The 15-Minute Timeframe
"When you're looking at this 15-minute time frame, this is the bellwether time frame. This is where I'm looking for key highs and lows. I'm looking for imbalances like fair value gaps and things of that nature."
"Yes, I will look for order blocks, but I'm going to try to stay away from order blocks in this lesson in this mentorship really because I have models that don't even rely on order blocks. Obviously, I'm teaching fair value gap here and that is the main focus because it repeats. It's easy pattern. It's it's there a lot."
"Everything I'm showing you is directly linked to New York local time. If you do it any other time frame, you're going to mess up. You won't have the same calibrations as all my students and what I'm looking at in price."
Daily Range Structure
"So, the equal distance and time in the morning, then an hour lunch, New York lunch, and then an equal amount of time after that."
Session Time Blocks
Morning Session
8:30 AM - 12:00 PM
"Your morning trade is between 8:30 in the morning... all the way to noon, preferably around 11:00."
New York Lunch
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
"That is a no trade time period."
Afternoon Session
1:00 PM - Close
"On the other side of lunch at 1:00, start watching."
"Noon to 1:00 in the afternoon, New York time. That is a no trade time period. I don't care who tells you that they can do this and do that. If you're learning from me, just don't trade during that time, okay? Not even in demo because just trust me, don't do it."
"Do not trade it. It can do a lot of weird things in that hour or simply do nothing and go sideways. But either way, you don't want to be a participant in that because it's just it's not usually a clean time of day for price action."
Identifying Swing Highs & Swing Lows
"Prior to 8:30, in other words, to the left of that on a 15-minute time frame, what's the most significant or obvious swing high and swing low?"
"Swing high is this. It's a candle with a lower high to the left of it and a lower high to the right of it. Three candle pattern. Okay? It does not matter if the candles are up or down closes. You're just looking for a swing high because above that is going to be buy side liquidity or buy stops."
"A swing low prior to 8:30. That's a candle that has a higher low to the left and a higher low to the right of it. It's three candles. Again, it does not matter what the close of the candles are. It has absolutely no bearing on what I'm showing you here because the swing points are where liquidity is going to be placed."
Three Candle Pattern: Swing High & Swing Low Identification
"Once you have these levels on your chart on a 15-minute time frame, then you can drop down into your first lower time frame for entry. That's your five-minute chart."
Displacement
"I want you to think about this idea that I teach, which is displacement."
"If you have a children's swimming pool, okay? If you have a children's swimming pool in your backyard and you fill it up and then you have an elephant just fall down inside of it, what's going to happen? The water's going to be displaced. Okay, it's going to be an obvious displacement of that water. Rather simplistic analogy, but that's what you're looking for in price."
"When price goes above an old high and it trades down below it, you want to see an obvious displacement. You don't want to see it just do like, oh, well, you know, little lethargic run here. That's not enough. This is like that elephant falling into that children's swimming pool. It's no doubt about it. It really had a displacement."
"You want to look for this energetic movement lower. That's displacement where it's really animated."
"When that occurs, then you go in, you start looking for the fair value, the low, the high, and if it trades back up into that, then you can look for a short."
Displacement vs. Anemic Price Movement
Three Drives Pattern
"If there's three highs that go up like that, that's a classic three drives pattern."
"That means it's a swing high, a higher swing high, and a higher swing high. So, it's three times the market kept pressing up."
"I like to see this pattern forming when there's an old high back here, okay? On any time frame. It's universal, okay? But if you ever start seeing these three drives up into an old high, you don't have to see that third high take out the old high."
"Because what it's doing is it's already pressing into running out liquidity every time it creates a swing high. And it starts to go down, bears are trying to sell that and they're putting buy stops right above the previous high and they keep getting taken. So, it's already building in liquidity and informed investors or quote unquote smart money will be already establishing short positions."
Three Drives Pattern Building Liquidity
Morning Session Framework
"Your morning trade is between 8:30 in the morning. Why? Because there's news events that come out at 8:30."
"I generally don't like to take trades after 11:00 in the morning. Now that doesn't mean I haven't or that I won't. I just generally try not to. I want to try to be positioned before 11:00 and hopefully be riding something into the New York lunch at noon."
"Prior to 8:30 if you look at that... what's the most significant or obvious swing high and swing low?"
What to Look For Prior to 8:30
"One of the questions I got was what highs and lows are we looking for that you know a stop run would be framed on or what would be the catalyst for a stop hunt? Well, prior to 8:30 if you look at that... We see this high here... And the low right here."
