Market Review Cliff Notes Edition

Date: February 23, 2023

Outline

00:44 - What happened to the audio of my live stream.

03:51 - Daily low of the day vs. daily high.

10:11 - S&P divergence -.

13:20 - What’s on my chart?

20:15 - How I share my view on my live stream.

23:19 - What is the fair value gap?

31:19 - Don't question me if I'm telling you to do something.

35:15 - What are we expecting? -.

43:37 - Don't do these things because this is what you don’t want to do.

51:32 - Algorithms are causing all the problems.

54:17 - I'm telling you where price is going to go -.

01:01:35 - There’s no algorithm, there’s no algorithm.

01:05:03 - It’s doing what it’s told to do -.

01:11:11 - The first time you’re introduced to this, you’re intimidated by it.

01:14:04 - It won’t happen overnight and it won’t happen overnight.

01:21:07 - It’s scary what you believed before -.

01:24:42 - What happens when you call out in advance and show your executions.

01:34:05 - The advantages and proof that none of this shit was ever going to work.

01:40:51 - Don’t listen to the bad advice from people that aren’t doing anything.

01:44:50 - When you’re chemically imbalanced, you have unrealistic expectations.

01:53:21 - You have rushed into trading with live money -.

01:56:45 - Why you need to be fearful of real money trading.

02:02:39 - Trading on one contract -.

02:06:29 - What are you going to do with it? How long are you going to hold onto it?

02:13:44 - There is no supply and demand unless you’re talking about commodities.

02:17:14 - How do you know what’s going to help you see how fast this compounds?

02:24:39 - Algorithms are like the middleman for your trades -.

02:29:54 - Central bank digital currencies and crypto traders think they have it all figured out.

02:32:34 - They’re owned by the leaders.

02:37:59 - There’s no difference between giving him a heroin addiction and enabling it.

02:40:49 - My wife asks me if I’m trading bitcoin.

02:46:54 - You asked for this and they created the environment.

02:49:36 - How the US government created Bitcoin.

02:55:03 - We’re the big swinging dicks of the world.

02:58:17 - What’s your biggest problem right now? You have no idea what is coming.

03:05:44 - Your perception of the world and everything around you is shaped and molded by these things.

03:12:26 - Why he is the way he is and what he does.

03:16:01 - Conspiracy theory is fact.

03:22:48 - The man who gave the polio virus to Africa is a plague.

03:26:11 - What’s going to happen to the people who have taken the vaccine.

03:34:10 - If it was transferable, why didn’t they get it?

03:37:56 - Why I’m doing this.

03:44:35 - I don’t have any energy.

Whereas the euro, pound, and other foreign currencies may be done for the day after making their daily range, stock index futures often extend beyond the London close. That’s why we have a PM session. In forex, however, the PM session is usually flat—it doesn’t do much at all.

In forex, the daily range is typically set by the European kill zone (London open), creating the high or low of the day, and then completed between 10:00 AM and noon New York local time with the opposite end of the range.

Looking at the eurodollar chart, you can see how it created the high and low of the day exactly as I teach it. The eurodollar chart showed a bearish breaker and divergence the third time price tapped that breaker. This occurred around 9:50 AM during the New York open kill zone. At that point, euro touched the bearish breaker while the dollar simultaneously made a lower low instead of a confirming higher low. That’s not symmetrical—that’s divergence.

We had already been anticipating higher prices on the dollar index, which meant eurodollar should be in a sell program. That implies its premium arrays would serve as shorting opportunities. The stronger setups appear when there’s real distribution in euro while dollar index lags in confirmation.

In a perfect scenario, when eurodollar made that lower high on its last touch of the bearish breaker, the dollar index should have confirmed with a higher low. Instead, euro fell into sell-side liquidity, taking out the lows formed around 6:00 AM New York time.

Now look at the Judas swing: from the bearish breaker up to the high where it purged buy-side liquidity. The standard deviation of negative three projected the day’s low, which ultimately formed during the London close kill zone. That’s where time and price aligned—London close time met the standard deviation target. When those two elements converge, the daily range is complete. At that point, you can walk away confidently knowing the bulk of the daily move is finished. If anything remains, it will likely be small, insignificant movement. Leave that “meat on the bone” for retail traders who’ll overtrade and bleed themselves dry chasing crumbs.

