The Sands Of Time

Date: April 25, 2023

Outline

00:11 - Welcome to the show.

• Welcome back to the show.
• How the markets are fickle right now.

02:31 - What makes this market so low probability?

• What makes this market low probability.
• The criteria for a high-probability trade.
• The importance of knowing when to stop.
• The low-probability phenomenon.
• Breaking down the low-probability market.
• The importance of being a jack of all trades.

08:58 - The sands of time in your hourglass are ticking down.

• Anybody can get lucky in trading.
• Sitting still is a skill set.
• Pushing in this environment is stupid.
• The market can stay irrational longer.

14:41 - Why you have to understand more than you realize these markets aren’t going anywhere.

• Avoiding free resets and not pushing too hard.
• Understanding where the weekly charts will expand.
• Rules are there for a reason.
• The importance of weekly expansion or understanding.

20:18 - Who is in control right now? How can they be harmed?

• Preserve capital at all costs.
• Seasonal tendency to lower in mid-June.

23:17 - What is a High Probability 5 Handle Run?

• What constitutes a high probability five handle run.
• How many handles to offer at least.
• Low probability and trading range.
• Three criteria for high probability, no weekly draw.

29:07 - What type of mentor would it make?

• Do not touch the market.
• Get in here and start looking for setups.
• Checking every box and not to touch it.
• Patience is not a saint.
• The market is going to perform in a manner.
• The loser cycle.

35:44 - Are you confident in this market right now?

• Being obsessively compulsive about social media.
• The importance of smart money concepts.
• The summer doldrums in the market.
• What to look for in terms of signatures.
• There's something amiss, something wrong, ict.
• This is a wonderful time to be studying.

42:03 - What’s so hard to understand about the current market?

• Signs to look for in price action.
• Heavy handed traders in the trading community.

43:53 - Will these concepts ever stop?

• The most repeated question from an educator/mentor.
• The question he gets the most.
• Money is always going to be sought after.
• Central bank digital currency.

49:53 - When you have a lot of money, more people want to take it from you, and more people are going to look down on you.

• Money doesn't give happiness. It only allows you to afford things.
• Relationships are hard to know.
• Turning a blind eye to everything.
• Prepare for scenarios that allow for the highest probability of profit.

55:02 - When we’re in high probability conditions and low resistance liquidity runs, it’s easy to see what the market wants to do.

• Taking a step back to see what's going to happen.
• High-probability conditions and liquidity.
• The catalyst for the entire monetary system being restructured.
• Rules of engagement for trading.

01:00:45 - If you don’t have these rules written out, you will not measure your growth - not psychologically, not monetarily.

• The importance of having rules written out.
• The daily chart needs to leave the range.
• Being comfortable in one's own skin.
• The sands of time and the hourglass.

01:03:59 - You’re going to impulsively do things as soon as you allow impulse-emotion psychological wrestling matches.

• Impulsiveness and psychological wrestling matches.
• How to manage impulsiveness and control it.
• The beginning of Alexander elder. Book trading for a living.
• Alcoholism and the real effects.

01:08:52 - What’s the best psychological book?

• Everyone has an addiction to something.
• The first part of the best psychological book.
• Gambling is another form of addiction.
• No trading book is a 1% slam dunk.

01:14:50 - What are you going to do to occupy your time now?

• High probability trading with low resistance liquidity.
• Being responsible as a mentor.
• Taking a step back and being responsible for yourself and others.
• Mentoring is about discipline.

Hopefully, you haven't been turning your account too much and causing more harm, because the markets are actually very fickle right now. Let's take a quick peek this morning; we saw that we had traded down into an old new week opening gap. Nothing really stands out in terms of high probability for me.

Now, I want to remind you, when we are looking at the markets in the way I am teaching you as my student, or if you are a casual viewer listening for the first time, I try to teach a concept that I dubbed smart money. And that means trading when it is smart to do so. It is not about thinking, "Oh, I have time to be in front of charts, I have time to be here, and therefore the market should submit to my will or my system." And sometimes, as we have seen, it simply doesn't want to do that.

Now, what makes this market right now low probability? Well, I will give you a couple of things. I tweeted this morning rather early, asking what the criteria was—a list of criteria that would constitute a high probability trade setup. Number one: you have to have some measure of understanding where that weekly candle is going to expand to. And I don't have that. I haven't had it for well over two weeks now. And I have admitted it. I have been upfront and told you, "No, I don't have a real good read on what it wants to do in the context of high probability."

Now, can I get in there and take two handles here, two handles there, three handles here? Yes. But it is nerve-racking for me. And it would be very difficult for you to follow that, and it would really just be a waste of time. I want to teach as I have been teaching: if we are going to look for a setup, it needs to have some kind of higher timeframe draw on liquidity. Why do I believe—or why do you as the analyst believe—the market is going to draw to a specific level on a higher timeframe?

