Market Wizardry & Everything Else

Date: February 22, 2023

Outline

00:33 - Where do you get all this energy? -.

03:23 - Jack Swagger and Market Wizardry.

09:03 - What would it look like if you could be a superpower?

16:01 - The need to be a market wizard.

22:50 - The only thing you’re showcasing is your ability to gamble.

24:24 - Larry William’s book, “Smart Money Tools”.

31:30 - What would it look like if there was really market wizardry in trading?

35:00 - How do you know when things aren’t going to work?

40:22 - How Larry Williams’ Trading Day of the Month template inspired Steve to start looking for seasonal tendencies.

47:01 - You didn't know this stuff was possible if someone would have told you that you could forecast how the market is going to gravitate.

51:03 - The Fair Value Gap -.

56:30 - Data is a premium commodity now -.

01:02:15 - The smartest people are the ones that know they can’t do this and they stop.

01:08:15 - Bring your bullshit lawsuit.

01:15:02 - Market Wizardry is what you're seeing.

01:18:05 - When you’re talking about specific pools of liquidity you are measuring the algorithms interest in getting to that level or not.

01:24:27 - You’ll know when not to touch any of that stuff -.

01:31:38 - Why you need to look at things differently.

01:38:50 - You’re in good hands.

01:42:04 - When I see other Youtubers and streamers out there doing this, I want them to sit down and contemplate what they’re doing

01:48:59 - You’re not going to be a superhero, but you’ll be a savage.

01:54:24 - When you have the ability to see the future, you have no idea how far you’re going.

02:00:27 - Why I don’t throw my books away -.

02:06:33 - When you start making your monthly salary gross before taxes in one trade, you feel like this was a fortunate windfall and then it repeats.

02:08:57 - He was the father figure I needed.

02:13:39 - When you start making a lot of money, it’s going to show you where your weaknesses are.

02:20:40 - There you go and you young men think that that’s not going to happen to you.

02:28:05 - Don’t leave anything on done.

Market Wizards and New Market Wizards

I saw the first edition of Market Wizards there, and I thought: Market Wizards. Market Wizards. Yes, that sounds cool. That’s going to teach me some real shit.

I expected graphs, charts, indicators, and all kinds of alchemy with candlesticks and bar charts. But when I got home, opened it, and started thumbing through the pages, I didn’t see any pictures. No graphs of any kind. Nothing that sparked excitement for me. I thought, Okay, well, they’re just going to talk about it then.

Because of that title, the book pulled me into the pursuit of knowledge I thought would be true market wizardry. I was convinced, as a young man, that I could find it in indicators and strategies. I wasted years tinkering with everything, trying to patch broken systems and improve what was never really sound to begin with.

I experimented with everything, trying to create my own little Harry Potter experiment, my own wand. But the truth was simple: none of it worked. Everything I tried, every tool I applied, every supposed secret—it all failed to produce the superhuman precision I was chasing.

Like many of you, I read those books waiting on bated breath for the big reveal—for someone to finally share a hidden truth, a technique that set them apart. But no one did. At the end, I realized the title had hooked me, not the content.

Market Wizards was a brilliant title. It conjured up images of hidden knowledge, secret power, market alchemy. But the content? Just interviews. No wizardry, no hidden formulas.

I still enjoyed it, but my expectations weren’t met. And I learned something from that. Just like now, when I release videos, many of you expect something new, some piece of wizardry. Back then, I expected those traders to reveal their secrets. They didn’t. Every book, every course, every program—it was all the same. Boring, recycled, retail-level nonsense.

So I decided to carve my own path. I asked myself: If there really were Market Wizards—traders with a skillset that truly separated them—what would that look like? I imagined it as a superpower: precision, foresight, accuracy. And I began studying in that direction.

I stepped away from the herd—away from the same books, strategies, and tired ideas. Sure, some traders succeed with that. But I wanted something more. In my opinion, profitability alone doesn’t make someone a Market Wizard. Skill, yes. But not wizardry.

To me, a Market Wizard avoids bad trades, knows when not to trade, and navigates markets with foresight. Most profitable traders accept frequent losses and drawdowns. Wizards, in my definition, don’t.

When I was younger, I made a list of what I wanted to pursue.

