NQ Trade Review Jackson Hole Symposium Day #2

Date: 2026-08-28

[00:00] Hi folks, welcome back.

We’re looking at the NASDAQ, and we’re on Day 2 of the Jackson Hole Symposium. Look over here. You’ll see yesterday’s trade, and you’ll see today’s trade.

See that? Look at that.

You can’t do that with Market Replay. Look up here—when Market Replay is active, executions don’t show.

Defining the morning range

[00:42] All right, so obviously we’re in a mad week here. Crazy. I want you to consider what this range was between **7:00 and 9:00 a.m. **

So if we look at the highest high, it’s this one right here.

Don’t look at that one—that’s cheating. It’s outside the range. That’s outside the range, and you know it.

There’s no form-fitting here, Jack. And the lowest low is right there.

So if we grab our Fib and anchor it to that range, you can see that this is the actual low of that first initial run.

See that?

I took the risk of trading it knowing that, again, we were likely to see Seek and Destroy conditions. Price takes the previous buy-side liquidity, then sell side, sell side, buy side, followed by the sharp disruption lower.

It takes out that low and trades down into Thursday’s 9:55 a.m. Eastern Time discount wick, specifically the upper half of that wick.

Discount wick and upside draw

[03:05] I just talked about this in the previous video, and they used it again here.

Look where the candle bodies stop. Come on, right?

The wick trades down into the lower half, but that’s it. It’s done.

I was intrigued watching price trade down into that area.

I was outlining 29,757.25 in the previous video as the next upside draw. If price could get beyond that, then we’d look for it to reach into the 830s.

So far today, it has found its way up to 808.

Qualifying inversion fair value gaps

[04:20] Now, this inefficiency—go back and watch the previous video before this one, and this will make sense.

Here at 9:30, we have displacement lower, creating a sell-side imbalance, buy-side inefficiency.

I’m not treating that as the first presented Fair Value Gap. It’s simply an inefficiency that allows me to grade it as a potential Inversion Fair Value Gap, provided price qualifies it.

Same thing here. Inversion Fair Value Gap.

[05:06] Once price trades down into the Fib’s lower projection, it hits the level and goes one or two ticks below it. That’s fine.

Once that level has been reached, I know it’s likely to reverse higher, take out the buy-side liquidity, and trade up into this inefficiency.

And I’m aiming for those relative equal highs, which we’ll look at here.

Price sends up into that old gap we were talking about yesterday and again this morning in the trade review.

IFVG support and exit

[06:21] If you’re ever unsure what these levels are, go back and watch the previous recording. I post them in order.

We have an Inversion Fair Value Gap here. Price trades above it and qualifies it, then comes back down into it and rallies.

The candle bodies are supported by the upper half of that Inversion Fair Value Gap.

From there, price rallies into the inefficiency. I’m exiting as it pushes through.

Then I take off one more here because I know the Fed Chair’s speech is about to be released at 10:00 a.m., so I’m not trying to be perfect with the exit.

[07:01] I just want to make sure I fund the trade.

Then I raise the stop loss, and price comes back and stops me out right there.

Again, the candle bodies are not reaching the midpoint level, much like I mentioned in the previous video. Then price rallies one more time into 10:00 a.m.

The Fed Chairman starts jawboning, price gets sent lower, and we get a reclaimed Bearish Fair Value Gap right here.

Price trades back into it, fills there again, then drops all the way down into Thursday’s 9:55 a.m. Eastern Time discount wick, specifically the upper half of that wick.

The candle bodies are showing that same respect there as well.

Post-speech delivery shift

[08:09] Then price rallies back up into that same green inefficiency—Consequent Encroachment, Order Block, Change in the State of Delivery. Beautiful.

Price rips higher, trades all the way up, and takes out the 757 level I mentioned was likely to be reached.

If you go back to the final minute of the previous video, you’ll hear me explain where I thought price was likely to draw.

