is part of the joy. But logically, if you came in long, what would you do on a Friday? Might you take a profit? And again, we don't know. So let's go take a look at the first structure traits. And again, past performance, not indicative of future result. This is part of what's in the 60 PDFs that are available to all of you in the book map, just go to your lab chat. So let's go take a look. It opens. I get some selling. I get some buying. This is called VPOC migration. This right here is showing me two pieces. Now I'm going in the microstructure. Now remember where my levels are that I have to be thinking about. Fill the gap. This down here at 15 and up above. And I have to try to see who takes control. Okay. So too high, too low, right here. Too high, retail, retail here. What this is measuring is volume. So I'm looking here. I have two sides active. Who's going to take the ball? Well, what I know is I'm in a gap. And I know this was too low. It was my target yesterday coming up. And it's going to be support potentially today. Again, no clue. And then whatever happens happens. So let's go take a look. I get my buyer. Right here, I'm looking at this and I'm going, okay, there's my buyers. All right. Let's watch. This right here is going to be your CVD chart volume Delta. It's going to show me, so over here it's showing me these sellers in this leg. Just so you know, RTH open. I get buyers. And now the longs. You can see the Delta now going green. All right. And just adding this in is a little bit of a spice. So what do we do right here? Let's look. Now these are not traits. This is just behavior. Okay. So right here, this is too low. This is not a long. Unless it's in your plan. This suggests rotation up. We still have this selling in this leg, which contributes. And this is a bit more advanced to an up rotation. I'm just giving you how to read. Not to do anything. Just to read. Right here, let's look here. This is called the chart volume profile. Right in here is volume. This, this is a consolidation. You guys all know what those things are. Chop, chop, chop, chop. And what is a consolidation? Let's look beyond the noise. The consolidation is an auction. And if this is auction market theory, we're thinking, why does the market do stuff like, why did it go directional and then do this? Well, a couple of reasons, obviously, but one of them is, is this fair versus too high? If this is too low, we can break away from it and keep going. If it in the short timeframe becomes too high and there's your volume. This is a price volume inside of a consolidation structure. I see my seller. In other words, let's leave the store. And now I come back to check the volume. Now, we don't know what's going to happen. Remember, that's not our job. But what might happen if I don't get above this, then I can come back here and check this volume. And now I have longs in this leg. See the delta? So let's just watch the behavior. See what it does. I don't know what it's going to do. Now, remember this, this is the area that I'm interested in. Now, so here's the possibilities. If you're in the trader lab, by the way, there's nothing here. You're observing this. If you're in the trader lab, you would know what this is. You would know it's an area of a decision. It's either right here, going to go that way. And you're going to go, Tom, this is so insightful. You mean it's going to go up and down? I'm going to say, yeah, it's going to go up or down. But if I can read it and understand the language, I don't use indicators. Now, this is the market pulse. I will talk about it. But it is not, it is the chassis of the market is the participant behavior. It's a chassis. That's how I think of this. On top of the chassis, everything rides, you know? The market pulse. I can use this chassis in alignment with market pulse. Now, I don't have anything going on here yet, but I'm just showing you. Obviously, I can trade without market pulse. Or any other indicator, because I can see what this, I know what this means. And in the trader lab, the goal is not to have indicator-driven traders who are red-light greenlighting, because we know that's what retail traders do. And the outcome for retail traders is not so good, statistically. So maybe if you are in the retail space, you want to learn what retail traders do. But you know, think like one, don't act like one. Don't do what they do unless, of course, you are a profitable consistent trader. Then, of course, keep doing what you're doing. But right here, this volume here, and you could see it there. If we can't clear it, then you notice the other behavior. This now is too high. This becomes resistance. Let's remember this. Now, I get my selling, and the stops are under here. Okay? Opening swing low. It's logical to come down. Now, where to? This is part of the joy. Now, let's watch. Right back here is a trader lab structure trade. Now, let's look. Too high. Leg down. Delta red. We're coming through an extreme. Well, out here. This sets up the potential for the counter rotation. This now becomes a structure trade. This is where it would fail. Here, let me label this. I got to not fall behind here. I call that a variable high volume node. And by the way, these are not, you know, all trades take, everybody takes stops. You know, I don't, I think I've just taken more than most of you because I've been taking stops longer than most of you guys. Probably all of you, pretty much. Almost 44 years, so more stops. Means more gift baskets from my broker. This is a structure trade in the trader lab. Right here. Volume. Break high. Volume. Sell trigger. Short. Notice the liquidity comes into the book. Notice the delta is green. That means this leg is all buyers, which we don't need delta to tell us that. But when we can't clear this volume, that sets up a short or an exit if you were long. It's subject to your plan. Break here. We, if we're going to go up from here, this is what we need to clear. This right here, the variable high volume node, just right about there. Break seller, seller pullback. Right here. Is this too high or is this too high? Check seller. Look at the micro structure. Let me take you in. Too high in this structure. Too high in the next fractal. Seller pullback to the volume short. And where's our target? You do remember, right here. And liquidities in alignment here. So this is the target on the short. So subject to your plan. This might be your short in the trader lab. This might be your short. But if you didn't take this, this is a structure trade in the trader lab, and that would be in the PDF. So you'd be short from here down to there. Now, everybody with me on the first short. Did any of you guys participate in that short? By the way, here's the other thing about that. You did congratulations trader lab. Now, the other part about this is, let's assume subject to your plan. You know this is your area. Do