 Welcome to the Critics Lab. I'm your host, Tom B. Thanks for stopping by the lab today. I stream live Monday through Friday, 11.30 to 1.00. Eastern Standard Time. And this stream is about integrating book map order flow tools with auction market theory using a tool called the volume profile in the intraday developing timeframe. And again, thanks for visiting. Could I please have a audio and screen check in YouTube and also the book map discord trader lab chat? Having just a little trouble here. One moment. So having some trouble. Okay, great. Thanks. Everyone, remember, please, I'm streaming from Costa Rica. And we do have a bit of a infrastructure roulette. So if the stream goes down in YouTube, you can, there's a link in the bottom of YouTube. You can go to the book map discord chat. Jump in there. Come over to trader lab. And if the internet comes back up, I should be able to reconnect in the discord channel in the trader lab. You don't have to be a book map subscriber. You won't be solicited. I just want to know there's a backup and I do not know if I can, would be able to get back into YouTube since it's a little more unforgiving. Okay. Good morning, everyone. So I have a lot to cover today. Grab your pen and paper. I'm not, I'm going to be moving as quick as I can. So to get the most out of the time you invest, take some notes, write down some levels, which I'm going to give you. I'm going to again, jump into the higher timeframe and then go down a little bit into a shorter timeframe and then the micro structure and using book map with structure trades that are available to all of you in the book map discord trader lab chat. 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. Now did you grab that pen and paper? Risk disclosure, trading futures, equities and digital currencies involves substantial risk of loss and it's not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results and please remember this is not a trade calling room. This is for educational purposes only. All the trades that I share here and I review are based on structured trades. They're all available to you. There's no cost. I'm not a vendor, et cetera. It's all free in the book map trader lab and you can follow. If you download their 60 PDFs, you can reverse engineer these. And my objective here is not to suggest that you trade anything you see in this stream that you take what you see, you reverse engineer it and see if you can develop a statistical edge. The business of trading is built in my opinion on gaming theory, not prediction. If you accept that the market is random, the randomness is created by the other participant interaction. They have their own agendas, their own timeframes and everything else, algos, market maker, hedging, you name it, higher timeframe participants and scalpers and computer algorithms. It's all in the mix. Throw in economic reports and a little salt and pepper and you get the idea. Nobody can predict the interaction of other participants just like the casinos. So how do casinos extract dollars from the gamblers? They only play games that have a statistical edge and they play them exactly the same way. Gaming is played with something called anchored inputs. Gamblers gamble with random inputs in a random environment. The casinos don't do that. Let me ask you, who's building bigger properties? The gamblers or the casinos? Case closed. So maybe we should emulate a successful business process. This is what the Trader Lab is built on and it's a community of like-minded traders looking to leverage their collective experience. So grab your pen and paper. I'm going to give you a couple of notes. This is auction market theory. Auction market theory is very simple. It is shopping and you go, really trading is shopping? Yes. If a price is too high in a store, you will not pay it. If the price goes on sale, you might throw two in the shopping cart. That's what creates too high, too low. The other part of that is inside of this rotation of too high, too low is high volume. It's some location in there. That is a retail price. If you go to store, can of tuna is $1, it goes to $1.50, you may say, I'm not paying that and you leave the store if you need tuna. If the price goes down to 75 cents, it's on sale, you may buy it. Well, if the sellers see their inventory being consumed, they can raise their price. This is what causes your rotations. Now, the next piece of this is it happens in all fractals or time frames. I do not trade in time because many years ago, just like you, I used time frames and I figured out that what I see is not based on the clock. It's based on participant behavior. You're going to see some ideas here that might be a little different. There's not a right or wrong to this. It's what you can vet and creates an edge. If you don't know what an edge is, come to Trader Lab. An edge is the way the game is played in the casinos. This is a higher time frame chart. Call it the intermediate or higher time frame, you know, and that's defined what your perception of time frame is. These are RTH candles. It's the only thing that is time based that I use. And what these do is what I'm looking at is the volume inside of these days. And it only matters when they overlap because basically that's showing us two-sided trait. Now, yesterday, if you follow the stream, I was looking for a breakout through the downside to take out the stops at the previous day's low right here. And to me, it's not a big deal whether or not the market does something. Do I have a plan? And then, if I have a plan, my job is to follow the plan. That's pretty, because it's like in the casinos. If a plan doesn't play out or it's all random, I don't know what's going to happen. And I'm going to suggest maybe you don't know what's going to happen. We only can know what might happen and then, as they say, act accordingly. So our target yesterday was sellers take the stops out on the pre... This is yesterday, by the way, take out the stops under here. You could see we got close. And then our next target was 6775. Does everybody remember that from yesterday? If you were following the stream, you might. If you didn't, well, welcome. Now, here's the next piece. If I draw a composite, and this is called a micro composite, all it is is putting dates together. That's all it is. The high volume for these two days was at 4883.50-ish. I say ish because it could be anything. And the highest volume for yesterday was at the same price, basically. So pretty much what this is saying is retail. Now, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum yesterday. We had Netflix earnings. Now remember, we're looking for this. I mean, think of the logic in all this. What are the probabilities if the market has run up and we have longs in the market, we gap higher, we run up, we get our sellers and sell stops are under here that if we open and come down that we won't take the stops at least. So that's why that was a target and this is a target. I just want you to know the rationale for yesterday's leaning to the short side. But here's what happened. And this is the joy of trading. I'm going to suggest, maybe, let me just see if I can move something. Okay, let me show you something here. And then I'm going to, we're going to get in today. I want to show you something that's very interesting. This is yesterday's RTH. And if you remember in the stream, we had this as a low volume area. In other words, outside edge of the previous days consolidation. So this is day before yesterday. Okay, I think I got so many things going on here. And this was the low of that day. This is what I was looking to get taken out. Now, this is a Renko chart. It's not time-based. And I just use this because remember, I don't deal with the clock. Because I want to see the behavior of the participants. I don't want it broken up by some arbitrary time. And this was our target. So this is at 67. This is the previous low of the day. So here's how this