Equity Concerns When Your Heavens Are Like Brass

Date: April 29, 2023

Outline

01:35 - What a chore to get this thing connected.

• Good morning and welcome to the show.
• Taking a leave of absence from trading.

04:08 - Keeping up with the Joneses and the pressure to prove yourself.

• Keeping up with the Joneses in america.
• The joys of doing live streaming.
• Taking his mind away from the market.
• Why it feels so much harder now.

10:03 - When you’re new to trading, it’s going to move a little bit.

• Fluctuations during the times of the day.
• The importance of being re-centered and recalibrated.
• Trading less than four handles a day.
• The importance of knowing where to hurt yourself.

15:31 - I don't like being told what to do and when I know my personal limitations.

• I don't like being told what to do.
• A gas station in south carolina.
• The look in his face was like, what?
• The car that drove up.

21:37 - What happens if you don’t agree with the second amendment?

• Knock on the RV and let the occupants know it's time to go.
• North carolina.
• What would have happened if it was you.
• What happens in ladies.
• The fuel that kept him going on the trip.
• The worst could have happened.

28:25 - When things start getting nuts, you need to be aware.

• Being aware of equity concerns.
• Deuteronomy, equity concerns when your heavens are brass.
• What to do when the market says no.
• The importance of having a model.

33:45 - The first ingredient to high probability is time -.

• Time is the first ingredient to high probability trading.
• The importance of being nimble.

36:24 - If I am left to my own devices, I have to prove myself.

• Being left to his own devices with mental illness.
• Being a sinner and repenting.
• Proud of what he's done, but not proud of some things.
• Low strike rate, low performance.
• I'm not obligated to you, but I love doing it.
• The line gets blurred.

44:12 - What happens when you get in a condition where you didn’t foresee the difficulty in price and now you’re in it.

• The danger of overnight trading.
• Praying god, please let this trade stop.
• Lessons can't be taught in a short amount of time.
• What happens after breaking up.

49:48 - You just know something's wrong, but you won’t admit it.

• Losing his first wife and feeling pressure to change.
• The importance of following rules.
• Faster, easier, faster, faster way to trade.
• The largest upheaval in the financial markets.

55:13 - Why you have to be aware of your own flaws -.

• Trading every week and not every day.
• The seven pound universe of gray matter.
• No one is exempt from this problem.
• Larry williams and one secret to short-term trading.

01:01:03 - What you want to avoid you are.

• Avoid the person who thinks this is a waste of time.
• The current market environment.
• Fear of paralysis, impulsive decisions and impulsive trading.
• Identifying weaknesses.
• John wick vs john wayne.
• The damage done in the last two weeks.

01:08:17 - When you come to grips with your failures, it’s liberating because then you start fixing them.

• The reason why most traders fail.
• The importance of journaling and journaling.

01:11:26 - You don’t have to fix your drawdown every day.

• Why trading every day is not the answer.
• Giving yourself permission to not trade.
• You don't have to fix your drawdown right now.
• Your conscience is telling you.

01:17:06 - Men don’t like losing money, women like losing it.

• The difference between men and women in trading.
• The five-handle rule.
• His first trade was impulsively in a market that he was never interested in.
• The first trade.

01:22:49 - Don’t learn how to trade with a demo account. Learn the broker with the demo and then go in with real money.

• Don't learn how to trade with a demo account.
• 81 ways to get into a trade.
• The best way to learn is in a closed-circuit environment.
• Stop listening to money millionaire mentors.
• 30 years of doing the same thing all the time.
• No shortcuts.

01:29:48 - Why I’m never charging ever again for education.

• Never charging for education anymore.
• The importance of unplugging from work and family.
• You can be wildly successful and be an utter failure.
• You need to learn lessons about money.

01:35:12 - You can’t hurry it up any faster.

• Laying down a legacy of safe, controlled trading.
• The importance of being patient.
• Everyone in the family is under the influence of alcohol and drugs.
• Trading with live money.

01:40:57 - If you don’t know yourself, you have no baseline.

• Knowing yourself is more important than knowing the market.
• Live money is not for everyone.
• Discovering who you are and what makes you impulsive.
• Finding coping mechanisms in trading.

01:45:00 - How to escape the pressure of wanting to do something you're not going to be able to do.

• Getting drunk in the markets.
• The new day opening gap trade.
• Weekly chart, volume and bounce on the weekly chart.
• Seasonal tendency to sell off in may.

01:50:52 - Fear of missing a trade -.

• Forecasting the quarterly shift in the chart.
• How to get back into the market.
• Learning to be rule-based.
• How many trading days next week and six months.

01:55:20 - What to do if you don’t want to be in this trade.

• The importance of sound logic in trading.
• Being comfortable with not knowing all the answers in beginning.
• Find your own unique approach to trading.
• Nothing better than precise, timely, precise precision.
• Listen, follow the rules and let time do its work.
• Get out of your comfort zone.

02:01:44 - Why are you stressing about stuff that has no real bearing on the success or failure of your future trading endeavor?

• The importance of being content with enough.
• The five-handles rule.
• Rebecca shares what keeps her motivated.
• Rebecca talks about the value of honesty.

02:07:32 - Be careful in the market -.

• A day before trade with the bond markets.
• Be careful in public now.
• Don't force it to take a week off.
• Knowing what to expect.
• The entry criteria for trading new week opening gaps.
• Seasonal tendency in trading.

It is very difficult to operate in an industry like this, where it requires you to be extremely focused and have no distractions. So to stave off that impulsiveness, I took a leave of absence and channeled that energy that would otherwise be utilized in markets that I knew, by experience and by the rules that I teach you, was going to be highly unfavorable.

Now, does that mean that the market stayed sideways and didn't move at all? There were no fluctuations at all? No, of course not. But I think you all know, now looking back at it, it was a little bit trickier than it has been in recent months.

And it is unfortunate for some of you that have pushed the envelope too much, trying to get your funded accounts and or make more money or try to keep up with the Joneses. This expression, if you are not familiar with that term in America, is kind of like trying to keep up with everybody else that is doing better—or pretending to be doing better. So if someone gets a car, you try to get a car that is like theirs or better than theirs; that type of thing.

As an individual with an internal chip on my shoulder where I feel like I have to prove something all the time—and that is rooted in my childhood, as I can't get my grandfather's approval since he basically raised me—I do a lot of things impulsively, and I am trying to garner something I can't obtain. So it is very difficult for me to have that impulsiveness in a market environment where I am not obligated to sit in front of you.

I would like to remind you all that I am not obligated to spend my time with you. And I don't mean that to be condescending. What I am saying is, I don't have any obligation to any of you. But I enjoy doing it.