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One of my earliest mentors was Larry Williams. I bought everything he ever published. Articles, books, courses—if he released it, I had it. He was like Muhammad Ali to me.

Not because of the fame from turning $10,000 into $1.2 million in a year. That wasn’t the appeal. What drew me in were his tools—what he called his “million-dollar tools.”

Those tools were exactly what the name implied. If you were a commodity trader, they worked. Much of my understanding of what I now call a mega trade came directly from that book.

I studied every lecture, every keynote, every interview he gave. And whenever he admitted he struggled with something—whenever he said, this never worked for me—I saw it as a challenge. If he couldn’t do it, I wanted to figure it out.

I’ve always been obsessed with puzzles—jigsaws, crosswords, word searches. That’s how my brain works: analytical, obsessive, relentless. So in my twenties, I convinced myself I would fix the problems he couldn’t. That was my mentality.

I remember him once saying he never figured out how to buy at the low on bullish days. His systems always bought strength: rallies above the previous day’s range, momentum plays, big stops. To me, that was chasing. His stops were huge—25 points on a contract. I tried to make his methods work, but they didn’t fit me.

That only deepened my obsession. I didn’t want to chase. I wanted precision. I wanted to be the living embodiment of that book’s title: a Market Wizard.

I never told anyone, because they wouldn’t understand. To the outside world, trading was insanity. Risking money like this meant you were nuts. But I knew I was cut from a different cloth.

Yes, I blew accounts. Yes, I was overwhelmed. But I always came back to my notes, refining my focus. I wanted to pinpoint exact turning points—the very price levels where my stops had always been hit. Because I realized something: if this game is zero-sum, then my losses were someone else’s wins.

So I flipped it. If I felt like I had to take a trade based on the retail rules I was following, I forced myself to stop and look the other way. What would price action look like if I was about to be wrong? That’s where the truth was.

That shift was the seed of everything. It’s what people later saw me do live, in real time, trade after trade. Precision, accuracy, targets hit with consistency. Not luck. Not chasing. A method.

The first major concept I discovered was what I call Power of Three. Larry Williams said he couldn’t figure out how to buy below the open on bullish days. That became my mission. If he couldn’t do it, I would. He was my hero, and I wanted to solve what he couldn’t.

I wasn’t impressed by his $10,000 to $1.2 million contest win. That was gambling. Competitions reward risk, not skill. Even Williams admitted luck played a role. What impressed me were his tools—his use of open interest, his accumulation/distribution models.

Those ideas shaped me. His fingerprints are all over my early development. I still respect him deeply for sharing his work, because he didn’t have to.

But I also wanted to go further. I wanted more tools, more weapons. A setup for reversals lower. A setup for reversals higher. A model for ranges. A model for strong, one-directional trends. I bought data, charts, statistics on every market—commodities, metals, grains, livestock. I immersed myself completely.

From that foundation came my own identity: the Inner Circle Trader. Inspired by his “Inner Circle Workshop,” I took that spirit and made it my own. Out of his “Smart Money Tools,” I developed what became Smart Money Concepts.

And that pursuit—precision, foresight, understanding how real supply and demand shape markets—became my obsession.

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Now think about it. Folks, I asked you to contemplate on what it would look like if there was really market wizardry in trading and speculation. What would it look like? Would it look like having a map of how the market would trade in the future? Almost 75% of the time doing the same thing over and over again. Wouldn't it have something like that? Yeah, that's a seasonal tendency.

Steve Moore has the absolute best seasonal tendency work that's ever been produced. Steve Moore is the highest pinnacle of seasonal tendency research, data, and resources. And what he sells is ridiculously underpriced. Unbelievable. Just a beautiful, beautiful resource. Seasonal tendencies are a real thing. Now, they're not going to work all the time.

Want to know when they're not going to work? By knowing that, I know when they’re going to work. Oh, shit. Yes. That’s exactly what I did. So, a market wizard would have what? A map. A map that leads to the forbidden zone, the inner circle, where the average person is not permitted to step in.

When I look at market analysis concepts, it’s got to make sense. Because if there are real probabilities behind something, you should know when they’re in favor, and when they’re not likely to be. That doesn’t mean you’ll know with 100% strike rate—that’s not possible. You’re human. You’re going to bring emotion into it.