worked. We opened, this is the outside edge. This was too high. So this was rejected. This is the day before yesterday. This is a distribution. I'm not paying that. Yeah, but it's on sale. Retail, remember? And if I reject this, I open here and I test it. It's also called value area high. This becomes the current high of the day. And then it was short, short, short, short. If you were in the Trader Lab and you're in the stream and then of course in the Trader Lab, it was selling, looking for the stops, right? And then this, that was the lay of the land. Now we had a small thing happen yesterday. You do remember Netflix. And you know, I just trade a plan and I don't know what's going to happen. So it's not my job to predict. Remember, I'm not in the prediction business. The casinos can't predict the outcome of the next hand either. I guess we're kind of similar. That's called gaming. But I do play statistics. So statistically, this had a high probability. And it doesn't have to do anything. But when something doesn't do something and you don't know, of course, until hindsight, then your antenna needs to go up. Now there is a 90% ish probability that will take out either the first hours high or low. And so we were looking for it. And this is called the IB initial balance. It's this yellow line yesterday. So we're looking for this. And we did that. So so far, everything was going south and going well. This is the IB high. Now here's where things change. I want you to see the change. And I did not narrate this in the trader lab. I was already doing some other things at this point. I was done. But I want you to see a long trade. This is and you're going to see me do the same stuff today. This was the first hour high. Now, typically what happens is when we come out of the first hour low, we have the potential for continuation lower, especially with these stops. So I just want you to see why the sell, sell, sell thing was going on. But this, I'm going to open this up. And it's important so you can see context. Because if you don't understand context, and by the way, context is fluid, it changes, and who knows. That's part of the joy. So right in here, this level here, I call them variable high volume nodes. It's here, right there. That little, it's hard to see it, I think, but it's right there. And by the way, I can't see your, if you're asking questions or commenting, I cannot see the chat because everything is covered up at the moment. And I will clear, when I clear IRT out of here, I'll be able to see if you have questions. Thanks for your patience. This was the last area that was too high. This is called developing volume point of control. You'll notice as it's shifting down, the market is going lower. This is a suggestion that everything above is too high. So that's why the short side. Now watch, markets coming down. This is developing volume point of control. It's saying everything above is too high. When we come back above it, I call this a warning will Robinson moment. And that's like, maybe this is too low right here. But there's no way to know because we might just rotate up. This is the joy. And then reverse and come back down to it and check it. So once we crossed above, then we have rejected this. And now this is called coming back into balance. Now there's a couple trades in the trader lab. Now I call this the IB failure. It is not qualified in my trade plan. The IB failure is a mean reversion trade. But because the volume point of control was here, I had no long. So I had no long out of here. Only get out of dodge. Now we have, we do have a long trade subject to your plan. When we cross above this, which was our level that was too high, the shorts in this leg now are offside. So there's by stops. And of course we had the report is net joyous. Let me show you the log and then I'll move on. I just want you to see the structure. This is the IB high. In other words, first hour is high. We took out the first hour is low. There's about a 29% probability ish past performance, not indicative future results that we take out both sides. When this happens, we break out and we pull back to the IB. This is called the IB continuation trade. It is a trader lab structured long. And you can kind of see where that goes. Okay. And that, so that's, you know, there it is. That's life in the fast line. So that's a trader lab long. I did not participate in that. I was already done. Okay. Now I'm going to get rid of this and get to today's open. And let me just make sure I do cover one other thing. This is 4913. This was a target 4906. My intermediate timeframe all the way back a couple of eons ago. 4913 is a target coming up, which you know we gap. 4919 is the current retail price. 4931 is called the low volume node in a high timeframe. It's an outside edge for us to move higher. We need to take this out. So we have, now I'm going to show you the trades, but you wrote these down. And I apologize if you're finding, I hope you find this useful. It's kind of important me to know that this is material for you. Let me get this out of here. And I'm going to get the chats back up so I can kind of see what's going on. Are you guys tracking? How are we doing? And of course, the next question is, are you conscious? Did you get something out of this overview? And I know it takes time. But I kind of think, see one of the things in the trader lab, among many things actually is about the business of trading. The business of trading is not sitting down at slot machine. You know, I mean, it's okay if you want to do that. But I always suggest go to casino, get the cocktails and the coupon to the buffet. Enjoy yourself. It's entertainment. It's not business. In the business of trading, it's trade plans and statistics and having an edge. And only interacting where you have an edge. You can always add pieces. But if you're in a hurry, meet FOMO. And that'll take you out of the business. So, RTH open. Now the levels I referred to, there's your high vault, remember I said low volume node 4931. See, now it all makes sense, maybe. Naked volume point of control, 4913. That was an open target. Overnight volume point of control, ETH retail, remember retail. What's too high? What's too low? Retail. So that's retail. So now let's look at the first trades. Now let's get, let's think. Put your, I don't know what there was a TV program many years back. I'm going to show my age a little bit. And it would be put your thinking cap on. Let's put our thinking caps on for a moment. We had Netflix come out and the market rocketed off it. Now, we got to think about behavior, typical behavior, okay? If the market opens higher and you've been long in this leg going up, there's probably a bit of euphoria running around in your brain. And what might you do? Is it possible that you might respond to the higher open and take profits? Let's think about it. Long's in the big update. Failure to take out yesterday's low by what? Point, point and a half or something like that. The world, the planet is long if you're long, right? Shorts in the squeeze of Terrier jumping out the window. That's just proverbially. And so what would you do? Would you buy? Or would you take dollars off the table? What would you do? YouTube, what would you do? Think like a retail trader. Don't act like one. YouTube, what would you do? Would you get long on the gap? Not sure with TPs. Take profit. No longs. Okay. No. Fred just says no. I get it, Fred. Thank you. How about in the trader lab? What would you do? Did anybody in the trader lab get long? Probably won't tell me if you did. Trader lab, what is the plan for this? Tony, we got to talk. Take profit. Here's what it's called. Write this down. Responsive selling. And it's what it is. I mean, we don't know. Try Demo Trader. Responsive selling. And of course, nobody knows. But in the trader lab, we have structured trades. So we would anticipate who participate. You need to anticipate. That's what the trade plan