Hello everyone testing get started here in a little bit testing testing Test oh welcome everyone My name is John Slazas I've been trading for over 35 years trading crypto since 2013 and I've got a Analytics business where we provide fact-based trading solutions and so I'm going to go into a how we look at the market and Also recommend if you haven't seen them we put together a nice series It really goes over kind of peak performance and kind of leads into this So today I'm going to highlight Some of our tools and and how we approach the market before we get into it. I want to just go through a disclosure You know basically anything we're doing here is for Educational purposes only and shouldn't be considered specific investment advice or recommendations Also, if you're trading digital assets or futures or anything and you're actively trading it You want to make sure you're using risk capital helps with your head keeps you balanced and Makes it easier to remove those emotions and stick with the plan You know our our mission is to create a positive impact and help traders achieve their full potential And that's what we've been doing for some time I started this business on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on the trading floor So I've been working with professional traders for a while and you know What we do is we empower traders with fact-based solutions, you know And what do those what do fact-based solutions do will they enhance your self-awareness and that helps your decision-making? and so trading is Especially if you're day trading and you're in the moment It's more of an art form than anything else, but you need that statistical baseline. And so our approach helps traders, you know Execute trades confident and effectively by facilitating the state of flow. So state of flow Meaning helping you get into the moment Kind of a no-mind situation, you know athletes, you know, if you're any if you do any sports Really anything you drive in walking down the street, you know All of a sudden you're just in that moment and it's a special moment things are just working perfectly and It's only when you kind of the funny thing is when you recognize that you're in that moment Sometimes it bumps you out of it and so We're you know a lot of these fact-based solutions that we have that we use helps you to stay in the moment But also when you get out of it helps you get back into it And it's just you know, the key is really focusing on a fact foundation and You know, that's what it's all about fact-based trading You know basically involves making decisions based on objective data and analysis rather than subjective emotions or opinions So it's it's important You know with your trading that you're separating subjective analysis objective Things into your decision-making process and understand what they are and then build on top of your objective data You know anything that you can put into an if-then statement are the are the you know The really the valid things because then you have a benchmark, you know, I love this quote by To lead, you know the illusions of validity, you know everything makes sense in hindsight the illusion that we understand the past far Fosters our overconfidence in our ability to predict the future You know, you look back at a chart the end of the day everything's so obvious And then in reality in the moment, that's not the case and the problem is that The simplicity of the bilo sell high proposition it creates that illusion the trading is easy And this is supported by subjective technical analysis tools, which clearly explain in hindsight how to achieve trading success And you pick up a book look is this works here here here here, but it's it's it's an after-the-fact thing And the consequences traders become disillusioned and they're constantly searching for new ideas.  It's not sustainable You know with all these different subjective tools that you know this and that and hope You know it creates trading paralysis or you're just blowing your account up, you know, based on empirical evidence You know intuition versus formulas research suggests that the to maximize predictive accuracy final decisions should be left to formulas especially in low validity environments So trader trading is a very low ability environment. You need that foundation.  This gives you something You know kind of the the rock in the storm, you know in the chaos in the emotion In the drama of the day, you know, it's really a reality check to the probabilities of what's most likely to occur based on quantitative results independent of any subjective bias That you know, these are the facts you can and you know under, you know owning those facts and Not letting your subjective opinion You know blind you to what the facts are but really owning what the facts are not what you want things to be what they are And the result is that traders that have a statistical baseline focus on facts and market truths less thinking, fearing, hoping, trying and more knowing self-trust, confidence doing And the results are more effective Consistently applied sustainable approach And that's what it's all about. We want a sustainable approach And by building on facts and market truth, that's how you get there In our method incorporates a statistical outside view which helps to slow down the decision-making process and minimize biases I'm a big fan of Daniel commons thinking fast and slow And his quote is the outside view offers a more accurate predictions than the inside view meaning that Having the probabilities of what's more likely to occur is Better than your gut reaction now absolutely your gut reaction Is an asset? You know your intuitive function is an asset, but it needs to have the right foundation And so and then getting in the zone when you get in the zone and everything's working trade It's because you're you know half the time your subjective opinion is matching up with what the facts are and when they're not That's when there's a problem and you force it And so not forcing things knowing the truth That's when you're when your inside view is in sync with the outside way when you're inside you're subjected You know your your decision-making is in alignment with this You know outside view the statistical baseline, you know, then that's giving you the The quickness and the fluidity to just you know really just act and trade and