Hello and welcome to my journal!


Believes

1. Technical analysis is useful to classify what happens live. Not to forecast what will happen
2. Each timeframe is either Moving or Balancing. If it moves, it moves to find Balance again. Auction Market Theory
3. We have to think in aspects of game theory. Who is involved? What is their position? Where do they feel pain and what is their resulting action?
4. There is a huge proportion of participants in the market who act 1) short term 2) speculative and 3) emotional. This often leads to imbalanced short term inventory which has to balance via covering or liquidation
5. When everything is bullish the positioning of above participants is already very long
6. The named participants execute their trades against big market maker firms. These firms control the game
7. Scalpers get paid by others having problems

Terminology and symbology

• Condition 1 describes the condition that results from the last days
• Condition 0 describes the actual shorter term condition
• Yellow boxes are existing balance areas or the idea that we could balance
• Turquoise boxes are areas where change could take place
  

Setups

SCALP_continuation

• Speculation that a move that has already started will continue
• Limit entry on a pullback
• Limit exit with approx 1:1 RR
• Bread and butter trade

SCALP_contra

• Catching parts of a move that goes against todays current direction
• Preferably used when Condition 1 is balanced
• Do not use in imbalanced markets, do not go against trenddays

MOVE_initial

• Trying to catch the start of a first move
• By nature this is an anticipative, risky trade that is used with directional bias
• Most times its better to be just a little right than too early

MOVE_second

• Speculate on a second move after a substantial contra-move
• Condition 1 must be imbalanced
• When in doubt, stay out and receive the chance of others beeing wrong

20230830 pre market

• on the one hand for now it looks like this 5 week pullback could be over
• on the other hand we had a strong move yesterday and have now many single prints (poor structure) below
• i am cautiously bullish knowing that short term inventory is long and there can be liquidations
• my bias would change if we fall back below yesterdays mid

20230830 post market

• we opened near y high
• my first idea was that we could see some liquidation, for example to y poc or the onl. did not work
• as we were not able to liquidate i joined the bulls knowing that liquidations can come. worked
• as the liquidation occured i sold my second contract fast and switched to short to join the liquidation. worked nicely
• then my thinking was: on the one hand a) liquidation strenghtens a market. on the other hand b) there can be a second liquidation move given that short term inventory is long from the days before
• as scenario a) seemed to play out i tried some scalps long. some worked, some not
• there is much algo playing in the midtime, which tries to get you out of your position so i dont do this regularly. but i liked how the market absorbed that liquidation

trades 8 30

weekly profile

• At the moment we are moving up on the daily (imbalanced up)
• The market tries to find balance again so that two sided trade can take place
• We do not know where it will find balance. But we can look at which areas we had balance in the past

We can analyze 500 things in 500 ways. The most important thing is what happens live. Thats why my no 1 rule is: See what is

Lets take a closer look at that yellow rectangle in the weekly profile from the prior post and create a composite value area (cva)


cva d

20230831 pre market

• the market is bullish. the daily is imbalanced up
• at the same time short term inventory is already long and we have poor structure below us
• we are sitting a little bit on the flagpole

• pce brought no movement
• tomorrow we have nfp

• yesterday high is poorish, which could be an indication that the market is too long (short term)
• we have a vpoc right below yesterdays low

Nice Journal, I will follow your Journal and I´m excited to see how it develops. Good Trading !

20230831 post market

• Second day of piling on on top of the trendday
• After its done i call it a neutral / balanced day
• In the beginning i saw first signs of a liquidation and tried to join. did not work. These trades are anticipative and have a lower win rate but a higher risk/reward
• When it seemed clearly long and we were one time framing up in C-period i tried a small scalp long. With small i mean small target near hod because the trade is late inside the move. did not work
• Then we had again signs of a liquidation. i tried to join but the market made one hook too much and took me out
• As nothing worked for me i ended the day early. Days like this are no fun but they are unavoidable

trades 8 31

If i remember it right, jim dalton said something like: In a summertime-holiday environment chances are good that status quo remains intact. But IF we see change, there can be good moves because of the low liquidity.

For me this sounds reasonable.

And: You should not be too anticipative. In such an environment its better to be a little bit too late than to be a little bit too early

• We come in with a gap up after nfp
• the gap is a pile on on the trendday + the last 2 sessions
• Short term inventory gets longer and longer. Does it mean that inventory has to balance? No, of course not, it can continue to grind up as long as it wants
• On the weekly profile we see, that we have poor structure not only below but also above
• There is a gap above us that perhaps wants to get filled
• If we see a bigger liquidation then the virgin volume poc could be a target

I hope the gap gets large. Then it would be easier to navigate for me. I do not follow large gaps early ...