is. Remember, we're like the casinos. We can't predict anything, but we can anticipate behavior. Think about a chess game. When you play chess, if you've ever played the game, and probably some of you guys have, or most of you, when you make a move, you are making the move in anticipation of drawing your opponent into something. When we see a move, we anticipate a few possibilities, then we make our move. It's kind of the same thing. Then we want to look at the language of the market. So let's go take a look. Let's look at the open of our TH and see. Now we have a gap. Here's the open. Let's watch. E-T-H-I. That's a high probability target. Hmm, are we going to go there first? You ask, so do I. Well, let's think about this. How might we measure this short-term behavior in a micro structure? This is where book map, order flow, sense of smell, and structured trading comes in. The sense of smell, that's something else. So let's look. R-T-H open. Liquidity sitting in the book, which may or may not be material. Remember, you know what liquidity is. It's like a banana peel. It's very slippery. It can just pull or stack. Now, this yellow line is called developing volume point of control. It's a term from market profile world. And basically, the point of control is where the high volume is. Since we're using volume profile, it represents volume. So when this opens at R-T-H, it starts at zero. So it starts at zero and the yellow line is tracking. All a volume profile is. It's really simple. It's price and volume. But remember, as a shopper, you go to the store. The volume tell us what's a fair price because people, you know, participants are willing to buy it at that price and the sellers are willing to sell it. The thing about it is, and in auction, this thing's going to move around. And we can use it as a gauge to potentially underline. And it's, remember, everything in the world of trading is random in the sense of maybe. So it's really just like the casinos. We don't know what comes out of the deck. We don't know how to gamblers play it. The gamblers work out with cash or the house gets the cash. Welcome to trading. So this is retail. So now I see some selling. This is Delta, the red bubbles. So green bubble by Delta. So aggressors. All right. Buy stops. Just showing what's here. Sell iceberg. All right. And so let's watch. Very slow because the first trade comes very quickly. So let's watch. Break down volume. So look at this as a consolidation. I'm taking you into micro world. There's the volume there. Now it takes skill. And how do you develop skill practice to do this? You don't just come to trade a lab and do this and and expect a good outcome. Now watch. This is called V pock migration. I made these up. Because when I developed this for myself, nobody was doing this. I mean, if they were, there was no internet. I mean, there really wasn't what we have today, you know, back in the Stone Age. So when I started doing this, I didn't, you know, everything's accidental. You know, I looked at this and I went, that's interesting. Look at that. I volume here and I started thinking of it like an auction or gaming or what does it say? See, most retail traders are using indicators as a translator. You know, like Google translate, right? Basically, this is language. So if you remove the indicator, can you learn to speak market? It's very simple. So instead of having a backwards derivative of price, I have a real time representation of behavior based on the participant. So let's look at this. So the short, right? Let's, how do you do this? Well, we come down, we test too high. And I'm, and it's a suspect right here. I rotate up. This is too high. Right there. Now I test this one. Is this too high? I see my seller again. I want to get short. Now let's watch. Pull back. So this is a short, and actually this is a short if you're very aggressive and your stop is right here or above here because this, you notice this, they're adding up here. That creates pressure in the book. Let's just watch, watch. This now, so too high, too high, so short. I can't sell it here. I'd love to, but it's not my thing. I can't. But this tells me if that is too high and now this is retail at the moment buyers aren't willing to pay this. This is what it says. That's too high. I'm not paying that. Now this test here, it can come back here. I mean, it can do anything. You know, right? So let's not worry about predicting. I gave up on that a long time ago because I was, you know, my outcome was random. And the thing that we tend to do as retail traders is randomness is like gambling. You win. Gamblers get paid. That's why they come back to the table. But over time they lose. So picking high lows and predicting everything is, yeah, you get it right. And the natural tendency for retail traders who don't understand gaming theory is to tweak and tune. And that's basically curve fitting and it's really nice in hindsight. It doesn't work in the real world because the market's dynamic in my opinion. And that's based on system design and almost 44 years of doing this, but it's just an opinion. You know, you can do it differently than it's fine. So too high, short, come back to mid and VWAP. Also a potential short stop over the high of the day or here. So that's your short. Now let's go down the ramp a little bit here and look at targeting because you got to know, right? Where are we headed? And again, nobody knows overnight volume point of control, which was retail. So in the micro structure, too high, too high. What's the last retail price? Think of shopping and fractals or multiple timeframes. This is retail and this was retail. So that, and this was open. We were looking at as a target from below, right? We gaped above it. So now it becomes valid to come back and check it from above. So overnight volume point of control, high probability statistic. I'm not going to give them to you because I don't want to take the time overnight mid, high probability statistic, past performance, not indicative of future results. You got to check it and this. So this is our target for this short in the trader lab subject to you vetting. And there's more. Let me just see what else is down here. This is also a target down here. And that's a higher timeframe. It's the same as this except the higher timeframe. So this is called fractals. Remember? So let's, let's see the trade now. Let's watch this slide. Okay. And I take time with this because if you don't understand why you don't need to see, you know, I think the purpose, you know, the purpose of the trader lab in the stream is to help you understand market mechanics, how it works, why it does what it does, even though it's random and how you might get an alignment using structured trades. These are structured trades and they're available to all of you in the trader lab as well as a community of like-minded traders that now we, everybody's there for one reason to get better to leverage their collective experience. I mean, we have traders in the trader lab been there and been trading over 50 years that they admit to anyway. So this is called VPOC migration. Remember VPOC migration short. What is this? VPOC migration. What might it be? How about another short? Let's label it. You'll see I'm just, I'm process oriented and it's really based for evolved out of system design, which is really conditional statements. So the conditional statement is like a schematic and the setups, if you will, or structured trades are related to the context. They are not mechanical. And that's what's the hardest thing. Most of us are red light, green light, you know, oriented when we start in this business and it's all indicator based because that's what we think the business is. I'm going to assure you, again, only on my experience, not so much. Here's high volume retail. If we leave it, we can come back and check it. If it's still too high, where might we go? We may continue lower. Where is our target? Here. Let's