Hi, welcome everyone. I'm John Slazos from Dharma Capital Trading. Today we're going to go over decision matrix with our fact-based trading solutions, you know, providing a way to standardize and put some structure around your decisions, taking a little higher, higher level view, but, you know, coming going top-down from the macro structure to the micro structure. And, you know, really just getting your trading into more of a if-then process. If this is happening, then you do this. Before we get into it, I just want to go through a disclosure. Everything that we are going to go over today is all educational. You know, nothing that we say about buying or selling should, you know, take as a fact. We may be trading with that or against it. If you are trading, be sure you're using risk capital. If you're not using risk capital, it's going to mess up your decision making process and you're not going to think clearly your emotions are going to take over. So it's a key factor in trading. You want to be calm, focused and make clear decisions. And that's what we're all about. So I've been involved in the markets for over 35 years. My company, JS Services, we just transition that into JS Analytics with Dharma Capital Trading.  You know, we cater to both professional and aspiring traders. You know, any new trader is aspiring professional. If you're not, if you're trading in the markets, it's a business.  And I started my business on the floor of the Mercantile Exchange in 1984. You know, literally hanging out levels to buy and sell the traders in the pits on trading cards. And now we're covering futures, we cover equities, options and crypto. And we've got traders that have been working with us for pretty much the duration of our time. You know, we're a resource in your toolkit. And the goal of Dharma Capital Trading is to make a positive impact on traders to help them achieve their full potential. You know, we're here to empower you with our fact-based solutions. And this, and this by doing this, we're going to help to enhance your awareness and your decision-making. And ultimately what this does, it's going to improve your confidence and it's going to help you get into a state of flow. And that's what it's all about. So I'm going to dive right into our fact-focused method and in what we do and what I do every day. We're going to take a look at our playbook. But basically when we set down a foundation in the market, we need to know what the context of the session. What's the state? What's the underlying state? Not only the technical state, but also what's the news environment, the news narrative, that's big for crypto. We need to understand where the structure points are or that states are going to change. And then what strategy themes do we want to get involved with? Which ones are dominating the market?  And you should. It's all based on your own personality strengths, your traits, what you learned. But you need to find your own way. You need to find what works for you. What works for somebody else might not work for you. My style has changed throughout the years. I take, you know, more of a step back, but always just focusing on the facts, looking for the market to provide opportunity. So let's just break things down. So today, in my Discord channel, we pulled up here, basically posted an update this morning. This is an update that I do in our trade room.  And so identifying where the structure alignment is, focusing on, you know, what strategies are in play. And last night overnight, and I'm going to go through this in more detail, but this is just how we tee things up. What you're looking at here is this is a monthly structure chart. This is weekly structure. And this is the daily structure. And this is the daily playbook. And you can visit this on the Discord site. We're going to go through both Bitcoin and we're going to go through Ether today based on the playbook. And we're going to take a look at where they are at now and how it would participate in these strategies. You know, crypto starts out the session at, you know, 12 AM UTC time. So, you know, that's when things start to kick into gear. And, you know, it's 12 o'clock in Chicago and the market's kind of through the day already, but we're going to go through and take a look at things. I really don't like to trade that much in the afternoon as the market, especially for crypto. You have to really feel, you know, from around, you know, really one o'clock on, it starts to, the market starts to go into what we call a settlement phase. And so, you know, things can get a little wily there. But we're going to go over, you know, what happened today. And I just want to point out that we've got this, we had this posted in our Discord channel. We're talking about that Bitcoin was in a hedge theme and that, you know, we were engaged with the sell, UP reversal strategy was in play and the sell DR breakout strategies in play. And what's important about, you know, identifying these big themes is this has given you the higher context. You know, if we're only focused on the micro and we really dial in here to the micro structure and we're just looking for, you know, who the players are, what's happening, you know, where the money's coming in and out.  But, you know, with crypto especially, liquidity is all over the place, you know. And if you're just focused on one exchange, you need to understand that there's only so many players in there. There's a lot of OTC trading, a lot of bigger players are, they're trading OTC pretty much exclusively. You know, they will put some resting orders on the exchange but you have to remember they may get into a position or out of a position on an exchange and get out OTC. So, you know, that's something to always be aware of. I do, you know, I like to look at the flows that are coming in on the micro structure but we'll get to that in a minute. So, you know, just going over from the top down, you know, the main point here is just, you can't get too caught up in the micro. You need to understand what the structure is and by doing that it's going to give you more insight to the micro structure and it's going to be, have you be able to anticipate and have expectations.   So, the important thing is you set out and you engage in the market. Okay, you're ready to start. All right, now I need to have my foundation set. I need to get my benchmark. I need to, you know, get some clarity and that's what it's all about, finding clarity. And so that's what the playbook is meant to do. It's meant to give you some clarity. It's give you this, you know, fact-based benchmark. You know, there's no subjectivity here. This is all math. When I designed this algo, it was designed to tell me what the truth was. I just wanted to point out where the facts are, not design a system, but design a fact-finding truth. And so with our market grid, you know, each tile represents a different market and the color coding is for what the different states are. And we're taking a look at Bitcoin and typically market states are broken up into general type states, you know, bull trend, bear trend and neutral, neutral digestion.  If you ask someone, most traders, that's what they're gonna kind of compartmentalize their, you know, their trading. See, they're trend or non-trend. Well, you know, trends aren't always the same. They're, you know, some trends accelerate. You know, and so a market that's in an accelerating trend is gonna trade different than a market that's in just a general bear trend. We've all traded those states and that's all we're doing is just getting some clarity and recognition of, hey, this is the type of state that we're in.  