 All right, here we go welcome everyone look good forward to working with everyone and going over our fact-based trading solutions and we talk about fact-based trading and it's Removing all the subjectivity from your decision-making process and just focusing on what is true and what are facts I'm John Slazos. I've been trading for over 35 years started at the mercantile exchange and got involved trading crypto in 2013 and really drank the Kool-Aid in 2016 with Ethereum and you know kind of haven't really looked back, but still keep my fingers in the traditional markets you know where the world's changing and We all have to change together so But what's nice about the Crypto markets especially is that they're behavioral-based and that's really kind of feeds into everything that that we do Before I get started, you know, I do want to thank bookmap For putting the channel together and we're going to go into you know, basically the decision-making process of You know how we look at the markets and the fact-based and kind of take it from the top down Before we get into it. I just want to go over disclosure and disclaimer here that you know, basically everything that we're Going over here is educational. We're not giving any Advice to buy or sell anything You know and when anytime you are trading you're putting capital at risk You know, you want to be sure that that's capital that you have to risk That's one of the most important things. So if you're not doing that You're not going to make the best decisions. So you want to have a clear mind And part of that clarity comes to just being having the right capital that you're putting at risk if you're not you need to Really, you know really think about what you're doing and and dial back to the small sizes you can so you can make the good decisions Dharma capital trading is here to Basically make a positive impact on You and we're here to help create traders help create discretionary traders We really believe that you know the intuitive function of a trader combined with You know a machine is the best Solution to success and So how do we empower traders? We do that with our fact-based trading solutions to really enhance your awareness for your decision-making process And when you have these facts, you know, this Gives you this the confidence and Helps you enter that state of flow that kind of the no-mind You know, we're not thinking you're just doing and you're executing what you're executing based on market truths So again, what is fact-based trading? You know it trading that involves making decisions based on objective data an analysis rather than them subjective emotions or opinions You know and this is you know as traders. It's so easy to get sucked into your emotions and Take that out on the market. And so, you know having a statistical benchmark You know something to lean on somewhere to go, you know through the you know all the chaos It's going on all the emotion that's flying around these markets, you know having a baseline is so important So, you know, it's a great reality check And so we're going to go through that process today and and show you how to you know kind of bring you back to basics To then go forward, you know, I like this quote by Talib, you know the illusion of validity You know everything makes sense in hindsight The illusion that we understand the past Fosters our overconfidence in our ability to predict the future And this is this is Really sums up a lot of the subjective analysis that's out there, you know Technical analysis you can really go backwards any day and just point out the obvious It's just that when in the moment, it's just not that obvious and that's because a lot of those Studies are based on subjectivity. And so you know have the you don't get the validation until after the fact and especially for new traders when you come in and you're learning different Tools or so-called tools or studies You know when you're looking back at the end of the day and the educator is able to just tell you hey look if you did this here There's there you're going to succeed and it's just And then you buy into that and you have this kind of overconfidence. Yeah, I can do this I can you know, but you know, basically you're you're not building that foundation on facts you're building on this subjectiveness and It's enhanced by the you know the ability to look back the end in end of the day and say oh and you kick yourself Oh, I should have done this I should have done that but you know if you don't have the right fact foundation You're not going to do that And that's the problem, you know the simplicity of the buy low sell high proposition creates this illusion that treating is easy And this is supported by subjective technical analysis tools, which you know clearly explain in hindsight how to achieve trading success And you know traders become disillusioned constantly searching for new ideas, you know their performance suffers Your trade flows inconsistent not sustainable You know either the subjective analytic complexities create trading paralysis or you're blowing your account up and so, you know read this, you know based on behavioral research You know comparing your intuition, which is good, but it has to be controlled and Coming from a solid foundation You know research suggests that the maximize predictive accuracy final decisions should be left to formulas especially in low-validity environments the markets are low very low-validity environment and It's not saying that intuition isn't helpful, but it's having the Understanding that and knowing what what should occur what are the probabilities? What are the two facts and our decisions are going to be better and so to improve our Execution, you know having a statistical outside view You know it's providing traders with a fact-based benchmark and This offers you a reality check to the probabilities of what's more likely to occur, you know based on quantitative results independent of any subjective bias and The result of this is traders have a statistical baseline focus on the facts and market truths, you know, there's less thinking fearing Hoping trying, you know no less stress more knowing self-trust More confidence and you're just executing you're doing And the results are more effective consistently applied Sustainable approach, you