you take the short to here? Do you see the short and stand aside? Because who knows, which of course is every minute. Or do you are, so you're waiting for this or are you taking the short? Why would you take the short? Because these guys got long and we have statistics. There's about a 70% ish probability we're going to get here. Past performance, not indicative future results. But here's the other thing. Wasn't it the target coming up yesterday? Right. You remember the price map for the long? This was the target. And that was the high of the day. I consider that a direct hit in anything, you know, but it would say horseshoes and hand grenades. Well, if you come back to the other side, why wouldn't that be a target coming from the other side? Are you guys tracking? And remember, I'm streaming for Costa Rica. So if this thing goes, you know, if I disappear, it's not intentional. It's the monkeys. Okay. So now the trade is over for me, flat. And then it's what's going on. And notice, let's look at the alignment here and the target there. Not a coincidence. And I'm always going to say, well, yeah. And then maybe not. I'll leave it up to you to figure it out. Why would I go short here? Because if you believe in that the market is an auction and that its job is to figure out what's too high and what's too low. And it's really a matter of beliefs. And I don't have indicators. So what is my indication? Not a backwards-looking mathematical representation of price or derivative of price. It's actually volume. That's the difference. I do the same thing you do. I just do it in a different way. That's all. And I don't need something to tell me. I know why this happened. What creates it? When you go to the store, why is there a price? And if this price becomes too low, when we come back to it, if it's unfair now, it's unfair. In other words, it's too low, which we won't know. Then you can't buy it there anymore. And now, that's why it's a target. Now, now you're looking for a potential long in this. And here's your liquidity. And it's a potential long. Now, if it's not part of your plan, it's not a long. But let's assume you don't know. Which, of course, we don't know anyway. So don't worry about it. Watch. I see my buyer. This is called VPOC migration. Let me label it. Just follow the yellow brick road. This is process, guys. And I do this the same way. And I apologize always because I'm methodical and consistent. Now, when this is happening in real time, it's just all going on in my head. And then I'm clicking this as the market's moving around on markets. You know, okay, that's too high. But we know this is too low unless we get below it. And then if we clear it, then that's okay. We still want to get long. But this is the area to observe. So right here. So let's watch our delta now. Market is short. Market is short. We get our buyers up here. You can see the delta. Let's watch. Watch. Too high. This is resistance. This is retail. Right here is really, you're over under. So I know this is support. And I don't know right here. Is it just going to do the Al Capocco cliff dive? Right? We like to know. We don't know. I know, though, it's an important location. So right in here, I'm out of my short. And I'm saying, now, here's what my thinking is right this year. If this is now too high, if we come back and check it and we can't get back above it, then I'm going to be on the short side. Just saying. And if we hold this area and now this becomes too low, same concept, but in a developing timeframe, this yellow line is the same as that. This is developing volume. So as it's moving, it's telling me value that's developing. This is fixed because it was the highest volume that we checked that was a remnant yesterday. So this was too high yesterday. But when we're above it, we check it is now too low. It's support resistance in a different way of looking at it. So here we are. So this is coming down, coming down. And so it's looking like if we can't get above this and this right there, then south. So let's look. And so I think of this like a pivot. It's not, but just kind of imagine it in a way. It's a decision or a balance point. So here's what we get. Rejection. Retail. Too high. Retail. Right here. If it's going down, it's going to break down. What does it do? It breaks up. So potentially, and we don't know too low. We come up to the VWOP. Now we have a trade in the structured trade in the trade. I've called the VWOP the V pocket. Let me explain it to you. Now, again, I'm just sharing structured trades. You got to be thinking from a couple different angles in this thing. You know, right here is a potential short in the trade. Let me show it to you. Now it's not a short for me, but it's a potential short mechanically speaking. And here's the behavior. You have right in this leg, you have shorts. You can see that in the delta. This is the market pulse. So we're going to look at this thing in with alignment. This is so right here. I've got sure, you know, the market is showing here. Let me open this up so you can see it better. So these are the buyers in this leg. Here's my delta positive now. Okay, guys, I don't know if I'm back or not. Am I back? I think I'm gone out of YouTube. So can you guys throw a link back in the YouTube? I'm gone from YouTube now. Let me know, Steve or Dan, how I can... Oh, YouTube is still... Okay, it looks like I'm disconnected from YouTube. Am I? Oh, it is. All right. Sorry about that, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, if you're in YouTube, I am in Costa Rica. If it drops down and I can't get back into YouTube or a link is not provided, click the link in the bottom of YouTube. It'll take you to the Bookmap Discord server. You can get into the TraderLab stream there. It should reconnect, hopefully, if Internet comes back. And you don't have to be a Bookmap subscriber. You won't be solicited by Bookmap. I just want you to know you have an option there. And we're going up and down here again. So sorry about that. Okay, let me try to continue. So this is called VWAP to VPOC. It is not qualified in this context. This is the part that will get traders in big trouble. If you trade mechanically without reading the story, you're going to have a problem. Are you guys still able to hear me, by the way? Am I still live? And I'm not seeing anything now in YouTube. I don't know if I'm disconnected in YouTube. I cannot tell what's going on here. Hold on. Let me see if I can get YouTube working on my end. I can't tell what's going on with YouTube. I don't have anything in the chat. Can somebody just post something in the YouTube chat so I can see if I'm getting that? Because that's not coming through. Okay. Steven, that's probably what's going on in YouTube. Okay. So this is a VWAP. And I'm still dropping in and out. I can see it. Hold on. So this sets up a structured trade that is not qualified in this