Many of you are probably thinking to yourself: "Why does it feel so much harder right now? Why does it feel like I can't find a setup that makes sense? Or why are the setups that I am trying to get into not performing for me?"

You might ask, "What is different about this environment? Or what is different about the algorithm? Did it change? Did something happen? Did too many people learn it now?"

No. Sometimes the market will go into periods where it just simply has to stay put; it is basically sideways. When it does that, when it is in no immediate hurry to get anywhere, it is just going to grind sideways.

Now, it won't draw a perfect horizontal line. It is going to move and gyrate—a little bit here, a little bit there. You will see fluctuations during the times of the day that we look for, but they just won't be as clean. They won't be so trustworthy. I think that is the word I am looking for.

Now, there are times where I can see setups in this sloppiness and still ferret out a move here and there. But they won't be the 25-handle, 30-handle, or 50-handle runs that you have seen me do. They won't always be a 20-handle run. In fact, recently, even 10-handle runs have not been as frequent.

Now, right away, there are some of you that are trading who will bring out your report card that you have been doing while I was gone and say, "But look at this ICT, you are being too hard on yourself. The model speaks, the algorithm is still working, and I did this, and I did that."

That is fine. That is your trade. That is your setup. I am speaking to the individuals that didn't do it—the ones that need the encouragement that this needs to be recentered and recalibrated.

One or two days of not being able to find your footing is reasonable for a new trader; they think that is something within the realm of permissible. But a new developing trader cannot come to terms with the idea that a trading model, an approach to trading, or a mindset about price action might dictate that for two weeks, if not longer, there should be no trades taken.

They think, "Someone must be pushing a button somewhere," and they want to be in that group. That mindset—that approach of always being in something—is an unfortunate thing.

Because there is a time to sow and a time to reap. There are going to be times when you get into the marketplace...

Well, wait a minute. You might think, "Now I can do two handles, three handles, less than four handles, 20 or 30 times a day, because look at it, look, it's moving like that all the time." And then you will think more is better.

Whereas less is more. Less is optimal; less trade frequency is key. When you are new, you do not want to be placing yourself in conditions and in "opportunities." And I say that term opportunities loosely—I am doing quotes in the air with my fingers right now. You want to limit that in the beginning.

It doesn't sound productive to do that because it is going to feel like you want to be doing this constantly. You think, "Well, day trading must be everyday trading." And it is not.

If it is not high probability, then sure, you can get in here, get lucky, and attribute it to being a skillful trader navigating the treacherous waters of these markets. That is fine. Everybody is entitled to their own imagination. But I am trying to be practical and responsible as an educator to you, the listener, who doesn't know that yourself yet.

You came into this industry, this venture, listening to me drone on about things that probably could have been said in fewer words. But the more words, the better. Why? Because I am hammering down these principles. For the people that are really prepared and want to learn, they are willing to sit through it and listen.

Those that have done that, you see them doing exceedingly well. The industry has recognized them, and now they are making themselves known because of their results. They are not out there bragging.

But some of you want to be just a fraction of what they are finding in terms of success. Even that fraction requires a great deal of discipline. And you have to know yourself; you have to know where you are likely to do damage to yourself.

Where are you going to hurt yourself? In the beginning, everything. Everything has thorns and sharp edges. Every single thing out there is too hot to touch. So you have to wear protection.

And the protection that I am offering you is experience. Sometimes that experience isn't always fully appreciated by the masses because they want me to do certain things. They want me to perform tricks; they want me to do things that I am "obligated" to do.

But I don't like being told what to do. And I know my personal limitations, as a man and as a person.

As a trader, what are we doing? We are trying to increase that equity curve, trying to prevent it from declining.

And for new students, you are trying to never have a losing trade. And that is never going to happen; you are going to have a losing trade. The harder you work towards not getting a losing trade, the easier you are going to find one. Think about that. Because that is the truth.

The more things you try to hunt and research, or try to trade in a way where you think you are never going to take a loss, they will come to you far easier than if you were just to trade and accept the responsibilities of the risk, controlling that by only staying within your model's rules.

So how does this equate to anything? What do we do with this message here? Well, your equity concern is that you want to try to make money. You want to make the equity curve go up, you want to go higher on a leaderboard in a competition. You want to get a funded account challenge passed, you want to be able to get a certain payout. You want to be able to reach an equity high mile marker to be able to tell yourself that you can do this—show the universe on social media that you aren't a "demo baller."

All these things are contributing factors for you to make that equity curve go up. But what happens when the market says no? What are you going to do?

What are you going to do when the market is not showing you that it is a time for you to plant in risk? Because trading is planting in risk. You don't know—just like a farmer doesn't know—if that crop is going to yield anything. Think about it. They don't know. They are just doing the same thing they do all the time. They have a routine; they have a model.

Their model starts with this time of year. Right away, what does that talk about? Are they planting their corn, their wheat, their soybean, their oats, their okra, their potatoes? Do they plant that in December? Do they plant it when it is likely to frost and freeze? No.

Their model begins with time. While there is a time to do everything, you cannot do everything at any time. So a farmer knows at a certain time, his model dictates he is supposed to do something. And outside that time, he is not to do anything. And he is not upset about that because he is following his model.

You don't want to have this impulsiveness as a farmer to try to get ahead and plant before you are supposed to, and you don't want to be late. So the first emphasis was on time. That is exactly how I teach you how to read price action. The first ingredient to high probability is time. Is it time to do anything?

Now, I mentioned regarding that daily chart that we were in that range. And until we left it, we were in a scalper's market. And that means that you have to be very, very nimble on a one- or five-minute chart and try not to have these expectations to hold for the full daily range. There is a time for that. We weren't in it.

And that is why you saw these stagnant little choppy ranges where we would see a flutter here and there—sometimes 10 handles, maybe 15. But it was an erratic price delivery.

As a new student, I know that you don't have that skillset. You want it so badly. You want to be able to do it right now, and it feels like it is already a year late. That is the mentality and the motivation that you have as a new student. I understand that; that is exactly how I was. I wanted to figure it all out faster than I did. But you can't speed it up. And when I gave you the insight that we are in this range, it is not high probability. So you have to be careful.

The market was not interested in the things that I wanted to see on the high end, and on the low end, it was not interested either. So that told me immediately—unless something changes overnight—by Tuesday of two weeks ago, going into Wednesday morning, I'm not touching it.

So I had set plans in motion. If I have no interest in the market, what am I going to do? Because I already know the impulsiveness, the human aspect of me, the frailty of emotions, and the psychological effects of wanting to show you results will still be there.

Which is why I said: I have the best tools in trading, I have the best models in trading. And if I am trading in the optimal time, there is nobody that is going to trade better than me. That is not ego; that is the facts. You will experience that too.