If we can't ascertain that with a one-sidedness, where it is so hard to argue outside the marketplace, then we don't have high probability. So why would you want to go in? Why would I sit out on Twitter? Why would I go on a livestream when I admittedly said I don't have a good read on it right now? So what did I teach and preach? If the market is not giving you something, go do something else. Now, as a young man in my twenties, this would drive me nuts. I would be in there trying to hammer away, trying to do more and more, and I would hurt myself.

You have to stop; you must know when to stop. I have given rules to help you determine when there is high probability versus when there is low probability. Again, I have stated this explicitly: I have been away because of that very reason.

Therefore, pushing the envelope and trying to force trades when the market is unlikely to deliver—regardless of whether you are in a funded account or not—simply doesn't make any sense.

That was very hard for me because I didn't come from money. So you have to follow rule number one: preserve capital.

And you have to have an understanding of when you are likely to hurt yourself by forcing something that isn't there. You know, forcing something in the charts.

When low probability conditions exist, everybody's system is going to talk. Whether it is Harmonics or Elliott Wave, someone is always going to have a reason to trade. They will claim the market is going up due to supply and demand, ICT order blocks, or breakers; everyone will find something they want to see in price.

This serves as the perfect excuse for them to push the button, simply because they have no patience to wait for the market to come out of these low probability conditions, which I have previously outlined for you. I told you exactly what I want to see: the market needs to come out of that range.

It needs to come out of that range. Until it does, we are in a very small intraday scalping scenario; so it is a scalper's market, but within such a small, little range.

If we are forced to scalp, let's go back to the criteria that would make a trade high probability. Number one: I don't have—maybe you have had, but I don't have—a clear indication of where that weekly candle is going to expand up to or down to. Because it could do either one, I have to wait.

I am not out here trying to show you I am a jack-of-all-trades in every single market condition every single day. I am teaching you how to follow a model, and I am also teaching you how to look for high probability.

When the market indicates to me that it is simply not trying to do what I would require of it for the model I am teaching you, and the models that I teach my other students, I have to sit still. And there is nothing wrong with that. That is not weakness; that is an advantage.

If you don't know what you're doing, and you can't control yourself, you become impulsive. You try pushing a boulder up a mountain. That is the equivalent of what you are trying to do right now. Take a step back. You might be seeing people out there getting lucky. I promise you, folks, if they continue to do this kind of stuff, the market will shred them.

Anybody can get lucky. I got lucky for months when I first started. And then the inevitable came. So don't think, "Well, I might get lucky during this because I don't have the benefit of time." You feel this way because the sands of time in your hourglass are ticking down, because you feel you must complete a funded account challenge. You tell yourself you have to get to funded status; you have to do this, you have to do that.

Watch those grains of sand. You are watching the hourglass empty out. When it first starts, it feels like it is going to take forever. Then, as it gets halfway down, you realize you have to wait that same amount of time for the remaining half of the sand to drain down. It seems like it goes on forever. But then you get down to that last tiny little fifth or eighth of the volume of sand, and it seems like it runs real fast—kind of like old age when you are young.

At 50 years old now, knowing I don't have a lot more time on the other end, I want to go real, real slow. I want things to slow down.

That is exactly what you want to do in your trading. I didn't see that as a young man; back then, I wanted it fast and furious, turbo-charged, always full steam ahead. It couldn't get there fast enough for me. Now, because I have hurt myself over the years, I have learned that lesson painfully.

Sitting still is a skill set. Because capital preservation is the number one rule in speculation. If you can't follow that rule, it doesn't matter how good your system is, it doesn't matter how good your mentor is, and it doesn't matter how many competitions you won or how many trophies you got.

If you cannot control and keep your money, you have to have that rule set. And by me teaching and preaching and doing it... when I have nothing to act on, I have to sit still in truest form.

You are not in a low resistance liquidity run condition. You are not in a market that wants to get somewhere very quickly.

The markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

The market can behave in a manner that does not allow you to profit or participate with an opportunity that would result in a gainful outcome. It can act irrationally, staying in a range that simply doesn't permit you to execute your typical trading model—looking for this thing to happen, or that thing to happen.

It can sustain that behavior longer than you can endure it and stay solvent—meaning keeping your account intact. You will blow your accounts faster than the market can leave that state of irrational behavior. And that is exactly the environment we are in right now.

If you keep pushing this environment, trying to demand things from it that it is not likely to deliver to you, it is going to bite you.

And then when it does, impulses are going to come. You are going to trade when nobody is looking, and you are going to blow your funded accounts.

These markets aren't going anywhere. Prices are stagnant right now. Look at the daily chart; you have wicks and tails on both ends, up and down, within that range.

