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Summary
Trades by Matt offers an in-depth guide on a specific day trading strategy focusing on NASDAQ futures. Matt emphasizes patience, understanding market behavior, and avoiding impulsive decisions. Key aspects involve using various charts like Sierra Chart with tools such as volume profile and vwap, understanding market liquidity, and trading around news events. The strategy involves leveraging multiple trading setups, focusing on small consistent gains or "base hits" rather than aiming for large single wins. Matt shares insights on utilizing tools effectively, executing well-timed trades, and balancing between personal and prop firm accounts to minimize financial risk, all while stressing the importance of practice and continual learning in trading.
Highlights
Matt emphasizes that patience and strategic planning are crucial for successful day trading 🚦.
He uses Sierra Chart with volume profile, vwap, and other indicators to guide his trades 📊.
The strategy focuses on scalping tactics around NASDAQ futures, aiming for small wins over time ⚾️.
Understanding and reacting to market liquidity forms a core part of Matt's trading method 🌊.
He stresses the importance of using paper trading or simulated environments for practice 🎮.
Matt utilizes both personal capital and prop firm resources for a balanced trading approach 🔄.
Staying informed on news events is vital as they can affect market conditions significantly 🗞️.
A 'less is more' approach helps in conserving emotional and financial capital during trading 🌟.
Key Takeaways
Patience is key in day trading; don't rush into trades 🚦.
Understanding market behavior and liquidity can guide decision-making 🌊.
Using comprehensive tools such as Sierra Chart aids in strategizing 📊.
Focus on small, consistent gains rather than large wins; aim for 'base hits' ⚾️.
Blend trading in personal and prop firm accounts to minimize risk 🔄.
Always check for news events that could impact market dynamics 🗞️.
Practice in a simulated environment before risking real money 🎮.
Leverage support and resistance levels for informed trading decisions 📈.
Overview
Day trading often requires balancing patience, strategy, and execution, a process that Matt from Trades by Matt demonstrates extensively in his video. He shares how over years of experience, integrating well-tested strategies into daily practices can assist traders in making informed choices rather than impulsive decisions. Emphasizing the significance of market behavior analysis and liquidity understanding, Matt encourages traders to focus on their comfort levels with strategies—suggesting that a 15-minute abstinence from trading at market open helps in assessing early market conditions more clearly.
Using robust tools like Sierra Chart, Matt brings detailed insights into utilizing technical indicators such as volume profile and vwap. These tools form the backbone of his strategy, helping Matt identify 'base hits' - small, manageable wins that accumulate over time without the need for risky large trades. He explains how platforms can enhance a trader’s understanding of market dynamics—both in real time and in simulated environments, which he underlines as critical for developing any principled trading habits.
Matt delves into how trading in both personal and prop firm accounts can leverage financial risk, allowing traders to potentially earn substantial rewards without significant personal capital exposure. Such a mixed approach is paired with a strict reckoning of news events, which can heavily influence market trends. By adopting a disciplined, data-informed approach to trades, Matt outlines the path to smarter investment tactics: one that encourages continuous learning, the adaptation of strategies, and the preservation of capital by avoiding high-risk actions.
Trades By Matt Day Trading Strategy Transcription
00:00 - 00:30 all right welcome to the trading strategy video uh my goal is to make this video incredibly comprehensive and go over all of my different thought processes in a concise and Consolidated manner this video is still going to be long so buckle up and uh hopefully you find something new or uh you're reminded of something that kind of helps your trading so that's the that's the goal here the things that I'm showing you right now are things that I've been using a lot these last 68 months it's all been stacked up on each other over the years um but it has just been slowly
00:30 - 01:00 getting dialed and dialed and dialed um I'm not the best Trader ever uh I will never be the best Trader ever I want to be very clear on that this is a free video that you're watching on YouTube so take it all with a grain of salt right you got to be able to implement it yourself back test it yourself figure out the ideas for yourself but hopefully the ideas that I present you can kind of morph and turn into your own ideas that being said um I did make $39,000 over the last 80 trading days using these methods uh through proper payouts uh the ones that I used that I
01:00 - 01:30 pulled out $39,000 from this year so far is Apex uh I use or 20 of the 50k Apex accounts uh you can use code TBM for the best discount always right now it's 80% off so it's 35 bucks and 35 bucks per account and then I ended up pulling $39,000 out this video will be using uh live markets the market just opened three minutes ago uh I'm trading the NASDAQ futures that's where the strategies kind of revolve around and I will be using this in a live market this is no back tested dat data this is not
01:30 - 02:00 like a a like a a recap of a market or something like that this are these are real live markets right now um trading on a personal account to Showcase how all of this is working all of these Concepts because it is price over time right um can be translated into other assets and tickers um say you trade es same Concepts right u i just prefer the NASDAQ futures because of the higher uh beta so it moves more than than the es and it's very scalping friendly and and my ideas that I'm about to be showcasing