But if I am left to my own devices as a human being with mental illness, where I always feel like I have to prove myself... and people like to play counselor to me, asking, "Why do you do this?" Don't ask me. I don't know why. But I have to. I am a dog chasing cars, and you are not going to fix me. A lot of people have tried good-hearted attempts, but that won't work with me. In fact, frankly, it pisses me off. I am going to be honest with you: I don't like when someone tries to mother me.

Now, I know a lot of you guys like to see me as a father figure. That is cool. But I am just trying to be a voice of reason. And if I don't follow my own rules, I can blow it just as easily as someone brand new.

It takes a great deal of effort on my part to stay disciplined. I always want to moonwalk on the grass that says, "Don't walk on it." I always want to do that. When someone says don't do something, I already have a dozen ways I am going to do it.

Now, we kind of define that as a Christian as a sinner. I am a sinner. And I have to repent every single day, multiple times. Because the things that I want to do, the things I think about wanting to do... it is not something that I would be proud of. And you probably wouldn't ever hear that from a mentor anywhere else. But I am real practical, even though sometimes I seem impractical to most people.

So I have to remove myself from that enticement. Because if I don't do that, I am left to my own devices. And then I would be in a position where I knew I would be in a trade where I shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't be in the market. You knew better, ICT. Why are you doing this?

Well, because I have something to prove. To whoever will listen. That is the humanity of me that I wrestle with all the time.

And for some of you younger folks—generally the young men—you have this same thing inside you. You want to get really, really good at this so that way you can go out there and stick your thumb in everybody's eye that didn't have a problem with you. You will create that audience because you feel like you have to do it. It is something inside of you that you can't cope with, and your coping mechanism is you want to do that.

Because then you will feel like you have arrived. But I am glad to hear that is not why I do what I do. I do it because I want to hear my grandfather telling me: "You done well. I'm proud of you."

And there are a lot of things I have done over the years as an educator and a teacher that I am not proud of. And I know that if he was able to see me and had seen what I have done, or heard some of the things I have said through ego, he would tell me that wasn't something that I would be proud of, or he would be proud of—which would scar me.

But left to my own devices over the last two weeks? I would have easily had an extremely low strike rate.

But me... Knowing me, knowing my tendencies, knowing how I'm going to interpret the climate, the environment... the ideas that I know are going to jump up in my head and say, "Okay, here's where you want to shine, ICT. This is where you want to go out there and show everybody else that they can't get on your level. When this thing is doing this, you do it."

I know that about me. I've done it for years—decades, I've done it. But there is something different about this now.

We have so many things looming on the horizon that can wreck these markets instantaneously. And I know that is coming. I know it is. And most of you, even without me saying so, you know it too.

But it is not a deterrent enough for you to say, "Oh, I'm not going to take a trade right now." Why? Because I see everybody else doing it, so I gotta do it.

I am 50 years old. I don't look at everyone else and say, "I want to do that because they're doing it." I look at my history. The human in me, the things I've always wrestled with.

And I know that every single time I've hurt myself, it is because I wanted to do something that was not asked of me in times where I should have done nothing, and I knew better.

What happens when you get into a condition where maybe you didn't foresee the difficulty in price, and now you are in it? And you just know that the trade you are in simply will not move. It hasn't hit your stop loss yet, but it won't move.

It is giving you every indication that it is not going to go for you. Not in the manner that you want in terms of profits; it is probably going to go for your stop.

But what do you do in that situation?

Well, I can tell you as a young man, I was many times praying: "God, please let this trade not stop me out."

I knew I should have gotten out of the trade. But I wouldn't take it off. What is the problem with that?

And I hope you can appreciate me using my own examples and not talking about things hypothetically, where you can feel victimized because you know you have gone through this yourself. But I want you to reflect on how you have endured this.

What were you doing? What were you thinking? What were you dismissing? You tell yourself: "Now, now, now... that is just me not being patient for the trade. That is not me following the model. So I gotta stick to my plan, my trading plan. I gotta push my edge."

See, when I was in those environments and in those trades, I didn't want to get out because I was afraid. I was afraid that if I got out, I would be wrong.

I was afraid to get out of the trades, even though I knew they were against me.

The probabilities have shifted. Are you aware of it? While you are in the trade?

That is what I am teaching you.

It is something that has to be endured. Certain lessons have to be walked. And you have to feel it. You have to have that uncertainty. You have to know what it feels like to be in that environment, and how you react to it.

Some of you won't have these instances where you feel powerless to get out of it. You will think, "Okay, this isn't working anymore. Let me just kill the trade."

That right there... That is excellence.

I wish I had that when I was younger. I didn't. I did not have that. I had no one telling me—like I am telling you right now listening—that that is what you want to do.

Believe me when I tell you: that is the answer. That is the solution. That is the thing you are supposed to be doing. And you are also indifferent to what happens after you get out.

It is like a bad relationship. What makes people go through all the turmoil after they break up with someone? When it is a bad relationship, and you break up, the person spends all that time afterwards when you are no longer together thinking, "What could have been if we stayed together?"

"If he just would have stayed in our bed and not ventured out and did something else... If she would just understand me..."

You are doing something that isn't going to result in anything except for misery. So why do the same thing in your trading? That is what you are doing.

You are recognizing—whether you realize it or not, even if you are new—you just know something is wrong. You do, but you won't admit it.

Just like I couldn't admit it. My grandfather recently passed away at the time when I started. So I had all of this pressure placed on me as a young man. I lost my father figure, I lost my first wife. And I had something to prove.

So I had all the most amazing disadvantages going into this class; I hated where I was in life. So I know what it is like to feel pressure to change the way you are, and where you are, and how you live. I know. I know what it is like to grow up and not have that family element supporting you.

You can have all of your disadvantages, all the excuses of why you think you won't be able to do this. And it is all a lie. That is something for you to reach for.

Why? Because you don't follow the rules. Because when I don't follow rules, I fail. I can fail just like the newest person that starts in this if I don't submit myself to the rules—engage when I am supposed to engage, and not engage when I am not supposed to engage.

Because I know me. This is why you cannot learn this in a workshop over a week. You can't learn this in a month. You can't learn it in 120 days. You can't learn it in six months. You can't learn it in one year. But at one year, you get a good foundation. And that is when the real learning starts.

And I have never one time sugar-coated that. And so many people out there are trying to take what I have taught—and am still actively teaching—and they are trying to condense it down to something to market it to people for the real fast approach.

I swear to God Almighty, if there was an easier, faster way, I would do it. It would come right out of my lips and it would be done. I wasted time in the beginning doing that.

Just like those environments... you want to be in a market environment where it is conducive for a Low Resistance Liquidity Run. Where it just runs real easy, like a hot knife through butter—just slices right through it, no problem at all, going right to where you knew it was going to go. And doing it faster than you were hoping it would do it.

