Shotgun Saturday - Order Flow & Real Time Price Action

Date: February 10, 2023

Outline

00:55 - An audio check.

02:29 - Introduction to today’s topic.

07:26 - The moral conflict of profiting from price fluctuations in the marketplace.

14:06 - Create a template for your New Day Opening Gap.

20:18 - Order flow is referencing and studying price right now.

26:23 - What is the primary function of how I teach?

29:55 - What’s the midpoint of the price run?

36:08 - Best case entry point is relative -.

41:35 - The One Minute Chart of February -.

47:54 - You need to look at these two areas in the day.

55:10 - You have to have a way of being able to do what -.

01:02:45 - The high of the day.

01:05:58 - What’s going to happen when the market goes above 1430.

01:11:44 - Fibonacci Overlay -.

01:16:35 - Swing Low and High of the Day.

01:22:39 - How far will the algorithm reach for you?

01:28:00 - What’s the primary driver here? What is the technical science?

01:31:00 - Why is this not more palatable if I'm showing you how to use market structure in a lesson?

01:36:57 - What about the midpoint of that last hour macro?

01:41:43 - What’s the relationship between the low of the candle and the opening price?

01:46:29 - Why are you not teaching with live accounts?

01:53:01 - Mentorship is what it’s all about -.

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The new week opening gap is the range between Friday’s closing price and Sunday’s opening price, along with its midpoint, or consequent encouragement. You want to extend those levels through the entirety of the week.

Here’s another factor: you also want to use that same opening range for every week that starts within the same month. The algorithm will continue to refer back to that range during that month. There can also be some overlap—for example, if you’re in the first and second week of February, you don’t just limit yourself to those two weeks. You can go back as much as four weeks, because the algorithm rotates its reference points. It’s not strictly tied to calendar dates like we think of them, such as when January officially closes.

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You’re basically working with a rolling four-week lookback. By default, this encapsulates a monthly rotation in order flow that the algorithm will continue to refer back to.

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It gives you an X-ray view of how the algorithm refers back to old areas of real fair value. That’s not to diminish or overlook gaps, because fair value is an evolving factor and a guiding principle in order flow.

You're looking for levels of premium to discount, time-oriented concepts, entry points, targets, inefficiency, and liquidity.

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Everything revolves around New York time. Sounds like a typical American thing—oh, you guys are arrogant, you think everything revolves around you. Well, the markets do, and that’s just the way it is. If it revolved around India time, I wouldn’t care; I’d just trade based on that. But the fact is, it revolves around New York time.

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5pm closing price and 6pm opening price form your new day opening gap. Extend that range out, but only for the current week and the week before—that’s as far as I’m interested. You might have up to 10 of them on your chart, and nothing else on that template, just those levels. You’ll also want a separate template for the new week opening gaps, with nothing else on the chart. If you try to bring everything onto one chart, you’ll end up looking like every other retail trader.

You don’t want to clutter your charts like that. You want to be able to clearly see price and time, and how price reaches into these areas of real fair value. You’ll be surprised at how markets reach back to them, turn, gravitate, act as support, or flip into resistance—you’ll see real order flow. Don’t just take my word for it—study it. On weekends, go back and review how the market referred to those price points. When it didn’t respect them, was it following a high- or medium-impact market report? Those are the kinds of details you need to journal.

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So when you’re screenshotting your annotations, you’d mention things like: “I liked seeing this about price action,” or “one or two things I was expecting didn’t pan out,” and “here’s where I would have taken a trade that was wrong.” If you get stopped out, miss a trade, or your limit order doesn’t get filled, you write down your observations and thoughts.

What you don’t do is say: “Shit, I missed this move, why didn’t I do that?” That’s frustration. You don’t want to record frustration—you want every journal entry to read like a love letter to yourself. Each time you journal, you’re encouraging your inner trader to come forth. You’re manifesting a positive, principle-oriented, analysis-supported speculator. And at the same time, you’re stamping out the part of you that just wants to press the button impulsively and gamble. It’s always about balancing those sides.

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Order flow, by my definition, is reading the tape and internalizing how price is being delivered right now. Is it in a buy program? That means it’s going to continuously move toward higher prices, possibly gravitating toward an inefficiency above market price, or a liquidity pool above an old high, relative equal highs, or multiple highs—like we saw this week with four intraday highs that got taken before price dropped lower.

Order flow is about studying live price delivery. If it’s in a sell program, then it’s continuously pricing lower for a discount, reaching into an inefficiency—whether that’s a fair value gap, a volume imbalance, or a gap like the New Day Opening Gap or the New Week Opening Gap.