If there were follow-through beyond that, 831 would be the next objective. But price ran out of steam here and rolled over.

[10:45] All in all, this week should have been a positive addition to your experience. You should’ve learned a great deal—at the very least, a healthy respect for the Jackson Hole Symposium and the effect it can have on the marketplace, even before Day 1 officially begins.

Seek and Destroy conditions

[11:10] Whenever that week appears on your economic calendar, know when it’s coming and prepare for a lot of volatility. That’s wonderful, but you also have to expect a lot of second runs.

Wherever you think a move is beginning, price may come back and take out that low or that high first. You saw it repeatedly today: low, higher high, lows taken, higher high taken, all the way back down to take out the lows, then a full rally higher. That’s the Seek and Destroy Model.

[11:47] That’s the profile. Knowing when to anticipate it is important. But being able to navigate and trade it is another matter entirely. I don’t want you using your ability to trade Seek and Destroy conditions as some benchmark for how good you’re becoming as a trader. Don’t do that.

Instead, go back and study what would have warranted a trade and what would have negated the idea of a trade working. Spend time this weekend reviewing Day 1 and Day 2 and how price behaved.

[12:30] In my opinion, it’s one of those wonderful areas of research where you can prove to yourself why these are not the weeks to over-leverage. You can hurt yourself very, very badly.

I was even trying to throw off the market—and impulsive students who wanted to trade today—by posting that I wasn’t going to trade. And if you chose to trade anyway, I told you to be careful.

Whenever I say “be careful,” that’s like a giant neon warning sign flashing right in your face.

[13:07] It’s going to be volatile, and unless you’re very, very skilled, have experience, and aren’t risking a whole lot, then and only then should you be participating. But a lot of you are brand new, and I don’t want to see you get in there and hurt yourself, blow your account, draw your funds down, or discourage yourself. It’s the worst feeling in the world to hurt yourself on a Friday, and it’s even worse if you had a great week up until then and completely discombobulate yourself, wiping out the profitability because of one day.

[14:21] We trade every single Monday of Non-Farm Payroll week, and if your model speaks to you and you have the experience, every other Monday can be traded. Fridays are days where, if you’ve been very profitable, you can take a three-day weekend. Who says you have to trade?

[15:59] The only way I learned was through experience. That’s the only thing that teaches you this. That means making and losing lots of money over time, and hopefully paying attention, taking notes, seeing what you did wrong, and not pretending it didn’t happen or putting blinders on. Dig into it and say, “Okay, what did I do wrong here, and how can I improve on it?” Notice the difference between that and, “Man, I wish I never traded today. This sucks. I can’t stand this. I’m a loser. I’m never going to make this stuff work for me.”

[16:28] “I’m going to do this until I blow the account, probably, and then there’s going to be no reason for me to continue. Why do I even bother doing this?” It’s all toxicity and negativity. And while you want to do that, think about why you’re doing it. You’re saying to yourself what you think other people would say to you, but they haven’t said it because you haven’t shared what you’ve done. [16:57] Your results are private. You don’t need to let anybody see what you’re doing. You owe no one that. No one.

But for those of you who want to put everything out there, you’re taking on a greater degree of difficulty because now you’re also managing the dredge of society as an audience that isn’t going to be satisfied anyway. So where are you really winning in that? You’re not. You’re adding more stress and making this a much more tedious task, like you’re answering to taskmasters.

[17:31] That means you’re not the influencer; you’re the influenced. If other people are making you perform in such a way that you have to show everything they ask for, do everything they tell you to do, and jump through every hoop, that includes feeling compelled to trade on Mondays or Fridays. If you feel like you’ve done well enough for the week—even if it’s only Monday—who says you have to trade the rest of the week? You don’t. You do not need to do that. But the perception is, “Well, I’m not going to be viewed as a trader unless I do it, and I don’t want people talking about me the way they talk about ICT guys or ICT himself.”