02:00 - 02:30 you uh typically are pretty scalping heavy um at least I like to think so I'm a day trader at the end of the day right but there's kind of levels of day trading and I would say mine is more scalping because I'm looking for targets of around 10 points so the markets are open uh they opened at 8:30 Central Time uh we did have CPI come out this morning so this is a news day this is the 7:30 candle is the CPI candle how I start my day every day is I come in I log in I set up uh Market opens and I'm always
02:30 - 03:00 checking the news for me the news that I check is I just use a free service called Financial juice so I always come in I check on financial juice to see what news I need to be aware of um and if it will be affecting my trading day so we had CPI this morning um I know that with CPI that typically means that we have a pretty interesting trading day usually a lot of times these new news candles will uh we'll have like a big news candle and then we end up retracing it which is exactly what happened today A lot of times it happens at the open
03:00 - 03:30 the US Open 8:30 but we did it right basically right afterwards the next 15 20 minutes we ended up retracing all of CPI other news that I care about uh that Financial juice might show is typically the 9:00 newses so like Michigan sentiment which comes out Friday at 9:00 that's always a Friday at 9 ISM which comes out at A45 PMI at 9:00 and then the other big one would be fomc uh which is Wednesdays like the third Wednesday of the month I think it's always on a Wednesday uh at 1:00 Central both of
03:30 - 04:00 those I typically I'm I do not trade for right I'm totally flat during all of those news events that's news trading not super exciting there but it is needed to be talked about in the strategy the next thing I want to talk about is is my 15minute rule so my 15 minute rule means I do not trade for the first 15 minutes of the day so from 8:30 to 8:45 I have zero trades on a lot of people ask why because there's decent volatility in the mornings uh right around the open and for me it's basically that reason typically what I
04:00 - 04:30 have noticed is that um the markets are a little bit unpredictable right off the open and I like to wait about 15 minutes for the volatility and the kind of weird um Whiplash action to stop it allows me to also just kind of be able to see a little bit more into what kind of day we're having um my goal is to be patient right my goal is to be smart and it's to be patient and it's to take A+ setups and if I can get more data into my brain without having to be forced to take a trade or feeling like I need to take a
04:30 - 05:00 trade it's typically a good thing so I always wait the first 15 minutes of the day I this stems this is a personal rule this is not a prop firm rule or anything like that it really just stems because I used to trade the first couple minutes first minute first two three minutes of the day and I would either be up or down a lot of money right away and I'd hit my daily loss limit in like say like the first minute or 3 minutes or 5 minutes or whatever but there's so much more time throughout the rest of the day I realized why would I put myself in that position there's so much more opportunity as the day progresses why do
05:00 - 05:30 I need to be rushed and try and take trades even if I think they're really good even really good trades that we think Market doesn't always do what we think it's going to do right even if you have an 80% win rate and you you're pretty confident on all of your trades you're still losing 20% of those trades right and so to put yourself in a position where you're just done for the day right away it's just I I just don't like it so I wait the first 15 minutes always I always say I'm greenlighted to trade at 8:45 meaning I'm good to go and hopefully I have a little better idea of what potentially could be happening today okay so uh before we dive into
05:30 - 06:00 actual trading setups let's talk about what I'm looking at on my screen here I use Sierra chart the reasons I like sier chart is it's fast I like their Denali data feed and I like the Teton order routing it's also really really fast uh it's also just incredibly reliable which I I prefer all of my screens I did not physically set up I used uh my head moderator in Discord created a service called trading platform help.com I use that for all of my screens the custom
06:00 - 06:30 indicators Etc it just it's got like 55 helpful videos there's a bunch of free videos in there to get you started with Sierra chart uh it's like 7 bucks a month even if you don't want to pay that you can still get started with Sierra chart through the free videos so I do use Sierra chart the other reason I like them is that they do have a built-in trade copier and if you are watching and you're not familiar with trade copying basically with uh prop firms there's you can copy trade prop fir accounts and it's a very simple process to do on Sierra chart and basically just I'm
06:30 - 07:00 trading One account and it's copying across 10 accounts basically or 20 accounts uh over here on the left side of my screen is the 5 minute chart down here in like the middle bottom of my screen is a one minute chart I have a 30 minute chart up here I click the 22R tab up on the top left hand corner and then I have a 22 range chart over here on the right side is my dom my depth of Market there's one other thing which is a daily chart I do pull up a daily chart pretty often I always