You don't have high probability right now. If you made money, I am going to be honest and give you my opinion: that was coincidence.

It is merely coincidence because nothing in the market right now is behaving in a manner that constitutes high probability.

You have to know where the weekly chart is going to expand. If you don't have that, you lack the higher timeframe sponsorship behind the move.

Large flows and delivery in price are going to be seen in an expansion on that weekly chart; it is going to be reaching for some measure of value, whether fair value or to reprice to an inefficiency—one or the other.

Regarding the list and criteria for high probability, we demand one essential thing: we must have an understanding of where that weekly chart is going to expand. If you don't have that, you are immediately in a low probability condition.

Now, can you take trades in low probability environments? Yes. Are you more prone to be incorrect and lose? Yes. However, if you won't look at it that way, you will likely view it as having skill—thinking, "I outperformed my model." That was the excuse I gave myself when I was coming up. I thought I was better than the model. But I have had models that I created myself humble me when I tried to outperform them. Rules are there for a reason.

So right away, without a clear weekly expansion or an understanding of where price is going to reach, you are operating without high probability. Now, even assuming that you could find a setup, we simply don't have that context; I certainly don't have it right now for the ES. I do not know where it wants to draw. Consequently, I have submitted myself to the rules. I have accepted that I cannot do anything here. I could sit here and tell you what I think price might do based on fragmented parts of the model, but those parts are not in alignment with what the full model requires.

I cannot sit down with a can of green paint, a brand new paintbrush, and a canvas, and attempt to paint something in the shade of red, blue, or yellow; I simply do not have the tools to do that. The model is incomplete because I am missing the necessary ingredients for the recipe that would call for Blue Ribbon results. Therefore, it would be foolish for me to try to call a move that I know is unlikely to unfold.

I have done enough. I spent two days expecting certain things, and as soon as the market failed to deliver, my experience taught me immediately that I had to stop. This is not because I am afraid, nor because I lack the skill. It is because the market is simply not providing what my model looks for. How is that hard to understand? And why would you view that as a weakness when it is actually a strength? I know when not to do something—do you?

Rule number one is that you must preserve capital at all costs. To do this effectively, you have to have a clear understanding of the weekly expansion. You need to ask yourself: where is the weekly candle—the one you are currently trading in—likely to go? Before the week even begins, you must have a reasonable expectation. This cannot be based on a gut feeling; it has to make perfect technical sense based on order flow and where price has recently been. You need to assess whose stops have just been taken, who is currently in control and in profit, and how those participants can be harmed.

Because we currently lack that clear weekly expansion—where price draws to a very specific level on the weekly chart—we are immediately in a low probability environment. This means we are in a scalper's market. Furthermore, regarding the daily range I mentioned previously, price needs to decisively leave that range; it cannot just poke its head above it. It has to leave the range completely for sentiment to shift.

I do not have my heart set on the ES going higher or lower; I simply don't care about the direction itself. However, I will submit to you that we are entering a seasonal tendency for May heading into the middle of June where, most of the time, the market drops and goes lower. So, I am tipping my hand here: if we only factor in seasonal tendencies, I believe it is likely to go lower. If I were to forecast and share my opinion for the next couple of months, I believe the ES will be lower, provided it follows that seasonal tendency—though obviously, unforeseen events can upset that entire outlook.

What we have seen in the last three years—where they are saying UFOs and aliens exist—shows that anything can happen. It is a precarious environment, and you have to be careful; you have to be very, very careful. I think that is what is being measured in what price is doing right now. There are so many things going on, not just in America but in other countries, and risk is elevated to a very high degree. Consequently, big money and deep pockets are not in a hurry to assume new risks right now.

That is essentially Investing 101: you must have some measure of institutional sponsorship for the market to want to move. It is not simply about buying and selling pressure; there has to be a measure of sentiment to allow for this dance between liquidity providers and large order flow. That sponsorship has to be there, and right now, there is a vacuum. That is why you are seeing price behave like it does with short little runs, which brings us back to that list for high probability.

What did I teach you when we were doing the live sessions regarding what constitutes a high probability five handle run? I think that is the low hanging fruit objective. Can you use what I taught in that model to get two handles or three handles and be done? Yes. But the real question is whether you, as a new student or a new trader, are well disciplined enough to just stop when you get there—to have a limit order to get that two and a half or three handles and simply stop. There is nothing inherently wrong with that approach.

You hear me talk about five handles minimum; that, to me, is a goal that you should strive for. You won't hit it right away. You will grow into it, and you will outgrow it over time. But to me, I think that is a reasonable target for someone who doesn't know how to trade and has never been consistent to start aiming for. And if you do that, that is fine. You will outgrow it eventually, but you can make a career entirely off of that. There is nothing wrong with just doing five handles, and there is nothing wrong if you can only get three handles when you are aiming for five all the time.