That is what I am teaching you to look for. But they are not every day like that. Those exist sporadically in the right times and the right settings.

And because of all the uncertainty that we are seeing in the world right now... believe me, folks, we are witnessing the largest upheaval in the financial markets and financial systems—plural—globally. There has never been anything like what is out the door. So you have to be careful. And I am trying to be much more careful because of that.

But if you get yourself in a situation, you may not believe in God, but somehow those three letters will come out of your mouth. "Oh God. Oh Jesus." It is funny. I have listened to Muslims doing live streams, and they will alter His name, which is interesting.

What are you doing? You are looking outside yourself. And you are resisting. You are resisting the very thing that your conscience is telling you to do: Get the hell out of that trade.

You know what is coming. Regret. Loss. Pain. But you want to arm wrestle it. You don't want to seem weak. "I'm going down... they are going to carry me out on my shield!"

Well done. You blew your account. Maybe not on that trade, but the six or seven trades out of that one. That is what is coming. Why? Because you arm wrestled in an environment that you can't win.

See, my tools in the right setting are flawless. That is why I can call it to the tick. But have you noticed that it is not every single day that is like that?

You might say, "Wait, wait, wait, ICT. Stop right there. Your model is every week, every day, and it won't stop you, right?"

But the market you are trading—that particular market—won't be every week, every day. This setup is always occurring every day, and every week, somewhere.

"Oh, there you are out there saying 'of course'." I didn't say anything other than that. That is how it has always been.

When I was teaching Forex, and primarily focusing on Forex, I had two pairs. Euro might not go to the tick, but Cable (GBPUSD) did. And vice versa. And there were some times where both those two pairs that I worked with... sometimes Aussie Dollar did something perfect.

You can't have an everyday, day trading expectation of precision. You can't. You are just starting. Okay, you can't do that. In the beginning, you have so many obstacles in front of you, you have no idea the difficulty in this.

And it starts between your ears. And it remains between your ears. That seven-pound universe, that gray matter that we call our brain, has a wonderful, wonderful capability of telling you things at the wrong time. And sometimes it tells you exactly what you need to hear, and then you ignore it.

So if you are in market environments where—by rules, the ones I have taught you—it told you not to trade... and it breaks my heart to see these people tweeting to me: "I lost this much money... I am not trading well... Why did you do it?"

You know your own reasons. And that is the thing that everybody has to learn about themselves. But you want to pretend that you are not going to be that person, you are not going to be one of those statistics that have all these other flaws inside them.

Some of you may have mental illnesses that are beyond the scope of mine. And you will have to wrestle harder and do things much more... well, the word escapes me... it will be harder for you.

But you won't know that. You won't know that until you go through it.

No one is exempt from this. People fail because they don't incorporate their own flesh.

I have told everyone that has ever listened to me in the last three years: This is extremely hard.

30 years I have been doing this; these candlesticks are not new to me. But regarding the way the markets are behaving... anybody that has been trading for a period longer than two years or three years—some of you just now started, you have no idea what you are walking into, and how much harder it is.

Anyone that has been trading for a long period of time—and I am saying five years or more, I think that is a fair amount of time—you are not new. And you have seen market environments that are not like this. You know what I am talking about; you know exactly what I am referring to. And it is not some kind of cryptic message.

This market is behaving differently. It is going to be hard for you to learn in this environment. But learning in this environment will make you so much better. So much better than it was for me.

We had... well, by definition in terms of what we have seen in recent years regarding volatility, it was like a snail's crawl back then. Where if you got three handles on the day, you did well. That was a good move in the morning—three handles.

Three handles. People's stop losses are bigger than that now. But that is where it was back then.

But the volatility you have today needs to be respected. Because it can do wild stuff in a short span of time. And you will be in that situation, praying to a god you never believed in.

A new idea comes to mind. You are going to plant the seed again in that risk. But now the ground is like iron; you can't turn the soil over. You can't cultivate it.

You can't put a new trade on because why? Fear paralysis? What do you do in that situation?

See, as a new trader, a new developing student, you don't know what to do. So what are you going to be left to do? Impulsive decisions.

"Well, the miss is gone here... I figured it out. Now I'll find my way through it."

Yeah. Right on through another blown account. Well done.

How many times do you have to do that before you would learn a lesson?

We're in low probability. They're trying to pyramid to try and trade with larger leverage. They're trying to trade every session, every day.

"I try to trade every macro... ICT said between this time and this time there's gonna be a run... I'm getting in, I'm doing it."

Okay, you have to have some kind of premise to be acting on. You don't know what to expect. You're new, you have no idea what you're doing, trying to engage in an environment that I am not willing to touch myself.

So what is that teaching you about yourself? You're reckless. You're reckless and you're impulsive.

Are you willing to observe that and identify it? If that's who you are, and you are listening to me... are you willing to let yourself identify that weakness in you?

Trust me, it's okay to identify weaknesses. You want to do that in the comfort of a demo. That's why I teach like this, folks. You have no idea who you are.

You're gonna get in these markets and think you're John Wick. You're gonna go out there and get your ass kicked.

And you're frustrated. "I'll just reset my account, it's only $100 or so. And I was going to do the same thing I just did. Because all I did was enter too early or too late. Or I put my stop loss in the wrong position."

Wrong.

You are trading in an environment that is not conducive for high probability. But you can't see that, you can't recognize that, because you are not listening.

In a short span of time in the last two weeks, how much damage have you done?

Not me. Not your broker. Not the method or the concepts. How much damage did you do?

Oh, that is a roll call for responsibility that nobody wants to take initiative and stand up and say, "Yeah, I did it." But the ones that are ready to do that—they are ready to learn.

I ignored it too. I tried to find some kind of external reasons why I was failing as a young man. And I promise you, knowing what I know now, looking back... it was always me. There was no other contributing factor. It was me.

And when you come to grips with that, and you accept it, it is liberating. Because then, and only then, can you start fixing the issues. But you have to be able to identify them and stop ignoring them, or pretending they are not there.

That is the reason why you are not finding success. You are arm wrestling things that need to be dealt with in you, the person.

Every single one of my failed students are failures because they themselves won't listen. Because if what I teach is flawed logic, it wouldn't be the fastest thing spreading all over the industry in terms of trading. People would not be passing all these funded accounts, getting on leaderboards, taking wild withdrawals from their efforts doing it. They would all be failing.

What are they doing differently? They are taking it serious. They are treating it like a business. They are not in there gambling.

They are not in there thinking, "Well, all I gotta do is reset the account. All I gotta do is pay the 100 bucks reset. If I get an affiliate program, I can do it and I don't have to pay for the resets."