07:00 - 07:30 start the day with a daily chart just to kind of see what's going on so right now we're at all-time highs we're ripping there's your daily look right so those are my three charts um in order of importance it's the really the 5 minute the 1 minute and the 22 range is what I'm trading on often the 30 minute chart up here is really just so I can get some ideas on uh what happened on the overnight session in different areas uh but I don't I'm not actively trading on the 30 minute chart it's really just so I can get some history that I might not see on the one minute chart because it's
07:30 - 08:00 so zoomed in and the five minute chart which is also zoomed in on my charts themselves um each chart has something different so on the 5 minute chart this chart over here on the left side I have vwap volume weighted average price which is the blue line I have volume profile which starts at 8:30 a.m. Central Time so Market open which is the green yellow and red lines as well as the volume histogram over here on the right side that is the core of my 5-minute chart is really volume profile and vwap
08:00 - 08:30 volume profile is very important for me it's showing me where people are interested that's it at the end of the day the way I view trading is where are people interested in like what levels are people interested in how aggressive are they buying or are they selling at those levels and can I jump in and play off of the levels that people care about that's basically trading in a nut hell for me right so right now we know that people are interested in 883s because that's where the point of control is that's where the most volume on the day has been conducted and right now as well they're also interested in trading 73 to
08:30 - 09:00 91 because that's where 70% of the volume is when you see value area spread open you know 100 150 points or whatever and it opens up real big and you see point of control flip to the top I call that a point of control flip it means that all of a sudden we had a really nice trendy day up for instance they were trending up and all a sudden there's a ton of volume at the top poting control moves up to the very top of the day after moving up 100 points it helps you ask the question why why is there that much volume the most volume on the whole day why is it all at the
09:00 - 09:30 very tippity top of the range and a lot of times the answer is because we're rotating back down we are making like that is going to be the local high for a little bit and we're going to make a move to the downside now there are times where we push out of that point of control flip right when you make new volume and then you level up again and that is also very telling if there's all this volume being conducted at the very very high of the day and then they push it even higher that's an idea of okay we're trending like we're real trending
09:30 - 10:00 right we're putting in all this volume and all we're doing is pushing out of it again like I should probably be looking for Trend continuation as opposed to a pullback now Vol or value area also really respects the prior day value area which I do mark on my charts so right now right here where we're at there's a blue tab that says y v so y means yesterday yesterday's value area high so I care about yesterday's value area high and I also care about yesterday's point of control and yesterday's value area low all three of those things are very
10:00 - 10:30 important you'll notice that they basically all of these Concepts just act as like support and resistance for me um I'm looking at them as levels of Interest areas of interest if you will where people might respect you know yesterday's interest level the other thing that I do with volume profile so that's that's value areas point of control the other thing is the volume histogram and this histogram is just showing uh similar to how some people have volume on the bottom by time I use volume by Price uh
10:30 - 11:00 and it's the same thing again a it's just showcasing for instance all this volume here of course just correlates with the point of control in the session and it's just showcasing how much volume has been conducted as we as we make moves and you can kind of see uh the profile of volume a little bit better you can use it as support and resistance uh and see kind of where we're going to accelerate versus not accelerate so moving on that is my 5-minute chart uh as well as like a very in-depth study on volume profile uh vwap I use it as a uh
11:00 - 11:30 as a support and resistance on Trend days but the thing that's really key for me is if if we open like at 8:30 if we're sitting on on vwap at8 at 8:30 that to me really signifies a choppy day and it's just a a data input that I can use to think okay we're probably going to go sideways and chop pretty hard because we opened up right at vwap another thing to note on vwap so like right here you can see that we like pushed it and rejected it pretty nicely that's a great like resistance test of V if we were to push through really
11:30 - 12:00 strongly and close you know 10 15 points above vwap or through vwap the odds of continuation there are very very high um so another way that I use vop would be that to just see kind of the odds of continuation uh versus kind of rejecting off of it looking at the one minute chart I got same color lines red and green although they mean something different so uh on the one minute chart the things that I'm looking at are vwap again the Blue Line same as the 5 minute I'm looking at what I call Initial balance
12:00 - 12:30 which is the first hour high and low so right now the first hour since 8:30 so it goes from 8:30 to 9:30 and as we make new lows or new highs until 9:30 those lines move okay but after 9:30 those lines are set in stone the gry line is literally just a 50% marker between initial initial balance high and initial balance low which I will refer to as ibh and IBL now how do I trade IB again we'll talk about it in a little bit but initial balance for me is really just areas of interest just like everything