They're gonna perform, our expectations are different. Because what we're always doing is we're looking to align our expectations with facts. And so, you know, if the market is in, for Bitcoin, the market's in a bull trend, is the market performing to the expectation of the state? That's basically it. If you don't understand what a bull trend is or you're having different understandings of the nuances to a bull trend, because there's different parts to it, right? A bull, you know, what's the definition of a positive trend? Market that's making higher move highs, higher move lows, period. If it's not doing that, it's not performing like a bull trend. What happens in bull trends? Well, they don't go linear to be aware of. Are we in the corrective part of that bull trend? Because we could have a negative down day in a bull trend that just goes linear down all day long. But the expectation is it's gonna stabilize. And it may take all day, and then the market opens up the next period and it starts to trend higher. So where are we within that? And then are, you know, and if the market breaks structure out of a bull trend, what happens? You know, markets are constantly in transition from one state to the next. So where are those points of inflection that tell us that this structure or this state is broken and no longer true, and this market's in transition? We don't know what it's transitioning into, but we know it's transitioning. So we can't expect the market to perform to the expectation of the state. And that's the key thing. You know, when you're in the microstructure, is the market performing to the expectation of the state? If it is, then things are easier to predict. You know, if we're in a positive trend, looking for opportunities to get along is easy. Markets are both a VWOT. What's happening in the order book? You know, these are the things that, you know, if they're much easier to jump onto when you have that, you know, that underlying fact foundation of what's the context? And so with that context, we define the structure of it. So as I mentioned, you know, we understand that this market's in a bold trend, but where are the key inflection points that define that trend? You know, and today in Bitcoin, this green line is what we call our sentiment bias, and this represents the, you know, literally the overunder number for any market, any time frame. Literally, if you're gonna, you know, drawing one line on the chart, this is the balance point where the bias shifts from positive to negative, period. So when, so this is for a bold trend, this is the inflection point that's gonna tell us that this bold trend is no longer true. You know, as long as we're above this point, the market's positive, and we're below it, there's a problem. And so that comes in today at 27,403. So we know that's the lower extreme for this bold trend. Then what's the upper peak? You know, where does this trend really start to accelerate and move higher? That's another key inflection point for a positive trend, that upper peak. And now these are quantitative numbers, so they're not going to necessarily match up with your price structure analysis. And so that's a key point to the work that we do. You know, it's a little different. But that comes in today at 28,829. So we've defined that, you know, the kind of the big structure. So that's a pretty wide range. And you can consider the sentiment as kind of energy. You know, this is the high value area because, you know, you've got the least amount of risk. If you're entering near this price point, you know that if you're entering here, you've got the least amount of risk for trading on either side of the market. And so this is where you spend your money. This is the big opportunities. This blue line, we call it the downside pivot, it's part of what we call our critical range. You know, this is another good inflection point where this is the first breaking point of this positive trend. So the positive trend is really going to keep going. It's going to hold this downside pivot, which is 28,014. And so then we take a look at, you know, because we're in this specific state with a specific structure, these are the optimal things to do. If the markets perform any expectation, what do we want to do in a bull trend? This is self-evident. We want to buy breaks above the R level, buy breaks above sentiment. That's the best place to, that's the best thing to do. I call that a buy or fade, fade momentum, fade negative momentum into this price point, into 27,403. This is where all the big buyers are. Because this is where the contest of the state will shift. And we'll be in a transitional state. What's another good thing to do? Well, let's let the market, you know, sell off and fail from this downside pivot area, try to make a play for this area. If it can't get down there and it pops back up above, you know, 28,014, let's get long then. So don't catch the following knife on this corrective move. We know that where the real energy is, if it can't get there, fine, but now this will be a momentum level for us to tell us, hey, the positive trend's gonna try to reengage itself. And so these are the best things to do because we're buying a break in an underlying positive trend. So what are some things that we can do on a hedge basis? What are some things that the market tells us through price action within structure that there's an issue, something's going on? Well, if we break out to the upside, so if we breach this 28,829, that's a signal that the market should scale higher, have a new impulse higher. And if we can't do that, and instead we fail back down below this price point, that's what's called a reversal, an exhaustive reversal.  Comes back down, it's a sell. So the expectation is we're either gonna make a play for the midpoint of this critical range or we're gonna fail and the thing's gonna revert and we're gonna have a complete corrective trade down to the sentiment. So the other part of a hedge strategy, and this is the optimal hedge strategy, is that we get a shift in momentum below the directional because that's telling us that there's an issue with deposit momentum. We're no longer performing to the expectation of the state because you can look at each one of these price points as literally a staircase. So as long as you're climbing the staircase, everything's fine. As soon as you break that structure, there's a problem. So let's take a look at this chart to get a little better clarity to what that is. And before I even put that up there, let me show you something else that is a good thing to do on your own, without our work, is to identify the previous period timeframes, highs and lows and the close and midpoint. So what I've identified here is, this is something always to keep in, this is what we're talking about, fact-based trading, fact-based solutions, these are the facts. Now one of the issues with crypto is that, there is no one centralized exchange. Got a lot of decentralized exchanges, different volumes. You've got OTC trading as well. So what's the real price of Bitcoin? What's the real price of any of these tokens? That is a bit of an issue, but, so I'm keying off of Binance. Right now that's got the Binance purpose, got the most liquidity. So even if you're trading on Kraken or Coinbase or wherever you're trading, it's good to be aware of the structures of other exchanges. If your trade, perpetual is gonna be different than spot, but structurally, you need to pick something and you should be aware of whatever exchange that you're trading on. So just some simple, again, we're looking, to look to standardize your method, if the market's trading above the previous day's high, that's positive. It's trading below the previous day's low, it's negative. If you're short and the market's above the previous day high, there's an issue. If the market's trading above the previous day's close, it's positive. Below it's negative. I like to use the midpoint. You can think of the previous day's midpoint as yesterday's VWAP. I like to use the current VWAP as well. Those are all great factual benchmarks to incorporate into your trading to get a sense of understanding