For high probability five-handle runs, you must determine if the setup meets specific criteria. This is a way to test yourself. If you are following along on Twitter, you should ask: how many handles does the range have to potentially deliver for you to secure a high probability five-handle run? It needs to offer 10 handles.

So, if you are looking at or anticipating a price run, you want to verify that the market can offer a total movement of 10 handles. It is not that you are necessarily trying to capture the full 10 handles; you can grow into that level of precision over time. However, the requirement remains that the range must be sufficient to offer at least 10 handles of movement.

So we have low probability because the weekly chart lacks a clear draw where it can go higher or lower for a specific level. Right away, this confirms that we are in a low probability environment. Furthermore, we are in a trading range on the daily chart, where we have seen wicks and tails move both up and down, indicating a balanced price range.

Think about it like this: for those in long-term relationships or marriages, when there is no arguing, fighting, or chaos, it feels boring, right? That is exactly what you want in your relationship—you want everything to be balanced. That is what you are seeing in price action right now in ES and NASDAQ; we are at a point of balance, and nothing has been introduced to cause an imbalance.

Look at that custom range I showed you on the daily chart for ES, the shaded area I tweeted this morning. Inside that range, we have seen expansion up and down, back and forth repeatedly. Imagine that range was an empty space and you were five or six years old again, instructed to color in that box with a crayon. That shaded area has essentially been colored in both up and down entirely; price has traveled both ways multiple times over multiple days.

So where is it going to go next? I am submitting to you, as I said last week, that I do not have a clear indication of where it wants to go. This immediately checks the first box: I am not in high probability conditions.

I do not need to spend every single day proving the point I have already taught: if it is low probability, we are effectively at 50/50. I do not want to operate in a 50/50 environment, and you shouldn't want to operate in one either.

Furthermore, there is no weekly draw, which checks the box for low probability. We are in a trading range, specifically a balanced price range, so we simply do not know where price is going to go. Additionally, we are currently in a scalper's market.

So right now, you have three distinct factors from the criteria list for high probability working against you. Every single one of these checks the box indicating that you should not touch this market. It is a rattlesnake; it is shaking its tail at you, warning you to stay away.

Now, look at the price runs. How many of the price runs that you are trying to partake in actually had a potential payout of 10 handles? Oh, now that list of factors working against you grows even larger.

So right away, it should make perfect sense. This tapestry that I have laid out here beforehand clearly indicates a do not touch market.

Does the model suggest we are in high probability conditions where we should hammer down and start looking for setups? No. It is actively checking every box that warns us not to touch it. While there will inevitably be setups that pan out, I will not be a part of them. For me to sit down, educate you, and analyze live charts to predict outcomes, I must have everything in alignment. Without that, I possess no advantage and risk looking like anyone else who has no idea what they are doing. The market will perform how it wants to perform, and I must choose to excel only when I know everything is in my favor.

The market needs to be one-sided. This does not necessarily mean a trending market, but rather that it is poised to move toward a specific location derived from the weekly chart. When I can see that clearly and establish my bias, I will operate strictly within that framework. I am teaching you to approach the marketplace and study price action with that exact mindset. However, to be fair and honest, the majority of new students lack the benefit of patience. I did not have it when I started, and I am naturally very impatient, but in this profession, I have to be.

You must develop this trait, or you will lose your money, become frustrated, and likely quit. If you cannot develop patience, it is probably better for you to quit now; you will save yourself a significant amount of pain, anxiety, and anguish by avoiding something your personality is not equipped to handle. There are people in this audience who simply fit that description and will never be able to trade. This is not a fault of my concepts or anyone else's, but rather because some individuals are not mentally equipped for this. They do not like rules, they lack discipline, and they refuse to take responsibility, preferring to blame others when their impulsive actions lead to poor results.

The market is currently performing in a manner that makes it less likely for you to anticipate its next move beforehand. I am submitting to that reality rather than arm-wrestling it. If the market indicates that it could go in either direction, effectively a 50/50 probability, why are you trading? Why are you attempting to build or secure a funded account right now? When probabilities are this low, the market can easily reverse, stop you out, and lead to frustration.

If you are new to trading, you likely lack the skillset to recognize when you are entering a psychological tailspin. Unlike a seasoned trader who understands that drawdowns are an inevitable part of a career and that 100% strike rates do not exist, a new student often lacks the necessary discipline to stop. instead of accepting the loss, your inexperience will drive you to feel impulsive. You will become angry, personify the market as an entity you must defeat, and try to force trades to recover what you lost.

This behavior triggers the loser cycle, a phase that everyone will encounter if they trade long enough, regardless of their mentor or system. When I was in my twenties, I went through this dozens of times, thinking I would get a different result, only to blow my account faster and in a more stunning fashion. To survive this, you must learn to be responsible. You need strict rules that dictate when you must stop and walk away to do something else.