watch. Now again, so you understand, there's more to this. So we're looking for the response of selling. Okay, fine. Short, short, short, short. I don't see along yet. Do you? And the other part of it is how do you manage the trade? This is where your individual trade plan comes in. It is really a statistical process. It is not a, I want to catch all of it, mental, emotional, wiring, triggering process. It's business. Not gambling unless you want to be a gambler. Then, like I say, casino gives you cocktails in the buffet. And if you're a high roller, maybe a ticket to go see Adele. Watch. V-POC, migration, minutia. What it is measuring is this volume. So we're still moving down. Now what we have to be conscious of is where is too low. And too low can happen anywhere and give us a counter rotation. I mean, this is the joy. So trade management is part of your process. And this is a part of understanding your plan statistically, not mine, yours. Let's watch. VWOP, mid. Now we have a structured trade in the trader lab. Now I'm going to tell you what it is. Let's assume we can agree that the direction of this thing is down, right? We see the developing volume point of control migrating lower. That is saying lower. In other words, the sellers are lowering the price. By the way, do you know who controls the price? The sellers. Sellers are lowering the price to entice the buyers. So they're lowering. They're lowering. They're lowering the price. We have a structured trade in the trader lab. Now I'm going to point it out to you. It's not qualified because of the range. It is a structured trade. And I said I would show you all the trades. Now it's not a trade that anybody in the trader lab, I hope, would take. But it is a structure that you need to understand. We have a structured trade called the VWOP to VPOP. Now here's what's important about this. I know. What do I know? Stops are at VWOP and mid. Here's what else I know. Let me move this back a little bit so you can see what I know. Here's what I know. Watch. This is the high volume area. You can see the volume there. Retail. Remember how shopping works. Consolidations. Basically, when you rotate, this is the outside edge out here. In other words, too high. I'm not paying that. Too low. Too high. And that's called a low volume node. And what creates it, so you know, I'm just going to take you back here. This is a consolidation. Too high, too low rotation. When I break out of it and the market runs, it doesn't chop. It doesn't auction. It just moves to a different area. That leaves low volume here. And in our definition of low volume means it didn't stop and pause and go too high, too low, too high. It just went, I'm out of here. That creates this space and that creates low volume. That low volume now is out here. I'm going to label it. Just to keep us conscious of what's going on. And this is what the profile tells us. It's really telling us where does the volume dry up. And here, let's just put it in there. And this is what I do. Now, obviously in real time, you know, I'm just looking at this. I know what it is. When you're learning and if these concepts resonate with you, I know this. The buyers dried up over here. The sellers ran away from this consolidation. And you know how consolidations work. Too low, too high. I'm out of here. High volume was here. We left it. I'm not paying that. Now we start down here. Rotation. Okay. Oh, too high. So that's my outside edge. Here's retail. Now, let me go back to VWAP to V-POC. We come outside and this is a structured trade in the trader lab that's not qualified. Why? Range. But what does it tell us? Context and behavior. So if I'm sitting here, I know I can come out to this. So if I'm going for the higher timeframe targets subject to my plan, my stop if I have runners is out here. And that and you know how it feels emotionally when it comes all the way back and takes your runner out and you want to throw a shoe at the screen. That's something you have to vet in the sense of what aligns with your psychology. So let's watch. V-POC migration. Let's watch. This was too high. This might be too low. This now is retail. This is a warning will Robinson moment to go lower. I have to clear this because this might underline be saying too low. I'm going to label it. Let's watch. I know it's a lot of detail, right? But what I'm doing is I'm doing this in real time. As fast as the inputs come. I'm now I'm tracking. I'm not using an indicator. I'm just reading these guys. What are these buyers and sellers doing? So VWOP to here VWOP to here moves up warning will Robinson moment. Here's what why if I come down here and I can't clear this and I come above here then squeeze and my outside edge is here. So let's see what it does. I don't remember any of this. See to the outside edge watch. So here's what happens too low shifts up here pull back test here too low liquidity comes in the book. I can't cover all the pieces here, but I just want you to see how you might put it pieces together. Now when you see this, you don't know are they going to pull? They stay. I come up here. This is too low. Now I suspect the rotation if I clear that. Too high too low. Too high too low liquidity break where the stops VWOP mid where's my outside edge out here? Okay. Outside edge now micro structure retail price there's the micro high volume I'm at my outside edge no clue. Let's look seller. This is a trigger now watch and I don't know what's going to happen and I can't remember this is pulling this is concerning but what we want to see here is if this micro this is like going down the street to your convenience store this consolidation has volume in it there's my seller now I'm above here so I have to be very careful because for all I know the market's rejecting this right and the whole idea of the short could be off so this is an area right here and this is pulling so that's disturbing let's watch it though too low too low let's watch liquidity let's watch see is everybody tracking can you guys see behavior no indicators behavior and I don't know what it's going to do you know I'm as clueless as everybody else not my job to predict what I know is based on the behavior this is important to clear this comes into the book we check it again too low buyer this comes into the book squeeze it area now this is up here so I'm pushing outside of this area so is everybody tracking so far can you see how this might work so now let's come back liquidity gets added here now right here there's nothing here for me okay because I'm in the what's going on mode I've crossed over the mid the VWAP I'm above the volume point of control this is now two sided trading we have shifted at this time from directional movement to rotational movement it is a separate plan in the trader lab are you guys tracking by the way I didn't say this was easy but what makes it doable is not thinking oh I should get long here I should get short here that's what amateurs do professional traders say where's my next setup what is the condition of the market has it changed do I have a plan for this what is my plan for this is this market going to go up now I mean are we done what what are we going to do this was too high we got our rotation we didn't take out our support level which is the volume we come back up where stops right above here this comes into the book so let's watch it and this is where market pulse I'm going to mention and you know I always have to say this I'm not a fan not of market pulse but of indicators because most traders are lazy and they don't learn how the market works they let the indicator do the thinking in my opinion that's a recipe for a bad outcome but that's just my opinion let's look at this this is the delta and is measuring the buying in this leg we're just going to say that for now this is market pulse and right here market pulse and delta align right here liquidity aligns I'm at an outside edge now what you don't know and