know that I'm a big fan of the thinking fast and slow by Daniel Coleman You know his quote the outside view offers are more accurate predictions than the inside view and This is what our method does, you know our method incorporates a statistical outside view To help you slow down the decision-making process and minimize your biases because we all have these These biases, you know, you get anchored on a news story, you know your friend Mentioned something to you and you get something stuck in your head. I mean I get anchored all the time I mean I see a commercial about cheeseburgers, and I have to have one you know it's You know in but recognizing That this is occurring so that you know you that And you've got this, you know bias that you want to have that cheeseburger But you know your your cholesterol is high and you probably should not do it today or because you had one yesterday, so you know just being able to kind of cut through those heuristics that kind of influences behind the scenes So that when we have the right we're putting in the right facts You know we have more of a fact focus, you know, that's what our basis is all about And so We're gonna go over, you know, you know just basic facts that you and start to you know kind of build on top of those facts And create that that baseline To to execute, you know, we're you know, we're also going to introduce you to some of the tools that we use And you're welcome to Try those tools out for yourself as well So some things I'm going to go through this a little quickly and get into the markets What's going on today? You know, but basically price and time You know just basic historical price data or benchmarks, you know Understanding the dynamics between the higher and lower time frames is critical to gain Awareness to the context of the current condition and the key word here is context That's what you're looking to attain awareness on. What is the true context of the trading period? What, you know, what environment are we in when we went through the the trader development program and understanding, you know Who we are and who we're trading against You know that gives you awareness to yourself And see the competition, but then, you know, we understanding the what the battlefield is. What is that battlefield? What is the environment? What's the political environment? What's the economic environment? What's it, you know, the technical structure, you know, we're talking about price and time, you know All the money big money that's trading the markets, you know, they're not they don't really care about what's happening Interday they just carry about the clothes, you know, because they're mark-to-market You know, they could care about the monthly clothes because that's really what their performance metrics are based on And you know quarterly and yearly clothes as well, but you know typical managers are going kind of month-to-month and And that creates a a special time frames but understanding what what the big money is looking at, you know, and What what are the good time frames to trade, you know, are you trading it the overnight session Low liquidity. Are you trading during regular trading session when, you know, there's high liquidity? You know, what are the optimal good marginal and settlement, you know periods, you know How does settlement affect the market, you know, it affects the market in a big way And so we're going to take a look at, you know, how settlement affects the market how the opening range affects the market And we're going to break it down So we're going to get into we're going to get into that right now So fact-based trading So what we're looking at here is a 60-minute bar chart I prefer open and I'll close charts to candles. I feel that the candles you You're missing structure So I think it's it's better clarity to be able to see the price action a little better We talked about, you know, what we're looking at here is, you know Over a period of almost three months And You know, so here we're trading and we're looking at a bitcoin chart. This is the perpetual contract And this is something that You know, you want it when you start out your day and you know, and you're just starting to Improve your awareness, right? That's what we're doing all the time. You know, what Creating that that base context of Where we're at in the market, you know, and what's more likely to occur And so we talked about different time frames and the monthly time frame is huge Again, if you're all the money managers, you know, basically they're they're marked, you know, their performance per month And so at the start of the month, they've got other bullets to play with And depending on how the things get going, you know, if they do really well, they might press it But they're going to manage it, you know, and then they might back off a lot if they start to give back too much You know, and you know, it it's just kind of a game throughout the You know start of that period And as you come into the end of the period and people need to settle up You know that that affects the the settlement time So you got the opening range area and the settlement area of the start of the month and the month become unique time frames But what's what's what are some fact-based things that are important? Well, you know just having you know being cognizant of You know, what's the high what was last week's hot last month's high? you know for thinking about Or you know looking you know developing context having an understanding of You know the previous periods range And knowing what that is because the money knows the big money knows what's going on You know, what you know, so we want to know the high and the low we also you know, we want to know what the close is and another interesting Thing to consider is the midpoint So we want to have an understanding of you know, if we we know what the high of the of last month is And we know the low it is and we know the close You know Understanding where that midpoint is because it's kind of a momentum area between between the two Gives you some insight to you know, are we Leaning towards the lower part of that range previous months lower part of the upper part You know, so it kind of gives us an interesting bias And so, you know just just with this simple fact-based tool identifying previous