There’s always a human element introduced into trading. If you’re depressed, if you’re going through issues in your personal life, that’s going to influence your decision-making. It’ll make you overreact, jump too quickly, take a move because you want to replace pain with a quick win. But you still need faith and understanding that what we do as traders—our catalysts, our triggers—have something real behind them. They guide why we enter, where we place stops, how much we risk, and where we set targets.

I decided I would spend my life pursuing real, precision-oriented tools. I wanted things that told me when to act and when not to, without ambiguity. So I began looking for when the high of the week would form, when the low of the week would form, and which days those would typically occur. Where was I inspired for that? Larry Williams.

He had this thing called “trading day of the month.” Now, they weren’t all that accurate, but the major turns—they caught my attention. Picture this: a seasonal tendency for the S&P and the bond market, broken down for each trading day of the month. With roughly twenty trading days in a month, he crunched the numbers and showed what typically happened.

When I first saw that, I thought, Oh shit, I’m going in there. Every single day, if the line chart showed a downtick, I’d sell short. And I got my ass handed to me. Then I started noticing something. If I just focused on the key turning points—the highs that preceded downturns—it became confirmation. I waited for that one to occur, then the next day I’d look to go short.

That inspired me to search for tools that gave me a roadmap, not just seasonal tendencies. And I’ve always said, Steve Moore’s work is the absolute best in this field. I’ve used his material since 1995. No one has ever come close to his level of detail and quality.

Over the course of a month, you can see patterns in the S&P. Where’s the main high? Where’s the typical low? If the fifth day of the month breaks down and keeps sliding, it’s usually a bearish month. That idea inspired me—not to copy Larry Williams, but to dig deeper. I scoured every timeframe of the S&P and bond market. I literally stripped them down to ticks.

Fifteen to eighteen years of that research became the foundation of who I am today. That obsessive digging, that inspiration to be nothing like anyone else—that’s what shaped me. I always dreamed of sitting down with Larry Williams one day, being able to say, Here’s what I’ve done. I built this because of the inspiration you gave me.

And I kept doing it—day after day, week after week, year after year. Quietly, in my own corner of the trading world, until I finally stepped out into the open. None of you knew me. None of you knew this was possible. But if someone had told you back then that you could forecast how the market would gravitate, you wouldn’t have believed it.

When I started looking at price action, I was convinced that if I stared at it hard enough, studied it long enough, and flipped every single retail lesson on its head—the stuff we’re told to look for—I’d find the truth. If an indicator says “overbought,” retail says look for bearish divergence and expect a drop. Fine. I’ll look for the dip into a fair value gap, and then I’ll buy it and reach for buy-side liquidity—because that’s exactly how I lost my ass in real accounts at twenty.

I set out to find repeating phenomena in price. Back then I was using open-high-low-close bars, which is brutal on the eyes. I put off using candlesticks for too long—should’ve switched sooner. Looking for fair value gaps through OHLC bars is different: you’re squinting at tiny ticks on a vertical line. Some charting packages didn’t even show the opening price—just high, low, close. Why hide the open? That was a clue. Same with the old delays on Commitment of Traders, or waiting a day for yesterday’s true volume. Data was slow, partial, and precious. You’re spoiled now—everything’s in your phone. We were dinosaurs, updating charts by hand, guessing where the open sat relative to yesterday’s close, calculating indicators manually. You can’t track twenty markets like that and get anything done.

I poured myself into data and started seeing patterns by inverting retail logic. “Overbought” doesn’t mean “short.” Bearish divergence doesn’t mean “short.” Even in a down move, it doesn’t mean anything by itself. Indicators just force price history to spit out the shape you optimized for—form-fitting, not truth.

So when my rules said “buy,” I’d stop and flip the script: where’s the short? What keeps repeating when the market rips the other way and tears me up? That’s where order blocks, breakers, mitigation blocks, fair value gaps, and the institutional order flow entry drill came into focus. The optimal trade entry—its logic—first hit me staring at a corn chart. Reflection—the reverse of OTE, the higher-high that often forms a breaker—same story. Those patterns came from doing the opposite of what we’re taught.

