Purpose: Provide a overview of the markets by using different instruments and evaluating prior activity. Use overview to understand market directionality, strength/weakness, and driving factors. Focus on areas with most potential. Outline: My process involves reviewing what the markets did last week using the Index ETFs, Index, and Futures in order to understand the day structure and market profile from the prior session. I will often mark areas of consolidation and volume acceptance as levels of interest to carry forward outside of daily levels and trends. Once an overview of the market products is assessed, I like to quickly scan the SPDR Sector ETFs for any obvious standouts relative to the current SPY Percentage Change. This is normally done close to Market Open around 9:00 - 9:15 ET. I like to have a list of candidate stocks that are good representative names for any sectors that are 'in play' relative to the markets. For example, if Energy stocks are moving independent of the markets, I would want to find a good Energy stock that has high Relative Volume and Percentage Change to trade 'the best of the best'. Instruments: Index Products: $SPY/SPX/ES Futures $QQQ/NDX/NQ Futures $IWM/RUT Index/RTY Futures Sector Products: $XBI - BioTech $XHB - Home Builders $XLB - Materials $XLC - Communications $XLE - Energy $XLF - Financials $XLI - Industrials $XLK - Technology $XLP - Consumer Staples $XLRE - Real Estate $XLU - Utilities $XLV -Health Care $XLY - Consumer Discretionary $XME - Metals Other Products: Bonds: $TLT & /ZB and /ZN Futures Oil: /CL Futures Natural Gas: /NG Futures Gold: $GLD & /GC Futures Silver: /SI Futures Volatility: VIX Index & /VX Futures Dollar: $DXY US Dollar Index

Monday - June 29th, 2020 Markets closed weak last Friday, June 26th with major index products closing near the lows after a roughly 2% decline throughout the day. Notably Technology and major names like Facebook and Amazon were sold off heavily and led the entire markets. Sunday Night /ES Futures opened lower at 2986.25 with low at 2983.5 before coming back above 3000s. Getting above 3025 area would be of interest as that brings us into the major breakdown area from last week. /NQ Futures opened lower 9785.5 with low at 9780.25 before coming slightly higher. Overall below areas of consolidation from last Friday and still showing weakness. /RTY Futures opened lower 1362.2 with low of 1359.6 before coming much higher to test 1400. Showing relative strength given already recovered the breakdown area from last week. Monday Premarket at 9:00 ET $SPY - Trending higher from Friday low, holding at roughly 0.5% higher near Thursday's low. $QQQ - Range bound between Friday's low and Thursday's low, roughly flat 0.0% $IWM - Trending higher off Friday's low attempting to test Friday high, up as much as 1.5%. Bonds are slightly lower from last week, I expect a small pullback as bonds have had a nice run from the recent lows. $TLT recovered from recent lows at 153.00 area up to 166.5 in after market last Friday, a roughly 8.5% gain in roughly two weeks. Oil Futures pulling away from 41 Gap Fill Highs, up slightly today. Natural Gas Futures very strong up 6.25% from recent selloff last week, I expect a strong bounce from these extended yearly lows. Gold Futures flat from last week, extended at 1800 resistance on /GC. I expect $GLD to have a pullback this week before attempting a breakout. Silver Futures down slightly after a major run over the past months, consolidating in 18 - 19 range. I expect silver to underperform gold in the coming months, but still remain bullish. Volatility Futures down 2.4%, with 23/51 day contracts roughly same price (slight contango). Sectors Premarket at 9:15 ET Strong Sectors: Industrials with $BA up 6%. Financials with most large bank names up close to 1%. Weak Sectors: Communications down with $FB down 4%. Things to Watch: Since major Tech was down heavily last week, watching $XLK and MAGAF names closely. If selloff continues, other potentially 'risk-off' sectors may get bought at these lows like $XLU (been weak for a while).

Hi, In Das, can a hot key be setup so that it puts a horizontal line at 2R, 3R etc? If not does anyone know how to script for it? Thanks Munish

I've been keeping a journal on SIM for the last few months. Now it's time to share it and eventually ask for feedback on some of the moves. 6/29/2020: ✅ Hit daily target. GOAL: Calm, organized, mindset. no fomo moves, look for clear signals GOAL: A clear ORB move with multiple confirmations. Watchlist: BYND - Near an important level FB - Catalyst and negative trend BYND: Entered twice at 10% of BP. Need to change that to 20% of BP as I usually take a double position. Target was my level at pre-market review level of 129. In Recap: ✅ Did a calm pre-market for BYND and FB to see levels. ✅ 🌟 AVOIDED FALSE POSITIVES. When other signals are indicating choppiness, lack of follow through. ✅ Missed some moves and didn't feel FOMO. Stuck to looking for a clear ORB based on several factors including pre-market. ✅ Picked a stock I knew with, BYND, FB. Understood their moves. ✅ Only 3 trades. 👍 ❌ ORB is hard to set a target in high speed. ❌ Should have sold 50% and set the breakeven.

