(binned per thread starter's request) Market bottom rotation trad

Flagship play of the day PAGS volatility tunnel with bid stack. Heavy rip. Slipped under radar.

TECK needs tick up for potential play.

SPOT no matter which way it will go, it will go there with pop. If bulls give up it will crash hard, if sellers are absorbed it will pop to the upside.

CTSH

CTSH delivering, obvious strong momentum ahead of structure.

SPOT the key one to watch for end of the day play, likely a short squeeze before market close, bulls are picking up drops with serious size. Potential flagshipper. Has been a while since last time strong play was setting for end of day play, most likely NKTR would fit that.

Some strong player is absorbing the ask without the doubt. If the floor is removed this will drop heavy.

SPOT for the flagship play of the day with short squeeze and pop. Finishing day here on strong winner, 16 R gain (with heavier risk exposure).
Highlighted on chart are little sophisticated price behaviour moves that reveal a single heavy weight player behind the bid pushing big orders in (hedge fund or investment bank trader likely), spreads told the rest of the story. Chronologically also level 2 data screens are put to reveal 170.00 short seller that pressed many times but got absorbed till the last minute and then squeezed.
Few minutes later after profit taking it ripped way more, probably should have left last 30% of position opened. This is one way why Fridays trading near end are very underrated by majority of traders, usually creating the most obvious and best plays (NKTR example from March).

setups for yesterday, all for retrospective,
also may be due to hindsight, can't find many loser setups.
i mainly focus on "bottom rotation with supply (horizontal resistance)" as that seems easier to identify. Pullback leg is quite difficult for me now.

NU, if during LIVE, might choose wrong SL for that.......

AN, a loser

CJ, is it a B quality? often see this traded by TRD,

EG, both seems B quality to me,

EU, tunnel size is too big for the impulsive leg? still developing for next week

GA, RR is about 1~2

UJ, seems a good rotation, whole area supply taken out

Yes it for sure is the fact that in historical searches you will find more winning setups than you would in real time markets, but mind that this doesnt matter, all it matters is that you get data and study it.

You are doing it the right way by focusing on single pattern first, that is basically how it should be done, its impossible to start implementing all the setups i presented on thread right from day 1 because it takes time to get good at one, start making profits and then moving / adding another setup. Focus on the setup that you are most confortable with and especially make sure that its frequent setup, supply takeouts, continuations and pullback legs are the most frequent so pick one of those as base play. It is very important that setup should be frequent otherwise you will increase the failure rate chances for you to give up.

Pullback leg setups are harder setup because often its a thin line between what separates each setup from the other (for example pullback leg could sometimes come close to being demand takeout setup if lows are taken out) so it takes a bit more overall understanding and practice.

But one should be very clear about the realistic expectations, if you want to become full time trader (having that as only source of income) then all of setups explained on thread (or at least 4 most common ones) have to be studied and actually traded, because there is only so many of each setups in markets each day, and for consistent income one needs at minimum 2 plays a day, the only exception where you dont need that is if you have pretty decent sized account compared to your usual living monthly expenses, then one might get away with just taking 10 trades in month. So starting at one setup but then progressively adding and learning new plays is most likely needed.
Another big reason why trader should have big arsenal of plays is because often traders with only 1 play and high TFs often force play on the market because they cant afford to wait for quality play. Some traders get away with it but most dont.

CJ setup last high is disconected from trendline. UJ is decent one yes. EU setup is pullback leg rotation not a tunnel, tunnel needs to have tightening of structure from both sides with much stronger tightening progression than the structure on EU.


The easiest and best way to find any setup and start quickly learning them is to on historical or live markets always focus first on context. Then after you have certain context that is needed for setup, then wait if structure develops and as structure is developing if it is fitting criteria rule for setup start placing alerts.
1.Context. (for example strong bull impulsive leg)
2.Wait for structure to start forming. (for example after strong drop price starts to bounce from the supply, forming potential play on supply takeout).
3.Alerts. (know when you will get in trade before price actually gets there, that will make more calm entries)

Bellow is conceptual presentation for pullback leg. Practice always searching pattern this way and youll quickly grasp it. Once you get used to that with practice it becomes very easy to quickly find plays, altough that doesnt mean trading it will become easy, it only means finding setups gets easy. Once you get enough practice basically you need to spend only 0.2 - 0.5 seconds on each chart to spot pattern.


Why is so crutial to have many plays in arsenal is because if you took Friday on FX markets there were hardly any good supply takeout plays, so by only playing this one you are cutting yourself short . If you added pullback into play there were many great quallity pullback plays so you are basically balancing the deficit of supply takeout play with pullback leg play.