Think: where are you in all that? You have to do it yourself, and I can't do it for you. No mentor can, no teacher can do that.

You have to allow yourself the time to find out who you are, and how you are going to derail yourself. And you will. And you'll know right when it is about to happen. And that is why you are supposed to journal.

And for the folks that don't want to journal—"I don't have time for journaling, money doesn't make me get time to journal and write books"—I guarantee you these people don't make money consistently. I promise you, they don't make money.

Every high-tech position in the world, all of them keep data on their performance—KPIs. Every industry, every food producer, every commodity manufacturer or producer, any kind of company... they all have performance stats. That means they are doing what? They are journaling.

Now, for the folks that don't want to journal their trades and their development... doesn't that make you feel stupid? Like you are gonna walk through this and think, "No real effort, it is just going to fall in my lap. It's gonna be easy. Why do that? I got to spend time writing in journals? I can't make money on those old moves anyway... why?"

Like, why would you want to do that?

You are going to continuously work the rest of your life. And you are going to be even more miserable because you won't find success in this. And you won't be successful in your job. And you will be miserable the rest of your life.

You have been relegated to the shared desk with Carl. And the last thing you see before retirement is him smiling, saying, "I told you you'd never get out of here."

There is going to be times when your heavens are like brass. And the ground you stand on? Well, it's gonna be like iron.

What do you do?

You take a road trip. Maybe you take a road trip, you go on a fishing trip, you go into your hobbies that are outside the marketplace. Pour your time and attention into your family or your friends, apart from the market. It's good. It's good to do it.

It allows you to recalibrate and reset your mindset. And you give yourself permission to forgive yourself for not doing it sooner.

I am not obligated to do any of this for you. Just like you are not obligated to trade every day.

Have you ever given yourself permission? So I am giving it to you right now. You have my permission as your mentor to not trade every day. In fact, that should be a goal for you.

When you make money and you are new, stop. Let the week close in profit. That is a skill set. It is teaching patience. It is teaching you to be content with enough.

"But ICT, it was only $1,100... I could have made more."

Right. But did you make $1,100 at your job after taxes? No. So why are you going to risk it? You are not skilled yet. You are finding yourself.

You have to continuously instill this cheerleading mindset as you are growing into who you are eventually going to become as a trader. You have to cheerlead yourself. You have to do that through journaling.

Spend time looking at when you got it right. You are going to need those times. You are going to doubt yourself; you are going to doubt your future performance.

If you try to trade every single day and you start going into drawdown... here is a permission slip: You don't have to fix your drawdown right now.

What? Yeah. You don't have to.

Who says you had to do it right now? Who says you had to fix the drawdown and bring it completely back this week or this month?

Who said that?

You did.

So when your heavens are like brass, and you can't find your way out of the position you're in in terms of profit... close the trade.

As soon as you recognize that you feel like you got to pray for the outcome of that trade to be different than what you think is already going to happen... because you know, you are looking at the charts, you see it. Something in the underpinnings of the marketplace has shifted.

You recognize that. And now your conscience is telling you: it's time to hit the exit ramp.

You have to stop, remove yourself from the risk, and walk away from it.

And it doesn't mean immediately look for another pair or another market to trade and try to plant yourself in risk again. Because the ground you are standing on is now iron. You can't turn the soil over and place good money—in terms of seed for risk—and expect to get the results that you didn't make up in the first trade.

Why? Why not do that?

Because your mindset is now distorted because you feel performance anxiety. You put on a trade, and it didn't work for you.

So now—as a young man, especially... I noticed the ladies that are students of mine, they generally don't have this characteristic. They are willing to accept being wrong. They don't like when they lose money. That is the thing they don't like.

Whereas men? They don't like losing, but they don't mind taking on big losses. They don't like the aspect of it being wrong.

I see it as the men, they have this: They want to be right.

Women? Not so much. They don't care. They don't care about being right. They don't want to lose money.

Whereas men? They don't care about losing money. They could lose money, and as long as they ended the day being right, they are satisfied. They can go down into severe drawdown and come back.

"Yeah, look what I was able to do! I was down 38% intraday, took 16 trades. But the last two? I got it all back, baby!"

And the ladies in my fold? They do not ever want to go through major drawdown like that. And they don't care if they are wrong.

So where are you in that spectrum? Where are you in that mindset?

Some of you don't know; you haven't been doing it long enough. And that is why it takes a lot longer to learn this than everybody else promotes it to be.

They tell you, "You can be so successful, live the life of your dreams. It's the Lambo lifestyle." But none of them are telling you the adversities that you are going to go through. They are not going to tell you how to deal with it.

What is permissible? What is realistic? Five handles. Not a 200-to-1 risk-reward multiple setup.

Everything I teach you is meant to meet the practical expectations of meeting ends. Meeting one bill a month. Whatever the lowest bill is, that is what you aim for first.

But something happens in your mind when you first start dealing with these charts. You are demoing—or you are rushing through that part by never doing the demoing.

But the demoing is there to teach you. You are learning who you are in demo.

You have so many things going on in your mind that you are going to bring to this that are going to derail you. And you have to know what they are.

You cannot discover that without pain and loss, or building in fear and anxiety-inducing concerns for your equity. If you do that with live money, you are going to be scared money in the beginning.

You are wondering, "Why the hell does ICT have all these concepts?"

Because I had to cope with it. I wanted to have an arsenal. My weakness was the fear of knowing when to get in. So I got 81 ways to get into a trade. I know it like the back of my hand.

But I also know when it is likely to slap me around on that plane. No, thank you.

I have been there before; you haven't. You are too new. You don't even know what it looks like. But I am sharing that experience with you.

I am allowing you to find yourself in a closed-circuit environment where you are not incurring monetary risk. That is why I teach with a demo. That is why it is the best way to learn.

That is where you need to learn—in a laboratory experiment setting where you cannot lose money and build anxiety-inducing mindsets. That is going to be a prevention to you finding success.

How much plainer can I make it?

I show you where it is going to go. I execute on it. And I use the logic. And I am telling you, when it is not right for me, by example, I stop and walk away.

Think: Who do you want to learn from? Somebody that can walk the walk and talk the talk—and press stop? And know why, and have no concerns for it?

"Oh, I might miss something."

I don't have any Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO). You never hear me say, "Whoa, why did that happen? Why did that slap in the end just happen?"

No, I am not surprised by that. But I can go into a week where I am expecting certain things to happen, and they don't manifest. Okay. I am not surprised by that; I am just not interested.

See the difference there? That is experience. That is 30 years, baby, of doing the same stuff all the time, expecting the expected results at the end of it.

But if it is going to show me signatures that are not supporting what I am teaching you... that is an invitation for you to find a new way of doing nothing.

There is a learning curve to this that nobody really expects to exist until they step into it. And they don't like it.