context. The behavior we want to see is, if this is the rotation from here to here, there is no short. Does everybody understand why there is no short? And I'm not getting any chat out of YouTube. So if I'm streaming, that's great. But I'm not getting anything. If you're posting any questions in YouTube, I am not seeing them. They're not coming through. So it's unable to connect the chat. See you later. Okay. Great. Thanks. All right. Let's try to get on with the party. So this right here is an important level. Let's watch. So right in here, this is showing us, this is Market Pulse. This is Delta. This is a trader lab structured trade. It is a mean reversion trade, completely counter trend. It's not a trade I can take. It is a trade I'm in. Now I'm just saying you could take this trade if it's in your plan. You need to understand context job number one. Hardest thing for us. What is retail? It is there. So right now too high took us down to this target. That's our target. Lovely. Liquidity in the book, having a wonderful time. Pull back here. This is too high. Nothing to do. You know, I have nothing to do here. The next structure trade. Boy, it's jumping up and down like a, like forget it. Sorry for the problems, guys. Are you guys still got me here? It's very annoying. Yeah, Stephen posts. Okay. I don't see anything in the YouTube chat. Am I still going? Cause this thing's jumping up and down. I'll tell you, it's like a jumping bean. The monkeys must be pretty active. So here's the short. And it's not a short. It's a structured trade. And you have to know what your objective is here for me. It's long zone Lee. And here's the test. So this trade in a vacuum is a structured trader lab trade. Not in alignment with the context. What supersedes this from here to here, which is a structured trade, the context, which is saying this is too low. Now you come under here. Then things to change as everybody tracking. And by the way, if you're in YouTube, if you're going to post questions, I cannot see them at the moment. Stephen, are they coming? Are you seeing questions in YouTube? I mean, should I recycle? Or I may have just leave it. Okay. So Stephen, if there's a question in YouTube, then you'll copy and put it in Discord so I can see it. I think that's the way because I don't see anything over here. Is that correct? Okay, great. All right. So this was a potential trader lab structured short. Now guys, if you're in the trader lab and you took this short, I want you to think about it. There's two ways, of course, to think about one is, yeah, it's a structured trade. But is it a counter? Is it a trend trade or counter trend trade? What does the market say? What did we do? We opened higher 22. We got our cell. We filled the gap. Yesterday's high. We tested into it. We had this as a target coming down. Okay. That's our target. So you've got to think from a few different angles. Do you want to be short if we don't get below this? If you see this trade, is this a short or here's the or. You see this trade. You, and here's your market pulse. You've got alignment with a structured trade, which, and our target on this trade is here, which doesn't. And by the way, if it gets below there, then of course, off we go. If it doesn't, then what? Here's the, here's the question. And the answer is trade plan specific, your trade plan. Long. Scale or short. Scale or don't know, which we don't anyway. Short. Look for the behavior. Knowing this is where it fails. Knowing this is the target for this and looking for the behavior. Now let's look too low. You see your buyer. We break above the VWOP. What was here? Watch. So let's watch now. We're going to have this level, this level, and of course this level. So let's just go forward. So there's your potential counter rotation. Here's your sellers in this leg. This is what the Delta is showing us here. I pull out to my target. If I can't clear this and I see my buyer, it is a potential long stop under here, under here, or under here. Let's watch. Now, VHVN. This is where we rejected starting at the RTH open. This was too high. This is now my scale. So my long is here or here to there. And then helmet. Now let's watch it. By the way, my data was going in and out. So there's going to be some holes. Makes it more fun. Let me try to get back here. Now we have other structured trades. Are there any questions in YouTube? If there are, if you're in YouTube, guys, I'm not able to access the chat. I'm having trouble here. I'm in Costa Rica, but we do have a backup plan. Okay. Yeah, you're welcome. So long zone only. So let's take a look at the next structure trade in the trader lab. This is called VPOC migration. This is saying at the moment, this is too low. I'm going to market. You see what I do, right? I'm very simple. Simple. Complex does not do you any good. There's no secret in complexity. It actually works against you. It's not like you're going to, you're going to trap everybody else because you see the secret sauce and everybody else missed it. I have news for you. Shocking news. Anything you probably thought of has already been done by everybody else in front of you who's come here, who's used anything out of the box retail indicators or mixes. It's already been gone through with a fine tooth comb by everybody else. If it's in the public retail space, everybody knows that everybody's done it. So it's not like you're going to find it. And now you may want it. It's like kind of looking to read. You want to discover what already exists. Well, you have to have a lot of time and a lot of resources to kind of go over a path that somebody else has already walked. So then it's maybe finding out what they do and not doing it. If assuming you don't have a statistical edge, if you have an edge, you keep doing it. That's the business from our gaming. But right here, too low market comes up. Now, right here, we had a report. Okay. And statistically, if we take out the first half hour high, there's a high probability that we're going to take out the first hour high. So the first hour high is going to be up somewhere up here. And there was something else. Oh, yeah, this is a target overnight volume point of control. I forgot right here. So we're going for this as a target. And this. So these are our targets for this for today so far. Let me get back here. So let's watch the lay of the land. VPOC migration structure trade in the trader lab. This is long. This is resistance up here. This volume break high to high seller. You can't clear this volume seller. That sets up and watch the volume. This sets up your counter rotation to here. Here's the choices you have. They're so wonderful. What do you do if you're sitting long, you have trade management. You have decisions to make and they're not made here. They're all made before you put the trade on. That's what a trade plan is about. When you're in the middle of this, you