months high low close midpoint We could see some interesting behavior In the price action in the current month So it's previous month now we have the current month and if we you know, so Now we're putting some structure to this context And what are we doing right now while we're hanging on to last month lows, so that's You know That's interesting, you know if the you know market did trade below last month lows It's back above it It's kind of at a pretty pivotal point here If market can't hold above last month's lows We can break And if it does, you know, maybe we're going to get you know, it's going to work its way back up to this midpoint If not back up to last month's high So you've got an interesting trade opportunity right here So what else can we you know, what else can help us? Give us more context Well, we talked about the you know, the opening range is an interesting uh facet of the market always of each trade period, you know, so If you're talking about a daily session, you know, is it you know, if you're just focused on the regular trading session Maybe you're focused on opening range of the first hour. That's kind of the most classic opening range strategy for a day trading If you're you know going on a 24-hour market, you might use a longer time frame You know, you're going to use three four hours further your opening at the start because you're you know, crypto is a 24-hour market And if you're talking about a weekly time frame, you're going to use a day of the week Monthly time frame you're going to use a week of the month And so if we take a look at The first week of trading here In may we're creating a opening range I like to use yellow for my opening range It's in alignment with The my analytics, which is my directional number is yellow and the opening range is a A good directional barometer So why is the opening range important? Oh, this is the start of the period The fund managers that have money to spend are making decisions New clients that are coming in may want to get involved or get out of crypto and so There's you know redemptions happening a lot of things going on and people are making decisions during that time period So we have a high for that opening range and we have a low point Let's add a Marker here outline the first first week and Let's take a look at that. Let's add the midpoint to the To that opening range So now we have some additional context here What's happening in the marketplace market opened up we have our Previous months closed Market opens up below it makes a low can't get to the previous low Rotates back up through the midpoint can't make a play for the previous months high And it just kind of settles in and so after this opening range is formed We have some new boundaries We've got some alignment with our open range midpoint in the close So that's becomes a really good pivotal point makes sense markets, you know, just a real basic of Is the market hot, you know leaning positive or negative is just what's the price basis of close From the previous period that you're looking at if you're looking at a daily And you're focused on the daily structure and daily time frame Then we're then we're focused on that close and that's going to be you know, you're above it You're it is if it's a fact fact is you're above the last month's close or fact is you're below it Fact is here's the opening range and there's the midpoint and if you're Below that midpoint It's negative And so these are truths And so no matter what you used to make your decisions Having this contextual benchmark as a truth foundation Is going to give you more clarity and there's other things that we can Add to that but i'm not going to get into more detail on that right now Just you know just focusing on that you know understanding this fact foundation So now we're going to add Some of our quantitative work to this to this mix just to even give us Ideally give us more clarity So when we look at the market Main thing that we like to look at is sentiment bias So This is what you call an over under number And in this instance this over under number is is way below the market Way below the market. So a lot of times when the market has a big acceleration And we can take kind of scroll back here So here's the situation back in february Sentiments below the market as well and then in march The market came down to sentiment and this the market likes to do this because this is where the real liquidity in the market is and so The market will come, you know, if the market coming coming down to sentiment This is your low risk best opportunity. And so the market Provided a major springboard there And then you had this big acceleration So you have the you know the market getting far, you know extended You know away from sentiment, which is where the real buying energy is So but what this sentiment bias tells us is that, you know, we're, you know, above this price We're positive below this price. We're negative simple as that. So understanding, you know, where sentiment Is in the marketplace is is important. So even though Based on this Our facts, we're, you know, being below yesterday last month's Closed being below the opening range midpoint being below the opening range low In florida in Right on the cusp of the previous month's low point if we did get a break It's a corrective break Versus if sentiment was above the market It would be more about we're moving into more of a downtrend But bottom line is what structure is telling us is that sentiment is below the market So that That break would be corrective The next thing we look at is what we call our critical range And this gives us insight, you know, additional insight to the structure of the market so With sentiment below the markets outside the critical range, this sets up what we call a specific risk regime So we know sentiment is here We know that the market if the market's trading Below this directional, which is the midpoint of the critical range Upside pivot downside pivot If the market's below this price, it's vulnerable to a move down to here Just as it is what it is If it's above this price the expectation is we can make a move to the upside pivot so after you know So in in this situation Letting the market open up Get its bearings And then after it opens, where's it at in the market? Then you have