12:30 - 13:00 else is areas of interest uh if we break out of initial balance high or if we break out of initial balance low either way like true breakouts whether it's above or below once it's fully set so after 9:30 this this trading strategy only comes into play after 9:30 but if we break out above we come back down we retest it that's a long entry for me to continue the move if we break Out Below come down and retest it so like say we you know we come down here at 822 we go down to 815 or 805 and we come back to
13:00 - 13:30 822 that would be a short entry so IB is really a uh breakout retest Trend continuation for me usually if we are in a true range day uh then I would be looking for initial balance to be the parameters of the range as well a lots of times you'll see that like we reject 02 and we come back down to the middle of the range or we reject 22 and come back up into the middle of the range and again all these things can only really be seen after 9:30 um so it's on my chart Parts all day long but it is
13:30 - 14:00 calculating from 8:30 to 9:30 if you don't have an initial balance uh indicator you can just use an opening range indicator on whatever trading platform you're using and just set it for the first hour of the day it's the same thing other things that I'm watching for on my one minute chart uh will be the depth of Market uh which is showcased here uh if you're familiar with like something like book map um or just liquidity I guess uh same idea all that we're seeing right here is just everything that's on my dom just
14:00 - 14:30 visualized by Price okay so that I don't have to like scroll Forever on my screen right now I can see from I can see nine points 69 to 60 of the NASDAQ but I can see right now that there's a huge order sitting at 31 right so if I was to scroll down 30 points I see a 200 order on the buy side there which I would have not seen if I didn't have like my depth up right so I just use this so I can see kind of where the liquidity is sitting uh who's interested where if the buy side or the sell side is more stacked
14:30 - 15:00 and I use this on the one minute chart um last thing to talk about here is the 22 range chart what is a 22 range chart most people don't know a range chart uh is not time based so the other charts the F minute chart the one minute chart all of those are time based on the 22 range it is not time based it is price moved based so I'm looking for it needs to move 22 ticks of price movement to print a new candle so 22 ticks from top to bottom on the 23rd ticket prints a new new candle candle okay so sometimes
15:00 - 15:30 if price is moving really fast like just then that candle get gets printed almost immediately cuz it's 5 and a half points on the NASDAQ 22 ticks is 5 and a half points there are sometimes during the overnight session where a candle could be 3 hours long because price is just totally totally stagnant not moving at all then there are other times where like CPI comes out we can actually go back and look uh let's see 7:30 so this is CPI and you can see price was moving five and a half points constantly all within a second it did
15:30 - 16:00 all that within a second you know 7:30 01 all of that until 02 for me it kind of just helps it helps uh visualize volatility a little bit um it's also just way back in the day I think like probably coming up on six years ago I had back tested a strategy I was using at the time with the 22 range chart and I really liked it I like the way it moved and I just am so used to watching the 22 range at this point that I just I love it uh and I love having something that's not time based I love having
16:00 - 16:30 something that's showing you know that this is the the actual moves that are happening the other thing that I use here specifically on the 22 range chart is called cumulative Delta it is the uh it's down here at the bottom and it is showing the change in Market buying versus Market selling so upticks on Delta is showing more Market buyers versus more Market sellers down ticks on Delta are showing more Market sellers than more Market buyers okay so right now for instance you can see that we are
16:30 - 17:00 looking good there are a lot more Market buyers than Market sellers the way that I use Delta in relation to the 22 range chart to see how are Market buyers uh affect like how are they reacting in a trend right if Delta is going up and price is going up it's a strong move if Delta's or if Delta's going up and price is going down a lot of times that's a reversal play uh other things that I use on here would be volume profile again uh the histogram I also use vwap here and then vwap band so this is vwap same one that's on the 5 minute and the 1 minute chart and then I have 1 1 and 1/2 two
17:00 - 17:30 and three standard deviations to the downside as well as 1 1 and 1/2 two and three standard deviations to the upside on really trendy days you'll notice that we start bouncing and hanging out in the channels if we're going sideways it's not super good but if on super trendy days uh bouncing and hanging in the channels uh is an interesting play interesting level of Confluence the last big thing on the chart that I need to be talking about is the depth of market and how do I use it I I want to see what I call magnets okay magnets are just above
17:30 - 18:00 average size orders so right now the orders active orders around are what 12 12 10 12 or so if I scroll up I can see 45 42 those are both above average size 50 right those are above average compared to everything else if I scroll down I can see 56 at 41 and then it just got filled out it's above average right and the point in talking about this is that I use the I use what I call magnets so I'm looking for those above average ones ons to those big blocks to magnet