When I taught the PD Array Matrix in the core content on my YouTube channel for private tutorship, I laid out a very specific order of where certain PD arrays usually form in their hierarchy. From the highest form of a premium array to the lowest form before equilibrium, they rank among themselves in delivery. Typically, volume imbalances aren’t in that PD Array Matrix, institutional order flow entry drills aren’t in there either, and New Week or New Day Gaps don’t have a ranking, because they’re variable. There’s no static reference point where they always form—it doesn’t always look the same.

But in a price run from an old high down to an old low, as you work your way back up, the PD arrays form in the exact order laid out in the PD Array Matrix from the core content.

Volume imbalances can occur anywhere within a price range. There’s no hierarchy—no added importance whether it forms above or below a fair value gap or a breaker. It can literally show up anywhere.

And because no one—not even me—knows where the market will open at 6 p.m. for a new day, or on Sunday for a new week, those gaps are completely variable in price delivery. You have no way of knowing what they’ll do. For example, if a geopolitical event or sudden crisis occurs, the market could open extremely far from Friday’s closing price. That sudden move would be used to engineer sentiment and fuel excitement or panic.

When studying order flow, we’re referencing what retail traders might expect based on the books and theories they use—things like bull flags, head and shoulders, or other classic chart patterns. I don’t teach you to adopt any affinity for those patterns, except to recognize how to trade against them. When smart money is positioned against retail-driven patterns, harmonics, or similar ideas, retail loses—every time.

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Real-time, watching price as it moves up, assume for a moment that price is likely to go higher. It’s moving toward a premium level and a buy-side liquidity pool. The market clearly wants to get there, pressing higher and higher.

When observing order flow, we look at every PD array I teach and reference on one-minute charts. Is it providing support? Is it preventing price from dropping below three PD arrays? In a buy program, where markets are bullish, we’re watching price continuously deliver—constantly booking and printing higher levels.

Forget the simplistic retail notion of “higher highs, higher lows.” That’s introductory and not useful for real order flow analysis. Instead, each individual candle matters. When bullish, every candle should expand higher, dig into higher prices, and encroach on the old high where buy-side liquidity rests.

We examine how each candle relates to the ones before it, creating small stair-steps. Every down-close candle in a bullish move should support price. That is a primary observation in understanding order flow during a market rally toward buy-side liquidity.

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When looking at level two data, ladders, depth of market, and volume profiles, all of that can distract from what’s most important: the candles themselves. Candles will tell you everything you need to see without diluting your attention. Focus on how the candles relate to one another and whether they give constructive feedback that aligns with expecting higher prices.

It’s normal to see short-term breaks lower that take out small sell stops. That’s why you shouldn’t rush to move your stop loss. The number one reason I emphasize not moving your stop hastily is that you need to train yourself to trust and have conviction in where the market is going. Your stop is your safety net, but you don’t need training wheels, harnesses, or extra protection that make you afraid to trade. You have to step out and embrace the uncertainty by watching the candles print, which is essentially booking price.

When higher prices are expected and price is gravitating toward buy stops, every down-close candle should support any return to that level by a new or future candle. Price will expand higher, pull back slightly, expand higher again, and continue in that pattern. By watching this, you internalize how real order flow is coming in. You don’t need detailed charts showing exactly how many orders are at every price level; that’s too much information. You can read what the market is doing in real time.

When observing bullish markets, each individual candle should support the next. Down-close candles act as support and prevent price from falling below, while the up candles continuously create new highs and push toward buy-side liquidity pools. Focus on how every candle interacts with the ones before it—creating small stair-step movements—and whether each down-close candle supports price.

Even when price moves through fair value gaps or recent short-term lows, if we are not yet in the upper quarter of the expected target range, you do not need to overreact. The market is delivering its movement in a way you can read from the candles themselves, and that is how order flow should be observed and internalized.

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If you believe you’ve identified the low in the market for a particular price swing and expect it to rise toward an old high—where stops and buy-side liquidity are resting—the midpoint of that anticipated run represents equilibrium. That range isn’t fully established yet; you’re simply implying where price is likely to move.

Between the low and that projected high, you may or may not actually be in the move yet. Either way, the best buying opportunities occur at or below that equilibrium point. Once price reaches the upper quarter of your target range, retracements to stop levels below old lows become much less likely. They can still happen, but generally, the market won’t revisit those sell stops.

This ties into pyramiding trades: adding to a winning position works best before crossing the threshold from discount to premium. In a buy program, you’re expecting higher prices that will gravitate toward premium inefficiencies, fair value gaps, or old highs to trigger stop runs. These are the magnets that draw liquidity.