of what the market's telling you wants to do. And just based on this previous period structure, we had a lot of good insight. When the market opens up, 12 a.m. UTC, that's 7 p.m. local time for me in Chicago, we open up, that's our settlement. It's quote, quote, settlement. There's really no settlement in crypto, but that's the closing, the mark closing for crypto. And the market stabilizes above the midpoint. This is a natural momentum level within the previous periods, high and low. If you're above the midpoint, market is gonna look to test the previous session high. If you're below the midpoint, it's gonna look to test the previous session low. Simple as that. You keep everything real simple, but this is providing you this kind of benchmark structure. Then, I like to look at crypto in four-hour segments and the first four-hour segment is what I call an opening phase. And the market breaks out of the opening phase range and above the previous days high and we get this volatility spike. Market pulls back, should stabilize, does, and it should start to build positive momentum. With the playbook we know we're in a bull trend, this thing should start trending higher. And what it makes sense, above the previous days high should trend higher. And then it doesn't and it stops. Okay, maybe it's just consolidating to go higher. I always like to see the market perform perfectly. So if the market's not performing perfectly, then there's a problem. And so if I have a market that's starting to build positive structure here, then we get this acceleration. This thing should just go. This emotion should stick with the market and we should just start to scale higher. And so when we start to see this kind of action, there's an issue and then here we have clarity. And we're always looking for clarity. And here the market's telling us that, hey, we're below the previous days high now. We broke out above it and now we're below it. This is, but we're talking about that reversal. We'll throw on the market structure in a second. But in terminology, when you're talking about structure in the market, this is price structure. So the price action, the market making, making a peak here and starting to make lower highs, lower lows and you're building this negative price structure. This is timeframe structure. So when we're defining the high and the low of the previous period timeframe, so this could be the day, it can be the week, it can be the month, year, quarter. So these structure points work the same.  So the money that drives all the markets is clued into absolutely what the previous year's clause was, previous quarter. That's their benchmark for their business. So that's why these price points are important. So here we have a situation where the market tells us right at this point, we have clarity that this market's not performing like a bull trend and there's a problem. What's the expectation? Expectations we're gonna retest the lows, retest that mid-pipe, retest the previous days closed and our net change. And then we get this spike down and then the market can't hold trading above the previous days close. Again, it's a tell. So the expectation as a trader, one, the market gave us a head fake up here. Two, we broke below the midpoint, which we, let's just make it a new day low and now we can't go net change positive on the day. It's negative, which sets up this break. And what do we know when the market's trading below the previous days midpoint? It's gonna make it play and challenge the previous days low. What do we know since we have the playbook? We know the underlying context is bull trend and the expectation if the underlying context is gonna mean true, then the market should hold above the previous days low and it should stabilize in front of it. So again, just looking to standardize what you do, looking to have this benchmark backdrop. So when you get into the moment and when you're here, you should be not thinking. It should be no mind and it should just be executing. Because you have to be. You cannot react here. You have to anticipate. And so the structure gives you the opportunity to anticipate. And so here we know the market went above the previous days high. We do know that the energy and the buying energy in the market is below the market. And we go back to our structure example here. This gives us more clarity. So we knew that based off the timeframe structure, we have our previous days high is in front of what we call our upside pivot. And we know that this is the real extension point for this positive trend. And it provides us with a reversal. So we have some other parts of this critical range and I posted that today in the Discord channel. Let me pull that up. Again, what we're showing you is we're just uncovering the underlying structure of the market. This is just fact based. This is just, these are foundational things. This is your market truths. And so with the critical range, we're identifying that key zone of structure to the upside and key zone downside pivot structure to the downside. And then you've got a midpoint, not necessarily the symmetrical midpoint all the time, but it's basically a pivotal point between, and again, if you're climbing the staircase, once you get above the midpoint, the market's gonna try to climb the staircase up to the top of the range. Down, you can look at these as just, these are your structure points, your levels. But what can happen in the market too is you have different scenarios where, and this was actually I posted this for ether and we'll get to that in a minute, but I just wanted to show, kind of break down these parameters for this critical range. And part of it is what we call our critical range, positive extreme and negative extreme. And you can look at these as more validation points. So you got the validation points for rotational moves through the critical range, which is the directional, it needs to be validated above this CR plus to get to here, below here to get to here. And if you're gonna get a break up to the upside, it needs to breach this area to really extend or fail from this area to really turn the market over. So I'm gonna add those points on it. And it's just identifying that structure. So when we have this signal here, what it needs to validate above here to be true. This is kind of the stop flush acceleration. And this situation here is classic and I don't have the data for book map for when this occurred, but no doubt this is going to show the exhaustion in the microstructure, which is what it's all about. So when you're in the microstructure and you're here and you see that exhaustive action happening at an extreme, it becomes really powerful because you have a lot of clarity. Because you know this thing, one, it already had this huge acceleration move. We broke out to the upside. We know that the real buying energy in the market's way down here. So we already know, before we even start the trading period, that any buy signals up here are not gonna be that strong. The market's gonna have a hard time really accelerating because the energy is way below the market. It needs to go sideways or a little bit or it needs to have a correction. And so this is what it's all about. Understanding the fact foundation that allows you to align your expectations with the truth. And the truth is the buying energy is down here and the truth is if we break out above this point after we've had this significant surge, we call this distance between major levels, average price map distance, APMD. And so if you have, this is basically telling us the segment moves the market's trading in. So this metric, let me pull up the playbook again, these metrics are your risk reward metrics. So basically this helps you in the microstructure too because this is the movement the market's trading in. So if you get on some momentum in the microstructure, in Bitcoin, Bitcoin is moving in 400, basically $407 segment moves at APMDs. So at the very minimum, you wanna take a half segment out. So at the very minimum, you're looking to make 200 bucks on a trade. That's just what the market's giving you. You might as well take it. And then our risk metrics, our alert distance variance and maximum stop distance, this has to do with these boundaries. So this is the alert distance here and the alert distance here and this is the variance. Variance is kind of like the slippage area around an inflection point and the alert distance is really kind of the signal acceptance metric boundary. It also identifies these alert that this price point, this structure point, this upside pivot's been violated. But this is a key factor. What the market's treating them, because this helps to define your risk reward. What's it worth? What are these opportunities worth? And you can see how, here's a, this is over, this is one segment, one and a half segments and you've got a full segment move here, half segment, half segment. And so you'll see these natural shifts of, here's a half segment move, full segment move, half segment move, half segment move, half segment move. So this is, it just is what it is. This is what the market, these are the segments the market's trading in and you want to align your risk reward to those facts. And you don't want to, when you put on a trade, this isn't the price you're getting, right? So you're getting whatever that spread is from your exchange. So that's something to consider. Where are you really entering this market? Anyways, so immediately when you put this thing on, you already have X amount against you immediately. And so if you scalp it in and out of something, you're taking some money at the table all the time, taking money out of your account all the time, just getting in and out, right? So you need, extending your duration can help, produce that, buffer that slippage and the fees that you take to do these transactions. So that all has to be factored into everything that you're doing. And so what these metrics do is they just tell you, hey, this is what the market's paying out. Align your profit objectives with these facts, with these truths. So this is another key thing that we offer with our work. But here, now we're, so it's aligned your expectation. When the market's in a bull trend that has energy below the market here is going to perform one way. And then a bull trend when the market has its structure in the middle is going to perform completely different. You're going to have a complete different expectation because in this situation, sentiment's balanced, it's in the middle and the expectation you're going to have, this is going to like a power stance, a guitarist power stance, you're going to, this thing's ready to go. And so the energy's lined up in the middle. So when having a, let me see another situation here to take a look at futures real quick. I just want to show you a, here's an interesting situation too. So this, what's your expectation here? You're coming into a bull trend context, but sentiment's above the market. So that's in conflict with this underlying state. So the expectation is corrective. And it's corrective below this price point. So that's what it's all about, just aligning your expectations with the facts. And so for Bitcoin, we know from the start of the session, the context is positive, so we're buying dips, but this thing can break pretty good. And so more likely, not that the market can't scale from here, and we've seen crypto do that plenty of times, so you have to respect it, but you have to be aware of the tells. And when you come into the trading session, when I posted my update in Discord, what I'm doing is I'm identifying what themes are in play. So I know that the underlying theme is bull trend, and I'm working, and here the market's telling me, from the get-go, it was telling me I'm positive trend. I'm above the midpoint. That's great. Everything's in alignment. This is all telling me the market wants to go higher. Stabilizes above the midpoint, we're winding up here, it's getting ready to make a move, it's either gonna break, we're gonna have a corrective trade, make a play for the R level, or it's gonna shift positive, and we're gonna have a play for the upside pivot. So here we get clarity, the market starts trading above the previous days closed, that's positive, now we get above the directional, we're in line with this optimal theme. We don't have that, the optimal strategies are the money trades. That's where you put size on, but that doesn't mean that's the only thing you can do, right? So it's basically getting in alignment with this positive, mental theme. And so that's what happened here. Where the market breaks out above the metric boundary, this is a positive signal, pulls back to the variance and made a new move high, higher lows, and giving opportunity within this alert distance for signal acceptance, and then we get this power pop. One thing about this structure as well is your risk management. And this is where, when the market is here, and we'll get to this point in a second here, but when the market's here, you're clued into the order book. What's happening here? I don't have enough history, but what's happening? Who are the aggressors? Are we getting liquidity shifts up? Is money coming into the market? What's happening? This is where you shift to the microstructure when the market is at these structural boundary points. And because as the market's breaking out, is the market performing the expectation?  What's perfect? And anything that's, the market is telling it's breaking out to the upside, then it better be perfect within the microstructure as well. And you better see that, and you better see, and that's what you're searching for. And if you don't see it, that's your tell that there could be an issue. But if you are seeing it, that's your story, you're sticking to it, and you're going for 400 bucks. So the market pays you out. Then the market, you have this linear movement, and this is always, for risk management, any time crypto or any market really breaks out of a situation, you need to be super aggressive on locking in your dough. So when the market does this, you, you're adjusting aggressively. You don't want to give that money back. And when the market comes up to his approach in this extreme, and it can't hold it, that's another tell, because that was the flush. And so when the market breaks back down through here, stabilizes and we get this retest, and it can't base above here. One, the fact that we did this tells us that this optimal theme is broken. There is a problem. This is a problem, because we did this. Because we're always looking, is the market doing this or is the market doing this? And here the market's telling us, I'm doing this. I just generated a sell you P reversal. I just execute, this strategy just executed. And what's the expectation? It's going to come down to the directional. So after we fail here, the market should be, but we're looking for a full APMD move. And more times than not, when the sentiment's below the market, that's all we're going to get. And the market will, it's stabilizing here, and then we could see that, and then in this situation, after we test the metric boundary, now the key tell would be, okay, let's get back above the previous day's high point. Let's stabilize here, and we can end this bulltranking, kind of continuing, and it'll be firm, but more sideways. So the expectation is, the bull trend's not really going to engage, but what's going to happen is, the market's going to kind of go into a sideways path. But we don't do that. And so the hedge theme fully engages and it generates another signal. It gives us this sell DIR breakout signal. So just again, validating this hedge theme. So the market is telling us that this is no longer, this is not true.  