Are you confident in this market climate right now? In the conditions that you are seeing at this moment, are you confident? In your experience, are you going to be able to control yourself? Or are you going to leave yourself to the fate of luck? Because if you are willing to do that, you have not learned anything with the time you have been with me. Luck is not a factor in what we are doing.

I saw a student of mine sent me a message asking, "Did they break the algorithm? Or did we break the algorithm? Are there too many people out there who know how to do it now, so they've changed everything?" When you are feeling that way, what you are actually feeling is inexperience. The market will sometimes go into these periods where it just ranges and consolidates. There is nothing abnormal about this; it tends to happen.

I made a referral to how it feels like the price action you would typically see in July. Generally, in the latter portions of July going into August, there is a time commonly referred to as the summer doldrums, where the market just isn't in a hurry to go anywhere. That is what this feels like to me—classic mid-summer price action.

You have to be very careful not to push real hard when it is trading like this. You must have the eye and the observance to backpedal and say, "Okay, I am not going to push real hard." Market environments will shift in and out of high probability and low probability. When it is not giving me the indications of what I look for in terms of algorithmic price signatures, I have to submit to the fact that I don't know right now. That is not weakness. That is not them changing the algorithm because of some guy on Twitter. Think about what you are saying.

All you are seeing is a market that is in a range bound consolidation, because there is nothing that has caused an imbalance yet. It will happen, I promise you, it will happen. But until it does, you have to sit there and relax, do something else—study, look at old data, and back test.

This is a wonderful time to be studying, and not risking something. Because if you are gambling right now—and that is what you are if you are trading with real money or a funded account right now—you are gambling. Don't do that.

The market is not behaving in a manner where it is so easy to go in and just walk up to the money tree and pluck it off. We are not seeing that right now. The tree is fruitless at this moment. Give it a chance to bloom and blossom. There is a harvest time, there is a time to plant, a time to sow, and a time to reap. And right now, you just got to wait. There is nothing wrong with that.

There is no reason for you to be in a 100-mile-an-hour hurry to go out there and blow your funded account or go into severe drawdown. We are not in an environment where the market is moving fast and loose. That is when the market is high probability. Everything will work like it is supposed to. Everything will be easy to see.

But right now, even for the guy that is running the show, I am telling you: I can't touch it. You might say, "But ICT, you said that you know the algorithm." Yes, that is exactly why I am sitting still—because it is not going to do anything right now. What is so hard to understand about that?

There are signatures that I look for in price action. If price is not showing me those signatures, it is indicating that I should not touch it. It will chop and bang around, run up and down, taking liquidity on the nearest short-term basis, and frustrate you.

It won't run for specific price levels that I teach right now. It will have deeper retracements, sharper retracements, all the while not doing very much in terms of price runs. So it is not something to be wrestling with. Just submit to it.

Until we leave this range, we are in a very, very small, intraday scalper's market. And when that is in existence, you are forced to either trade that way or lose money. Think about any position traders or swing traders trying to position themselves in this price action. I am sure they have been chopped up—lots of examples of hoping it runs here, hoping it runs there, and then getting stopped out.

The mechanics behind what goes on would have to be something outside of what is the only way it can happen: large order flow, deep pockets. That is the dance between liquidity providers and where the market wants to go.

These markets will allow deep pocket order flow to exist for a period of time. And then that tide, or that trend—if you want to call it that—that momentum will shift, and they will move against it. That upsets present sentiment and engages new liquidity constantly.

So that ebb and flow in delivery of price that these price engines deliver... it inspires new order flow by the big funds, the large funds—people with more money than you have in your little contract trades in here. And collectively as a retail trader, we are doing very little in terms of the scope and magnitude of the volume that enters these markets.

So these price engines are not there to inspire your trade. But by default, it does. It is meant to inspire the new position or the collapsing of existing positions in large positions—Whales. Think of it like that, okay?

Because that is always going to be a factor, because money is an interest to everyone. There is nothing wrong with that. It is the love of money that is the root of all evil, but using money and having money and acquiring more of it—that is not evil, that is not sin.

But if we are paying attention to how these markets work, there is always going to be a seek for yield—some measure of income and interest-bearing instrument. There is going to be a constant seeking of profit. That is never going to go away. Before the markets were there, there were people buying and selling things all the time.

So what you are saying is: greed is going to no longer exist. Because that is exactly what you are saying. If you are saying that by me teaching this and showing you how the markets really book, you are saying that I am going to single-handedly remove greed.

That is not going to happen, folks. Money is always going to be sought after. And when there is lots of it to be made, big deep pockets are going to be trying to go after it. But right now, that is why I am asking this... this is why I get folks that are adamant against me talking about anything outside of a chart. But all these things I talk about are going to be factors.