I'm currently working out a business plan for my trading, but I've hit a bit of a mental road block. I currently work 9am-5pm on the east coast, and our daily operations meeting is at 9:30 (of course it is!!!). I wanted to get some guidance on how to balance the 9-5 while trying to pursue a trading career. Should I stick to Swing trades only? What time frame should I focus on? Anyway, I'm really excited about becoming a member and learning from all the traders here whom I respect greatly. Thank you,

Thanks Justin. OK, lets say the existing funds are in CAD. Is it a simple process to have IB convert it....assuming there will be a fee associated with it. I'm with one of the Big 5 Financial Institutions here in Canada as well, I created a Chequings account in CAD to Fund IB (Both Margin and Savings Accounts). At this point sounds as if its best to keep it as is and just convert it directly through IB...i'm ok with a hit of a few dollars assuming its flat fee and not % based.

June 29th 2020 SIM trading This was not a good morning. I continue to struggle with having patience. Tomorrow, I am staying off the 1-min and 2-min charts (except to verify entry/stop/target), and am resolved to try and trade off of the 5-min chart and allow things to open up before I enter/exit. Here's a trade a took on Gilead this morning.

Appreciate this overview, thanks Jarad. 👍

thanks J. super helpful explanation

Yeah, sorry - I should have elaborated. I have read that options is still a loophole that exists. I don't trade them so I don't have much detail on why. Maybe someone else or @peterB can explain if they know why.

I had the same issue for many months when trading ORBs. I would have to be at 65% win rate to be profitable even though I always stuck to my stops. I am profitable now even though I have a win% around 50%. These are the changes I made. 1) Make sure your R is completely fixed. If not this causes two issues. Unsure how the subconscious does it but you will continuously see on the big winners you took too little risk and the big losers too much. Also, it is very difficult to analyze your trades if the R is not fixed. 2) Do what you need to do to control FOBW (Fear Of Being Wrong). I instinctively would take a partial way too early so I could lock in a winner. Now I try to set the partial profit locations (at least the first one) before I take the trade. Still it took me almost a year before I had the discipline to wait to 1R before I take the first partial. 3) Move stop to B/E after first partial. 4) Analyze journal to determine which ORB is best. One minute in time between ORBs can be a completely different strategy. I found out I was poor on the 1/2/5 min ORB and was good and the in between. So the 30sec, 1,5min and 3min ORBs are my best. 5) This is the change that finally placed me into profitability for ORBs. Add a few cents to your stop. I kept missing huge runs by the price dropping and taking me out by a penny or two and going for a 10R run. I kept telling myself it was a coincidence there isn't an algo going to my stop and taking me out. But after a 100 or so times I realize that is exactly what the algo is doing. Because I have set my stop in the same place as the other 10,000 or so retailers. So we all can be taken out at the same penny or two because we all chose to have our stop 5 cents below VWAP or something like that. So I added a couple of cents to my hot key. I still choose the same stop as always but my hot key makes the stop a couple of pennies deeper. Same for my B/E stop key I added a a couple of cents. Now, at least half the time, the price drops just misses my stop and the stock takes me with it on its big run.

I wasn't planning on holding any more VPA study groups for a few reasons. Firstly, I learned that VPA is just one indicator, and you can't take a trade based on just VPA. And if you use the techniques in Anna Couling's VPA book, sometimes they just don't work - in fact, sometimes the things Thor says about VPA in the chat room are opposite of what Anna writes in her book. Anna Couling's approach to VPA seems more valid on a swing trade time scale, whereas the things Thor teachers is more applicable to day trading. For example, Anna Couling talks about how high volume combined with a relatively big price move is validation of the move - well Thor a lot of time talks about a high volume candle as being "stopping volume" indicating a reversal. My conclusions are that traditional VPA is simply more valid on a daily timescale vs intraday timescale, and you need to think about things a bit differently on an intraday timescale, even though Anna Couling claims that her techniques are valid on any timescale. The other reason is that for the first VPA study group I did, we had about 5 people, and after that it was really no more than me and one or two people, so I didn't really have participation. My vision for the study group was to make it like a community study group and not a lecture - for example, I wanted to show an example myself to get the discussion started off, but then I wanted to hand off the screen sharing to others so that others could talk about their experiences too, however it ended up mostly me talking for an hour. If there is interest, I'd be open to starting a "Community Trade Review" group - where you can talk about any trades you took, good or bad, and specify the reasons why you took them, and then the community has a discussion about it. The biggest things I'd want though is firstly attendance and secondly participation by people other than myself, meaning other people will be willing to screen share and discuss real money trades that they took that day, and open them up to community review. I'm certainly not an expert, and I'm nowhere near Andrew's or Thor's knowledge level. I am not qualified to teach a class, and I really want this to be a study group, not a de-facto class.