As for practicing and studying in trading there is one thing that from my observations almost all traders get it wrong (including me in past). The time balance that is spent on studying the historical patterns and researching them versus the time spent on tracking live market is completly in wrong balance. Traders while learning will spend too much time on live market watching every tick, and maybe over weekend dedicate a hour or two studying the past. To do it right, one has to do it 180 degree the other way. Putting much more time into historical study and only reversing that after a whole year of successful trading. There are many reasons for that (most people want to start making money straight away while they practice, some are very impantient, some just dont like to learn at all and just want the profits....) many reasons.
The statistics of successful consistent traders are extremely harsh, 98% people if tracked over longer run will consistently loose money, thus if you want to be that tiny 0.8% of ones that do make money in first place its best to do things differently than what masses do, simply majority of traders will repeat the same mistakes and if enough mistakes are made, the break point is awaiting quickly.
So when a trader says "never trade against the trend", you dont believe that and do all the research you need to prove that indeed that statement doesnt make any sense, if 98% people are inconsistent and a lot of those will tell you "dont trade against trend" its a likely an error of judgment, thus just an example of how to not do the things that most others do to increase your success rate. Once you obtain the real answer to really understand (from research, experiance and stress testing) why the statement "dont trade against trend" doesnt hold any water, thats when youll realize you are on the right path, and it might take a while before you figure the answer, most never do.
Being contrarian might be bad thing, but being a efficient contrarian is great, meaning going against the crowd where crowd displays high concentration of same opinions that deliver bad results time and time again. Once that is spotted its ones duty to figure out the reason.
And the things that any trader needs to shy away from are shallow assesments of a very broad topics. Things like "noone in FX makes money", "all markets are manipulated thus you cant make profits", "penny stocks are all scams", those are all opinions that can be stress tested and very quickly confirmed as empty buckets. There are two types of personality within every person, one is a outside expectation person and the other one is problem solver. Outside expectation person will always seek external reasons to complain about and at same time already giving up on progressing with opinion, problem solver accepts reality and starts to look for solution, in markets there is place for only 1 type of individual, good thing is that this can be practiced and improved.


By the way one question (not sure if i already asked you that) why is your primary focus on FX and not US equities since you are US resident? Time zone fits better. Practically the only limitation should be if you dont have 25k capital then its better to focus on FX but otherwise its worse option.

Hi, Janpec, thanks for your insights and wisdom.

actually, most of my free time goes to manually backtest of multiple currency pair histories. since i have a day job, that means i basically have very little time left for LIVE trading. i can only spend 10 minutes in the morning, or do some peeping-trading during working hours, lol . Per your suggestion, i should keep focusing on backtesting for now. I do try to at least find a LIVE trade everyday, as the LIVE trading provides something different, and help engaged this thread discussion.

as to Timezone, indeed it's better to trade equities for me. but 25k is an issue for me right now. most of my capital went to cryptocurrency, lol. I checked my broker 'E-trade', it doesn't have TC2000's keyboard shortcuts. I doubt any other broker has TC2000's convenience too. Once i'm relatively improved on these patterns, i need to start trading US equity. Seems I can use TC2000's data, but still trading on my broker with limited small capital, if I remember your introduction on TC2000 correctly (from beginning pages of this thread)?

As US resident you will have to pick some hedge fund in Caribbean to trade with otherwise you are forced under PDT rule and no broker will accept you (US residents need 25k capital to daytrade equities, meaning placing more than 3 positions per week). I can forward you to fund that i trade with once you become consistent on demo or you can find your own solution, but it will take some research.
TC2000 you will need in any case just to find setups, altough there might be some other decent software that i dont know of that is as good.
If you keep your capital in crypto for 2 years youll most likely get to 25k anyways, just keep holding and dont panic sell. Make sure that you use Trezor wallet, dont make same mistake that i did.

On crypto side one major one to watch for over next 1 year period is EOS. Even though that overall markets have been in bear phase since January, EOS is one of few large cap coins that actually was consistently on the rise, its always a good general rule to invest in asset that is doing well even though that general market is falling.
There isnt that much of high growth potential since market is already 11 bil, but it potentially has much more limited downside compared to many other projects.

thanks for the tips on brokers. i'll resort to your help once i reach that stage.

as to crypto, i treat it in a way similar dealing with retirement investment. just put some money every month into bch. i just can't see many plausible crypto except BCH, lol, i must be paranoid. the thing with EOS is like you said, its market cap already too big. and it is based on POS fundamentally, which I just don't agree with. And many big fish already have tons of EOS, the manipulation would be super dramatic i guess, lol.

now i think at least for partial positions, we need to buy low and sell high for cryptos. like you defined earlier in this thread, one way to make money is to buy long term bullish trend (like S&P500, almost certainly bullish-long term). crypto is tradable this way too, and it is simply frustrating to sit and watch the crypto equity in my account from Dec 2017 to today's. approximately halved, lol.

profit

1 loss and 1 win

interesting missed oportunities

this micro demand was good for continuation with 3 hits. broke immediate and gave good run