execute So we're talking about fact focus and so that's what we're going to go through today, you know using our our our foundation and We're going to I'm going to get into our facts and our fact foundation talk a little bit about What we do we're going to and some of the Tweets that we do and and we're gonna in the post that we do and how we can support you and give you some insight to Create a sustainable trading approach so that in our series we talked about you know understanding yourself understanding Who you're trading against and understanding what the context of the market is what's the baseline and The main thing You know, this is something that you need to do every day, you know when you're coming into the market What is the underlying foundation of the market? What is the state? so market state, so this is our playbook application and you basically the algorithms that are behind this were designed to Define what is not what will be so they weren't designed to be a trading system They were designed to understand and identify the truth of What the state of the market is By because by having that foundation of that truth. It gives us the context That we can you know work from it's you know kind of start our day You're walking up the day to go trade is it sunny out or is it raining out period?  You know if you're playing sports You're gonna wear different shoes When you're when you're running on a field.  You're gonna tweak how you apply those tactics You know a lot of traders have a tactic that they like to do and they just come in with that same tactic every day No matter what and some days it works and some days it doesn't work a lot of times when the days that does work It's because it's in alignment with the state and it's aligned with the characteristics of that state You know if you trade momentum Well, you know, absolutely every state, you know is always transitioning from one state to the next so even if you're in a Digestive trade state You can have a momentum move that's going to move from one top of the extreme to the bottom But bottom line The expectation is that that trend is not going to fall through So you're going to have You know, if you're executing your momentum tactic, you're going to wait for the momentum shift And you know that you're going to you really be aggressive on protecting those profits Because you're not the expectation is that thing is not going to fall through Until it breaches and then it mark and the market tells you hey, we're in transition And so, you know, but you know, basically understanding The state and the characteristics of it, you know, that gives you better insight in how you need to play the game You know, this is our market grid You know, it comes in and you know, really it breaks down What what what's what market states are Each of the markets in and You know, if we're in a a neutral digestion Are we in a a bull trend? You know, we've all traded bull trends before But do we really just really think about, you know and go through what does it really mean? Yeah, it's a market that makes makes higher move highs higher move lows You know, is the market performing to that expectation does the chart, you know, is the is the trading action look like this if it doesn't That tells you something so You always want to if you know when you when you read a book on a study And it shows you, you know, the biggest bull trend in the history of bull trends It's going to look like this. It's going to look higher move lows and higher move highs period And so that's an easy tell To look at if the market's not performing the expectations of a trend Something's wrong with that trend and you shouldn't hope that it's going to continue It means the market is going to is shifting and changing No matter what that is You know, are we in a corrective state?  It means the market's been in a negative trend and it stopped trending and it's either going sideways or a corrective rally and At some point when that corrections over the bear trend is going to resume So this can be a fun state to participate in because You may be able to get participate in the next extension of that trend lower You know, so it's just really understanding The context is important And then once we understand the context, we need to understand the structure of it So where does that where does the state persist? Within what price parameters does the state persist? And Where does it change? You know, some markets are dynamic. They're constantly moving. They're constantly shifting from one state to the next And when markets are in transition, that's when that's when it's difficult. That's when trading is difficult When they're in sync That's when everything's working. Everything's clicking. You know, especially if your tactics aren't in alignment with that So what we do is we have another algorithm that goes through and defines the structure of that state We call it our price map And this is a representation of the full price map and here's the here's our our market state And here is our structure within that state. So for bitcoin 27 263 Is what we call our upside pivot. That's the top of this digestive expectation And at the low point 26 400 is our Low point of that range. So this is the digestive range that the market is currently in And then we identify a different algorithm sentiment bias So the structure of the market is pretty much the same Every period the The upside pivot is always above the downside pivot. This is like our critical range And the sentiment bias is just telling us hey above this price where buyers below it were sellers And when sentiment is balanced and there's no bias because it's in the middle of this range That tells us that that's a unique structure. So Here's a market in neutral And sentiment is at the lower band So this is giving us more of a positive sentiment bias So we're still they're both in neutral But this one has a little more positively Because how its structures sit up So we need to adjust our tactics to that For what we're looking at today, we're you know, we're going to take a look at bitcoin. We've got balance structure Balance structure means that you know, this market's been in neutral or it's wound up It might be ready to do something might be ready to break out whenever markets And this is you know, so this is what our commentaries go through You know one we define. Yeah, this