Now, let’s shift to the E-mini S&P. When I discussed the new week opening gap chart, I explained how imbalances work with fair value gap theory but applied them to the gap between Friday’s close and Sunday’s opening price. The midpoint of that gap—the consequent encroachment—acts like a magnet, drawing price back to it. The algorithm repeatedly rebalances into these levels.

That’s why I always keep the current week’s opening gap and at least the four weeks prior on my chart—five in total. You can add more if you like, but don’t clutter your chart to the point you lose sight of the candles.

The same applies to the new day opening gaps. I track every single one. My charts are templated so I can see them all, because they provide constant reference points and recurring opportunities.

You can see there’s a rhyme and reason to how price behaves—it repeats. I’ve talked about the new week opening gap for the last couple of weeks, and there’s been a lot of attention on it, along with the new day opening gap and the consequent encroachment of those two imbalances. Now I’ve introduced the implied fair value gap. Yes, there are other concepts, but I don’t want to overwhelm you. If I give you something new every week, you’ll spin your wheels and never learn how to use them effectively. I may add two more concepts, but what we already have—core content, last year’s model, the new week opening gap, new day opening gap, and implied fair value gaps—is enough to make you a disciplined, consistent speculator. That doesn’t mean you’ll be profitable right away. Profitability happens in a live account, and I’ll never tell you to use live money until you decide for yourself.

When we study these new week opening gaps, I’ve explained how they act as dynamic fair value. The core principle is still fair value. Price revisits these levels because they serve as reference points for institutional order flow, not just retail stops. They provide fair value for large investors who enter the market. It’s not that their orders push price to those levels—it’s that the algorithm takes price there to set the stage for real orders and create the counterparty interaction between informed and uninformed traders.

In my daily commentaries for students, if I’m between analysis points, it simply means I must wait for more information. There’s no setup, no clear bias yet. The market sometimes says: do nothing. As an educator, I didn’t want to just tell my students, “No trade, be patient,” so I’d find something useful to teach.

I said in the livestream: at 9:30, the initial move is the fake move—the Judas swing.

This morning, at 9:30, price traded up into the 60-minute fair value gap. During the livestream, just before the GDP release, I explained what I wanted and didn’t want to see. I literally walked you through how to look at the market at 9:30, step by step.

I called the entire narrative before it unfolded—that’s foresight, authorship, fingerprints all over it.

When you buy into an up candle, you widen your risk because your stop is further away. That’s why we buy into down candles or low ticks instead. If price doesn’t reach the top of the 60-minute fair value gap, that implies weakness—not because sellers overpowered buyers, but because the algorithm stopped repricing before filling the imbalance. At 3425, I told you to watch for repeated rejection at consequent encroachment. Price hammered that level multiple times, creating what looked like a retail bull flag, but I showed you how to read it differently.

At the same time, the NASDAQ printed a lower high while the S&P printed a higher high. That’s divergence. With the S&P in a premium array and the dollar index rallying higher, the bias was clear: risk-off. Divergence plus premium equals short setup. Smart money sees that as the green light to short S&P while dollar strength accelerates the sell program.

I gave a Twitter tape-reading exercise: note the fair value gap at 10:06 AM. Extend it forward. That’s where we wanted to short. One of my students entered too early and got stopped out. I reminded him: use a five-handle stop and wait for confirmation. Later, when price revisited the level, I explained why I re-entered, but told him he had to manage the rest of the trade himself.

Retail stops were resting below the lows at 8:31 and 10:10. Price dropped sharply from the 10:06 fair value gap, then quickly spiked back into it. I warned that it could run higher one last time before rolling over. That’s why I told him to also note the 10:01 fair value gap—it showed potential for one more spike.

With just one contract, the monetary risk is small, but the lesson is huge: he doesn’t need to capture the entire move. Three to five handles a day is enough to replace his day job. That’s the goal—humble, consistent beginnings.

Don’t buy up-close candles or bullish thrusting candles. That’s retail logic—breakout buying. It’s flawed. We sell into those. Either new short entries or distributing longs. That’s market efficiency. Retail opens themselves to risk by buying strength; that’s why their trades fail most often.

You must get comfortable with uncertainty. Right now, at certain points, it’s 50/50. Accept that. When it breaks, it should move through the candle that formed the 8:30 fair value gap. Extend that box forward on your chart—it should act as resistance.

