ICT Style nightly review

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So I took two losses today...shoulda respected market structure more I guess. I think that I feel "smarter" or something when I'm trying to call the reversal of a swing and it makes me even feel like I'm doing more study and predicting so it makes me think that I'm cracking the code and that makes it a better trade or something. I think I need to submit to what price is doing, which overall has the cable bouncing from a weekly +OB at 1.4980 and the daily MS has been bullish since the high on Jan 27th. Long term low formed at that OB as well. I think especially while I'm trying to master ICTs tool bag, I just need to focus on trying to go with the flow and not try to swim upstream (aka counter trend). Do any of y'all ever feel like its too easy just to look for a judas swing that's counter trend to get you in sync with the big move??? Like you have to do something "clever" in order to make a good trade, cause if it was so easy as to just go with the big up or down trend, than why wouldn't everyone be doing it???

Does that make any sense? Sorry if its just rambling....

Anyways, for my nightly analysis:

NFP tomorrow, so I don't really plan on being in the market, but here's what I'd be anticipating. Still need to go over the mitigation block material, but I believe we might drop down into a 4h mitigation block with the 50% being 1.5295, which has some confluence with a 15min +OB/OTE/big fig 1.5300, so price could judas down to that level for a LO buy. It could just as well move down farther and ignore the mitigation block and drop into a 4h OB right at 1.5200. Anyone have any thoughts???

Matty
 

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Also, USDX in a MM sell model after hitting resistance at 94.62. Could makes a Judas swing up to 1h - OB and previous support turned resistance at 93.84, which is right on the 61.8% retracement, and then move down to sweep Feb 3rd's lows.

Matty
 

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matty44 said:
So I took two losses today...shoulda respected market structure more I guess. I think that I feel "smarter" or something when I'm trying to call the reversal of a swing and it makes me even feel like I'm doing more study and predicting so it makes me think that I'm cracking the code and that makes it a better trade or something. I think I need to submit to what price is doing, which overall has the cable bouncing from a weekly +OB at 1.4980 and the daily MS has been bullish since the high on Jan 27th. Long term low formed at that OB as well. I think especially while I'm trying to master ICTs tool bag, I just need to focus on trying to go with the flow and not try to swim upstream (aka counter trend). Do any of y'all ever feel like its too easy just to look for a judas swing that's counter trend to get you in sync with the big move??? Like you have to do something "clever" in order to make a good trade, cause if it was so easy as to just go with the big up or down trend, than why wouldn't everyone be doing it???

Does that make any sense? Sorry if its just rambling....



Matty

Yes that makes sense. To some degree the market isn't trying to trick you, it just needs liquidity. Generally, if you can think of, and talk about the market in terms of how it is going to absorb the available liquidity, you should be "with the flow" often enough to be profitable. First you need some skill in determining where that liquidity lies and at least some extra insight on how deep that liquidity might be. The market makers want to PAIR orders. They generally have the job of finding enough *suckers* in order to pair an institutional order of large size, or cluster of inst. orders.

If you look at it like that... and truly have the patience to wait until the price action makes sense to YOU, then there is plenty of opportunity. And it's the type of opportunity where you can win a lot more than you can lose, assuming you're rational about your stop placement.

Have you noticed Michael's description of his trades have focused on telling the story of market maker liquidity searching? it just might be on purpose lol
 
the golden gun said:
Yes that makes sense. To some degree the market isn't trying to trick you, it just needs liquidity. Generally, if you can think of, and talk about the market in terms of how it is going to absorb the available liquidity, you should be "with the flow" often enough to be profitable. First you need some skill in determining where that liquidity lies and at least some extra insight on how deep that liquidity might be. The market makers want to PAIR orders. They generally have the job of finding enough *suckers* in order to pair an institutional order of large size, or cluster of inst. orders.

If you look at it like that... and truly have the patience to wait until the price action makes sense to YOU, then there is plenty of opportunity. And it's the type of opportunity where you can win a lot more than you can lose, assuming you're rational about your stop placement.

Have you noticed Michael's description of his trades have focused on telling the story of market maker liquidity searching? it just might be on purpose lol

:thumbsup:
 
the golden gun said:
Have you noticed Michael's description of his trades have focused on telling the story of market maker liquidity searching? it just might be on purpose lol

Nicely stated. Currency is all about flow. I have to ask myself every morning, "Where's the current in this river of money?" I'm surprised that so many here trust the market maker charts on MT4. There are more than a few instances where my broker disguised the true market structure with excessive or exaggerated price action. My 3rd party charting software let's me see all those "stolen pips". Not a big deal on larger TF but lower TFs made searching for entry and exits very challenging. I call them stolen pips because they were never revealed, OR they were revealed late OR they widened their spread to eat my stops and then reverted back to the underlying market structure. Oddly (or not), I've never had a spread widen to gobble up my TP line...
 