By preparing for scenarios that allow for the highest probability for you to profit, and understanding where the snares are, you learn where the pitfalls lie. You identify the things that are likely to do harm to you, and you avoid that. Don't even walk in that area; don't even venture into that jungle.

And right now, the way the markets are behaving, it is literally like taking a blood bath and walking into the jungle, waiting to be devoured by the first thing that gets its claws into you.

And then, wondering as you are being eaten alive: "Why did this happen? Who is responsible for this? Who can I blame for this? Someone owes me restitution."

No. You made a very poor choice. You were ill-equipped. You went into a dangerous condition and situation assuming that you would survive it and have no harm done to yourself. That is the equivalent—mentally—of what you are doing right now by trying to trade in this environment. How hard is that to understand?

Now, for those of you that are quiet, didn't say anything to me, and you hurt yourself—lost money, went into drawdown, lost your funded account, failed your funded account challenge...

You know that every box I toggled as we went through this discussion was the truth. And yet, you still pushed the button.

Who is responsible for that? I wasn't even around here. I have been away. And yet, some of you, if you were being honest... if someone asked you, you would be blaming me.

When we are in high probability conditions and low resistance liquidity runs, that means that the market is really easy—like butter. It slides right on into where you want it to go.

It is easy to see it happening, it is easy to see what it wants to do. It is easy to see the entry points; everything is easier there.

Then you will hear the adjectives come out: the boom.

I will tell you again: this is not something to be viewed as skill, because it is just coincidence that it happened to deliver. It is outside the model's rules. How hard is that to understand?

In this environment, we are seeing people that don't really know what they are doing getting lucky, and then claiming it is skill. And some of you fall victim to believing that stuff. I did too as a 20-year-old; I thought everybody showing me results was being honest and that they were actually able to do that consistently.

I am absolutely 100% being transparent with you. If I see it coming, I will tell you. If I don't see it, I am going to tell you: I can't see it right now.

And that is not an algorithm being changed. It is not me being the catalyst for the entire monetary system being restructured and done all over again. It just means that we are in a consolidation, folks. That is all it means. And it will not last forever. But you have to submit to it; you have to wait for whatever catalyst is going to be used to move us outside that range and get us moving around again. You just have to wait for it.

You cannot impose your will on the sands of time right now. They are going to drop at the same speed; they are always dropping at the same speed. But regarding your perspective of it... when there is a lot of sand in the upper portion of the hourglass, things feel like they are moving real, real slow. But that same grain of sand is still dropping at the same capacity and speed. It is always doing the same thing.

But your perception shifts when you lose more of that sand—you feel rushed. And you are doing that with your challenges for your funded account, trying to rush to the state of being able to make money. "I gotta get funded now to start taking money out. I gotta trade one more day, I gotta do five days of trading, I gotta do this."

All these things are time constraints. They are there for you to blow it. That is why those rules are there. They are not there for you to succeed. So you have to turn everything upside down and look at it for what it is. They are speed bumps, they are barriers; they are in place so that the funded account provider doesn't have to be paying you anything.

For the folks who are trading with real money, the same thing happens with you. You are thinking, "It's been a while since I've had a winning trade. I need something, I need to be encouraged."

Well, you should be encouraged by the fact that you are not rushing in, doing anything right now, and gambling. That is the mindset you should have.

So there are rules to this game, there are rules of engagement that you are going to have to submit to. And if you don't, you will pay the price.

If you don't have these rules written out and follow them, you will not measure your growth—not psychologically, not monetarily. You will have no measure of knowing what it is you should be expecting in terms of progress.

How much have you grown in the last few weeks? Some of you want to quit. You are regretting ever starting because you think it is impossible. I am just trying to tell you to take a step back, go back to that daily chart. And as I mentioned last week, price needs to leave that range.

I promise you, when it is out of that range and we are moving freely again, all this stuff will be easier to see in price action. You will think to yourself, "Man, I was sweating it back then." And it has only been two weeks.

You are trying to take your entire career—your entire lifetime as a trader—and encapsulate that in terms of two weeks. You believe the success or failure of your entire journey hinges on the outcome of these two five-day periods.

Certainly, when you think about it like that... it is all perspective. And I did that to myself many, many times as a young man. It skewed my perspective, and it skewed my understanding of where I was in my growth.

And you don't want to do that because it stunts your growth. You will trick yourself into thinking there is an emergency when there isn't. You will trick yourself into thinking there is an opportunity when there isn't.

And you have to be very comfortable in your own skin, knowing that it is okay for you not to do anything.

If other people are doing something and they are making money, be happy for them. Be glad that they didn't get hurt right now, because it is too easy to do it to yourself or themselves. And if they want to pretend it is skill, let them. What are you going to do? You are not going to change their mind about it.