[19:37] So the bottom line is this: respect Jackson Hole Symposium week. Anticipate it. Predict that there’s going to be a great deal of volatility that week. If you’re brand new, or if you don’t trust yourself, don’t trade with real money. Just stay in tape reading. Don’t even demo, because if you trade on demo and do poorly there, you’re going to think, “Well, if I had traded with real money, that would’ve hurt me.”

[20:15] Then that gets lodged in your mind and becomes scar tissue. But you definitely want to study price action. You definitely want to watch price action live. You want to see it live. I mentioned that we were bearish on NQ until we reached a certain degree of price movement on the daily chart, and here we’re seeing a really nice drop. Look at all the volatility today. I mean, look at that.

[21:00] Don’t make it a standard practice to trade when this week comes around. It’s Jackson Hole Symposium week. These people have lots of money, and they’re pushing agendas that you’re never going to vote on. You’re never going to vote on these things, yet they shove them down our throats, spray it in our skies, inject it into our foods, and tell us that we have to have these medications.

[21:35] The bottom line is, these people are evil, and they’re going to influence the market because of what they say. Because of what they say. And now you know the inside track to it. Just predict that there’s going to be a whole lot of movement that may or may not make sense to you. You may not be able to see the things I’ve outlined today or this week. Don’t chalk that up as failure. This is a highly manipulated week. I didn’t do it perfectly here.

[22:36] I want you to enjoy the weekend. I want you to relax. Next week we’re going to move at a slower pace. I’m not going to be doing executions or trading and showing you executions because I need to spend that time on the lectures I’m making for my son Caden. I’m going to make them available to you as part of the normal daily content I put out, but I really want you to buckle down and observe what I’m teaching in these lectures.

Every day next week, there will be a video on logging what you’re supposed to observe in price action. What do you screenshot and annotate? What are you trying to reinforce in your memory? What are the most important things in price? That’s where you start.

Logging price-action observations

[23:34] It’s not about entering trades. It’s not about knowing where the stop loss goes. It’s not about knowing where the market is going to draw to. It’s about collecting information and data so that, over time, you begin to see these things repeat. There’s a repeating phenomenon here. By doing that, you begin to fortify courage. You’re not going to have that confidence until you build it, and the only way you’re going to believe in it is by seeing the same things over and over again through repetition.

[24:03] We’ll also talk about how these pieces of data eventually develop into backtesting. It’ll progress from, “This is what you’re logging every day. This is what you’re looking for,” to, “This is what you do with that information going forward as a backtesting campaign or endeavor.”

Once you’ve done that for a couple of months—and understand, you’re still not trading, not even on demo—then you can move into demo trading. Minimum three months. If you’re really, really good, maybe two months of demo or paper trading using the observations you’ve made and the model you’ve constructed on your own.

[24:50] Then you walk forward with it through tape reading and demo trading. When you reach the point where you’re no longer excited or scared about the outcome—where you simply know what you’re looking for and you’re measuring every execution like a science-lab experiment—that’s when you’re probably getting close to being ready to trade.

You’re no longer impulsively chasing money. You simply understand that these things tend to repeat. As long as you focus on the process rather than the money, don’t over-leverage, and use the smallest amount of leverage, you’ll know when you want to transition into live funds.

[25:29] I never tell anybody when to do that. I don’t actually tell people to do anything with real money. I talk about price action, and that distinction is important because I’m not licensed to give you trading advice. But I’m free to tell you what I think these candlesticks are going to do, how they’re likely to behave, and how they’re going to populate your chart.

I can give you an opinion about that, but that’s not investment advice. That’s me observing what these lines are likely to do, and you get the privilege and honor of sitting back and watching how often I get it right or wrong.

[26:01] Hopefully you found something insightful this week. Hopefully you learned something. Hopefully it was inspiring to you.

Enjoy your weekend. Until I talk to you again, be safe.