18:00 - 18:30 price in uh the market is searching and seeking for liquidity the goal is to conduct trades it's to meet buyers and sellers together if there's a lot of buyers down below the market will typically get pulled into all of those buyers down below 832 right now we got that 200 block that's been sitting there for a while if there's a ton of sellers above the market will hunt for all of those Sellers and a lot of times there we go it's out now so a great example of a of a b block right that we just got
18:30 - 19:00 sucked into a lot of times you'll see like it get really cleaned out on one side and really heavy on the other and to me that typically means the price is going to get pulled into that into the side with all of the liquidity right because the market wants liquidity it wants to do it wants to go find that liquidity and that's how I use it is just toine liquidity same thing that I'm doing on the one minute chart it's just a little bit more it's the real version of it right looks like price is trying to make a new low now um and you'll see initial balance if we do make a new low initial balance will continue to go lower because it is not yet 930 so
19:00 - 19:30 that's a rundown on all of my charts um talking through initial balance volume profile Delta 22 range chart um daily chart and some of the ways that I would look to trade all of those things as well as levels of Interest now we're going to actually look for some real examples of all of this see if we can find find a some legit trading examples of the strategies that that I look at every single day another thing that I want to talk about very quickly though before or while we start looking into strategies it's one of the big
19:30 - 20:00 principles right you got to be patient um all of trading is about being patient a lot of people think that trading is just button smashing clicking buttons going crazy right you got to be patient you got to be willing to take something uh when it's there you got to be willing to take it right but being able to be patient and wait for something that you deem as A+ where you feel comfortable getting in uh is just so important it's so good for your mental I like to call it emotional Capital right I start every day with a full tank usually as I as I
20:00 - 20:30 trade uh that tank gets depleted even on winning trades and trades that take a long time to pleaded a lot more than trades that are fast and just run right into my targets but it's a very important important concept here and if I can take trades that I feel confident in and sometimes it just doesn't work out then that's okay and I can move on from that losing trade very easily as opposed to me taking a trade that I knew I shouldn't have been in to begin with I get into it and I take a big losing trade it's kind of like that drains your
20:30 - 21:00 emotionals way more because you're like why did I even take that I knew that that wasn't good that wasn't an A+ setup and I'm paying the price for it uh the last thing I want to quickly not last thing I keep saying that's not true at all uh another thing I want to quickly touch on while we're kind of waiting for some setups here is that you should be putting in screen time on all of these ideas and testing all of them in a simulated environment if you don't know what a simulated environment is you can just Google it almost every single platform has it in some capacity uh it's either called a simulated environment or it's called paper for trading uh and
21:00 - 21:30 it's a risk-free way to do it you don't have to put in any money you can just execute I like to call it the blueprint of trading while we're really selling off here uh I like to call it the blueprint of trading the blueprint of trading is this uh this is like the Journey of a Trader that I think is the best and most ideal way you learn about trading you get started and you start trading in a simulated environment because there's no money of involved you're totally risk-free you're not having to put in $10,000 or $20,000 of your own money to start trading after the simulated environment there's two
21:30 - 22:00 different routes you can go you can go into a prop firm or you can go into a live account any money that you have in your account is 100% at risk you have to follow the margin requirements of $1,000 per mini contract or whatever you're trading and if you have a really bad day you can lose $110,000 immediately right the other option is to go into a prop firm uh like an online prop firm these days uh which is where you go through an evaluation um you pass the evaluation they give you money to trade with and then you get to keep that money and usually it's a profit split involved uh
22:00 - 22:30 the ones that I use that I pulled out $39,000 from this year so far is Apex I use the 50k accounts and I use 20 of them so copy trading like I was talking about earlier I copy trade them uh I use or 20 of the 50k Apex accounts uh you can use code TBM for the best discount always uh right now it's 80% off so it's 35 bucks and 35 bucks per account and then I ended up pulling $39,000 out and so that's just a way to not have to risk as much much money uh you're still
22:30 - 23:00 putting some money at risk because you are having to buy an evaluation and then earn a funded account you got to prove to them that you're a good Trader but it's a lot less money than risking $20,000 in your own personal account right off the bat um so the the journey in the blueprint is go from SIM to then a prop firm and once you're able to pass valuations make some money then migrate some of that money into a personal account as well and then operate both a Prof firm and a personal account that's how I think is the best option uh and that's what I do as well uh and here's the rotation value low we did it that's