this alignment with the previous month's midpoint Our lower metric of this kind of Metric boundary that surrounds this price point Is in alignment with the opening range midpoint and the close you've got a lot of interesting things saying that okay, well 29 20 in bitcoin is a pivotal point For this for for may and if the market is going to Rally It should base above that price point If they can't It's vulnerable to a corrective move And if it's vulnerable to a corrective move, where can it go? We can go here And what would validate that move? Well, we have the previous month's low If we're looking at some price structure We have this This low point here. So if we're just looking at classic positive trend higher move highs higher move lows And this is the second price structure break So we have a The previous month's low The most the previous major Price structure low and we have what we call our price map downside pivot coming in here So we have a lot of alignment in bitcoin. It says okay. Hey You know if the market's going to stabilize You know, we could you know, if it's trading below the previous month's midpoint below it. That's not That's not good and we're already not in a good situation But to really validate Any weakness the market's going to really need to trade under this 26 300 And then we could have a little bit of an event It's hoping so basically market Within this context, we've got a market that is in a corrective situation And we're right on the cusp and so this is a monthly basis And so it's you know a bigger picture And let me flip out of this So here's the same picture Just have some labels here. So we'll use the labels PML for previous months low Previous months high previous months closed previous months midpoint And then we have the you know in the context of the monthly we have the or h which is opening range high opening range low and opening range midpoint So this is this is the bigger foundation So now if we want to You know start to dial in We want it to start, you know, we can start to look at lower time frames You know, how do we get to the moment? You know, so we're in this moment here and we know this market's at a pivotal point You know around the around the 27,000 level in bitcoin. So let's let's zero in on that That point So i'm going to jump i'm going to skip over the weekly but it basically on the it's the same analytics on the weekly And just dialing in dialing in and getting additional clarity And then looking at the daily structure We can this can help us with some, you know actionable trading opportunities in the moment right now So i'm let's just keep for now. Let's key off of this The previous month's low point Because that's the first the first You know real trigger for For a negative move And it's coming in around 26,950. So it's a little bit up higher here Okay, so, you know based on Maybe remove these minor levels here So the daily structure Is a little different So same thing, you know, what's the previous days high? Previous days low previous days close previous days midpoint We've got our opening range Let me add in our Better here. So we're going to use the first four hours So the market's going in during this time making the decision for the day And it's forming a range It's going to be influential for the period and so what's happened today is the market has been trading inside the opening range the whole time You know, so after we established this range, it hasn't been able to get outside of it But what's been You know pervasive is You know, it's has the market's had a soft tone Uh You know with mark, you know On the on the opening surge You know the market tried to make a a push to the upside it couldn't Squeeze everybody and it came back and retested the high of that opening range and then tried to retest The low of the opening range and what happened is we have a narrowing So we've got this market that's, you know Tightening this coil Waiting for some more news Or not, you know, this thing can move in a second. So But what do we know for a fact, you know fact is This is the over or under number for The session The fact is You know the upside pivot is in alignment with previous days high And the downside pivot we've got are the low Is above previous days low is a little bit above our downside pivot But the fact that the sentiment is in the middle of this critical range tells us that it's balanced and so this is You know, basically what we've done is we've documented Each one of these different regimes What's more likely to occur when sentiments balanced when sentiments Outside the critical range when sentiments at the top of the curve range when it's at the bottom It just it just forms a specific structure and whenever the market is balanced It's it's typical of a coiling and the market's preparing to make a decision And so that's where we're at on bitcoin and we know that on the monthly basis we're We're leaning negative And on a daily basis we're still on the fence But we can see with the microstructure here what's happening And so we know that as long as the market's below sentiment, you know Vibrates above this price sell rallies below this price And we've got the previous days midpoint previous days close At the top of that metric boundary Let me throw in the uh I'm real visual. I really like to see everything Again, I'm just I'm just focusing on what are the facts What's the truth? I don't need any indicators indicators are lagging They're just going to tell me things that happened after the fact If I'm going to make money in the market, I'm going to make money because I'm anticipating opportunity The only way I'm going to anticipate, you know, so I know With this specific structure, what's more likely to occur And that's what I'm focused on So now that now I'm here You know, we just we went from the bigger picture. We're down to the microstructure now Here we've got our analytics built into The book map platform And this is giving us the insight of it. What's happening at the moment? What does the order book tell us? You know, so we can start out to get a little sense of, you know, was there any it wasn't a lot of activity You know my, you know, this platform allows me to adjust, you know How much when it can alert me when a certain amount of volume is taken place And, you know, we really