It's done for the day on that. We're either going to do this or we're going to go sideways. And we're going to wait till tomorrow to kind of pick up, to make a decision. So it's either optimal theme, hedge theme, or non-event theme. And so here we get a negative sell signal in the directional, and it fails here and it attains a half APMD. Again, you get the action within the figure and the metric boundary and the previous day's midpoint. It's always great when you have alignment with timeframe structure and price structure and market structure. So that's what you look for as a trader. You're looking for that alignment. And then you can throw in the daily VWAP with that as well. And so you can see we have an application here. It's in a cloud notes application where you can put our data file in and it will plot these, the structure points on your heat map so you can be there in the moment. So where are we at now? So we know that the optimal theme's not true. The context of the bull trends, there's a problem with it. Because it's not holding high or high or low. It stopped doing that here and it validated here on the timeframe structure. On the price map, it validated here. So this is where risk management comes into play. If you had a trend following system, this is a way to reduce your profit give back. But now, so now we're here, the market is in a sell DIR breakout strategy theme and that's valid below this price point. So as long as we're below the upper metric boundary of the 28,411 directional, that's our story and we're sticking to it. The market attained that interior level, if it's gonna bounce back into a sideways non-event trade, it would more likely just rotate within this area. It couldn't get back above the directional. So when it couldn't do that, what's it doing? Now we're looking at price structure, it's basically holding negative price structure, right? And it's also climbing the stairs down. It's climbing the staircase down. So then here it fails and breaks market structure. So this validates this weakness. And this is crypto in any market, they go right to the stress point. So like when you're looking for an opportunity here, where's the risk, the risk is here and the market goes right there to challenge you, to shake out the weak hands. So with the fact focus and we know we're here, now we're getting into real time, we can start to take a look at the behavior of the market and the microstructure. So as the market is coming in here, I like to see stuff like this where the market has this intensity of trade building up and then we have a big intensity of trade on a move above the directional here. And this is this spike here. And it doesn't follow through. And then we, so I like to see that emotion there. And if we did get a retest, kind of less intensity, but right now we're at this bottom, we're at the previous day's midpoint. So now if we see some aggressive sellers coming in, that's an alignment with the underlying context of the state, right? So we know that the bull trend's not gonna engage. So these buy signals are really more of a signal to go nowhere. Yeah, it's positive, we're breaking the structure, potentially breaking the structure of the sell DIR breakout strategy, but we also know that the market needs to get above, basically $28,470. So we know that until the market's trading back above here, and we can see where that, we had some sellers up here, some liquidity. And this is also nice when you get the, when the order book starts to align with structure, it gives us confidence. Because we know this is a, you know, it's not a wall, but it's basically, this is the validation point. And if we did validate above here, what are we validating? We're validating that this is no longer true, right? The market's either gonna perform optimally to the expectation of the state, or it's gonna, it doesn't. Okay, it's not doing that. Now I need to focus on this. Is it either, it's markets just telling us we're going sideways or we're gonna be in a hedge team. Well, the market told us we're in a hedge team. So as long as this market is holding negative structure now and holding, holding here, that's your story and you're sticking to it and that's what it's doing. If this breaks structure, that tells us that this isn't true and this isn't true, and we're gonna have one of those terrible linear sideways days. And it's best to just stop trading or sell premium, especially if it's early in the trading session. And you get two breaks in structure. So as it is here, if we start to get, you know, we start to see, let's say some liquidity build up and shift down. We start to see some bigger sellers happening, especially as we, if we start trading below this, this 28,340 area and we get some big red dots, those dots are gonna be different. So if all of a sudden we had someone come in and just take out this liquidity here, this may have some potential. We do have the VWAP here and especially that would be another good validation, right? So that'd be a validation that, hey, we get below this, the VWAP, we have some aggressive sellers starting to come in here. You know, any aggressive selling that starts to come in in this area all the way up to really 28,400 right now, because our, you know, our figure's 411, it shouldn't trade back above here. And this is a good validation trigger that this thing can start rotating back down. And if it does, what could we see? Well, we could see a play for 28,000. And that's one APMD. We had a half APMD, that would be a full APMD to the downside. What else would it be? Well, it's also gonna be the previous day's low point. You know, if you're doing your technical analysis and you wanna do a projection, you could take this high to this low and we could swing it down. So the, you know, I don't really like to talk about technical analysis too much because too many people get sucked into it and it's such a subjective study. And so it can be very deceiving, but it can be a good tool to use for confluence. So we get, you know, we have, you know, what was the expectation that we talked about from the get-go? Again, it's just, you know, having the truth. So the truth is that energy's below the market. And we talked about it's more like, you know, if the market was breaking here, we're not gonna step in front of it here. We're gonna let the market try to make a play for the real liquidity because the market likes to search out liquidity. And then if we can't hold it, you know, then we're going to look for this exhaustive reversal to kind of get back on the positive momentum. And we have, you know, just as we have on the upside, we have the critical range extreme when the market topped out, you know, we have this number on the downside too at 27, 8, 10, which is here, which is basically a swing from here, which comes into alignment here. So, you know, as the market is telling us this week, we're in a hedge theme, that's our story, we're sticking to it. You know, we're looking here in the order book for, you know, we do have some liquidity here that we'd like to see the market just grab. Someone just grab all this, get everything excited. And then, you know, but basically our plan is, as long as we're above 28,411, we're looking for excuses, you know, we're looking for the order book to give us opportunities to get short. We know where our risk is at. Even if we're trading with size here, and we're dancing around with that size, we know when we need to start dancing out of it. But we also know if the market does start to roll over, what's the opportunity? And so here we do have some confluence coming in here at the CRX minus. And a lot of times the market likes to make symmetrical trades.  Any questions? I don't have a lot of time, but I can keep going, go into Ether, and show, you know, basically show the whole method there. The power of this is just having that foundation. So and again, you know, if you have a shorter term style, much a little more longer term, I like to, you know, I'm looking at not only the daily playbook, but I'm looking at the higher time frames weekly and monthly as well.  