Arguing with them is toxic. Let them be themselves. I am just telling you from personal experience, having mentored hundreds of thousands of people and having been in this industry for three decades...

Experiencing it myself, pushing in this environment eventually will do its work: you will have your wings clipped.

You have to submit to this Sands of Time. And regarding where you are in that, it is always happening at the same speed, at the same rate of descent from the upper portion of the hourglass to the lower. It is never really speeding up. But how much time you have left in the upper portion is going to have an impact.

And don't look at your trading like you have to rush to get somewhere; you are not in the right state of mind when you do that. You are going to impulsively do things.

As soon as you allow impulse, emotion, and psychological wrestling matches because you are trying to keep up with someone else's performance, or trying to live up to someone's expectation—like signal providers...

You do what you got to do. If it means taking your computers and telling your spouse, "Hey, look, here's a power cord. Hold on to this until next Friday, or next Friday after that," or whatever.

And commit to them. Say, "You know what, I'm going to invest more time into you, instead of doing this, because I have to physically remove myself from the impulsiveness that's likely to occur."

If I look at the price action right now, everything in my system—that I haven't grown in trusting yet—everything in my model tells me I shouldn't do it. But I don't have the experience to listen to it yet. I might do something to myself by pushing a button that I shouldn't be pushing.

I'm going to engage a marketplace that I know, by all rules and face value, I should not touch. But I might see something that will lure me into thinking, "Oh, it's going to really run now. And if I don't take this, I'm going to be regretful."

How about if you weren't there? Looking at it when you know it's not likely to be there anyway? You can't feel that impulsiveness if you aren't looking at it.

The beginning of Alexander Elder's book, Trading for a Living, in my opinion, nails the psychology and the real effects of why we do things impulsively. Alexander Elder nailed it.

I grew up in an environment where the majority of my family members were alcoholics. They were often "functioning alcoholics," meaning they could keep a job. They were able to work while being an alcoholic. But as soon as the time for going off duty happened, they were on their way to the bar, getting liquor, or stopping at the liquor store to bring it home and drink all night long. Weekdays... and on the weekend? Forget about it. They were "wet," frightened, carrying on, and acting the fool.

That was the environment I grew up in. So I told myself I was never going to do that. But that book, where he talks about alcoholism and the struggle of overcoming that addiction—that resonated with me. Because that is where the rubber meets the road. That is a grassroots, real issue that I often wished educators I liked reading would go into, but nobody ever did. But Alexander Elder did.

So whenever I am asked, "What is the best psychological book out there?" It is the first part of that book. The technical stuff, the triple screen stuff... that is okay, you know, but that is useless to you if you cannot control yourself and your impulsiveness.

Everybody has an addiction. Everybody. Every single one of us as a human being is addicted to something. For some of you, it might be the fact that I am producing content; you may be addicted to that because you are pursuing something, and you like what you are learning here, and you like the community. However, given enough time, if you are not behaving in the manner you are being taught and you are breaking the rules, you will learn to hate this community. You will hate me because you are going to look for something outward—outside of yourself—to blame instead of assuming the responsibility that is required.

The rules I am giving you are there for you to learn properly and eventually not need me. But so many of you want to behave like the alcoholism does to an alcoholic. You know, "I can't drink while I'm on duty, but man, I am counting down the time looking at the clock." Almost quitting time... it's happy hour. And you can't wait to get another drink.

Is your trading like that? Are you thirsty constantly for a new setup? Because you are addicted if you are. And chances are, if you feel that way, you are not going to stick to the rules that I am giving you—or anyone else will—and you will not succeed. You will fall victim to this environment right here. This climate right here is that moment where an alcoholic feels like they want to escape.

They want to escape their marriage, they feel like they are in a rut. They want to leave the person they are with, they don't like their job, they don't like where they are in life. Maybe they lost their relationship and can't get it back. All those things start wearing them down emotionally and psychologically. And what do they do? They want to drink it away. They want to self-medicate.

Well, in trading, how do we do that? We push the button. Bottoms up, glasses up, baby. Push the button. "Here is a toast to you, ICT."

Listen, I do not want you to send me your winning trades right now. I don't want you to do that. Because I do not believe this is an environment that is conducive for high probability. And to give you a high five right now would be equivalent to saying, "Hey, let me fill your gas tank up before you go home driving drunk."

If you are impulsively looking to do something right now, and you just can't wait to do it, you are addicted. And you are trying to do something that is outside of what I taught. And if you have something bad happen, you eat it. You own it. It's yours. You drove drunk.

You are looking at this and you cannot weather the time that is required to wait. Your impatience is wearing on you. You can't stand the way the market is moving, and you just simply want to get out of it. And the only way you think you can get out of it is by simply pushing the button and seeing what happens. And that is gambling. That is another form of addiction.