$erenityNow said:
Nicely stated. Currency is all about flow. I have to ask myself every morning, "Where's the current in this river of money?" I'm surprised that so many here trust the market maker charts on MT4. There are more than a few instances where my broker disguised the true market structure with excessive or exaggerated price action. My 3rd party charting software let's me see all those "stolen pips". Not a big deal on larger TF but lower TFs made searching for entry and exits very challenging. I call them stolen pips because they were never revealed, OR they were revealed late OR they widened their spread to eat my stops and then reverted back to the underlying market structure. Oddly (or not), I've never had a spread widen to gobble up my TP line...

I have screenshots of my broker filling at better price than TP, FWIW

no reason to live with paranoid delusions like that lol :thumbsup:
 
I may have agreed that it was delusional the first 3 or 4 years, but here we are, several thousand trades beyond that. A lot of theories get kicked around in this business, and since we're on the outside looking in, few are provable, so I'm left to my own empirical evidence. I've chosen to call it systemic risk and figure out how to trade around it. It doesn't keep me awake at night, but I'm convinced that an awareness of it has put money in my wallet...and that's all that matters here. There's a thin line between indigent and MADE.
 
I am pretty sure the brokers are tricking a few pips on their side, but it's not easy to prove. They'll just steal a quantity you won't notice.
 
the golden gun said:
Yes that makes sense. To some degree the market isn't trying to trick you, it just needs liquidity. Generally, if you can think of, and talk about the market in terms of how it is going to absorb the available liquidity, you should be "with the flow" often enough to be profitable. First you need some skill in determining where that liquidity lies and at least some extra insight on how deep that liquidity might be. The market makers want to PAIR orders. They generally have the job of finding enough *suckers* in order to pair an institutional order of large size, or cluster of inst. orders.

If you look at it like that... and truly have the patience to wait until the price action makes sense to YOU, then there is plenty of opportunity. And it's the type of opportunity where you can win a lot more than you can lose, assuming you're rational about your stop placement.

Have you noticed Michael's description of his trades have focused on telling the story of market maker liquidity searching? it just might be on purpose lol
My first post here and i figured this is as good a place to start as any....

This ^is something ive been taught recently and am just now understanding the importance of what your saying. Ive always been so focused on finding the perfect entry but in reality you can "ballpark" the entry close enough if you have a thorough understanding of what is driving the market and where it has to go to get the liquidity it needs to get there. Its takes looking at the market from a different perspective to answer that question. Ive learned more in the last two months since finding ICT and FXGears than in the three years previous.
Thanks
 
MS up, retraced into a mitigation block, overlapping bullish OBs, USDX SMT divergence. Looking for a buy in LO....

My questions are whether price will move up to take stops above 1.5272 before making the true Judas down, and if we do get a Judas down to set up a LO buy, will it sweep the lows from Friday to reach down to the 1H +OB at 1.5207, or since we already dipped into the mitigation block, would we just look to buy at a retrace of the current swing, with the 79% right on the institutional 1.5220 and 15min +OB.

Don't know how to choose, but I'd prefer price took out the lows from Friday, so I'll probably wait for a dip to the 1H OB at 1.5207.

Good luck for a new week all.

Matty
 

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pipsRmybitch said:
Ive learned more in the last two months since finding ICT and FXGears than in the three years previous.
Thanks

Welcome to the forum! :)
 
Can take this with a grain of salt, but one thing I've done in the past (while even more green than I am now) is set a limit entry for the "further" entry. If it doesn't get there, you just need to know where to get in for a "closer" entry.

Eventually you get to learn the joy of "spread-splitting", but that comes later.
 
Thanks Sqa. Price took until the very beginning of NYO to make it down to the level I was eyeing. It made a nice run upward and retraced for a NYO reversal buy. I got in just a hair above the OTE and price ran up about 30 pips. If this were a counter trend trade, I probably would've closed it out there, but since I was looking at this trade as a NY reversal to get in sync with the HTF, I kept holding. Currently price moved back to my entry point, so I sit and wait. Probably poor trade management on my part. Don't know if I should just close it out and not risk losing any equity, or if I should hold it. Thoughts?

Also, curious how you guys would classify the current action on the Fiber. Is the candle I've indicated a breaker, or a mitigation block? Or nothing? Would you anticipate a move up from this level?

Matty
 

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the golden gun said:

Ya got greedy and were trying to get the very top of the breaker. tsk tsk ;)

Just messing with ya....psychologically, those are some of my hardest days, when my order misses getting filled by < 1 pip, price moves exactly where I thought it would go, and then I feel robbed and wanna chase price.

Matty
 
matty44 said:
Ya got greedy and were trying to get the very top of the breaker. tsk tsk ;)

Just messing with ya....psychologically, those are some of my hardest days, when my order misses getting filled by < 1 pip, price moves exactly where I thought it would go, and then I feel robbed and wanna chase price.

Matty

if you miss your perfect entry by +/- 5 pips then I wouldn't call that chasing, just a "bad fill"

15 pips away and you can still take the trade, but probably not going to get a great RR ratio
 
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