As the market moves higher, whether you entered at the initial low or later, you need to know both the inception of the move and your target. The range between the start of the run and your target—Terminus—is the equilibrium, marking the transition from discount to premium. Moving halfway between equilibrium and Terminus places you in the premium range, not the discount.

As soon as price reaches the final quarter of the run—approaching the target—it becomes much less likely to see a stop run below old lows. This happens because the market is in a hurry to trigger the buy stops, anticipating what’s likely to occur next.

You know what it’s like to be short, with your stop sitting just above a high—you’re praying, hoping it doesn’t hit it. The closer price gets to your stop, the more likely it is to run for it. That’s why the market is less likely—though not impossible—to come back against you and trigger sell stops before reaching your target.

The market wants to move quickly to reprice without giving those orders a chance to be pulled, closed, or reduced, preserving liquidity for Smart Money traders. That behavior is coded into the algorithms: once the price enters the final quarter of the run, it accelerates toward liquidity, ignoring human fear or protective stops.

This is why I focus on speed and large-range candles during execution—those moves expand into the liquidity cloud, effectively purging liquidity.

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Order flow is about observing how candles support one another. Any retracement typically only goes down to the nearest fair value gap below price. In a buy program moving higher toward buy-side liquidity, every down-close candle should support price.

Conversely, when looking for lower prices, every up-close candle should resist price from moving higher. This doesn’t mean bearish markets can’t breach up-close candles—if there’s a fair value gap above, price may go there, but it doesn’t undermine the concept. It simply creates a new opportunity for Smart Money traders to enter or add to a short position if they haven’t participated yet.

Best-case entry points are relative; you don’t always get the absolute low. Your skill set and market conditions dictate when to enter, so don’t rush.

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When considering how many opportunities occur per week, don’t expect five-handle moves every morning and afternoon session—that would be 50 handles a week, which is overwhelming, especially for a new trader using these thresholds. Five-handle moves are relatively easy to spot once you know what to look for, but price runs can exceed that. By applying these methods, you’ll be able to identify when moves are likely to go beyond five handles.

On the far left, there’s a dotted vertical line marking the New York 9:30 AM open, and on the far right, a dotted vertical line marking the 4 PM New York close. Between these intervals, use five handles as your initial baseline measurement for progress.

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The importance is to know how many times by looking through the entirety of price action from the low to the high across the full spectrum of the nine thirty opening to four p.m. close in New York. This is the canvas that you are working with every single day.

You as the trader need to look at this and ask what does this life that I am living right now allow me to trade. Does it allow me to trade the first half of the day before noon New York time, which will be the morning session, or is it more appropriate for me to be trading the afternoon. Either one is fine, both have opportunities, but framing your approach to trading and building a model that is unique and permissible for your life requirements is critical.

It may be that you can only engage one or two times a week, and that is completely fine because once you start making money and consistently capturing setups and opportunities, all the limitations you thought existed, like your job controlling your time, will fall secondary.

Right now you may feel constrained by your job, school, or unsupportive family members, and that is normal. Once you see that you can pull setups consistently, the job you held as a shield or pillar of insurance, that fortress you ran into when things got rough, becomes less relevant because you understand that the market is not guaranteed, just like your next trade is not guaranteed to win.

The difference between an entrepreneur and someone trapped in the rat race is that the entrepreneur tests for opportunity. Once they see evidence that they can be profitable, they act.

The job that you think is safe is not a fortress, it is limiting. It dictates what you can earn and holds your life back. Trading introduces uncertainty but also creates the potential for self-determined income. The market responds to your skill and decisions rather than to someone else’s mandate, and understanding that is key to developing freedom and control over your own financial outcomes.

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When you start seeing that you can do this, that job will become secondary. That is exactly what you want. You want to do everything that fortifies and supports what you are building as an investor. As an investor, there is no ceiling and no limit to what you can earn. Who says you cannot make ten thousand dollars a month, ten thousand dollars a week, or ten thousand dollars a trade? The only person who can stop you is yourself. The same person who complains about having to go to work while simultaneously feeling grateful for the job is the one holding themselves back.

You should ask yourself what you would do if you did not have that job and were earning money from your investments. Flip the narrative. Instead of asking what would I do if I lost my job, recognize that holding on to that mindset is like being in an abusive relationship. Look at your chart and identify one of the two areas of the day as your home. This is where you will mentally and psychologically anchor yourself. If you are trading the morning session, you do not concern yourself with what happens in the afternoon session. If you are trading the afternoon session, you ignore the morning. You pick one and become a specialist in that specific time of day.