23:00 - 23:30 a full red to Green rotation very nice and now we're at the part where do we continue to like keep selling off here or are we going to you know catch a bid around yesterday's value or low I don't know the answer to that we'll have to wait and see I think the last big thing um actually the last big thing uh before we can try and throw in some examples here is the idea of base hits um and this was really founded from my journey with prop firms with Apex this year uh you know taking out through $9,000 is not an easy task and the crazy part is
23:30 - 24:00 that the way that it broke down to was $400 per account the idea of base hits really was was founded here of not looking to swing for the fences when I'm looking to swing for the fences and get 100 plus Point trade I need to be able to give it a lot of wiggle room typically in order to get that or have a very low hit rate and I just don't operate well with that and so I I came up with this idea of base hits which is and and there's a lot of people doing it now which is amazing it's fun to see um but the idea of base hits is to look for 10 15 points right something that the
24:00 - 24:30 the the NASDAQ gives us often especially right now like I mean we're getting 20 30 point trades or candles in one minute right now all the time so a 10-point trade I would call base hit I would even call I would definitely call five-point trade um but I think it's really like ideally you know five to 15 points and this you you pair it with the concept of less is more right so if I can find two 10-point trades on a NASDAQ and get 400 bucks and I multiply that out by my 20 accounts that's $88,000 in a day on my funded accounts right and that was like a mind altering brain busting thing for
24:30 - 25:00 me of two 10-point trades on NASDAQ is not that hard to find 400 bucks a day even if you're not copy trading accounts 400 bucks a day is not terrible a lot of people think that they need to be making multi- thousands of dollars on a single account uh making a 200 points trade or whatever and it's like that's just think about the money think about how much time you're putting in think about the effort that you want into this and base hits really just kind of Lights the way especially if you're going through pop firms or you're on like an valuation or a funded account base hits save you from
25:00 - 25:30 trailing draw Downs it saves you from daily loss limits and it just is truly a in my opinion a really really solid framework uh that can be ingrained into your head and uh is worth kind of messing around with I I challenge you if you if you don't agree just look at your data and see like what happens when you look at 10 point trades versus like 100 Point trades or 50 point trades or whatever you're constantly looking for uh I find it hardest whenever I do have like a 50 point trade I start only looking for those right like I want you know that dopamine hit happens and
25:30 - 26:00 you're looking for the big trades that make a lot of money in one go and you can be done for the day early and things like that and that's typically when bad things start happening so just reinforcing the whole idea of like less is more base hits patience right all three of those concepts are so important so right now Delta is down uh we're still seeing a lot of sellers this still looks heavy to me we're getting a very nice Trend day to the downside uh no Wick tests or anything like that a wick test um I have videos on my Channel about a wick test
26:00 - 26:30 and we'll probably just throw in the whole segment of the wick test right now uh to talk about uh if you do use trading platform help.com from Gary uh there is an actual Wick test indicator that is built in that fires up whenever a true Wick test is formed with Target stoploss and entry all pre-planned in there as well but here's the wick test segment okay Wick test this is a great example of Wick test you have okay so you have a candle it's it's a three bar setup okay the wick test is a three bar setup well a two bar setup third bar
26:30 - 27:00 execution okay uh if it's four bars it is no longer a true Wick test um if you're trading like an untested Wick which we saw here that's like kind of the principle of a wick test but for me the true Wick test is is it requires two bars side by side you have a bar closes red puts in a wick next bar full engulfing okay then the third bar which is where the entry happens again if it's the fourth bar no longer is a true Wick test uh the indicator will also fire off for it if you have a strong engulfing candle the next bar what you want to see
27:00 - 27:30 is a retrace to the prior wick for a bounce off of it the reason I like it is because it's a very defined setup for me entry prior Wick stop loss bottom of the engulfing candle Target one to one or 10 points for me that is a true Wick test it is a three bar setup one two three right three bar the third bar being your entry I know exactly where my stoploss is going to be you see these on shorts and Longs ideally it's in a trend sort of situation it's the best in that s in that case where it's not I mean it's a
27:30 - 28:00 little rangy right wick tests in the middle of a range are not necessarily the most ideal but it's very clean it's a very clean setup hopefully that helps uh I feel like that's a pretty in-depth explanation of what I'm looking for again you'll see it on different time frames but I prefer it on the five minute so right now you can see liquidity uh being a little bit more higher like a little bit more to the upside um playing off candle structure off the one minute chart I actually really enjoy so like if we had like a really nice move to the downside we have a hammer or something uh that adds some