part of the joy of trading is are we just going to keep going because we're in the casino business we're not we can't predict what comes out of the deck or how it works if this is a short if this is a short let me show it to you then this is the target and then potentially back to the other side so let's see what it does now if it's not in your plan it's nothing okay it's just gee that's interesting watch the liquidity this is called the liquidity marker so it's showing me the ads the ads and you see the book so that's one piece okay we have our market pulse right here alignment I'm going to take you into minutia now and I hope you find this interesting now these are not necessarily trades I can take I mean it's just not important to me I just wait you know for my trades whether I take this or not it's not material to what you do you can do anything you want if you take the time to understand the mechanics of the market and have structured trades if you once we cross mid VWOP and V-POC there's a couple possibilities we can keep going up we can get into rotational trading side and I don't know which one until I get something that indicates back here now if this is too low we can come back to this area and repel off it and go higher it's too low think V-POC migration or if it's not and all we did was go into mean reversion and I did I dropped a webinar out there on rotational trading this is in the trader lab so you guys know if you're just visiting for the first time we basically discussed two kinds of plans one is directional trading which is what you saw early and then it changes and we don't know until hindsight so let's get real you don't know it's changed and often you'll take a stop because you're trading door number one and now it's changed the door number two and if it changes you're not going to be in alignment until after the fact that's just you know let's just be real here there is no magic bullet there is risk management and trade plan that is the magic bullet you come out here so the possibility here is to come here or give you a little hiccup come back here and blast off that's what I know I don't know anything else but let's look at the structured trade now micro now remember why I'm thinking this because I have targets below and I had responsive selling I pushed outside of this layer so that was my outside edge I've pushed further out it can do anything now I'm going to take you a little deeper watch this is our liquidity here's micro high volume this is the stop and iceberg detector so selling iceberg but here's what I have found and this works for me now there's a lot of pieces here so you've got to be patient buy stops coming up 14 stops thanks for playing broker send you a gift basket into the liquidity three buy stops where's my buyers so you know keep going right Lewis oh my goodness it's going to the moon house liquidity stays in the book buyers buyers buyers they're not you know this is staying in these guys are getting absorbed okay and don't forget my market pulse is giving me a overbought thingy it's like an oscillator you know so for me if I have let's say a higher and I do have a hierarchy of inputs this is like the last piece everything else has to be in place before this is material otherwise it's just noise and a distraction that's why indicator based traders overall and it's again just an opinion from observation and personal experience or just visit they don't last long enough to figure it out what indicators are and aren't but indicators have a place if you learn how the market works it isn't the other way around that indicator solve education on market they're just kind of dumb you know and you have to use your head not just using random outputs of price and tweaking and think that you can create an ATM in the basement I'm going to suggest that might be a little naive so right here okay so but yet where's our trigger absorption absorption this is staying in the book it's even getting heavier over here so let's watch see how it gets darker that's adding that is pressure so you see the pieces come together micro high volume seller this now is too high and we have alignment with the market pulse and everything else the idea is to return here it's called mean reversion there's the mean so if you get short here if it fits your plan basically you got to be looking at this so let's watch pull back here is this too high I wonder huh look at that VPOC migration so short if it's in your plan I want to stress that micro structure pulse sell and you saw the trigger back to here under here pull back to where this is that now too high VPOC migration too high potential trader lab add short or trade management opportunity who knows watch retracement to where too high too high seller trader lab trader lab too high target is here remember target that's just a short sequence okay guys is everybody with me and guys if you can't follow this in the sense of trade it it's okay your job is not to get all of these your job is to wait for your trade if you took one trade today and you followed your plan that's what this business is all about it's it's not oh catching every ripple in the market it's not the real world the real world is one trade at a time that you have that you develop process for the biggest obstacle in my opinion to being a professional career trader is understanding the context of the market it is the most challenging part of this because it's not it is multiple dimensional if you will in other words short short short what happens when we get too cited different plan comes out of the drawer then if it continues and it changes back to directional you're now in the directional plan these targets of since the top of the stream this is what I was trading towards right but when we crossed outside I had to go into a mean reversion plan to come back to this and then if we break below all we did was rotate out and squeeze and I don't know I mean I thought it would stop here right and by the way would I say I think it would I really should be saying I think it could not that it would because that means certainty I certainly don't have that not blessed with certainty I'm specifically blessed with randomness because that's the environment I operate in I cannot be responsible for knowing I am responsible for having a vetted trade plan and having the discipline to follow it if I do that I have the potential to survive the learning curve and build out the plan piece by piece that's what the trader lab is about and that's what the 60 pdfs I share of structured trades you can reverse engineer now what's going to happen I have no idea so I don't worry about it my job is not to predict I have no clue now here this is the first hour's low okay and right here and nobody knows by the way so this is the first hour's low and I'm on the short side so for me I only have short okay now let's look at some of this I'm going to open it up and I'm going to get into the minutiae this is a high volume node I'm now going to go into fractal with you now subject to your plan and remember what is a plan it is something that has a statistical edge it is nothing more than that by the way this is absorption here this is another algo that's in the market pulse I don't need this to see absorption I have it here too but this jumps out at me so here's what I see the market is short this is delta the market pulse and here's the fallacy of indicators by the way you see this this tells you to get long if you're using the market pulse so that's why indicators will throw you under the bus because if you have to understand behavior so when I see this who buy in the market pulse I have nothing to do with that because what's the context down so I can't pick the bottom of anything I just go with the flow so for me I'm if I'm short I'm using structure to manage the trade so structure there's your high volume there's your seller if it stays under here it's lovely I come down here I have market