Afternoon Session Framework
"At 1:30, that's usually when I want to start trading the afternoon. That's the earliest. But I'm preferably looking for a swing high and swing low to form at 1:30. Why 1:30? Because there's an algorithm macro that starts running at 1:30."
"1:30, I'm looking for swing highs and swing lows for the afternoon session. That's what I'm looking for. It's the same context that I use for the morning session. I'm looking for swing highs and swing lows prior to 8:30. I'm looking for the first one. Okay? I'm not needing to go back days and days and days. I'm just looking for the first one. It's not a complicated thing."
"There is something going on that creates movement at 1:30 in the New York session, okay, in equity market."
Market On Close Orders
"There's a repeating phenomenon at typically around 20 minutes to 4 and 10 minutes to 4 and 4:00. And it's all based on market on close orders. That's really what it is. Okay? And the algorithms will start spitting out really really aggressive pricing and forcing traders to either cover or you know get out of their trades and usually if it's going up it really just ramps up and accelerates in that direction."
Session Profile Combinations
"Sometimes what you'll see is it'll be bullish in the morning and then reverse in the afternoon or it'll be bullish in the morning and continuation higher in the afternoon and you'll get like a measured move."
"What's a measured move? Whatever the morning move was, it'll duplicate that twice. So, if it moves up 200 points in the morning, the afternoon could see another 200 points in addition to that and have a 400 point range."
"Or we could have a consolidation in the morning session and then it trends in the afternoon higher or lower."
Buy Program & Spooling
"That small little stop hunt is all that's necessary. That will start what is called a buy program."
"A buy program is when the algorithms go into the process of spooling. Spooling is where it just continuously keeps offering higher prices. If it's a buy program, it just keeps offering higher prices. It does not matter what the volume is. It does not matter."
"Look at the volume that comes in. Sometimes it'll be good volume and another like why is this happening? Right? That's that's your signature. That's how you know that this is being completely manipulated."
"So if it's being manipulated, doesn't it stand profitable for you to know what it's likely to do? Not you're going to know it all the time. You're not going to know. I don't know it all the time. But these things tend to repeat."
Afternoon Stop Hunt Triggers Buy Program
The Two Patterns
"There's your two patterns. That's it. That's the only two patterns you need. You don't need 15 different gimmicky names, okay? You don't need breakers. You don't need an order block. See how easy that is? Very simple strategy."
Pattern 1: Stop Hunt Entry
- "Wait for a swing low to be violated"
- "Buy the sell stops that are resting below"
- "Expect this level to be taken out" (resistance above)
Pattern 2: Fair Value Gap Entry
- "What if you don't get a swing low that trades below it?"
- "You look for a move higher. That's sudden displacement higher."
- "Then look for a fair value gap. If it trades back down to the fair value gap, you buy back."
"You have a trade one way or the other. And the logic has to be there for either one of them to form."
Key Rules & Guidance
"That's why you have to have a stop-loss. That's why you have to have good sound money management because if you don't have those things, Murphy's law is going to creep in and whatever can go wrong will. And if you leave it open to the market's determination how bad the pain's going to be, trust me, you don't want that."
"These patterns sometimes will fail you. Okay? You'll read them wrong or they just won't work. Okay? Sometimes the market will have some kind of a news event that comes out or it just simply just rolls over top of it and goes higher or goes lower. That's a losing trade."
"Don't get in here and try to trade these little Mickey Mouse moves and worry about them and overlever and try to put more contracts on than your account can really weather because if you don't know what you're doing, cheap leverage, discount leverage can murder you. Can absolutely murder you."
"Preferably if you get one in the morning, you don't trade in the afternoon. Go to a demo and practice there. Don't give the money back to the marketplace, especially while you're, you know, you're new."
"You're not trying to do 25 trades. You're not trying to do 30 trades. You're not in any trying to micro scalp. You're looking for the real moves in the morning and the real moves in the afternoon."
Homework Assignment
"I want you to think about creating your charts like this, and then describing what the morning trend was. Was it a bullish move? Was it a bearish move? Was it consolidation?"
"Go back through your charts, and you can go back as far as you want. The more you do this, the better you'll get."
"If it was consolidation prior to that part of the day, in other words, the previous day or the previous days, was it bullish or bearish then? Because if it was bullish, this is probably setting up another continuation higher. Especially if you start seeing these relative equal highs forming where it paints the idea that this is retail resistance."
"I want you to think about outlining what the session was in the morning and then what did the session do in the afternoon."
"Study what the daily chart was showing days before when it had days that had these nice runs like this and yesterday and previous Friday. So, it allows you to help find these big moves."
Study Flashcards
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