are emotionally triggered. Juices are flowing. It's like being under the influence of a fine wine or case of fine wine, maybe. And you can't make decisions because it's emotional chart triggering. Oh, it's going to the moon. Oh my God, it's going to fail. Oh, yeah, I'm okay. No, it's not. You know what I'm talking about? So that's why you don't make decisions here. Trade plan is all done outside of trading hours and it's all based on metrics and statistics. So now it's not an emotionally charged process. It is a statistically or business-based process in a random environment. So the target we're going for is this. What happens if we never get there? Possible. So you have to have a trade management process. Now, for me, I trade with statistics. I have a high probability of taking out the first hour's high, which is going to be, I think, over here, getting here and getting here. So for me, I have no shorts. I only have longs. Me, not saying it's right, wrong, or indifferent. But when I see this, I can anticipate a counter rotation. Now, my plan has to already know, what are you going to do about that? Are you going to get out and risk this whole thing failing and giving it all back, which is not a pleasant experience? Or am I going to use another process to manage my trade, get out of my trade, risk missing all my targets? But here is a long in the trader lab. If I'm out, I get long here. If I've got subject to my plan, I add here. I get risk neutral. Got to scale ahead of this volume. Watch. See the behavior at the volume? Right there. That's why you get a scale ahead of this. And then helmet, statistics, statistic, statistics. And that's the trade. So let's watch what it does. So long here, scale here. That's why you got to scale. It was too high. Break below here, where was the last place it was too low? It was here. Let's just see what happens. So there, there, here. Come outside. See, this is the thing that does make us crazy. If you just held this, you would give all this back. I don't, that doesn't work so good for me. I get kind of, you know, things got, start going off in my head that aren't pleasant. But I know that if I get the long, this is my scale. And the reason I know it, even though I don't know what will happen, is that it was too high. And there's my seller. So once I come here, I do have a legitimate long, but I got to scale ahead of this. Once I come back under here, then, you know, problem. And now this was where it was too low last time. So I can come back here. Take it out. And that's that. Watch. Now remember what's over under this out here. This is too low. This is your outside edges right here. Liquidity bulks up. Bang, bang, test, potential long back to here. You can kind of see the structure, can't you? Pull back to here. Now, if you're getting taken out, you're getting taken out. You have to just wait for your trades. This is too high here. You see the test too high. Pull back. This is too low out here. So you kind of know where your edges are. Then you either have trades here or you don't. Let's just watch it. Overnight volume, point of control, target, and then this thing. This is another statistic. This is also a viable target up here. Hold on. There's that data dropping out. Sorry about that. So you can kind of see this is the primary target for this sequence because this was too high. I also have this as a potential statistical target. So you'd be going for this also. Currently this is the high of the day. So let's see how this plays out. How are we doing in YouTube, guys? And by the way, Stephen, should I try doing a reload on the YouTube? Actually, that shouldn't affect. Let me try that. I'm not going to, not with Discord. I'm going to try it elsewhere. Let's see if this works. One, two, three. Yeah. Okay. I got it now. Okay, guys. I see it moving fine. Okay. Can somebody just throw something in the chat there in YouTube so I can see that I've got it back so I can see the questions? Yeah. Hi. Okay. Great. Thanks, Stephen. Stephen, that wasn't you. I think that was Dan. I can't keep track. Either way, thanks. Sorry, guys. YouTube monkeys. That was you. Thanks, Dan. Okay. So right here, let's go back to our locations. This is our primary target for the sequence. This is a tertiary target. For me, I'm very much a fan of this, you know. Now, let me ask you something. As traders, what are you trading? What are the things I think we always have to be thinking about is why are we doing this? Are we doing it to think like a casino and trade with a statistical edge and just play statistics? Or are we in this for the excitement? Where is the statistical edge? This, let me show you some trades here. This, we have another structure trade in the Trader Lab. It's called the... Did you guys lose me again? Are we back? Okay. Got YouTube. How are we doing in YouTube? We're still there. There's just one of those days here in Costa Rica. It's like, you know how it is here with the... Let's see if I can get back here. Yikes. Sorry about this, everybody. That's part of the joy. Normally, it's not this bad. Okay. Let's come back. So, I was talking about the IB continuation trade, I think. Can't remember at this point. So, when you have range extension, you pull back. This sets up along in the Trader Lab. And this was, you know, this was a big sweep. Pull back right here is along. And you're shooting for this. We pull back here, right here. Problems here. This sets up another IB continuation trade. And we're still going for this. I don't know where we are. Let's see. So, as I was trying to say before I was interrupted by the Monkeys, and I hope you guys can hear me, that these are the IB continuation trades. So, there's one here, which is along. You're going for this. We rotate down. We come to the IB. We come to this outside edge. All of this sets up a continuation long back to here. And we're going for this. That's what I've been trying to say. And the internet keeps going up and down here. I hope you guys got that. And I hope I'm still up in YouTube. I really can't tell at this point what's going on. In fact, I really can't tell. Are you guys tracking? Are we doing all right? And I apologize again for this. In Costa Rica, I guess it's part of the joy. So, let's see if I can help you with one other element here. Okay. Let's talk market pulse for a moment. Not anybody should take this literally. What I think you might have been doing is thinking about alignment. But we have structured trades in the trader lab. Let's go take a look. Let me open this up. Try to get this in alignment for you. I want you to see this. And I promised you guys I would, you know, add a little, a couple pieces in, try to take some pieces out so we could kind of move. You know, I've been doing this in trader lab for a couple of years. And you guys know already a lot of this. So, and it's available in the library of webinars, you