pulse by I also have absorption going on here okay market pulse by so where's the last place it was too high it's there so right here now I'm going to show you some other stuff I'm showing you I'm taking you down with the I wouldn't call it a microscope but we're getting there watch this right here let's put a box around this mentally speaking remember how shopping works oh it's on sale I'm not paying that oh it's on sale I'm not paying that right here breakout buyer oh what's this volume where is it here let me let me show you this is how they use bookman and it's a piece it's not a reason to get long in my opinion now if you have a vetted trade plan you can knock yourself out with this literally and figuratively this is the high volume there see it it's developing this is basically where the volume is too high too low grocery store down the street kind of ice cream eight o'clock Saturday night going to watch the movie not a lot of volume takes place but there are shoppers in there and that's where the retail volume is so what I'm looking for for it to continue to go down is for it to have its volume and push this way same as those migrating v-box this is just down at fractal so you see the behavior I'm looking for it to push off this volume and then I would put my stop here okay is everybody tracking the micro I just want to make sure how we doing in YouTube I hope you're getting something out of this and you find this useful I'm showing you micro how to narrate and potentially manage your trade so right here is the volume I wanted to push this way because then I know this is too high just like that was too high just like that was too high see it there see it there see it there too high too high see the sequence too low and I don't know until after the fact you know hindsight there you are now I know right here is too low now what is the proof that it's too low you're going to ask the test is this really too low high volume if I don't break below this and I clear this it's see you later alligator watch see the change in behavior so this is volume seller come back and check it too high there's your seller okay here volume looking for this I get the opposite now what this is too low what do I get my test buyer so right there is your reversal and for me it is a exit and I have this now what about this one should I be exiting here what do I have here volume buyer pullback to the let's look at the difference volume is here test and what do I get seller so you know it's subject to how you manage your plan and it's really up to you I mean you could be out of this thing here doesn't matter does it we're never going to get all of it you think you are that's not the business of trading that's FOMO and that's greed and all those emotional states oh I left some on the table really so now we have our reversal and let's see what happens now where's the stops let's stop for a second and think about this mid VWOP and potential to come back here no way to know this here out here is a potential outside edge this is a micro structure selling structure right here you've seen this from the other side but here's the problem stops at mid in VWOP so write this down think like a retail trader don't act like one you have to decide really do you do you want to step in front of retail traders stops which are here for me no I'm just going okay down leg is over what you know and I know we can come anywhere to any of these high volume levels like this one it took it out this is the next one and always write this down look left what's over here buy stops it's a swing what's over here buy stops it's a swing if I short here I am stepping in front of the fuel I can't sell this in my plan I mean you might but I can't why how many of you put your stops at the mid or the VWOP how many of you automatically you don't have to tell me but I'm going to say I did early on in my career because I thought that was what we supposed to do oh you sell the mid you put your stops here do you think other retail traders are doing that well since we know the majority of retail traders fail and it's over 90% failure rate more than and let's just say of course past performance not in the future results you got to do your own research but let's assume maybe it's over there what are they doing don't do what they do don't take this short and look what comes in here liquidity and it looks like a short there is your seller isn't it look lovely here's your volume and what does it do it blows right through it I can't sell this I see it and I go ahhh no because of why stops stops swing swing and potential to come back here so let's look the epoch migration watch now what's going on variable high volume node everything below is now too low great to know after the fact this shifts down here let's label it variable high volume node how am I doing on the clock I'm trying to speed along believe it or not I'm trying to rush you probably go really probably seen snails run faster but if I don't give you the explanation I don't think it's worth our time what I'm doing is narrating participant behavior and I'm showing you the narration based on the volume which is what the volume profiles all about what does volume say about price well here's the high volume in the store if this price is too low and I don't know right here I never know even if I think I know so that's not part of it then if we reject it we can come back to a previous price where is too low in the micro structure this is too low okay there's my buyers this is my head fake sellers I pulled back I got nothing here to lean on really I mean this might be usable but for me it's not at the time because I'm looking for the stops to come out so I'm not going to get long I'm going to look and you know I'm just waiting here now because I can't get short here this is kind of a trap as I see it this is you know you get the liquidity you get the seller you get retail traders selling this thing and then they pull and that's like gotcha this shifts down retail watch now I have this let's look and see what happens here vpok migration is this too low I don't know vpok migration this now is too low this now is retail this is my outside edge let's watch you notice a change in behavior what does it do too low vpok migration this is along in the trader lab stop goes under here this is your target to scale right here let's watch pullback support long in the trader lab so you have the following what's going on too low vpok migration long to where here it was too high is it logical vpok migration pullback and test too low or are we going to come back here wish I knew the answer long in the trader lab vpok migration another potential long in the trader lab obstacle is still here and there stops over here let's watch vpok migration long in the trader lab long in the trader lab too there long in the trader lab too there vpok migration watch pullback test vpok migration resistance watch test test so what do we have too low let me take into micro now I know this will probably make you guys nauseous so I apologize for that with no indicators I don't need an indicator if I can do this and I take stop by the way stops cost of production and overhead I know we're emotionally attached I get it we feel it I ask you what is the casino feel now by the way this is the first hour high right and there's we had a response of selling so we know there's by stops here don't we and there's more he says and there's more what was the target I showed you now I have no clue if it's ever going to do anything you know this is this remember outside edge of a higher time frame this is the target if we come out the top so you'd be hanging out on the long side here heath chattering and everything else going for this and then the extended target subject to your plan so let's just see it and you that's why I wanted to show you the price map because these are on the price map before the RTH open any questions so far I hope you're getting