Read the comments under my executions. People ask, “How the hell is he doing that?” That used to be me: “How am I losing every time while following all these books?” The smartest people are the ones who realize they can’t do this and step away—that’s wisdom, not weakness. But if you’re still here listening to me go on like this, you’re a trader. You love the craft, the analysis, the lifestyle. You don’t have to like me—you like the power in what I’m sharing. You know a superpower when you see it. I’m teaching you how not to be a victim of retail kryptonite. This isn’t beaten by trend lines and fairy tales. Markets keep producing new suckers; retail myths keep recycling. Put that against this approach and it gets smashed—day in, day out, month after month. Data doesn’t lie. Receipts, every day: precision and foresight. You can’t fake it.

This phenomenon—this way of reading, forecasting, and engaging price with precision—stands on its own. I don’t care who you idolize; nobody’s matching this level of detail. You’re learning a language you’ve never heard. You see a rectangle and think supply/demand—no. You see me highlight a candle and call it a zone—no. That’s a change in the state of delivery. The candle’s open matters. There are three specific reference prices in an order block; vague “zones” don’t tell you which tick counts. I’m cutting through candles and calling the high-time and low-time of day, the moment volatility should kick and run at the objectives I laid out. That’s real market wizardry: knowing what matters and when.

Today I recorded something you’ve never seen. I put a trade on and said: “If it tags 4000.75, the short idea is dead.” That’s a stop region to track—not a signal to trade. It tagged, stopped me out on the balance after partials, then snapped back into a range worth re-engaging. That was a liquidity run—I was the liquidity in that moment. No drama. Check the box, reassess, back in. Sometimes I’ll reverse when the read changes; you only learn that by seeing it live.

When I call out specific PD arrays or liquidity pools, you’re measuring the algorithm’s interest in those levels. If I flag a buy-side pool as the draw on liquidity, we watch for intent. After it hits, the next insight comes from the reaction, informing the next move. I know exactly what I’m looking for, and I’m narrating how I interpret every fluctuation—each pool, each inefficiency, each reference. If I say “this is the objective” or “this is the draw,” that’s one-sided: that’s where I expect price to go.

If you push buttons because you think you heard a signal, you’ll blame confusion. It’s not confusion—it’s impulse. That’s not wizardry; that’s gambling for a feeling. Real trading doesn’t care how you look to others. We’re not posting for applause. Image is irrelevant.

I'm pouring everything into you this year. All you have to do is show up every day. You’ll see receipts, you’ll see proof that it works. I’ll call it beforehand, and it’ll be clear as day. By the end of this year, you’ll know exactly what the fuck you’re doing. You’re not going to be a market wizard by November—that’s not realistic. But by November, you will know exactly what you’re working toward.

The end goal is simple: you’ll confidently know when not to do anything. That’s the first and most important step. You’ll understand there’s no reason to worry about missing moves. That one discipline alone will protect most of you from blowing out a funded account or a personal account. Every blown account has the same story in hindsight: the trader pushed too hard when the market wasn’t doing shit.

Stress, pressure, debt, problems at home—whatever it is—those things make you reckless. They push you into stupid trades. By November, you’ll know when not to touch the market. You’ll know what to look for, and when to sit on your hands. You’ll understand what low-resistance environments look like, and how they differ from high-resistance ones.

Low-resistance liquidity runs are the clean moves: big, fast candles driving right to your objectives. Those are fun. They’re telling. They’re easy to recognize once you know the signatures. High-resistance conditions, on the other hand, are slow, choppy, grinding through old structure. They require a different mindset, more patience, less leverage. In the beginning, everyone thinks every trade should be a low-resistance run—quick, clean, profitable, like the market owes you something. But the market doesn’t owe you shit.

By simply learning to distinguish between high-resistance and low-resistance liquidity runs, you’ll trade more effectively. You’ll start to appreciate the difference, and you’ll gravitate toward the better setups. Come November, you’ll see it clearly. Will you lose trades? Of course. That’s normal. Losing isn’t the problem—bad money management is. This year I’ll teach you that too.

You don’t need to fear losses. You don’t need to chase every move. You don’t need to trade every market. Pick one you’re comfortable with, one you like, and focus. Learn its levels, its character, its tendencies. That makes it easier. Think about the tools I’ve already given you: new week opening gaps, new day opening gaps. Just those alone are enormous. And if there’s no new week opening gap in the spot currency? You look at the futures contract. That’s your reference. That’s the intermarket relationship.