It is a reminder to them that everything worth doing requires a lot more effort than you thought it was gonna take. There are no shortcuts to this, folks.

I am the shortcut. I promise you, even though it seems like it is long-winded all the time... This is the shortcut.

You cannot make it simpler than this. You are waiting for the market to go up to run stops or reprice to an inefficiency. It is going to drop to run stops or reprice to an inefficiency. Or it is going to go sideways.

And guess what? When the market is gonna go sideways... ICT is doing something else.

It is not always about money that you need to learn lessons about, because you can be wildly successful. You can be a pillar in the community of the industry that you are in and be an utter failure as a father, a husband, or a wife. And no amount of money—none of that—can wipe it away.

You have no idea how hard this industry is. Because you don't know how hard you are going to make it on yourself. That is the variable.

And nobody ever writes that in their books about everyone of them. They are never going to place that clarity on it. Because they have something else to sell later on.

And the reality is, if you were told this in the beginning, and you are not going to be willing to make the sacrifices... is it really worth this? You have to sacrifice your wants. Because you call them needs.

"Now I need to do this, ICT, you don't understand."

No, I understand. But you need to understand too: simply because you want it and you call it "needing it," that is already a problem.

Because when you say the word "need," it becomes: "I need to take a trade. I need to get that drawdown back right now. I need to go and reset my account. I need to do this, I need to do that..."

You don't need to do anything except for learn.

You need to listen to me. I am not giving you bad advice. I am not trying to prolong your success. I am not trying to steer you away from something else that might be better—because if you can find it, go do it.

Learning how to do this in a safe setting, and then watching students walk out there in the real world and put it to task... And they are changing their lives with it, independent of whatever I think is going to be in the marketplace. That is awesome.

Your success story is waiting. But you can't hurry it up. You can't assure it comes any faster than it is going to be. And the speed at which you receive it or get to it is unique to you.

And be comfortable with that. The harder you push to make it sooner, you are just pushing it further down the line. I swear that is the way it is.

You start to enjoy the process, go through it. And one day, you will know you are ready. You won't feel impulsive about anything. You are comfortable, you will be able to navigate, and you will notice the market condition right now and say, "You don't want to touch it."

And you don't care who else is making money. Who cares? "Well done. Good job that you made money." That doesn't mean I have to do anything, and it doesn't mean I am less of a trader.

That is not what you see on social media. I don't want you to think that way. I don't promote that idea. Your results are yours.

I can't sleep in your bed and wrestle with falling asleep because of the drawdown you have taken on. And I can't relish in the successes of the profits that you made in your trades, because I didn't incur the risk.

So why are you trying to do that with other people's results? You are minding their business. They are minding theirs. You mine yours.

Some of you won't... you certainly won't ever be in business because you are doing stupid stuff like that. You are trying to keep up with the Joneses. You are rushing too soon.

And then when you find yourself in a situation where you know in your heart that you are rushing, you shouldn't be there risking real money or trying to get a funded account passed. You don't know what you are doing yet.

Why even bother with that until you know exactly what you are doing and how you are going to mess yourself up? You have to learn who you are.

The last time we talked, I said to you that Alexander Elder's book, Trading for a Living, and the first portion of that book, in my opinion, is the best part. It talks about alcoholism and the effects of it, and the way it affects people, families, relationships, and a business.

I have never been drunk in my life. But I have watched everybody in my family be under the influence of either drugs or alcohol. And you would be surprised to see how some of them were totally different people when they are drunk. Absolutely—you would never recognize that is the same person. Totally nasty drunks, bat-crazy, violent drunks.

And they would say, "Oh, that's the whiskey talking."

No, that is not the whiskey talking. Whiskey just numbs them enough to let them have no inhibitions. Without inhibitions, the real person manifests themselves.

And that is what happens when you get with trading with live money. You are drunk.

You are driving drunk right now, with a live account. With no experience. You are under the influence of what? Trying to make money. And nobody is there that can take the keys from you.

So you have to know these things before you do it. Because you don't want to find out that you are a nasty, violent drunk that crashes when you get with live money.

That is why you have to do this in demo. You are going to find your character flaws.

That causes those same individuals to go to alcohol to self-medicate. They know what is going on, but they won't share it with anybody to help get themselves through it.

Relationship issues, midlife crisis, anxiety—generalized anxiety, I am sure, is a major contributing factor. But all those things, and other things... the list is too long.

You have been hurt, you have been scarred, a bad relationship, you broke up, you are lonely... whatever that is, it leads them to alcohol or substance abuse. And trading is in that too. It is the same thing, folks. It is the same thing.

The point is trading with live money. If you don't know yourself, you don't know your model. And you don't know the way the market is behaving.

And you haven't seen at least four quarters or a full year of what seasonality looks like. You have no baseline; you have no idea.

So that is equivalent to you flying into a city you have never been to, heartbroken. Angry because someone else left you, you got fired. You got a cancer diagnosis—six months to live. And now you are in a hotel where there is a high-end bar right across the street.

What are you going to do? Go there and medicate yourself?

But how are you going to conduct yourself after that? You don't know. So why would you do that with live money?

You don't know what you are going to do to yourself, and you don't know the consequences that you are going to bring on yourself as a result of whatever it is you do while you are drunk.

Trading with live money... losing that... that pain that is going to bring? One, because you weren't ready. And you are going to know that you weren't ready because you were ignoring what you knew beforehand.

And that is gonna present all kinds of scar tissue that is gonna promote you to do what? Make bad decisions. And now you have fear.

When I am teaching my students to operate and learn about themselves in a demo—that is what the demo is there for.

The demo is there for you to discover who you are. What makes you tick? Where are you impulsive?

See, that is what it takes to do this. And anybody who tells you otherwise is full of shit. And this is the way it is. They have some kind of ulterior motive. They have something to sell you. They want to derail you.

But I am telling you, you can do this. But you are gonna have to submit to a lot more time than you want to.

But once you learn how to do it, and you know what sets you off... What makes you feel impulsive? What are the triggering mechanisms in your personal life? In your thinking?

Are you wrestling with a mental illness that makes you do certain things that are not supportive for a successful endeavor in trading? That means you have to now find coping mechanisms.

Are you a drunk? Are you a drug user? If you are, you need to tackle that because trading will not work with that.

Are you in a toxic relationship? If it is that you are in a toxic relationship, you either fix the relationship or leave it. And if you have been removed against your choice from a relationship because they left you, or you had to leave because it was toxic... you have to let that go.

You have to forgive them and forgive yourself and move on.

Because if you are feeling all those things—those pressures and regrets and "what if" thinking... "If we stayed together? What if I would have left sooner, would it have been so much better?"