is the market state. This is the expectation What you should expect for a neutral digestion This is what have the market should do The character the characteristics should be but neutral digestion states our precursors to breakouts And so this is what what can happen when the market starts to break out And so you need to be aware of that And then based on the structure, okay, how does that change? Well Because the market is balanced You know, this says the potential to be a turning point session So that's kind of exciting Hey, we might make a move could be a nightmare trade too where the market just really just Rotates around this area and it's continues to consolidate You know, so you never know But what we do know is we know we can observe price action within structure to get some insight to what what can occur And so you basically what this playbook is doing is it's it's really just setting the conditions it's setting You know, it's identifying. Hey, we're in this state Here's the structure now. What you know, how do we play it? You know, it's it's an if then statement, you know, if the market's in neutral and it and it has a balanced sentiment bias Then these are the plays that you want to do and so we identify those strategies and in any market state You've got characteristics and neutral digestion. It's sideways And sideways the you know, the optimal thing to do is just to fade momentum into those extremes If the market's going to Continue to consolidate then those extremes, you know, this Those extremes may narrow if we start to breach those extremes that starts to tell us that hey, we might be in a transition Or we're or we're expanding the range And if the market's going to transition A lot of times the market likes to transition from sentiment So the market will make its its decision Off of sentiment and then it'll just start to trend and it'll just go I mean if you look at most breakouts That's what happens They get into a consolidation situation They rotate around The kind of the midpoint of that consolidation And then when they start to go they just start to build a trend and we you know, either higher move highs higher move lows or lower Move lows lower move highs And so this this commentary is really giving you some insight and some guidance to these strategies what the expectations You know when the fades work we're anticipating a narrowing of the digestive range You know, if the market is rotating around the directional level That's an instance that we might be getting a breakout and so Then we go into more detail of the the cr plus and cr minus these interior range become good validation points for the Either breakout strategy so that the market starts to make a move Can it violate those levels if it can? We might there might be something we may have some something something to do And if we do get a breakout You know, we're looking for A two-way PMD target. So two way PMDs would be two major price map distances So here's one major price map distance two major price map distance So we could see an upside breakout would target 27 694 in bitcoin and downside would target 25 537 So big moves And so this basically just goes through the you know, here's the play here's the playbook You know, you're in the locker room, you know, this is this is you're getting geared up You have this at the start of the session And it's for the session If you're an options trader, how do you play the how do you play that in the options market? You know optimally well if we do get a push up into the upper extreme, you know, we're going to sell some calls We get a push to the lower bar We're going to sell some puts why because we're expecting volatility to pump out And we're expecting at least it in the market to stall there If not reverse You know, so if the market Is not in a hedge theme and it's not really you know holding You know really good structure and it's kind of showing us that it's still choppy, you know, this can be a great strategy If the market is holding structure, that's a different story And we're going to want to buy, you know, we're going to be looking to buy calls and maybe put it, you know Put a spread on Because we're anticipating the market to make a move So we do have integrations And you're able to download the data files here For those integrations and that's what we're going to take a look at right now So everything we do it's always going kind of macro to micro, you know What's the big picture kind of you know start to zero in right now? We're just focusing on the daily structure and we have From the get go In this, you know, here's the start of the trading session here So we opened up And we're getting a A breakout Which is a hedge strategy theme And so is the market performing to the expectations of a breakout? So let's take a look at that What is a breakout? So we go over on our website when you register with us We've got tutorials that go over all everything that i've been going over And we talk about and what the critical range is And we talk about all the different specific playbook strategies And the strategy that we're looking at here is a breakout strategy and basically This strategy involves following price action the direction of the critical range breakout But here we have a a breakout that is off what we call our directional And so bigger breakouts usually occur when we move outside of the critical range But the key to all breakouts is the expectation And two things it gives you trade vision where this market should go So I mentioned before two average price map distances and those metrics I just reset this Those metrics are here So for bitcoin An average price map distance is 431 dollars So 862 is two And so that's going to be what we're going to look at just different we go through different examples of Breakouts so What do we know about a breakout? Is it the market should trend? the other thing it's interesting we've gone over this as well is the using facts so What are the facts do we have besides this structure? Well, we also have You know what happened yesterday? What's let yesterday's low? What's yesterday's high? Where's yesterday's close and where's the Where's the midpoint? Of that range gives us kind of a a sense of what the biases are, you know, so When the market's opening up And it's above yesterday's midpoint and then it's trading above Yesterday's close, you