Welcome @Lorin Stoll, love your back story.

I second this. DAS is excellent on Order/Transaction processing. They have an advantage here but everything else including charting is a major challenge. In the last release 5.5 they implemented order manipulation on the CHART....and RVOL display only. This is small progress as all other trading apps have these, but progress so I am thankful. Basic scanning and filtering in DAS is weak....made a number of request on this last year August...only RVOL display was implemented (ATR, FLOAT, ADV, SHT FLOAT, RVOL filtering still outstanding). Scanning on these values I see as basic requirements as taught by Mike from SMB Capital others. Quick alerts is also a prob. Mike from SMB and the other folks rely heavily on quick alerts. As a ex-software QA and dev manager, I sent a list of requests/bugs, u need to do the same. Unfortunately some traders may not be aware when something is a bug and how easy it is to fix. But folks if u need a feature u need to ask multiple times. U pay every month for the software. We should get a public thread here for DAS bugs and Request......so we all know wht is a bug and when it was submitted and when it will be implemented. Again remember we pay monthly. This may get blocked.

I'd love a webinar dedicated to the journey of our mods. It could be structured as: 1.Backstory of how they got into trading 2.Their path from SIM to Live, 3. The grueling first year 4. The intermediary phase where they became more profitable 5. All the unique pitfalls they faced along the way 6. Where they currently are at now. It doesn't have to be a webinar, but could even be a dedicated spotlight section on the website, interviewee/sleek editing style. I think it's interesting to see how far people have come, and in their stories there are always nuggets of truth that help other traders along the way. Sorry for calling you out mods! But you guys rock and love to learn from you guys.

Hi Guys - I tried to take Fallen Angel trade on DAL at market open 1/14/2020. DAL has gapped up 4% pre-market. At the Open the stock pulled back towards the VWAP and I went long. After the stock dropped further 30 cents, I stopped out. I was taking this trade using DAS replay feature so I didn't have a chance to look at L2 during this trade. Interested to hear thoughts on if this is a bad trade or if the trade just didn't work out. I am trying to analyze if I should have not taken this trade and couldnt find good reasons. Thanks.

Hello everyone! This is naveen from Texas. Been a member of the community for a few weeks now. I have been looking at ways to generate alternative streams of cash flow and interested to try out day trading. if I can get the hang of this and be successful, I am hopeful that I will be able to switch to a full time day trader over the next 12-18 months. Just want to reach out to the group and introduce myself. I am open to any new traders interested in sharing ideas and catchup in general. Feel free to message me. Looking forward to seeing you guys in the chat! Happy Trading!

I use the Tape to exclusively to trade momentum plays, especially opening range plays. When i don't use the Tape, i usually don't trade well. The Tape is much more useful than the Order Book as a lot of manipulation occurs there, although it does have some value if you know what to look for those manipulations occurring. The Tape is the actual (note we can't see darkpool activity so it's not completely "actual") supply and demand driving the price where it goes so understanding how to read it is really useful. It gives me clues where to take profits and when to stop out if my original targets/stops don't seem like they'll be hit so i can risk manage a bit better. As Lee W pointed out, SMB has good videos on this. If you want to learn how to read it, record your screen on a few stocks and don't trade. Just watch it and look at the charts at the same time and focus on the speed, print colors (above ask, at ask, in between bid and ask, at bid, below bid), and the patterns. Especially pay attention in consolidation areas vs. strong moves vs. staircase moves. Take notes and watch your recordings a few times over. It'll start to make sense over time.

I'm trying to use the Ichimoku indicator with DAS but my setup doesn't allow me to see the floating cloud ahead of the current price of the stock. As you can see in the picture, the cloud stops right at the current price. Anyone has an idea how to setup correctly? Thank you!