something out of this question guys how we doing in YouTube we getting something out of this I hope you are and I and this is probably you're going to go I can't do that I'm going to say yes you can and here's the other thing I tell you you know I say I don't use indicators I don't need an indicator this is my indicator the participant behavior indicators are outputs that are based on price that are math based outputs they are not sensitive to the condition of the market and where the how the market behave previously this is what the auction is about you know uh CLVN top hat is a uh composite low volume node it is a higher time frame for all the volume going back to January 3rd I think 2020 that's what this is and this was an outside edge of a higher high high high time frame so it was an outside edge so on that basis we could pop through here and keep going or if we pop and come back inside this is what you anticipate this and then it's there's other trades that's set up in the trader lab which I'll talk about but that's where it comes from does that make sense uh Fred the market has been here um pricing in futures um you have to add the spread in when you roll over you use a back adjusted contract because uh when you roll the months there's carrying charges and you can have a spread between the current month and the next month over in a roll over so we're adding that on to the price so the volume stays constant the price is changing I hope that makes sense remember futures does that make sense Fred so this is our outside edge and now guys remember I can't predict anything I don't do that that's somebody else's job to pick the high and the low I spent too many years thinking that I could do that because basically when I learned I'm just saying when I learned when I started trading I learned at the Chicago mercantile exchange um classical bar charting which is measured moves primarily right you know triangles, pendants head and shoulders all that jazz um 50 percent retracement and um so that's kind of how that all evolved so I always thought trading was predicting so I don't predict anything I figured out that you know my guess is as good as anybody's and the problem was that you get a right sometimes just like gamblers win so they think they have a viable process they don't and again in my opinion um you know I would say go to casino entertain yourself don't do that here this is business assuming you just aren't a gambler you know that's up to you so let's look at this thing so we come up to the location who knows so location you could have been out for me I just get out ahead of the thing I don't care why should I care now there's more I have to give you something else here that I forgot I think I did okay so you know we have our longs right we have a structured trade in the trader lab called the IB continuation trade it's right here I forget these things you know because there's so many things now when you take now the target coming up was this right one of them to take the stops out by stops all the shorts guys hanging out short you know get them and then I'm going for the next target because I don't know you know so here now let's assume for if I wasn't long how would I get long this right here is a structured trade in the trader lab let me show it to you now the way this works is and this is called the IB continuation trade you guys can download their 60 PDFs in the trader lab if you're interested in what this is all about and and also let's be let's be real about this you have to develop a skill to do this you got to and just think about high performing athletes anyone who's at a competitive level in anything they don't just walk out on the court and shoot three pointers like Michael Jordan you know they have hours of practice coaching films they have structured plays all of that is what makes performance happen that's what it takes in this business it's a building process and I underlined the word process because trading is process driven in a random environment blackjack in the casino is process driven in a random environment that's the business of trading you don't have to accept it but I'm going to say I was I had a whole different perspective on trading for many years until I kind of got the light bulb one off and I'll tell you the light bulb was kind of dim early on because I was doing what other traders do and I thought it was the right thing and the problem we have doing what might not be the right thing is we believe it is the right thing what does it take for you to change a belief you think it's persistence right I'll get it I just got to tune this tweak that maybe another time frame let me put a couple more indicators on this and our under our subliminal desire is to squeeze the risk out with more indicators more time frames because we don't want the pain of loss we don't want to be eaten by the saber tooth tiger in this business instead of running away from the fire you're running towards the fire and your wiring is actually you're not wired to do that so you've got all these emotional states and chemicals and survival instincts working against you you need to learn about that so right here is the IB continuation structure trade and again past performance not indicative of future results so let's take a look at this we break through the high there's your buy stops thanks for playing remember the broker is going to send you to give basket we pull back to the IB now let's look at the trade right here is volume variable high volume node remember let's go back to the open let's come back to the open let's come back to the open this there was too high so I know this is too high right where this is labeled and I know this is my area to look for along so when I first break out of the IB which is here I'm looking for a pullback to here and to along so let's look try to get over here with this thing so this is where I'm looking I have this if I'm scaling depending on the number of runners I'm scaling here because I want to trade into the stops in case all we do is squeeze and fall back in right if I don't do that whatever happens happens if I come outside I'm going for my next target so here let me open it up so here's my buyers my stops here's my volume chop chop chop chop microstructure break high pull back and test the volume let's watch trader lab structure trade long okay now and what's our target this okay so you kind of see the IB continuation trade any questions on it yet nodgy I think I answered a question all time highs theoretically have not been taken out in futures I will say that I'm getting the question about all time highs you just got to go with the flow in other words all time high gets taken out at some point we're going to come back in the other direction we have a lot of poor structure under us and I anticipate and it's not it doesn't matter to me you know I mean I don't that doesn't matter I don't really think in that I think in the here and now because this is where I'm trading in this time frame but all this is going to get repaired we're going to come back down when how if not my job so I don't think about it but right here this is the target so I flat you know or or let me give you the your or you're going I don't know that's wishes probably even better why is this the top I don't know is this the top well let's look at trade management don't forget you got your long here let's look at microstructure for trade management and these are not recommendations I'm just going to show you how to read the follow the yellow brick road so you got your long right this is a structured trade right here long stop under here or further out up to you micro structure see the little volume break high does this look like V pock migration to you in micro buyer micro structure V pock migration if you want to think of it volume volume break high test right there too low break high volume break high volume micro micro micro V pock migration micro V pock