I’ve shown you this live—how different assets, correlated or inverse, move together and paint a tapestry. When you can see that tapestry, it feels cinematic—like watching behind the curtain, understanding the story before it’s told. That’s what I’m giving you this year. A way to look behind price and see what it’s likely to do.

And remember, I didn’t come up with this in a week. I didn’t test it for a month and quit. I spent years—six months minimum on every single approach before I allowed myself to adjust it. I worked religiously, obsessively. Nobody puts in the kind of work I did. Every waking moment was markets, price, and process. It’s in my DNA. This is why I’m here.

I was built for this, wired differently, obsessive to the core. Those things that were problems in my childhood—the obsessive tendencies, the compulsion to fix puzzles—I channeled all of it into this. And when I understood how markets truly function, I had a mission: to bridge the gap between what nobody sees and how to communicate it on a chart. Things no book ever taught, no other teacher even understood.

That’s why you’re here, still listening, still putting up with me. You know damn well what you’re learning is going to change everything.

There is a science behind all this. When the daily high and low is calculated at midnight, every single day for every market—unless there’s manual intervention—that’s science. To me, this is Bach. This is Beethoven. It’s a symphony. It’s poetry. It’s art. To outsiders, to the uninitiated, it’s just noise. To them, it looks like a cult. But I don’t care. I’m a proud card-carrying member of the cult of winning. If you’ve got a problem with that, kiss my ass. I don’t care what anyone outside this circle thinks. And nobody else here who’s winning gives a damn either. They’ve tasted it, they’ve seen it, they’ve been convinced of it, and they keep getting new doses every single day.

I wish I had this when I was starting out. I wish I had this community, this guidance. I wish there was an ICT for me back then. I wasted years chasing bullshit—money, time, energy all gone. You don’t have to. You’ve got this right now. That should encourage you.

No, you’re not going to be a Market Wizard by November. But by then you’ll know how to find setups, how to engage them, how to place stops without fear, how to pyramid correctly, and how to recognize when conditions have changed so much that you need to sit on your hands. I’ll even teach you how to reverse. Will you have the same low-tick, high-tick precision I demonstrate now? No. That takes years and years of deep, obsessive study. And that’s fine—you don’t need that. That’s why you see me taking partials, getting out early, conditioning you to be content with enough.

I’ve told you before—five handles. That’s the starting point. You see me take more, sure, but if you only ever get consistent at five handles, you’re already ahead of most retail. Most people can’t do that consistently. That’s why I’ve drilled it into you.

But if you overleverage—if you try to swing for the fences and play wizard before you’ve earned it—that’s where you wreck yourself. A mosquito-bite stopout for me becomes catastrophic for you, and now you’re damaged goods. You lace fear and desperation into the outcome of the next trade. That’s how people self-destruct. I know the cycle, I’ve lived it, I’ve seen it. Impulsiveness is human nature, but in trading it’s deadly.

So I walk you through, one candle at a time. This is market wizardry in action: foresight, precision, probabilities stacked in your favor. Not perfection, not invincibility—but a savage edge. You won’t be a juggernaut. You don’t need to be. High probability setups, consistently executed, will make you a savage. That’s enough.

And I’ll stand by this anywhere—in courtrooms, in front of judges, in front of anybody—because the record is undeniable. Receipts every week, every day. It doesn’t stop. It only gets better, faster, sharper. Data improves, latency shrinks, efficiency rises. That’s the direction everything is moving in.

The only way this ends is if trading itself is outlawed. And maybe one day that happens. Who knows? But worrying about that instead of working today is wasting your life. It could be 20 years away, it could be 10. The real question is: what are you doing between now and then? Are you working, learning, building? Or are you wasting your fucking life worrying about something you can’t control?

I'm pouring into you. You're not paying me for shit. And I'm proving it every day with precision, with the theory, with the logic I’m teaching you. It’s repeating. If it wasn’t algorithmic—listen, folks—if it wasn’t absolutely fucking controlled, there is no way, no fucking way, that I would know what it’s going to do minute by minute. Think about that.

It takes more faith to believe in Santa Claus than it does to believe the market is algorithmic. It’s so obvious now it should slap you in the face. Why it’s even divisive blows my mind. You should be thankful. You should appreciate the fact that this is a huge weight off your back: it’s not random. Because if it was really random, how the fuck could you sleep at night risking money? You think these organizations risking billions of dollars are doing it under the assumption that it’s all random? That nobody knows what’s going to happen tomorrow? Please.