28:00 - 28:30 Confluence into like Delta being up plus a hammer candle meaning like we put in a wick and we Clos out pretty strong plus Delta being pointed in the right direction plus going into liquidity that's something I would be interested in taking right now also interested though in if we have Delta going crazy to the downside I would be interested in looking at shorts another option for shorts would be yesterday's poting control as well as current valy area low both interesting spots there we got initial balance getting formed in 1 minute so again with an initial balance is formed in 1 minute what I'll be
28:30 - 29:00 looking for is are we going to retest it and bounce or are we going to slap through retest and short at 57 and obviously everything I just talked through is seen on my live streams which happen every day on the channel at Market open um all of these examples that I just talked through are seen on the live streams just depends on the day right on which examples you're going to see um but I did just talk through literally everything that I'm going to be looking for and so now you can just use what I'm looking for and the concepts behind what I'm looking for in the explanations and then pair it up with the live examples from the live
29:00 - 29:30 stream and here on this video to actually pair it all up together and initial balance is set so now this red line will no longer move and the green line will no longer move either this could probably be called a Delta Divergence uh we have price making a new high right now over the last high so we had a current high and then price making a new high and we had Delta making a new high and now Delta's making a new low or it's not yet at the current High uh this would be on track for me to watch for a Delta Divergence to potentially fade this move that's
29:30 - 30:00 currently happening back to the downside whenever you see a Delta Divergence and we just can't get the buyers to match the current move um a lot of times you fade off of it and then now we're coming into oh there we go we got a big buyer big buyer just stepped up into the 720s so now the question is are we going to rotate 720 or are we going to continue higher into the 760soldskooljams grindy so far I mean we had a really nice selloff of uh 200
30:00 - 30:30 points almost I mean literally 200 points 860 to 660 so having a rotation back up into that 760 for like a 100 Point rotation up 50% retrace on the Move makes a lot of sense to me I think this is a very interesting Target to be looking for but I also think that rotating 720 makes a lot of sense um we're losing a little bit of steam here there's the rotation off 720s could have taken it for 10 points very quickly I like the downside plays because the
30:30 - 31:00 trend is down right now right and there's a little dogey at the top there that's the price action I was talking about really enjoying like the the candles that I've been really enjoying 22 range is kind of showing a little bit of a trend Direction Change um we obviously had consolidation New Low and then we po the prior high on the consolidation and then consolidate near the highs and then rip it again that's a little bit of a trend change on the 22 range a little sketchy still to just be truly anticipating a true Trend change after a 200 Point drop uh but just
31:00 - 31:30 calling it out that that's what I see on the 22 range but 22 range changes all the time it's 5 and a half points of movement so right now we got some sellers coming through rejecting the 720s was nice 20 point rotation 20 plus Point rotation so far uh right here is an interesting spot um 75 I think we snap 75 then IBL is definitely in play but interesting spot right here for sure just a little bit of consolidation right and that's like what most of this is just looking for consolid Val looking for those areas of Interest the true support resistance
31:30 - 32:00 Concepts right it's just U and look where we're bouncing so we bounced 75 and it's worth 20 points just immediately if we have a selloff period look for the green candle for the order block and see how we respond there and we sell off again and then we start kind of hanging out at the lows we barely baby take a low and then we come up and we hold it so then if we rip back down like where did that spot where we B barely swept the low and we you know ended up that's where buyer stepped in
32:00 - 32:30 right buyer stepped in when we barely swept the low on this candle so at this candle where are they holding us up and it's at 75 and you see that we retrace right down into that 75 right into this candle that the buyer stepped up on and we bid it markets are been open for just a little over an hour haven't taken a trade yet and that's fine we had a really big selloff and guess what the Market's still moving if you are feeling fomo because you didn't get a part of that sell off for instance it's all good the markets are still moving we're
32:30 - 33:00 looking for our base hits right we there's no world where I would have held this for 200 points to begin with and once you can kind of realize that and Associate that that's the case it becomes a lot easier to watch these moves and be okay with not catching all of it testing the prior high on the 5 minute or prior open on the 5 minute another thing that I really enjoy price action wise is you have a big heavy candle the next candle comes up test prior open we sell off off of it so like right now I'd feel I'd feel very comfortable I think taking an 88 short uh we have sellers looking
33:00 - 33:30 decent taking the 88 short to me is top of the range we obviously have some Wicks going on above but if I get filled it's the top of the little short-term range very short-term range we have Delta being heavy we have initial balance kind of holding us down uh and sucking Us in liquidity is fairly split uh didn't quite get the fill there missed it by uh what point point and a half something like that still going to hold on to it for a second see how Delta is doing I am