So if you have ever read the book Trading for a Living by Alexander Elder, my advice is to read the whole book. But the things about the indicators and stuff? Throw that out. It is all BS; you don't need any of that. The view of three timeframes? That is wonderful, and that was my initial introduction to multiple timeframe analysis. But I don't just do three timeframes; I am looking at other things.

The real gem in that book is all the boring stuff in the beginning. If you read it and try to place yourself inside of that, ask yourself: How do you fit into all that? You as a person, you as a trader? What can you do to avoid those things that would do you harm by not using the logic that is being introduced in that portion of the book?

I have maintained that ever since I was asked by other people, "What trading books do you like?" None of them. No trading book out there was a complete 100% slam dunk.

I like Street Smarts because it provided short little patterns right to the point—things to go on and study price action with. But I don't trade with any of it. I made money with the Anti-Pattern that is in that book. I made money with my version of Turtle Soup. But I didn't like the whole rule of 20-day high and 20-day low, because I could see that forming on a five-minute chart. So I am not using 20 days. They are using Turtle Soup Plus One, which is a new 21-day high and low.

I am not trying to teach chart patterns, but the patterns in Street Smarts were helpful for me to create a model that is right to the point. That sounds like an oxymoron coming from me—"You are never to the point, ICT. You never just spell it out."

Well, I did. In 2022, I gave you a very specific model. It is easy to follow if you wait for those conditions. But the problem is, you don't have the discipline to wait.

Doing things in an environment like this is uncomfortable, isn't it? Waiting like this is uncomfortable. Waiting like this and not having me tweet to you is, for some of you, unbearable. And what are you going to do to occupy your time? The same thing an alcoholic does? Grab a bottle and toss one back?

What have you done since you have been doing that? Have you grown? Did you profit? Did you feel good about what you did, even if you did win? And can you really, honestly say that that was skill?

To me, problems manifest themselves in this environment for someone who is irresponsible, not disciplined, and not rule-based. It invites chaos. It invites it, it greets it with a kiss. You don't want that in your trading.

You want boring, easy, salad days trading, where price just simply wants to get right where you think it is going to go. And it is going to do so with multiple entry points. This is the reason why I said high probability trading with low resistance liquidity runs is easy to trade. Entry points are not even all that important because there are multiple ways to get in. You don't have to have the best entry.

But right now? Right now, you have to be perfect.

Are you perfect? I am not perfect. I know my limitations. And I know, as a mentor teaching the rules I have given you, I am not going to be able to fire on all cylinders every single day, perfectly leaving the day with my head up thinking I have done well. I don't have that right now.

So I am trying to be responsible as your educator, your mentor—the captain at the helm, if you will. I am trying to steer us around troubled waters. And some of you are arguing that you want to get wet. "I want to feel the lightning on my backside, just to see what it feels like. Drive us through it, ICT!"

I don't want to do that. I want you to respect the fact that you didn't have to go through the troubles that many people feel like they have to in order to understand not to do it. You don't need to have your arm ripped off. You don't need to blow your account, you don't need to lose your funded account, you don't need to fail your funded account challenges to appreciate that this is a hard market right now.

You should be thanking yourself: "Hey, look, I had the discipline to do nothing." And now, for some of you that were questioning whether you should have been doing that, you should feel better about it now.

I physically had to remove myself from this. Because I would trade it. I would try to exert my ego on it. Why? Because I have people watching me.

So I did the math on it. I said, "Well, no. I know my characteristics. I know my tendencies. I am impulsive. I am obsessively compulsive, and I have bipolar tendencies." I have everything that would be perfect to steer me right into the eye of the storm in this environment right now.

So, being true to what I have written down in my journals for years—praying about discipline, praying about strength—I had to walk away from it. This is like my drink for an alcoholic. I want to be in this environment every day with you, sharing a drink with you at the pub. I want that. I enjoy it. I enjoy our time together. I enjoy sharing.

But I can't do that right now. I have to take a step back. And I want you to appreciate the fact that I am being responsible not only with myself but for you as my viewers. I don't want you to fall victim to anything that is harmful.

I am not interested in the glitz and fame. If I was, I would still be doing it past November this year. I won't be doing it. I want to instill in you the right mindset. I want to walk the talk. And I want to show you everything that you are supposed to be doing—even if it is avoiding certain market environments.

That is what mentoring is. And that is why I have asked you all—whether you have the same faith as me or not—to pray for me. Because I don't want to be a catalyst that causes any of you to fall short of your goals or your success.

And also, I don't want you to foolishly try to attribute your failure to me. Because whatever you are doing, that result is yours. Whether it is good or bad, you own that. That is your responsibility. So I am doing everything I can within the realm of reality. I physically removed any enticement—no tweets, nothing—so I can't be accused of leading you astray.