You got to stop. Because all those things are going to trigger you to want to feel better. And to feel better, you escape.

That is what I did. I got in an RV. And I escaped the pressure of me wanting to do something I know my rules say I am not going to be able to do. So I take myself away from it.

I have never been drunk before. But I get drunk in these markets. Because I get a bloodlust. I know what I can do in here.

The trade that I did yesterday, I told you what the ES was going to do. In tweets, I said I would like to see the New Day Opening Gap, which is the difference between where Friday's... well, not Friday, but where the 5 PM closing price is, and then the restart at 6 PM Eastern Time. That is the New Day Opening Gap.

Friday, we didn't completely close that in, and we traded lower. And we traded down into the gap—a Fair Value Gap on the five-minute chart set the stage for a rally up into the New Day Opening Gap and then that Buy-side Liquidity pool.

And there is a Volume Imbalance on the weekly chart.

You will see on the weekly chart: Monday, August 15 of 2022. It is a down-close weekly candle. And then the next candle is down, starting Monday, August 22.

Okay, there is a wick that doesn't come all the way back up to the previous week's low; there is a little bit of a gap there. That is a real gap. That is a real Liquidity Void.

That is real liquidity. And the fact that those two bodies of those respective candles don't connect—you want to have that entire range highlighted on ES because that is where we are likely to go.

And if you look at the Fair Value Gap that is on March 27 of 2023 on that same weekly chart, the only thing we did was we traded down into that, and then that is why you see it going higher.

Now, I also stated that we are going into May, and during the month of May going into June, traditionally that is a seasonal tendency for it to sell off and move lower.

I am thinking that we might pump up into the high on ES for January 30. That high, or that wick on the weekly chart—that Consequent Encroachment—we have gone through it two subsequent weeks after that on the upside. So because of that, I am favoring more the January 30 high and then the Volume Imbalance that this gave you on the weekly chart.

So that range—that small, little actual gap between the August 15 weekly low and the August 22 weekly high—that small little gap up there. We could go up to that, and how we trade there... you know, that is gonna be what I'm watching.

But if we do have the seasonal tendency for May going into June... if you look at the Relative Equal Lows on ES—those being December 19 of 2022 and the low on March 13 of 2023—there is Sell-side Liquidity there.

So if we do have a weakness in ES and the seasonal tendency does materialize going into the month of May into the second week of June, that is where it would draw to.

So I am kind of like forecasting the quarterly shift before it is in the chart. So I am not saying it is going to happen, but that is what I am anticipating.

So therefore, I would like to see things get in alignment with that.

But obviously, I can trade against that, because it hasn't really... it hasn't manifested itself yet.

Yesterday, I gave you an outline on Twitter, where I was going to go near the New Day Opening Gap, and in there, the Buy-side Liquidity pool.

And because of my fatigue... the entry... I moved my stop up too soon. And it came down and stopped me out.

But the conditions were still there. So I simply just re-entered.

And I saw you focusing on: "What was it? What was the entry criteria? How did you get back into it?"

And you know, whatever the idea of what I outlined... that was going to be the Draw on Liquidity.

And we had already traded to an Old New Week Opening Gap high multiple times. And we had three times that it traded lower on a one-to-five minute chart. So Sell-side was wiped out.

So the inefficiency is going to be on the Buy-side. So reaching higher... how high can it go? To the Old New Week Opening Gap, to the New Day Opening Gap, and to old Buy-side Liquidity. Higher and higher. That is basically what I tweeted.

So I have ways of trading—getting into a setup—that aren't going to be always explained to you. But the models that I teach, if you stay with that...

I told you, as a student, I told you to wait until the Silver Bullet forms. The Silver Bullet is highlighted in that Fair Value Gap (FVG).

When I am usually doing a Fair Value Gap for, like, bullishness, it will either be like a light blue, or sometimes—if I am not using blue—it's going to be green.

If I am looking for something that is bearish, it is just going to be some hue or color that is red.

I highlighted that fair value gap in the recording. That is the one that was going to be used for Silver Bullet. And you can see it does in fact deliver it on that basis; it goes and runs up and goes higher.

You are learning to be rule-based. I have lots of rules, I have lots of models, I have lots of approaches to trading. I am not limited to that. And because I have been away from the marketplace, I have to get myself back in alignment.

So if I see something, I am going to... I am going to get it because I have 81 ways to get into a trade. So I don't have a fear of missing a trade. I never, ever, ever have a fear of missing a trade.

You may not have one of my entry mechanisms; you have a number of them. But you won't have fear of missing out because I am giving you time-based setups.

Between 10 o'clock in the morning and 11 o'clock in the morning, there is a fair value gap that will reach for inefficiencies or liquidity. That happens every day. Every single day that will form.

Between two o'clock and three o'clock, every single day. Every single trading day. There will be the same type of setup today as your PM Silver Bullet.

We stuck them in real deep in these lectures because the weak ones won't listen.

The idea of fearing a missed move... there is no reason to fear that.

How many trading days next week? Six months from now, how many trading days are going to have a 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock window? And how many of them are going to have a two o'clock to three o'clock window of opportunity?

And that is a trick question. But sit down, you are going to have to prepare yourself for this.

But every single one of them. Every single one of them have that.

So why, pray tell, would you ever fear missing a move?

That is what a neophyte does. That is a hallmark.

For someone that says, "I don't want to be in this trade... I know, I know, if I stay with you, I am going to be a loss. But I know also, if I get out, it is going to move."

What? That is what they are talking to you with. They are telling you those things. They are literally telling you in no uncertain terms: they have no idea what they are doing.

Why listen? Their results are not rooted in sound logic. It is just happenstance.

And I had nine months—nine months of happenstance, initially. I had that, and it evaporated.

So you want to have logic. You want sound logic as to why you are taking a trade, and you want to be doing it with a rule-based idea that you have worked with for months, that you have grown accustomed to.

When it doesn't work for you, because you are floundering in the beginning, you have no idea what you are doing... but you are not beating yourself up.

Why? Because you are not losing money. You are not wasting the mortgage money.

Your spouse is going to be upset with you because you have wasted some money that should have been used for some other things around the home.

If you just listen to me, I am going to keep you out of trouble. Your spouse can't be upset with you, because you didn't waste any money. I am not charging you any money. I am teaching you a life skill that is absolutely going to benefit you in more ways than you realize.

But you can't do things outside of what I am telling you to do and what not to do. If you do, you are teaching yourself.

The results are yours. And when you fail, don't ascribe that to me.

The folks that listen to me do everything I tell you to do and what not to do, and how to progress in practice and study and learn in a demo account.

Stop listening to people complain about, "I'm teaching you in a demo account... why doesn't this guy trade with a live account?"

Why can't you be as accurate as I am?