know, some up to four hours long of real time narration and 60 PDFs of structured trade. So you, all this is available. If you're new visiting the trader lab, you just recently come to trader lab. But I want to add some more pieces in here. So this is the IB continuation trade. What makes it even better for me? This is the ETH volume point of control. Think of it as the retail price from the ETH. Once I come above it, I can come back and check it. Let me put this in, give you a mental aspect, a mental aspect of it. When we came down and check this, which was our long and was yesterday's target coming from the upside, we checked it. This became the overnight volume point of control became the next. And I'm looking now. Unbelievable. I think I'm still here, right? He's back. He's in. He's out. He's up. He's down. It sounds like the wrestling match. And I keep getting thrown to the mat. It's unbelievable. You know, it's like the referee standing over me and they're counting. And then they forget how to count. Hey, well, where was I? Was it seven or eight? Let's start over. Anyway, IB continuation trade, alignment, stop pick, market pulse, longs in the leg, which is what this is all about. Now I got the shorts in the leg. This is the Delta. This is showing me divergence. But the most important thing for me is the trade. I don't know where the problem is. Don't really know where the problem is. Anyway, law is what I'm trying to say back to there. And this is the target. Anyway, guys, that wasn't easy for any of us. Was it? Sorry about this. This is the worst it's been really. And I'm not sure quite what the issue is. So next target. Let's look above here. See what else there might be. Well, this is an outsized target outside the target. And we have resting liquidity in the book. At this point, it's sort of like on fumes. So it's just manage the trade, manage a runner. And in trader lab, it's really up to your trade plan. But once we're outside of these areas, I know the potential. The potential, this here is very important. I think my investor RT probably is also having big trouble here. Hold on a second. Let me see if I can get something. Yeah, we can accelerate out of here. This is a intermediate timeframe. And what we're looking at is this is the top end of a consolidation right here. And you could see what we're doing. We're pushing out all the energy from in this range, this box. This is a consolidation. And all I do is split them up to see the legs and see where the volume is in the days. So our th candles, that's all this is, and they show me where the high volume is. They show me the outside edges. You guys remember this day, the target was actually here. Didn't get there. Then we had a reversal day. Then, you know, yesterday we went down, checked yesterday's range, rejected it, gave us a neutral extreme. Today we have the gap. We come down, fill the gap. Check this node 4813, which was my target that I was pointing out to you 13 to 15. Remember, ranges of levels too low. Hasta la vista baby, propulsion too low. What's our next target? You come out of here. All there is is fuel vacuum. That's why other than counter rotations for me, the play is to be on the long side, not a recommendation. This is my next area. Potentially, if not, you know, wherever that doesn't matter, but there's nothing here. What is here is all these shorts have their, their fuel here. We can accelerate potentially. So for me, for me, the smart move is not to sell it. I mean, again, and I say me, that doesn't mean you. I'm just saying I am who's off sides, all the shorts, all this energy is getting potentially uncorked. So that means buyers, buyers, buyers, and you can see a lot of buyers now and that'll be a short covering. So do you want to step, do you want to try to pick the high of anything where there's when you're off sides, think of it like army, who's advancing, who's retreating counter rotations become counter attacks. It might be one way to think of it. Let me try to get this back in here and not blow everything up, which, you know, part of the joy. See the, see the behavior guys. Are you guys tracking? Is this making some sense? Why you would not be, you feel lucky is dirty. Harry would say next target, by the way, not a recommendation. Let me try to get the chats back. I lost everything. I lost means it's there here. I just can't, I got to find them. Are you guys tracking? There is no IBF. It's absolutely no IBF. If you're taking the IBF, you are got to go back to grammar school if you've been here for a while. Did that make sense guys? As far as why, you would not be taking any shorts. Why all day since we checked this level 15 was long. There were no shorts. Does that make sense? So anyway, I hope my little explanation of the higher timeframe was useful and why we would look for movement. Did you get something out of that may show you the higher timeframe? It's everybody tracking. Any questions? So this 50 is a nice strike. We got some liquidity sitting in here. To me right now we're sort of in, you know, you know those high altitude balloons. That's what we're riding in right now. A high altitude balloon. And we are breaking out. This is the breakout level of all that energy. You can see acceleration. You saw it here. And why, let's look at something. I want to show you the stop and iceberg detector. 3,640 stops. That's why I was saying if we come outside of that edge, there's your fuel. Now what happens here is very important because if we break out and exhaust and there's no buyers above here, which I'm not saying there will or won't be. It's not my job. Don't forget I'm still looking for that. I have no, nothing to short. I only have long and until it breaks, it's not broken. That's all I can tell you. But I thought it was fairly timely that I would say energy. See that's the energy. The higher time frame you go up and you know we trade kind of like a Russian doll, Matryushka dolls, the big one down to the little one. But the higher the time frame becomes, the more energy is wrapped in it. So when we're trading these microstructures, it's really the same except it's fractal. Time is not really an element. Even the consolidation that I was just pointing out to for this acceleration up is it's not time-based. It is range-based. So the more you include in energy or volume, the more dramatic it becomes. So when you go up in time frame, if you will, instead of just an intraday consolidation, that's a little thing like this. When you have days and days and days or months, it's the same exact fractal process with more energy because there's more compression of volume. The volume is what makes the move. And there's two sides to volume. There's going to be the buyers who are covering their shorts and there's going to be a new initiator. So there's always two sides participating in the market. That's also what creates rotations. But right