So you need to understand what the context of the state is. You need to understand what the structure of that state is.  You need those statistical benchmarks. We just, we take it to another level and we make it easier, you know, we're your partner in making money. We're here to, you know, support you and your trading. If you make money, we make money.   You know, what's the state? The market's in a bear trend. What's bear trend? It's opposite of the bull trend. Lower move lows, lower move highs. You know, what's the structure of Ether? Well, it's a little different. We've got a trending market that's got the R level at this, at the sentiment bias. That's interesting. Ether's trading in $25 segments. Our half AP is 12 bucks. Our alert distance risk is three and a half bucks. So, you know, if we're aligning for a half APMD, we're risking alert. We can risk two alert distances for a full APMD move. What are the strategy themes? What's in play for Ether? So this is something that I posted in the Discord channel talking about the CR rotational trades. So here, before we get into that, and we just go through this quickly, just to see the strength of this stuff. So, you know, previous day's high, previous day's low, the previous day's close. We've got our midpoint. What's happening with the market? It starts the period. It's above the previous day's close. That's positive. What's the expectation? Oh, we're gonna, you know, at this point, we're gonna make a play for the midpoint. And at the midpoint, it's gonna make a decision if it wants to go make a play for the previous day's high. Simple as that. So the market starts to do that, and then it can't do it. Falls back in, but can't get below the previous day's close and gives it another go, and it can't do it. So this is just telling us that the market's, you know, having some issues, but what do we know for a fact? Fact is, it's not performing like a bare trend. That's what we know. So what do we know there? It's probably going sideways. We're gonna have some type of corrective move. So now let's put sentiment bias on there. All right, well, sentiment bias is a balanced sentiment. And, you know, the market starts out above, holds a metric here.  You know, it's, but what all the market's telling us is that we're in a corrective part of a bare trend, and the market is having a hard time accelerating into a hedge thing. You know, this is, this signal told us that this is no longer true. And now we're either in this theme or we're gonna have a non-event. And when we put the critical range on here, and we put our minor levels on here, this gives us, you know, basically this is telling us that, okay, maybe we're just going sideways today. You know, and here, you know, the market took a while to tell us that, you know, until here, because up until that point, we still had this positive momentum that this thing was working and was trying to work this hedge thing. But, you know, as you get into the work, and the reason I posted that in the channel is that when the market does stuff like this, this is, it's a tell that we might have this sideways trade. We might have a rotational trade. And typically the market will rotate. And if we see Bitcoin roll over here in the afternoon, we could see either dip down here at this 1557 level in this rotational CR trade. Because we're not doing this, and if we break structure here, we're not doing this. So it's more likely we're on sideways, not a vent.  But here's a bear trend at the directional. You know, here's a bear trend, a market that's in a bear trend with sentiment above the market. So it's in alignment with the bear trend. You know, and you start to learn these different structures, you know, when the sentiment's way above outside the critical range, when the sentiment's, you know, one of the critical range parameters, when sentiment's balanced, but they're all bear trends, those are just different nuances. And each of those nuances has different expectations.  And that's what it's all about. So I welcome everyone to come to our website, DharmaCapital.Trade. There's more information on our tools there.  You'll know what the sentiment is, you'll know your risk and reward metrics, and those are just the truths. So you have that as your foundation, and that's gonna help you optimize and standardize what you do. You know, it's gonna give you that clarity and help you get into the sink. Because when the market's performed to the expectation, that's when you can really engage and get into that flow in the moment, in the microstructure. Any questions, you can email me directly at js.dharmacapital.trade. And I look forward to seeing you guys next week and good trading. Cheers.


Here's up you guys, welcome back to another one. If you are new to the channel, I am Gal Pona. And today we are in the new 2020 Audi Q5 courtesy of Sun Motor Cars in Mechanicsburg, PA. And so yes, they actually just recently got a brand new dealership, it's beautiful, but nonetheless, it's been quite a while since I've actually reviewed the Q5, so I figured I'd jump back into it today. So what do you say? Let's go ahead and jump right into it. And as always, let's start with pricing. And so there will be a few different trim levels for the 2020 Q5, first one being the premium, starting at $43,300, then you have the premium plus, starting at $47,700, and lastly the prestige, starting at $51,450. And so regardless of trim level that you go with though, power plant is going to be the same, powering this one is going to be a two liter turbocharged inline four cylinder engine, putting out 248 horsepower at 5,000 RPM, 273 pound feet of torque available at 1,600 RPM. That power then being sent to all four wheels through Audi's legendary Quattro all wheel drive system, power sent to the ground through a seven speed dual clutch with paddle shifters, which you guys know, we will of course be testing out in a little bit here, but all in all that gives you a zero to 60 time at 5.9 seconds, which is quite quick for an SUV, and we'll test that out as well. Top speed, if you're interested, comes in at 130 miles per hour electronically limited, of course, and MPG numbers come in at 22 in the city, 27 on the highway, taking premium unleaded fuel. And so before we do any kind of accelerations in this thing, I did want to mention there are some drive modes, of course, Audi drive select, it's what it's called. That button is located kind of just below the climate control settings there, but that is going to give you options like off-road, comfort, auto, dynamic and individual. And to sum that up, dynamic is the fun one, comfort is the better ride quality. In individual, you can really set it to your own liking, but essentially what those drive modes will do is adjust things like the throttle response, shift points and steering sensitivity. And so if I were to put it down into that dynamic driving mode, it does immediately downshift. It will hold the RPMs at a much higher level, giving you more power on demand. And it will also tighten up the steering sensitivity, I would say ever so slightly, not a whole lot of difference there as far as steering sensitivity goes, but we'll say wouldn't have minded a little heavier weight as far as dynamic driving mode goes at least, but it is pretty much as expected for an SUV as far as that goes. But having said all that, I think you guys know what we have to do next. And I did want to mention, if you wanted to put it in full manual shift mode, simply slide the shifter all the way to the back and to the right, that is going to give you full control over the shifting. And now having done that, let's do a quick little turning radius check here. Wow, that's excellent. I do a lot of turns right here, you guys. This