Be comfortable with discovering who you are. Be comfortable with not knowing all the answers in the beginning. Because you will learn them; you will find your own unique approach to doing this with everything that everyone else has been exposed to with my content.

You might not want to trade a 2022 Model. You might use an Optimal Trade Entry (OTE). You might just simply do a Bullish Breaker or Bearish Breaker.

It is enough for you during 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock. If a breaker forms, okay, there is nothing wrong with that. You just won't get the better fill that the fair value gap would give you.

So it is a matter of letting your own personal tastes and your own personality dictate what you are going to do. That way, you don't feel pressed into a mold and have the same feelings I had, where I felt I can only trade "what this guy said in this book."

And if it didn't make sense to me, I wasted all that time forcing something that wasn't fitting me. It didn't fit me.

And that is why I am practical. I know I am not the best mentor out there. I am not. I have always maintained that. That is something I wish I was better at.

But nothing out there is better than what my concepts do.

There is nothing better than precise, timely precision, sound logic, understanding liquidity, understanding the algorithmic macros that really start these moves. They are predictable.

And you can rest assured that there is much more coming this year. And what I have already given you is more than you will ever find in any other medium. No other teacher, no other resource, no other approach is going to get this much detail that removes all the things you are worrying about.

You are worried about, "What happens if this?" and "What happens if that?"

How about: What if you just listen?

Follow the rules and let time do its work. Let's do that. Hear me, okay?

Spend this year doing what I am telling you to do and avoid the things I am telling you to avoid. And then come at me with your questions.

Because I promise you, you are going to see results that you can't appreciate now because you don't know what is coming. You don't know where your discoveries are going to be in yourself.

Many of them might be painful, but don't run from them. Don't hide from them.

You don't want to be in a situation where you are trying to pray your way out of a situation that you put yourself into. And your conscience is telling you: "Get out of it." Just simply get out.

If you have the thought process of: "If I get out of this... or when I get out of this... I know it's gonna move."

You don't know what you are doing. You are not content with the model. So you are greedy. You are being greedy.

"I know if I dump this trade—I am in profit right now—but I know as soon as I close this trade, it is going to run."

If you vocalize that outwardly, if you type that into any kind of social media... that is the surest testimony that you don't know what you are doing.

You have work to do. Refine that. Why is it that you feel that way? What are you lacking?

Targeting? Time of Day? Day of Week?

It is simple—but you can't appreciate that until you wrestle with it. And then, when you come to terms with it, and you understand...

"Oh, well, I don't have to be concerned about if I get out of it and it runs. Because the setups that I use? They are time-based. And they form every day, within a 60-minute window."

What am I worried about?

Like you are never going to have another 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock period ever in trading? Like there is never going to be another trading day that never has that time window aspect?

Even on holiday schedules, there is a 10 to 11 because they shut that down at noon.

Silver Bullet. That is why it is named.

Then you have a full trading day. You have one again between two o'clock and three o'clock.

That can be your entire model. Why are you stressing?

You are worried about stuff that has no real bearing on the success or failure of your future trading endeavor. You are making mountains out of molehills, worrying about stuff.

It is eating up energy, time, and concern.

When in doubt, stay out. When in doubt, get out.

There are so many statistically provable instances... go back in time, don't just take my word for this. Go back and look at it. It is always there.

Be content with enough. What is enough, ICT?

Five handles in the beginning.

I did not say stop at five handles and never get any more than that. My audience members are people that don't know what they are doing. And they have never done this before.

But you can do exceedingly well with five handles.

Imagine if you just did five handles in the morning and five handles in the afternoon. And you did that twice a week.

What kind of impact would that have with just one mini contract? We are not talking about five contracts or 15 contracts just because the funded account says you can trade that many.

What would it do for you? A lot?

What would it do if you just got one of them a week? And you had the discipline to stop, and you were consistent with doing that?

How is that failure?

But is it busy in your mind already saying, "That's not enough"? Because you see me and other students doing way more than that?

That is incorrect. That is toxic logic.

You can't think like that in the beginning. That is what gets everybody in trouble.

And you are gonna find yourself in that situation where your heavens are like brass and you are gonna be praying: "Please fix this... please help me get better at this... please, please, please..."

Even atheists find a way to start talking to Jesus then.

Completely avoidable. Completely avoidable if you feel that way.

If you feel completely disconnected from the market, you just can't focus... stop.

It is going to be there. I promise you.

You have to know when to stop and be comfortable with it. And if you feel like you are not able to find your way... everything you are trying to do doesn't seem to be working... Don't force it.

Take a week off. Simply just unplug.

Don't even watch my videos. Don't watch my Twitter Space or Twitter feed—don't even look at my tweets. Okay? Deactivate notifications. That way, you can't be enticed to look at what's going on.

And take a week off. The markets are not going to change; the algorithms won't stop working. Rather, it is going to be there when you come back.

But what is different is: you are gonna come back with a fresh perspective.

You come in, and it is like a car after being washed. It just looks good. Feels good to be in it.

And yesterday, I knew what I was looking for. I knew what to expect. I saw it.

And notice the difference between that and two weeks ago on that Monday and Tuesday. I was giving you levels I wanted to see price gravitate towards. Versus yesterday, where I mapped that out and showed your chart... that is different.

That is knowing what you want to see happen in price because everything is indicating it is likely to do that.

Versus: "Okay, we are looking for a Draw on Liquidity right now." That is tape reading. It is an understanding of getting a feel for where we are at—building a narrative.

Versus knowing what the narrative is and saying, "Here is what it is going to do. And this is what I want to see happen."

That means if I get what I need in terms of an entry, I am in.

I got in it fatigued. I wanted to get through it faster because I was tired. I regretted actually putting the trade on. I was thinking to myself, "Do I just let my limit order go and go to sleep?" Because that is what I wanted to do.

And I was thinking to myself, "Just stay with it." But I don't want to. I don't have any more risk than I have right now. And I put the stop loss up too soon. And it came and hit me.

But nothing changed the trade; it is just I put it up too soon. So that's okay. I am just gonna get back in.

So the entry criteria for those that are wondering was me simply just getting back in because the original idea that I used—which was trading the Old New Week Opening Gap, and the fact that we had three sweeps below and the market was likely to go higher because we traded down into that Weekly Fair Value Gap I mentioned a while ago.

And the likelihood of trading up into that Volume Imbalance on the weekly chart and running out the January 30 swing high.

We are opening up a new month in May. So seasonally, you want to be studying: does the market provide it?

And I will share the seasonal tendency that I am talking about. I will give you the actual chart. You already have it anyway; it is in the Core Content on my YouTube channel.

But I am going to show you why I am referring to what I am referring to, and we can watch it real-time and see if it pans out. Which will be interesting.