They’ll tell you, “Nobody can time the market.” Meanwhile, we’re laughing at these motherfuckers. We do it every single day. Every session. Minute by minute. Predictable. And you should be buzzing with excitement, because you’re learning something the world says is impossible. Every day should feel like a carnival, like a sugar high, because I’m showing you the future before it happens.

We’re time traveling. Every day. You’re seeing outcomes drawn on charts beforehand. It’s like having tomorrow’s winning lottery numbers—every single day. Think about that. What the fuck? That’s exactly what it feels like.

That’s how it hit me in my late 20s. It dawned on me: I can see the future. And once you grasp that, you start looking around waiting for black helicopters or men in black to show up at your door. It feels like that level of power.

And when you walk out there every day and it keeps happening—delivered right into your hands—it shows you the truth. The sky isn’t the limit. The opportunity is limitless. Limitless. You have no idea how far you’re going to go with this. Whatever your “high point” vision is right now—it’s not high enough. It’s nowhere near high enough. You can’t see far enough from where you stand yet.

That’s why I want your story. I want to know what you’ve done with it, because I’m putting something in your hands that nobody else can. That’s empowerment. That’s a superpower. The ability to read the future. Who wouldn’t want that?

Everything we do revolves around time. This is when it should happen. This is when you need to be ready. We’re setting our watches to it. You could set your clocks at home, at work, on your phone, to the rhythm of these trades. That’s how precise it is. We’re not guessing. We know when.

But here’s the truth—you still have to be there. You have to put in the chart time. If you miss it, you miss it. That’s the deal. You’ve got to be in front of the charts when opportunity shows up, because they won’t wait for you.

You cannot be successful without knowing how to manage yourself.

I’m not trying to be funny. I’m not trying to be a comedian. I’m trying to communicate to you that the things you don’t pay attention to—the things you think aren’t important because you don’t have that problem—are exactly the things that will crush you once you start making money. You’re thinking, “Once I start making money, I’ll figure out how to manage it.” You have no idea.

Proof of that? When you start making real money, you’re going to short-circuit right there. Most of you have no idea what it feels like to make good money, because you’ve been conditioned your whole life to make nothing. Give up your entire day, your entire week, wear yourself out for a little bit of money, come home tired, no energy, no time to do anything. You’ve got to get eight hours of sleep to go do it all over again.

Then one day, you start making your monthly salary—gross, before taxes—in one single trade. Whoa. “This was nice. This was a fortunate windfall.” And then it repeats. And then you feel like, “Wait a minute, what am I doing that’s creating this? I’m going to keep doing that.” And then it becomes every week. Then it becomes every day. Then each session—morning and afternoon. That kind of windfall, continuously. It changes you. It challenges you. It shows you where your flaws are.

As a young man, I was continuously looking for a way to find validation because I lost my grandfather. My father didn’t raise me. My mother didn’t want anything to do with me. So I spent my entire life seeking validation.

Money is going to challenge and change you if you let it. And it will allow you to feel confident about being the wrong type of person.

I want you to decompress and get some perspective on what you’ve been enduring, what you’ve been experiencing, and what you’re learning. In concert with what I mentioned this morning about maybe not knowing how far you’ve grown—because you don’t yet have a way to measure it—your best testimony of growth is your terminal, the things that you’re learning, the things that you’re observing.

We’re only really into this a couple of weeks. We haven’t even done a full month yet. And I’ve already changed most of your perception about how price is booked by giving you two specific ranges of inefficiency, where the market constantly goes back and reverts to for the sake of fair value. Just understanding that alone sets up all kinds of setups you weren’t even aware of before. And they repeat every week.

There’s going to be this repeating phenomenon that takes place. And you also know that every morning at the New York opening gap—the difference between where we closed yesterday and the 9:30 opening price—what happens if there isn’t a gap there? You still reference the respective opening and closing price. You have to have those levels. Those levels are going to be useful.

The likelihood of opening exactly where we closed? It can happen. But does it happen most times? No. And for forex, you’re going to use the futures market—those Canadian dollar futures contracts, those Australian dollar contracts, the Japanese yen contracts, the British pound contracts. Those are going to provide you the gap you’re going to utilize.