Everything I teach won’t always give you butterflies or warm fuzzies. Some of it will feel extremely complicated. If it feels that way, that’s not your PD array, not your multiplier, not your model. Let it go. Someone else will say, “That’s my thing, that’s what I’ve been waiting for.” It’s the same with breakers, fair value gaps, order flow, order blocks, optimal trade entries, mitigation blocks—all of it. You’re not supposed to bring everything into one trade. You pick the one model that makes sense to you and look for it every single time. If the market doesn’t give you your setup, you miss the move—and you must be content with that. It may not feel good when price runs off without you, but these setups repeat every day. You must filter out the noise or you’ll get distracted and miss your model when it appears.

Today, the market broke down aggressively, delivering lower and lower prices, ultimately trading down to 3939.75, the standard deviation from the Judas swing of the daily range. That range was set between the 8:30 low and the near-10:00 high inside the fair value gap. Lay your Fibonacci across that range and project the standard deviations. The algorithm will always use measured deviations within specific ranges, based on time of day. If there were no algorithm, this level of precision would never repeat to the tick every day.

This precision has existed since electronic trading began, and even before, during open outcry. Floor traders weren’t making markets—they were trading the price feed shown on the board. The real market maker is faceless. It’s AI. Occasionally, there’s manual intervention, when someone overrides the day’s script. It sounds unbelievable, but the daily high and low are often predetermined before trading begins. Otherwise, how could I tell you in advance where price will go, how far, and where it will turn, minute by minute?

What I’m removing is your fear and doubt. Every day, you see me call precise levels, and price moves exactly as described. Doesn’t it feel insane, like you’re watching a recording instead of live action? My son and I laugh because I know many of you are sitting there thinking, “How the fuck does he know that?” The answer: there is an algorithm. And if you still doubt it, then I must be the luckiest trader alive—but luck doesn’t exist. You create outcomes through skill.

Don’t dilute your attention. Don’t distract yourself with concepts you don’t need yet. Focus on what I’ve already taught you. Watch how often I’m correct, how often price reacts to the exact tick I’ve called, how it moves with speed and magnitude at the levels I highlight. That’s authorship, ownership.

I envy you. You’re getting this advantage early in your journey. My house is paid for. I want you to reach that too—to be debt-free, no mortgage, no car notes, no financial millstone around your neck. This skill set is a step toward that freedom. It won’t happen overnight, and not for everyone. Some of you will fail because of character flaws, lack of discipline, or impatience. But that doesn’t change the effectiveness of what I teach. This isn’t fraud. It isn’t luck.

Retail books will tell you price is random, a “random walk” of discovery. That’s bullshit. Price is absolutely scripted. You just need to know what to do, when to do it, and then get out of your own way. That’s when the magic happens.

Keep your family at a distance while learning this. They won’t understand. They’ll say you’re wasting time, chasing a pipe dream. I heard the same things from my own family.

When you work with a demo account properly, you’re not just learning the platform—you’re learning how to read price action, how to find your setup, and how to frame risk. You’re not rediscovering your process every trade. You’re looking for your model, every time, consistently.

If you rush into live trading underfunded, you’ll bring fear, debt, and desperation into the market. That’s why you’ll fail. You’ll hesitate, enter late, chase moves, or cut winners too soon—all because you care too much about the outcome. This isn’t about being right or wrong. It’s about following rules, being disciplined, and managing risk. If you skip that, you’ll fail—not because of the market, not because of me, not because of the concepts, but because of you.

You haven’t traded a live account, and you’re wondering how you’d do—what if you’re not precise, not great at entries? What’s reasonable? Close-proximity entries. That’s what I did. And what you saw my son Cameron do this morning—fumbling, hesitating when he should act, distracted by his girlfriend or work—that’s exactly the baggage most of you bring. All of it dilutes your attention, which you cannot allow with real money. Demo feels easy because, before you ever click, you’ve already decided you don’t care about the outcome—you just want to see if the idea works.

If you learn the right way—no money all year, not even demo until I prompt it—you’ll build that same unemotional curiosity: you care about the process, not the hit of a win. With impeccable money management and repetition, accuracy follows; you get desensitized because you’ve seen it so many times.

Live money feels different—that’s why you get scared and impulsive. You wait too long seeking “confirmation,” or you rush because you want money now. Some video or PDF hyped a pattern and you’re over-leveraging an underfunded account. Of course it feels different.

Here’s what I know: a fair value gap forms in the first 45 minutes. A volume imbalance forms in the first hour. Between 9:30–11:00 a.m., I’ll have four trade setups—every day, across profiles. Same again between 1:30–4:00 p.m. They’re always there. I don’t wonder where my next setup is; I know when and how it forms. That confidence is unimaginable until you have it. Once you do, you’ll sound like me to newcomers.

