$508 already booked for August?!

Another day where it seems unbelievable to say, but I’m walking out with an additional $211 added to my account. If all goes well, I’d better hope I’ll be able to pick up the final 20-something MNQ points before the end of the week. As punishment, I’ll select only the best A+ setup for those 20 points and write a post about the trade if it hits. I must continually think of paxtrader - “If it’s not easy, I don’t want it.” - I certainly didn’t follow that advice today!

Looking back on the development of today’s session, it’s one I know well - get frustrated in overnight chop (yes, I hit that short and closed way too late, and yes, flipped long and then closed THOSE way too late), get mentally exhausted for the cash open, make mistakes and get chopped up some more.

Thank god we actually did rally to the naked VPOC at 23800 (even though only 3 of 2 cons were actually sold there, the other 2 at break even), this quite literally saved my session - I was about 10 points from being liquidated by Tradovate.

It’s wild that you can come back from a $500+ drawdown and make $200 - you really have to respect that the nasdaq is a fantastic market - and all this movement on a Monday, above all things!

The sad thing is there was one single trade that would have payed 200+ points: short rejection of any interest in staying at 23800, with a nearly parabolic short that didn’t end until M period. In AMT terms: rejection of a previous value area and search for another one (what happened to be the value area of the previous session - Friday’s). If the quick rejection in E period wasn’t enough, the massive hits on the offer (negative delta) in G period were a pretty good sign that the market wasn’t interested in building value up there.

…or, you could do it “sloppy” like me - scalps short in I period and M period, when really you could have just held the whole second half of the session. Then finally, towards the final minutes of M period, where I was short, I was watching both the clock and the P&L of my shorts, recognizing that sellers were way offside (far too much negative delta that did NOT correspond with price). As soon as short scalps stopped working, I went full size long, doubling my P&L within a few minutes as we launched nearly 50 points in mere minutes. I had trouble closing these long scalps - I later realized these order rejections were due to Tradovate closing due to my max profit, filling only with $243 - and somehow, I still managed to get one long through, which I took a scratch from, ultimately ending the day with $211.

Such a violent rejection off of the all-time high VPOC doesn’t bode well for the Nasdaq, and CPI is tomorrow. Let’s see. As always, anything can happen.

Also, was today the look above and fail for one-time-framing up on the weekly? If so, we should look to target the other side of the weekly balance at 23800.

Initial research into my AMT JOY dataset shows that neutral extreme (bias down) sessions (sessions that cross the initial balance on both sides, and close outside of one side, in today’s case, below the initial balance), have some slight negative correlation, but only slightly. Mostly, they reflect sessions with indicision - sessions that follow such a setup as we have contain nearly equal average times above and below the open, and a higher-than-normal possibility to be inside days. Need to wait for more market-generated info to find out…

-Chris