You will focus on observing price action and recognizing what a five-handle run looks like. Initially, your progress will be measured in these smaller runs. Over time, you will learn to identify twenty-handle moves, fifty-handle moves, and even trades exceeding one hundred handles in a single position without partials. Partials are like training wheels, available for learning and protection, but they are not necessary once you have the experience and conviction to hold your target.

You do not need to take partials to manage risk if you have the knowledge and skill to trust your trades. For beginners, learning to master yourself is the first step. Start small, with five-handle runs, which are easier to manage and replicate. Five handles can replace your income regardless of your current job or profession. All the heavy lifting is done by disciplined money management. Repeating a simple, structured strategy consistently acts as a multiplier for your results.

Five-handle trades are achievable once you observe the price ranges in your chosen session. There are several easy opportunities in both morning and afternoon sessions. The challenge comes when you demand more than you are ready to handle and hold yourself to unrealistic expectations. This leads to frustration, anxiety, and a sense of being rushed. Comparing yourself to where you think you should be is counterproductive. Focus on mastering the basics, executing consistent trades, and building confidence. Mastery begins with small, repeatable steps, and that foundation allows you to scale safely and successfully.

You have to give yourself time and experience and create the space for that experience to develop before attempting monumental projects and goals. The first thing you are learning now is to identify setups that repeat consistently. Once you find one that repeats, you will learn to trust it because you will see it unfolding every day. I promise you, without exaggeration, you will witness a five-handle run every single day the market is open. Five handles is laid out before you like it is on a silver platter.

Right now, you may not be able to identify it, and that is completely normal. There is no reason to feel anxious about it. Over time, with patience and consistent observation, you will begin to recognize these opportunities. Eventually, you may need to make changes in your personal life to fully accommodate this practice and maximize your ability to execute these trades consistently.

I’m teaching you how to see these opportunities every day. This builds confidence quickly, but not to create overconfidence. This isn’t about quitting your job tomorrow or thinking you are ready immediately. What I’m doing is aligning your perspective and your thoughts with the process I want you to experience so that the experience itself becomes the teacher. I’m merely the coach, placing you in front of the charts when setups are forming. By trusting your observation skills, which are basic but sufficient, you will begin to see these setups clearly. Right now, they may not jump off the chart, but with practice and attention, they will.

Experience comes to you over time, and how much time that takes will be different for each person. Some of you will warm up quickly and get a feel for reading order flow fast, while others will require a bit more time. Do not fault yourself for needing more time. Often, it is just your mind worrying about possibilities and thinking “what if.”

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All you are doing right now is going through the training process that earns you your certificate, your degree, your diploma. That is what you are here for this year. Some of you may want to walk out and be a surgeon just because you read Grey's Anatomy, but that is not practical. You cannot do that. This is highly technical work. It is very hard, and you are competing against some of the brightest minds in the entire world who are trying to beat you. Using retail methods will make it almost impossible because those methods are distractions.

All I am asking is for you to really look at the chart and figure out where you are. Do not use individual swings to justify anything about your personal life. Consider what changes you are comfortable making to allow yourself to be in the markets, watching live, for two and a half to three hours a day, a couple of times a week. That is all you need. One good setup per week can replace your entire work week and what you earn. It may not feel like it, but it is exactly what it is. When you can repeat this every week, it compounds. Your confidence level, your trust in yourself, and in what you are learning and have learned will grow.

Then you will be willing to do what an entrepreneur does: expand and make the necessary changes to allow this to completely and utterly replace your job. But that does not happen immediately. You cannot force it overnight. I know that is not what you want to hear, but it is what you need to hear. If you do not understand this, you will hold yourself back with the wrong mindset. Instead, commit to rolling up your sleeves and dedicating this entire year. It is less than a four-year degree, but you can make more than anyone with a PhD or a Master’s in Business because there is no ceiling in this. You put in as much effort as you want, and you get out what you put in.

Do not be upset when your attempts are imperfect. You will lose money along the way. Just as losing money happens in life, when you get sick or have a medical bill, it is a loss but not catastrophic. All the excuses you make to avoid doing what is required for success in speculation are just holding you back. You need to put in the work, accept the losses as part of the process, and understand that this is how you build the skill, the confidence, and the opportunity to succeed.