I tell you what’s about to happen—and then it happens. You weigh me every day, and the market delivers on time. That’s how your trading should feel: predictable, not guesswork. Clear liquidity above/below, a fair value gap before the run—this forms every morning and afternoon. Stop worrying it will stop “because too many people know.” The market is algorithmic; it goes to these levels regardless of whoever is buying or selling. These algorithms are coded to take price to specific levels by specific times. Believe me or don’t—I show you the evidence daily. Spend a year with me and the cycles, seasonality, and structure make it undeniable. Confidence comes from seeing it, repeatedly.

Everyone “knows” there are stops below old lows and above old highs, but they don’t use that as a daily setup. You only need one repeating pattern that yields five handles to quit your job. The simplest version:

• Between 9:30–11:00 a.m., wait for a clean run above a high or below a low.
• Look for sharp rejection toward the opposing liquidity pool.
• Enter on the next fair value gap in that direction with a 5-handle stop.
• Take half at +5 handles; aim the rest into opposing liquidity.

Do that, and in 90 days I’d have quit—because it repeats. Many of my students trade something that simple.

“Five handles, stop where?” If you’re shorting a fair value gap, your stop goes above the candle that created it. If that’s more than five handles, either size down to a micro ($5 per handle; ~$25 at risk for 5 handles) or pass. Condition yourself with $25 risk to make $25. High-frequency models run on repetition, not massive R multiples; some make billions scraping a handle at a time, all day.

Frequency wins. Within a day, you’ll see more opportunities for multiple 5-handle moves than for a single clean 30-handle trend. HFTs harvest that intraday volatility—the disparity between price five minutes ago and five minutes from now.

And those relentless, low-retracement days that grind up tick by tick? That’s an algorithm repricing, not an army of “balanced buyers.” I lost plenty fading those when I started. The engine keeps doing what it does until there’s manual intervention—surprise rate decisions, war headlines, a “black swan.” That’s the one risk I truly respect. I don’t fear a normal loss; my models repeat. But I’ll sit out FX if I think a structural shock is brewing—like the CHF de-peg. You don’t survive that.

Zoom out. Banks and a handful of families own the plumbing. They guide outcomes, and everything is increasingly controlled and algorithmic. Crypto didn’t sneak past them; it primed the public for central bank digital currencies. When policy turns, venues change rules; wallets get frozen. If you’re spending energy fearing what might be banned in 10–20 years, you’re wasting time you should be using to learn what works today.

Bottom line: stop over-leveraging, stop chasing, stop bringing your personal chaos to the screen. Build discipline in a no-money phase. Learn a single repeating setup. Risk small. Take five handles. Do it again tomorrow. Repeatability—not hope—is what feeds you.

We’re traders. We don’t need jobs. But hear me: we’re going to get fucked with. They will not let us feel exempt. So learn the skill set. Make what you can, stack what you can, and fasten your seat belts—it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Not a rough couple of months—try ten years of shit no one wants to endure. They’ll use every uncomfortable distraction to pull your attention away from what they’ve done to all of us. And it’s repeated. We’re running the same playbook you never learned because no one teaches history anymore.

You don’t even see it. What’s happening right now mirrors 1947. If you never learned history, you can’t recognize it. The old heads were taught it. Some of you remember things even before my time—you recognize this. But when you try to warn younger people, they don’t want to hear it. They slap a label on you—asshole, racist, whatever—anything to vilify you for saying the obvious: history is repeating. The same catalysts that drove us into World War I are back on the stage.

This thing in your hand—the phone you’re listening through—has trapped your mind. It’s a pocket prison you were convinced you needed on you at all times. It owns your attention the way I own it now—because I’m giving you a skill that can make money. Social media and ads hook you with sex, money, entertainment, dopamine. Planned obsolescence keeps you buying: every update quietly cripples performance and battery life, so you drop $1,200–$1,400 on a new phone every two years. I don’t want another phone after this one.

You think social media is fun. It’s why you’re miserable. You feel like you’re not arriving fast enough because you’re watching people perform a life they don’t live. They don’t own those cars or houses. Those hotels aren’t theirs. Those women don’t love them. It’s staged. You chase the illusion, get depressed, and keep scrolling for “motivation.” He’s not motivating you—he’s making you feel like shit. You don’t have—and won’t have—the things he’s pretending to have. It’s all fake.