is among the best. This turning radius is brilliant. Good job, Audi. Anyways, I did just have it up around the 4,000 RPM range. It did not shift for me. So that's kind of the first test. It is truly a manual shift mode, which is brilliant. A lot of times vehicles will send it back into that drive mode if you don't touch it, but I do like the full control that I'm getting right now. But nonetheless, let's do a quick little paddle shift test here and let's see how quickly they're going to react for us here. And here we go. Yes. Oh yeah. Lightning quick, instantaneous. That is one thing. I feel like every time I drive an Audi, their paddle shifters are among the best. I swear it's instantaneous reaction times. If only maybe they were magnesium paddle shifters that would make it even cooler, but they are plastic. But still, the reaction times on these paddle shifters are absolutely ridiculous. Instantaneous. If you wanted to put it in that manual shift mode, you will not be disappointed for sure. But so now, having done that, you guys, I think you know what we have to do next. Let's now do a quick little acceleration test here and let's see how quickly the Q5 can actually get us here up to speed. Here we go. Oh my goodness. Wow, okay. For an SUV, this thing is ridiculously quick, quite honestly, zero to 60 and 5.9. You're not gonna need anything faster than that in an SUV to be quite honest. Merging rods at the highway is going to be a breeze with that kind of acceleration. So plenty of power for the Q5, certainly not disappointed there either. But as always, to go along with that acceleration, braking is equally important.  In the back, 13 inch ventilated rear discs, as far as the braking feel goes, it's been perfectly fine for me in my short test drive today. So definitely no issues there.  As far as steering feel goes, I kind of already touched on that. It is a little more on the loosey-goosey side, but it is pretty much as expected for an SUV, although a well-seeing that dynamic mode, Audi, if you're watching this, wouldn't have minded a little bit heavier of a steering feel to that mode at least, maybe not the others, but at least the dynamic mode. As far as ride quality goes, that has been brilliant. Really no issues there whatsoever. Definitely soaking up P.A.'s road imperfections quite nicely. Cabin noise also very nice. Then touching on visibility, I can see honestly perfectly fine out the back. The second-row headrests are kind of pushed to the side a good bit, so really you're not going to have any issues there. Sometimes they can cause problems, but definitely not in the Q5. And to go along with that touching on visibility, head-up display is going to come standard with the prestige term level. So if you wanted that head-up display, that's how you're going to go about getting that one. And rain-sensing windshield wipers also going to come standard on every single trim level. So rain-sensing windshield wipers are definitely one of those things that should be standard on all cars these days. They're kind of like automatic headlights. It's just one less thing you have to worry about. So essentially the second to Q5 detects any kind of mist or rainfall. Windshield wipers will turn on automatically for you, so you never have to worry about it, so you can better focus on driving the Q5. But that about rounds out the performance segment of this review. Let's now go ahead and take a look at the exterior of this beautiful Audi Q5. All right, you guys, here she is, the 2020 Audi Q5. Let's go ahead and start up front on this nice cold winter day here. Audi single frame front grille, of course, will come standard along with that Quattro lettering within that front grille, indicating one of the best all-wheel drive systems out there right now. It's always a plus. Xenon Plus headlights will come standard with the premium trim level. However, if you were to go with the premium Plus or Prestige, you will find full LED lighting up there. In all trims, though, we're still gonna give you LED daytime running lights up there as well. But now let's go ahead and make our way to the side on this one. Aluminum roof rails will come standard on every single trim level. That, of course, is what you were looking at right now. Aluminum trim window surrounds also coming standard rear privacy glass, standard once again. There are gonna be some revised 18-inch alloy wheels. One of the new upgrades for 2020 that is gonna be with the premium trim level and it's gonna be a five-spoke design up there. However, if you were to go with the premium Plus or Prestige, you will find 19-inch alloy wheels and that, of course, is what you're looking at right now. But so now let's take a quick look at those side mirrors there. They are power-adjustable heated side mirrors with integrated turn signals, all of that coming standard for all trim levels there across the board. And they are actually auto-dimming with memory settings if you were to go with the premium Plus trim level and up. Then making our way to the back first thing I always imagine is there is that shark fin antenna up top there just below that rear spoiler with an integrated brake light rear window wiper, of course, just below that. LED taillights again coming standard across the board. That's always nice. And just below it all, dual exhaust outlets. However, you would think they would be integrated into that rear bumper, but that is actually my friends an illusion because the real exhaust outlets you guys could see are found underneath tucked away, but nonetheless, I think you guys all know what we have to do next. As always, here is that exhaust clip. All right, and so now since we are already around back, as far as opening that rear liftgate goes, there is a power tailgate for all trim levels actually across the boards. That is definitely quite nice. Hands-free tailgate is gonna come with the premium Plus trim level and prestige.  There is a button on the key fob. Also a button found on the driver's side door. And again, hands-free if you were to go with premium Plus or prestige trim levels, but once opened up, cargo capacity is gonna come in at 25.1 cubic feet. If that was not enough space for you, however, there is a 40, 20, 40 split essentially, meaning the rear seats do fold down for quite a bit of extra space bumping the cubic feetness. Yes, I know it's not a word, up to 53.1 cubic feet. There's actually a good bit going on back there. There's a spare tire just underneath of the cargo floor there. There's actually LED lighting in the cargo area. And it's a cool design for the LED lighting. It's like a horizontal bar for the LED lighting. That was pretty cool. 12-volt power outlet back there. There is a rear cargo cover, also a Plus. All in all, definitely a nice setup to the cargo area. Making your way up to the rear leg room that comes in at 37.8 inches. So for reference, I mean even six feet tall. Definitely plenty of space for me back there. And I did wanna mention at this point there is three-zone climate control, meaning both driver and passenger have their own settings, but rear passengers can actually set their own temperature as well. So that's the third zone, of course. But also for those rear passengers, rear center armrests with cup holders, of course, will come standard. And I did wanna mention there are some rear window sunshades available, although they do not come standard for the Q5. But then making your way to the front seats, leather seating is gonna come standard across the board. Eight-way power adjustable heated front seats will come standard for all trim levels. And that's not just the driver seat, by the way. That's the passenger seat as well. It usually doesn't work that way, but that's pretty cool that Audi did that. Memory settings can be found for the premium plus and prestige trim levels. And they can be found on the driver's side door for up to two different drivers. And there's actually several different color options for the interior as well, which I found pretty cool. Of course, you have black, which you're looking at right now, but there is also gray, beige, and a darker brown. So that's pretty cool as well.  