now the market is long. If I run, if once these buyers are out, if I don't get new buyers right here, the current longs become the sellers. So that's why we're always rotating even if the trend is up. So you need to be thinking... The way I think of it, and it's just a mental thing, the way to think about it is the market runs in waves, different time frame participants, different risk agendas, different trade management. That's why you get rotations in the market. The market gets too long. The delta shows you the condition. And even if you're trending up, you're going to counter-rotate. The thing you've got to ask yourself always is, which side do I want to be on? If the army is marching up the hill and every once in a while, the retreating army says, hey, guys, I need you to do me a favor. Go in there and hold them off for a little while. We want to retreat. There's your counter-rotation or counter-attack. Those guys who sell here, are they going to push this whole army back? Maybe. Or are they just going to cause a rotation or a small pushback and then get taken out? In a trending configuration, it's long zone. Unless you have a specialty trading process where now you're trading both sides. Now, yesterday, we remember it was two-sided trading. Do you notice why one side does not fit all? The Trader Lab is about understanding context. Specific trade plans that are deployed to be in alignment with the condition of the market. And, of course, and believe me, of course, let's be real. You're going to get out of alignment because the context changes and we don't know it's changed until hindsight. However, today I think it was fairly clear based on yesterday that you wanted to be long and based on yesterday when we came in that we could come and fill the gap, just like yesterday. And if you remember yesterday's trade plan, we were actually looking for it to come down to the area that it ultimately did. It was just a mess. It was a chop, very hard to navigate chop, mean reversion trading. But we have a plan for it. It was just very difficult to operate it. And we narrated that yesterday. So that was a hard day for everybody. And I did a special recap at the end of the day for Trader Lab participants with some screenshot, you know, screen and all that kind of stuff in the Trader Lab exclusively, which I like to do for Trader Lab participants when I can. So this is our next target area. Now there's nothing here, right? What is there? No shorts yet. Now why would you take a short? Do you think you have a statistical edge trying to pick a top? Retail traders do that all the time. Oh, it's the top. At the top. You know, eventually there will be a top. I can't tell you how many traders, retail traders, whether it's in futures or even stocks or anything else, it can't go any higher. It just can't go any higher. I'm going to sell it. It can't go higher. Meanwhile, it keeps going up. How can anyone ever say what it can't do? How about always thinking what it might do? And then that's all you got is maybe. Stay in the world of maybe because you can't predict anything. Now I'm making a statement for myself. I cannot predict anything. Let me ask you this. Our model is the gaming industry or casinos. How are they doing? Do they predict anything? Or do they accept they're in a random environment and that every card that's dealt from the deck is random and every gambler plays their cards randomly? The only thing that's anchored in a casino is how the game is played. That's their games or setups for us. So if we look at it this the same way, then our process is to accept we're in a random environment like the casinos do. So you can take this idea of predicting and let somebody else spend their energy with that. That's an emotional need to be right and to be able to tell the future. They have tarot card breeders. They have a pretty good business. You could always do that. Trading is not the business to trade. The business to trading is just statistical and random distributions of outcomes. Is this the high of the day, by the way? Might be. You know what? Not my job. My job is to take structured trades, manage the trades based on my plan and that's that. That's the end of it. Nothing more to think about. That's as deep as this is. If you want more certainty, wrong business. How about accepting ambiguity and randomness and it lets you off the hook? Your job is no longer to predict. Your job is to interact at a structured area that you've done the work that has a statistical edge. Just like the casinos only play games with an edge. They don't make them up. They don't get emotionally involved. If a gambler walks out with cash from the table, the next hand of the blackjack table is played exactly the same way. They don't change it. Why would we change it? Why would we not deal in the next hand or take the next trade because we lose on the last one? Casinos don't do that. They just deal the next hand. The reason we don't do the things we need to do to operate in a gaming environment is because we're emotionally attached to every outcome. You need to understand that. That, I think, I believe and it's a personal belief and it may not apply to you individually. I can teach anyone to trade. If that's the case, why can't people trade? It's all the other reasons. Not doing the work, not being persistent, not being organized, being a chemical, being addicted to chemical stimulus, not understanding our conditioning and socialization and need to be right, not understanding our wiring to run from danger, which is part of our survival as a species, not understanding how to manage that and building in processes. It's not easy. Otherwise, everybody would be doing this successfully. It's not easy. Even if you understand how to trade, you might not be able to trade. The other thing is believing you are on the right path when you actually have the defective process. That's the other problem we face, thinking we're doing the right thing. We just got to get it right this time. We get it right this time. This time it's going to be different, right? Well, it's never different. It's always the same thing. So the thing is, in order to be in the business of trading, you got to not develop this. You develop this outside of trading hours with one piece at a time. One piece at a time. And you gradually increase your understanding of market mechanics. But if you don't understand how the market works, no tool, no matter how good it is, is going to help you solve the problem. The problem is randomness. So if you accept it, it's no longer a problem. It's just part of the mix. Then it's a matter of how your opportunities show up. And when they show up, do you have a process you can apply that has a statistical edge that over a random sample of interactions with the other participants in the market that you have a positive outcome? That means, subject to your plan, getting