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If you are looking at price up close and you do not have enough real estate in terms of the candles, you are too zoomed in. It is like trying to look at a forest with your nose pressed against the closest tree. Can you see the forest? No. You must be able to step back and internalize where liquidity is, where the morning session highs and lows are, and where equilibrium has formed for the day. You need to recognize the liquidity pool that lies just beyond what your chart is currently showing. Being too zoomed in will leave you surprised, wondering where a sudden move came from. You will never hear me say, or have seen me react with, “Oh, shit, where did that come from?” I am never surprised. I anticipate and expect price to move, already positioning myself mentally in the future for where the price is going to be.

You will reach that point too. You will not be surprised or panicked, nor will you have anxiety attacks while watching real-time price action. Instead, you will anticipate how price is likely to deliver based on the concepts I am teaching. Over time, your ability to read and predict price movements will improve, and you will get better at this faster than you probably expect.

The retracement he talked about between 13.30 - 14.30 on m30 chart

I felt that we would potentially run that 4100 level a little more meaningfully because it is Friday and we left those highs behind, especially with the bump above it at 130.

It only went above it a little bit, just a shallow run above the previous high. That means traders are likely feeling very confident that it is not going to push higher. As a result, more buy-side orders are likely to be triggered, so we would be expecting it to go above that level.

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You want to write this down in your journal because you want to test it. Take that low up to the short-term high and anchor your Fibonacci to that range. Use your Fibonacci projections with settings at negative 0.5, negative 1, and negative 1.5. On that price run from the low up to the high, you are measuring expansion and standard deviation from that price. For now, just follow these steps. The negative 1.5 level is the only standard deviation that sits above, or is the very first one above, the relative equal highs to the left.

The first standard deviation above the relative equal highs, where I have the buy-side liquidity call imitated, is negative 2.5. The next standard deviation after that is negative 3.

So if I'm bullish and I think those relative equal highs are going to be blown out later on in the afternoon, preferably in the last hour of trading, from three o'clock to four o'clock New York local time, which will be represented on this chart as 15:00 to 16:00, that time of day corresponds to the last portion towards the right side of the chart. If I'm expecting liquidity to be drawn up into that area, I don’t want to just roll the dice and say, “I don’t know where it’s going to go.” I want to take measurements because this is exactly what the algorithm will do—it refers to these points of reference, and that leads you directly to the first standard deviation above a buy-side liquidity pool.

That time of day, the last portion towards the right side of the chart. If I’m expecting liquidity to be drawn up into that area, I don’t want to just roll the dice and say, “I don’t know where it’s going to go.” I want to take measurements, because this is exactly what the algorithm will do. It will refer to these points of reference.

I pulled it out of the logic that the algorithm itself uses when it books price. I don’t care if you believe me, because I’m using it every single day with to-the-tick precision.

It’s doing something that is mathematically calculated, focusing on specific elements. The primary driver here is that the market is going to reach those relative equal highs, which is exactly what I teach you to focus on first when you’re learning with me. You have to know where those areas are.

Why should orders reside above those relative equal highs? Because above them is buy-side liquidity. That’s what you want to understand.

What’s the science? What’s the technical reason the market will go above that? It’s because that’s where the liquidity is resting, and the algorithm is designed to seek it out.

The macro in the last hour, between 15:15 and 15:45, creates a thirty-minute interval that runs. The price action inside the blue BISI has multiple volume imbalances, which makes the price action spotty and uncertain. This creates difficulty in reading the market, so you have to wait for it to show its hand, then use the information it gives you.

Between 15:17 and 15:28 there are several volume imbalances in price action. That spotty movement means you must wait for displacement. The draw on liquidity is above the highs at 4100 and beyond. So what do we look for? We wait for displacement, and we saw it happen on the 15:30 candle. That candle rips through price. The objective was to see a trade above the fair value gap formed on the 15:15 candle. The expectation was for it to move above that gap, then return and use it as support.

And that is exactly what happened. Price traded back down to the lowest point of the fair value gap. Where did that occur? Inside the macro itself. What about the midpoint of that last hour macro (15.30)? Between 15:15 and 15:45 it creates a price run aimed at liquidity that has not yet been purged. Where is that liquidity? In the relative equal highs.

At this stage, we are looking at a very specific and technical event—what can be described as a scientific moment in price delivery.

The respect shown for the volume imbalance was the very signature I was looking for. It confirmed whether price would allow for continuation to the upside. We moved through the volume imbalance and then advanced higher, but on the very next candle, the open traded back down into the high of the volume imbalance.

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I cannot humanly predict how far or when a manual intervention might occur. A Black Swan event, some kind of unannounced disruption, is always a possibility. That is the inherent risk of trading, a risk that never goes away. Sometimes you will get hurt by it, and that is the risk every one of us accepts when we choose to speculate.