haven't had a lot of liquidity coming in here one way or the other So there's just a lot of non-interest Um, so it's it's a bit scary that, you know, you could have moves out of nowhere um, but Looking at the order book here, you know, that what I'm looking for is, you know, what's happening here And This is a combined order book. So it's the combined of of the different perpetuals USDT from Binance futures by Beto KX. So just to get a sense of liquidity across different exchanges And I'm looking for, you know, what's happening Here and having the offers build, you know, defend This You know the inflection point, you know, this is my pivotal point You know, here I can see, you know, where you know, the sellers got aggressive here And they got aggressive selling into this structure So let's put that structure up here so You know, we have a lot of times when the market is balanced You'll get a rotational trading within this These interior levels within the critical range And these are tutorials that we have that you can go through if you Want to check out our analytics? We've got a whole educational program that goes through all these different factual pieces these different quantitative pieces And so, you know as you you can get you have this rotation around the inflection point the sentiment bias Uh, and these become validation points That if the market does want to break out, it's going to need to validate beyond this point If it's going to break out to the downside, it's going to need to validate below this point So what we're looking for is, you know, the order book to continue to build up We looking for we've got a little bit of Um imbalance here So if we do start to if this thing does turn around there is a bit of imbalance We've got some liquidity coming in here Which would make sense And that's where the that's where the market is going to try to to defend things If we get a retreat and if we take that out, we'll be below the previous monthly low We know We know what the bigger picture looks like I messed up my My levels there, but we know we're here On the longer term. So we're either going to get a rotation up back up to the 27 700 level Or we're going to rotate down to 26 300 with the potential of going much lower So the 27 700 is coming back up to the previous day's high point in the upside pivot And 26 300 is going to be down here And if we do that on a daily basis, we're going to break out of our critical range, which is a new negative signal And typically if we get a break out of a critical range We'll get what we call a 2 a p.m. D move and that'll put us down here So that's in alignment with that the longer term negative context So that is the basis the context Where we have we're looking for Sorry about that We're identifying the context of the higher timeframes first So we start out with the monthly and we work our way down to the daily structure and Adding up all these facts. I mean, there's just all truths And then when we get into the moment And we're sitting here And we know on a daily basis We're within the metric boundary of the daily sentiment bias and we're at the opening range midpoint Markets making a big decision here We also have you know, this is the v-wap. So it's right at the v-wap as well I mean, we've traded back and forth through it. So it's you know, the market's coiling. It's waiting for a move So and you know at the moment the bias is negative until it's not The big thing here is that we know if this thing does start to move to the downside There's a there is a bigger potential For an event And if we start to rotate back higher, it's more likely going to fizzle out around the upside pivot The nice thing about this approach is it gives you that statistical benchmark It gives you that outside view You know helps you slow down that decision making process It's going to help you minimize the biases if you're coming in you're getting buy signals like crazy and you want to load up But you're below sentiment You know, you have to take a step back and so you know things that you can do is just dial your size back I mean if you if you're trading something and you have to accept every signal signal Well, you you overlay criteria that's going to dial your size back So it's a size measurement tool and that's the key to successful trading anyways is knowing when to bet big So, you know when you are in alignment with the context of the market and the structure That's when you bet bigger That's when you can risk a little more And when you're against the context you need to one you need to recognize it doesn't mean you can't make money, but it's a hot potato you got to be quick and My issue with those trades Is it takes me away from the bigger opportunity? I was I'm always looking to take you look for the Biggest opportunities I wanted and I don't want some small opportunity Even though it looks tasty to take to get involved with it and then I get turned around or I get stuck on this This small opportunity and I'm working on dealing to get out of it And it's taken me away from trying to build into a position to take advantage of a bigger opportunity So we do have We are um Publishing our analytics if you're interested in taking advantage of them and test driving them You can come to our website and Test drive them every day We we do have a trade room as well where we are publishing the weekly structure and You know highlighting strategy alerts that occur in real time You know basically walking through What's happening at the moment Everything that we do is all quantitative It's all fact-based What you'll find when you start to incorporate more facts and more it you know your trading becomes more if then you'll find that It's more relaxing You'll have less stress It's more you know that you're betting on their odds And if and if it's if things don't work out You you understand that you made the right bet Because you know that in the long run they will and then Then it just comes down to You know how you manage that and how you stick with that position and that's a A conversation for another day So thank you for your you know attending the webinar and watching through this and I look forward to Seeing you in our trading room and feel free to reach out to me directly If you have any questions, I'd love to talk to you. Enjoy your day