33:30 - 34:00 filled short one contract got a little bit of buyers kind of trying to step up here oops and my point of invalidation would be right around here at the top of the range right so at the top of the range is my invalidation point is a $155 loser if I get tapped if I make it down to the bottom of the range it's a $200 winner uh Wicks get run is something I love so I do think that these Wicks will get run if everybody's getting stopped around the exact same spot or entering around
34:00 - 34:30 the same spot with similar stop losses because the Wicks are very apparent a lot of times you pop through that right but for me looking for the bottom of the range uh looks pretty solid don't want to be a dick for a tick miss that fill by two points and I'm out so there you go there's a 10p pointer um just trading some some price action it's funny we talk about all of these crazy strategies
34:30 - 35:00 and crazy ideas and all the things I'm looking at on my chart and then it comes down to the execution right uh how can I find a cheap trade and how can I find a cheap trade that I feel comfortable with and like we just watched price action move hundreds of points on the NASDAQ were thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars right and then the one trade that I that I get into it had it ends up having 94 I got in at at 90 so about Four Points a draw down four or five points of draw down that's like $80 to
35:00 - 35:30 $100 a draw down to make 200 bucks I was risking 155 to make 200 so there's like a ton of different things that that I'm utilizing there and like a lot of different Confluence and ideas but at the end of the day like trading is pretty simple it's a red button and a green button okay so here's initial balance low uh this is good um okay so flush into like 40s retest into initial balance I think would be like an interesting play so like if we flushed into 40 even just past 50 that would be interesting the key now is are we going
35:30 - 36:00 to kind of barely sweep the lows like we just did and catch some bids off of it or are we going to power through the lows no way to know that yet um you can watch Delta to kind of hopefully get an idea you can watch liquidity to get an idea right now we got liquidity down into the 30s or so U we got 50 psych level again I would kind of like to see a candle close like the one minute candle close at like 40 or down into the 40s and and then we push back up into 57
36:00 - 36:30 for a short for initial balance low retest we're below the 50 now we're into the uh into the 40s I think at this point I can get away with looking at this uh so this will be a retest of initial balance low one of my favorite setups is a retest of initial balance and then continuation off of it uh I like it on the long side even more than the short side I just prefer the long than short um but that is a initial balance low retest so we closed below it we came back we retested the
36:30 - 37:00 short of initial balance low and we are out for 10 points that's another 10-point winner that's $400 uh on the session two 10-point winners these days that is one of my favorite trades initial balance is one of my favorite trades and base hits that's all I'm looking for that was like a borderline no draw down trade yeah I mean that was like almost as good of a trade as I can get that's like my favorite type of trade is a no draw down trade I took one tick of draw down uh I got in at 56 I took a tick of draw down to to 25 and
37:00 - 37:30 then I took 10 points on The Winning Side now I would consider myself if I was copy trading my prop firm accounts right now I'd be done for the day two trades right two trades done for the day up 400 bucks it's what it's all about is just taking setups that you feel really comfortable in um initial balance setups just like that one closing above or if you're at initial balance High closing above or below if you're not at inial balance low coming in trading the retest love that setup um love Trading little micro ranges like this honestly on the one minute chart with pretty defined
37:30 - 38:00 areas of Interest right and notice how volume has not moved down at all we've had a 200 plus Point 200 almost 250 Point rotation and volume has not moved at all volume has just been stuck and to me that just shows that like no one's really interested in getting out of their trades right now like continuation is not terrible because there's not a lot of volume being conducted down here there's not enough people getting out of their trades and back into new ones in order to really like dictate a huge rebound to the upside to me and that's
38:00 - 38:30 like me you know asking the question why is there no volume down here well because they probably like their positioning right they like the continuation they like their risk and that's how I use point of control right and then the value area value yesterday's value area high to yesterday's valary low beautiful rotation uh trading Delta in order to help execute on these trades just overall really solid and solid examples um obviously the wick test was needed to be added in there but that's how I trade um if you enjoy this video and the strategy video I know it was long very
38:30 - 39:00 long and a lot of information but I hope the information helped and uh yeah if again all of the things are interesting um IE trading platform help.com is linked down below if you're wanting to get started with Apex that's linked down below good luck on your profm journey use code TBM for the best discount always make sure you subscribe come hang out on the streams I'll see you next time peace everybody