risk neutral in other words, a scale so that the worst that happens is that you scratch. What's your probability of that based on structured, vetted trades? Then your job is to hang out. Wait. Where's your next trade? In the trader lab, we know where our next trades are before the market ever gets there. We also know and it's a conditional process and it's a narrative process. So it goes like, if this and that, if not, then what? If this is too high, if this and I see my seller is too high, then what? Right here, you can see your seller. This came into the book and disrupted. Now we're going to come back. Is it going to interact or is it just nonsense to cause the counter rotation and you notice they're pulling. Well, if there's nothing to stop it here, then we go there. Now, these are not structured trades in the trader lab. They could be, but they're not trades I talk about. They would be more advanced. But you can extract trades or you don't have a trade and your job's not to be clicking the mouse. That's not the business of trading. Your job is to have vetted structured trades and you're waiting for them. This is the overnight or ETH high. That was our next target coming up. We pull back, we check it, we come to a micro high volume structure. This is retail. There is alignment here, potential long, but this is your resistance right here. Are you going to mess with this? Are you just going to be done for the day? What's your plan? Now remember, we're in a higher time frame, we're outside of an outside edge of a big consolidation. We had 3,000 stops go off coming out here. So is there going to be more buying above or are we going to be exhausted and are we going to pull inside was it only a squeeze? Now I don't have the answer and I'll never have the answer because I can only guess. I will know in hindsight. So it doesn't matter. What do I know? We had our sellers here and here. We had our buyers here. Here's the high volume. So retail, retail support resistance right in this little box. I don't trade this. I observe it. If I had a trade plan that would operate in this range, I would trade it. Me? Not so much. Me? Sit back have a glass of wine or something, whatever. Or eat a banana. You've got great fruit down here. Targeting, targeting and then nothing. You could be done. You should visit the trader lab. What do traders in the trader lab do? Are they all juiced up because they see this and the greed button is flashing? Or are they sitting back and letting the amateurs run amok in this? The thing about this is this is all very tradable. If you can operate this rapidly, if you can process the information mentally and you're timely and you can enter properly and operate, it takes a high level of skill. And that's not saying it's a good thing. It takes a high level of skill not to over trade and end up giving back the gains that you make in a bigger, broader swing. So you have to know where your strengths and your weaknesses are. Mirror mortals that we are most of us get fatigued and it's easy to get kind of euphoric. If you've had a nice run and you've got a huge open trade had a great morning, which you would be if you're in the trader lab and you had a vetted trade plan and you followed it. Many traders in the trader lab had a very good morning. If that's you, congratulations. If you're still juiced up because you're under the influence of chemicals that are endorphins and all of that you need to recognize that. You also need to know whether it's time to put the mouse in a drawer and lock it. Does that make sense? And by the way, if you have questions in the chat, I'll do my best to answer them right now. And if you're in YouTube thank you for being here. I'm still having some trouble here. Okay, here we go. How we doing? You guys doing alright? Apologies for all the problems here with the internet. And I really can't tell when it drops out until it takes a while before I even know it's not cooking. Apologies for that. Thanks for your patience on all this stuff. Hope you guys are getting something out of this. So what do you got here? You could be done, but I don't try to pick the high of the day. It's like, you know, and hindsight are very good. But in between, not my job, I don't care about it. I'm not in the business of predicting anything. I'm in the business of alignment. I don't care about it really. I do know the trend is up. I know if I try to get short why I'd rather use downside rotations for continuation longs, not shorts. Where's the right short? Is it this one? Is it maybe this one? Oh, no, maybe it's this one. No, is it this one? Oh, there's this it? Or is this an opportunity to get long? So, you know, this is all trade plan. And there's our next target up in here at the moment. Not a recommendation. And I have no reason to get short. And I have another target sitting here. Not a recommendation. Anything can happen anytime. So, you just want to watch this as a nice strike price up here. It's pretty important. We may not get over here or we're just going to get, you might get market maker behavior up here doesn't matter. But this is how you follow the yellow brick road. Are you guys tracking? Hope you're getting something out of this. By the way, this stream is available to Bookbamp Discard Trade Lab participants. They'll be open through the weekend if you want to review it. Sorry, there's going to be some noise and interruptions, you know, because of the problems here in Costa Rica. But you might want to review this, get some ideas off it. The important thing and I think the hard thing for most traders is to understand context. When are you trading two sides? When are you trading one side? When is a trend configuration and you're using counter rotations only? Or what's your trade management process? All this is done outside of trading hours. And then it's just a matter of really alignment. You have a plan. Once you recognize the condition of the market, it's basically like a pilot. You're flying the plane. You already know what you're going to do. You're not reinventing the wheel. You're not figuring out how to fly when you're up at 30,000 feet. You are just following the plan and you accept the randomness in our business. It's a gaming business. So you already know what you're going to do. You don't know the outcome of any interaction. So it's risk management, trade management, scaling, targeting, and that's it. It's not complicated. It's random. Big important differentiation is it's random and please write that down. It's random. Think casino. Random. Why do casinos build bigger casinos? Pay the gamblers. Give you the ticket to the buffet, the cocktails. Send you to see Adele if you're a high dollar, comp your room and still make a profit because they have vetted structured games. We are in the business of gaming, but they're vetted structured trades. Same business. If that is logical to you, we're not