So it's nice that you got two extra color options with the Q5. But if you're curious, ventilated front seats are available as an option. Again, they don't come standard though. They take a look at the steering wheel. It is tilt and telescoping. It is power adjustable for the prestige trim level only. And it will come leather wrapped for all trim levels across the board. Then when it comes to the startup, let me first start by showing you guys the key here. You do have a kind of a heavier duty key, but all the buttons are located on the one side. You have your Audi insignia at the very bottom. Lock, unlock, and again, that button to pop the power rear liftgate. But it is actually all keyless entry though. So essentially all you need to do is just leave the key in your pocket, put your foot on the brake, and press that engine start button to go about starting this one up here. And so perhaps the main question I always get in my Audi reviews is what trim levels get the Audi digital cockpit? Because it is one of the coolest things out there.  And so therefore we do have the premium plus. So we do have it today. But all in all, to control what is on that digital screen, there are buttons on the left side of the steering wheel there. And that really gives you a ton of different information. Tacometer being on the left speedometer on your right. And there's a digital speedometer within the regular standard speedometer, of course. How many miles you'll have left until you hit empty? You can check out your driving modes up there, average miles per gallon, safety features, radio information, Bluetooth information, and of course perhaps the best part, the navigation system. And that's the best part because if you hit the view button after you select the navigation system, you have a full digital navigation system up there with the speedometer and tachometer being much smaller in the bottom corners. That is the best view in my opinion. I always loved that Audi did that. It's still one of the coolest digital gauge setups out there right now. And Audi was one of the pioneers. That first really I believe perfected this digital gauge setup. So it's still absolutely amazing up there. So that's definitely one of my favorite parts about the Q5, but moving on to overall interior quality, panoramic moonroof coming standard with a premium plus and prestige. And when I say panoramic moonroof, this moonroof perhaps goes back the furthest I have ever seen as far as panoramic moonroofs go. So that is quite impressive, I gotta say. Walnut wood trim, I absolutely love that. And it's authentic wood. It's not the fake wood you find in some other manufacturers. It's authentic and it's kind of black, so it ties in with the black interior that we have here today. And it's found on the doors as well as just above the passenger side glove box and the climate control options here. But dang, it looks very high end. That wood trim, at least, and it's walnut wood. So that's definitely a plus. Ambient LED lighting coming standard. Again, tri-zone climate control. There's a wireless phone charger that is available. And that's gonna be found just behind the shifter there. And there are homelink controls for up to three different garage doors. So you don't have any of those rattling garage door openers on your sun visor. It's always a plus. That can be found on the ceiling here of the Q5 or up to three different garage doors. It's definitely nice. There is a frameless rear view mirror. I also love that.  There is actually a sunglass holder. I believe that's what its intended purpose is. If it, my sunglass is absolutely perfect. But just to the right of the shifter there, electromechanical parking brake, of course. But perhaps one of the quirky features that I usually don't find on other vehicles out there I don't think I've ever found actually or maybe I didn't pay attention. I don't know. The inner armrest between the driver and passenger, usually you can either lift it all the way up or you can lift it all the way down. But this kind of has a power mechanism where you can set it to any particular height. So if you wanted to rest your arm at like a 45-degree angle, you can do that because you can set it to any particular height. So I found that pretty cool. I've actually never seen that in the 400 plus cars I've reviewed so far. So kind of like that. And that's just behind, of course, the wireless phone charger. And if you press that wireless phone charger back, you have dual cup holders. So that's where they can be found. But once actually opened up, there's, of course, an auxiliary port and another USB charging port within that center armrest as well. Anyways, let's go ahead and make our way to the tech display.  And that is, of course, what you're looking at right now. Coming with that will be Bluetooth and audio streaming as well as Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, meaning simply hook your smartphone up to the Q5 and therefore you have free navigation through your smartphone displayed up on that tech display. And you can also check out your Pandora songs, like and dislike your Pandora songs up there as well. There's a couple other compatible apps up there too. Factory navigation system coming with the digital gauge cluster being the premium plus trim level and prestige, of course. You can also check out your radio settings up there too. And by the way, when it comes to the sound system on the Q5, 10 speakers with 180 watts will come with the premium and premium plus trim levels. But then if you were to go with a prestige, you will find a 19-speaker Bang & Olufsen sound system with 755 watts.  But, and by the way, I don't think I mentioned it yet. To actually control what is on that digital display, it is not touchscreen. There is a circular dial and buttons and kind of a touchpad controller located just in front of the shifter. So that is how you are going to control what is on there and yet at the same time not smudge up the screen with your fingers. So I didn't wanna mention that as well. All right, so we do actually have, though, the Bang & Olufsen sound system as an option for a premium plus here today. So what do you say? Let's go ahead and turn on the radio see what we got playing this morning and let's test out the clarity of this one.  Definitely not bad. There are actually speakers everywhere. You got four of them located on the two A-pillars combined there, so. But last thing I wanted to mention to you guys on that tech display is when you do put the Q5 in reverse you of course will find a rear view camera letting you know who or what is behind you which is always is going to lead us into safety. And so to start there are front side and side curtain airbags. Then in the back you're gonna have latch AKA lower anchors and tethers for children for the rear car seats. Didn't wanna mention the premium plus trim level that we have today is going to add front and rear parking sensors as well as a blind spot monitor with rear cross traffic alert.  You don't go turning into anybody. That's always nice. Prestige trim level is going to add on top of that adaptive cruise control, a 360 degree camera, Audi park steering assist, traffic sign recognition and lane keep assist as well. And so, but that is about it for this one you guys. Thank you so much for watching. Feel free to follow me on social media at the bottom of the screen there if you like. Be sure to hit the subscribe and the bell notification button if you're in a new car reviews. That is what we do here on this channel after all. Do appreciate you guys watching more than you know and I will see you guys all in the next video. Stay gold.