migration V pock migration but it's not a V pock can you guys see what's what fractal is youtubers you see trading and fractals I can read this because it speaks the volume in here is the same think Russian dolls this is how you kind of get this you know what a Russian doll is well the low volume node here in the ultimate high time frame is the same as this low volume in the developing time frame the variable high volume nodes I've been talking about where the V pock or yellow line migrates are the same is this except it's more micro structure same behavior Russian doll so if you understand the behavior and you can think and fractals pop down bottom up at times you can read it and if you can read it you can dance with it this is language of the market there's I'm not using any indicators this is very timely for me I'm not waiting for some backwards looking anything I can see what's happening here and when I see it then I know this is too low right here it's too low too low buyer right here too low buyer you can see it let me let me take this off here I'll just clean it up a little bit for you hope you get something out of this by the way if you're in YouTube if you find this useful or at least educational and maybe even different please give a thumb up down in the bottom somewhere there's a thumb place put your finger print in there but I won't tell anybody high volume buyer test too low there's your buyers too low so too low too low test buyer volume too low buyer test see what I'm doing buyer who knows buyer too low volume buyer too low watch volume seller too high question mark he says what about this took it out trade over subject to how you want to manage your trade are you guys getting something out of this please give a thumb up if you're in YouTube if you want this stream to continue you know whether trader lab stays and continues is really up to participants in the trader lab and thumbs we need your thumb throw a thumb in there and I have a lot more I can share with you guys but I'm very limited on time I have nine minutes left so if you have final questions there's more trades in the trader lab but I think this is a reasonable overview I try to cover some different stuff you know I've been giving you the higher time frame right let's see what else we got here I haven't seen any of this so what's going on okay let me show you this now for me I'm not suggesting somebody fade this but let's look at a selling structure now what this is about what I'm going to share with you here I'm getting advanced and I don't want you guys think you should not do this you should take the trend trades or the mean reversion trades two different trade plans because the market shifts from directional to rotational or it could go rotational and shift the directional and intraday it could do it back and forth back and forth and you're always going to be out of step with it until you recognize it and that's conditional statements and in the trader lab it's done like this if this then that if not then what if this then that if not then what if this is too high and I get a reversal so if this and I go through it that's fine but it's too high and I get a selling structure so if this is too high then that then what where's the volume too high where's the volume too high seller you see the change in behavior buyer where's the seller buyer there's a seller and no seller change in behavior too high seller too high oh my goodness we're out of here too high let's go back to the structure let's look at the structure too high there's the test seller too high there's the test seller any doubt now where's the test there so what where's your volume here too high where's the volume here too high where's the volume too high there too high potential short if you want to be if you feel lucky as dirty Harry would say because this is counter trend and where are you trying to go back here there's stops under this you have a counter trend plant or you sit back and you order your pizza because if you don't have an edge you're going to pay into this and then potential back here if you can't come back here then potential to come back here let's watch outside edge low volume note now this could be a long but here's what you got to be conscious of this is too high so do you take along or do you use this to get short or do you just put it in park and put the Lamborghini back in the garage up to you see what's going on here now and where do we come back too high there was your seller where do we come back too high too high there's your seller where's the volume here's your test potential short back to here goes here it's all up to you not a trade recommendation anything could happen so you know subject to your plan final questions and by the way if you haven't taken advantage of it please give a thumb up on the way out if you're in youtube it's very helpful um and we have a bond auction coming up thanks Slaughter Ozzy and that can create hiccups and volatility if you haven't visited the trader lab you're all welcome there's a link in the bottom of youtube you don't have to be a book map subscriber now ever never and book map will never solicit you you're welcome to visit the lab there's 60 pdf's of structured trades some of these trades I'm talking about and there's others there's more advanced stuff but to give you the idea and I'm not a vendor there's no trading course I didn't put these together from 2020 I was sharing ideas 2021 and here's a reason for some of these some of these are live trades and some of these I went back after the fact you know just grabbed a screenshot to explain what was going on some of these things you're going to see in here were experimental I was working with developers at book map and you know jettisoned some of it so you have to vet these for yourself but you can kind of look at these and it might give you some insight as far as why because I think it's really important to understand why when you live in the world of maybe why is important because it's always going to be maybe so maybe it's good to know why and why maybe that's pretty much it that is what the trader lab is about this is what it's built on auction market theory how the market works why it does what it does also helping trader develop trade plans so they understand why retail traders fail and why the failure rate is so high try not to do what they do they don't stay in the business there's a reason you might be able to learn why and maybe change the course you're on if you're not successful on the other side of that if you are a successful consistent trader and here check check check check check check we're back up um yeah we are I think are you guys are you guys able to hear me internet went down here in Costa Rica how we doing maybe yeah okay guys sorry about that the monkeys grabbed the you know how it is monkeys jumped on the on the wire the cable here and I dropped so anyway hopefully a few guys can still hear me um please give a thumb up in YouTube on the way out um hope you got something out of the stream by the way this stream is available exclusively uh to trader lab participants to reverse engineer uh review we still cook in here what are we doing back to the high and going so you know please give a thumb up there's a link in the bottom of YouTube and our internet's going back up and down again so um please click the like button in YouTube you can review the stream if you got something from it visit the trader lab you can download the 60 PDFs plus a library of webinars is available to you to review so you can get an understanding of this some of it up to uh four hours long of real time narration so you can see how this develops in real time if you you know if you're inclined thanks again for visiting the trader lab appreciate you visiting today sorry for some technical challenges but I am in Costa Rica catch you guys tomorrow take care everybody and thanks again for visiting the trader lab truly appreciate it