in a prediction business. There's no casino on the planet that can tell you who's going to win the next hand, whether it's going to be the house of the gamblers. But they do know over time they extract dollars from the gamblers because they have anchored inputs and that means a statistical edge. The problem we have is because we are operating like gamblers do, those of us who don't understand gaming theory and think that indicators provide the output for consistency with indicators in the interaction of multiple timeframes and indicators for most underlying retail traders are random inputs. In other words, they're not all in alignment. There's many variables that come in that create an inconsistent application. An inconsistent or random input in a random environment yields random outcomes with no statistical edge in my opinion. Anchored inputs in a random environment create a statistical extraction or ability to get an edge. The edge is how the casinos operate. Anchored inputs. I covered this in my primer webinar. It's available to all of you guys. It's in the Bookmap Discord Trader Lab chat. You're all welcome to visit there. The primer webinar, it's about an hour. It's got, and I think I just mentioned this recently. You know, I don't look at this stuff. It's got 27,000 views. I don't think anybody really knows it's out there, but it's still got 27,000 views. And the reason is it's different. There's no secret sauce. There's no holy grail. It just doesn't exist. What does exist? Well, Trader Groundhog Day. That's where us as retail traders take all our toolbox of bazillion indicators and derivatives of indicators and timeframes and this, that, envelopes, this, that, and throw it against the wall. And we think that by doing that, that we can extract something that nobody else has done. But what we don't understand is the random inputs are creating a random output in a random environment. So we're, and gamblers walk out with cash. So as gamblers even with a defective process we're going to win at times. Well, that keeps us doing the same process, but the house, the casinos don't do it that way. Why don't they do the same thing? Well, because they can't do with the casino, with the gamblers do if they want to stay in business. Maybe we shouldn't do with the gamblers do. That's really the process. It's not complicated. Complexly obscures what's in front of you. That's what the business of the trader lab is. And that's why I invite all of us at trader lab, download the 60 PDFs of structured trades, reverse engineering, then you can decide whether or not it's something that might be appropriate for you to, you know, dig into. Why are we only long today? Why would you not be taking shorts? Why might this have been a long ad right here? Why? You're in the trader lab. You know why. Why would you not be selling this? Did you? You need to know why. If you don't know why, you might want to further your education to get a better understanding of market mechanics, how it works, why it does what it does. And yes, it's all random and everybody takes stops and that's just the way it is. I'm always going to say we got to get over it. You know, the need to be right. You got to get over it. Does that make sense? In YouTube, guys, again, if you're getting something out of this, you'll be able to review this stream. Come up, come to the trader lab. There's a link in the bottom of YouTube. You can go to trader lab, download the 60 PDFs of these structured trades. You can reverse engineer them, you know, see what mentally fits, you know, what you see that's interesting. And if you're looking for a quick fix, wrong business. This is like you want to compete in a Superbowl. What does it take to become a top tier competitor? We are competing. We got to do what others don't do. This is what these PDFs look like, circles, arrows. Why? Explanations. I'm not a vendor. There's no course. It's all free. There's a library of webinars. You can also watch start with the primer webinar. It'll kind of take you to give you an overview of this process where I kind of came from. I've been doing this going on 44 years. There's the link in the bottom of YouTube there. You can check it out. Also, there's the library of webinars. Sum up to four hours long of real-time narration in environments like this and all and changing environments. In other words, bullet train in the morning, rotational trade, continuation of the bullet, or crash landings up, down, sideways. It's all there. And why? Because all we can do is attempt to get in alignment with the market and not try to predict what it'll do. Just try to think and have a process that helps us get in alignment with what it might do. The best you have in trading is maybe. If we accept it is maybe, then we need a process to operate in maybe and have a statistical edge. If we operate like the casinos do over time assuming we've done the work and that's what the Trader Lab's about. It's a group of like-minded traders looking to leverage their collective experience. We all come together. We've all walked in your shoes. Nobody is unique here. The only thing is it's called Trader Groundhog Day. If you have a defective process you may believe it's not defective and it's a matter of tweaking and tuning. Most of us, that's kind of where we all have been at some point. And the reason you keep coming back to fix it is because it's defective. The randomness is what keeps you trying to fix it. Maybe it is the process that has an issue. It's not that you believe your beliefs. It is the process. And the randomness is what keeps you believing you're on the right track where maybe a casino wouldn't operate that way. Think about it over this weekend. Visit the Trader Lab and take advantage of all the resources. You don't have to be a book map subscriber now or ever. And the book map will never solicit you. And it's a great community of like-minded traders plus a lot of additional free education. Stocks, options, crypto, you know, order flow behavior with a high tier tool like book map and a lot more algorithmic behavior options, you know. I can go on and on and on. Market maker behavior. A lot of great stuff and beauty of it is free. My mother always said, free is good. Thanks for visiting the Trader Lab. Thumb up, please, on YouTube. And thanks, everybody, for being part of the Trader Lab. Do your homework, as they say this weekend. Review today and yesterday especially. Screenshots, circles, arrows, build your library, work on your stats. Remember, the job is never done. If you want to be a competitor, you got to remember. Think like a retail trader. Just don't act like one. Thanks again, guys. Thanks for visiting the Trader Lab. Look forward to seeing you guys next week. And apologies again for the problem with the monkeys swinging on the vines here in Costa Rica. Take care, everybody. Have a great day. We'll talk to you soon.