know, even if we're just using those facts And here's our opening, you know, this is a Indication of strength So it's all about, you know, really identifying that context, you know One of the most simple things, you know, if you're trading the market and you're short and the market's trading above the previous day's close You're trading above the previous day's close. That's just the fact So how far away from that close are you and if you're you know, if you're near it, you know A lot of times the market likes to move away from those closes Um The midpoint's another great number. That's basically the yesterday's v-wap, right, you know, it's and Are you above that? That's kind of just a sense of, you know, that's that's you know, really the real sense of momentum You know, if you're coming in and you are above the the midpoint of the previous session You're above the previous session midpoint. That's that's a sign of strength And then Previous session high It's a big number, you know, are we going to breach that high? Is this market going to fall through and make a new high and start to trend and break out?  It's been a terrible terrible trade In bitcoin and now we've got the market that made a new high. Okay. Are we going to fall through? Let's see, you know, here we you know, basically it seems that we've made like, uh, you know, whatever yesterday's range This is half of yesterday's range. We've kind of made a half range move here But now we you know with our analytics, you know, we can start to build on this and now all of a sudden We've got our sentiment bias. It's coming in Right at the previous day's close and the previous day's midpoint You know, so and we know that You know the sentiment bias we're you know buying breaks above here selling rise below here Pull something up here sentiment bias the r level Give you a better visual on on what sentiment is You know, basically, it's just it is that over under number and it's that bias And so, you know, you want to keep your trading in alignment with that bias You know, so for selling the market It's it's it's a sell against sentiment. So it's a corrective sell It's not the you know, not to take that trade if that's if you got your signals are going But how do you how do you manage that risk? You need you're treating it more like a hot potato versus now if I'm getting a buy signal I'm going to press it because I'm anticipating follow-through you know This is a great example of sentiment where you get a sell signal But it's it's it's away from the real sweet spot. So this is where the energy of the market is This is where the big sellers are the big liquidity is is that sentiment And so a lot of times the market will give you a false signal It gives you the big squeeze into sentiment and then it falls apart You know, so this is kind of a classic thing. So understanding where sentiment is Can give you great insight and then we have these metric boundaries which I Which are here in the playbook to give you a sense of how to manage your risk And you can look at these this boundary area is kind of signal acceptance. So When you're trading outside of the boundaries of of structure, it's it's messy and expensive This is where the algos really live to chew you up And this is where the funds participate at structure points and the funds are most interested in sentiment Because that's where they really are going to make decisions And so understanding that is important And then you can you know, we're not going to get into this today, but you can look at How you compare, you know, daily sentiment to weekly to monthly sentiment and it gives you, you know, different insights But understanding sentiment if you move the farther away from sentiment where that can the market go If it starts to sell off, you can go to sentiment So for today Sentiment we came into alignment with the previous day's close and previous day's midpoint. So this gives us, you know More confidence based on these facts That if the market starts to move higher, it could go and we could get some follow through And where can it go when we know the market's been in neutral digestion? And so Where can it go? It could go up to the upside pivot You know reading through the playbook. It's talking about, you know validating, you know Beyond the critical range Parameters and so here we have interesting setup where We've got the previous day's high point is at the top of the Critical range positive, which is our validation point for this positive momentum So we get this spike through exhaustive Initial on kind of low liquidity and then the market holds Is starting to build positive structure. So this is important higher lows And then this You know and you know the market had built some structure off the previous day's high point And so when you see alignment with different facts, you know the previous day's high and then this This market structure metric That's always encouraging gives you confidence And when we get start trading back above there the confidence that the market's going to follow through And so since we have this move with positive momentum, you know, we were identifying this market is in a hedge thing So this market has a potential to break out So when the market is giving you a signal It's telling you what theme it's in and that's what's important understanding what the strategy theme is for the session That's what traders are Should are doing every day Identifying what are we in an optimal theme Are we in a hedge theme or are we in a non event thing? So an optimal theme the market's not going to trend. It's not going to hold positive structure It's going to break continue to break structure and it's going to digest A hedge strategy theme the market starts to trend and it's going to break and it starts to break out Now if the market Starts, you know goes into a hedge theme and can't hold trending structure And it are in it and also the market breached It's upper metric, you know, it's upper band of this neutral digestion Then it's our the third thing that the market can do is have a non event Do nothing. That's those terrible linear days or terrible days. The market just doesn't go anywhere And so that's look, it's you know, bickering is starting to tee up for that So just as we had this validation of this momentum This is our validation number for a critical range breakout and the market held it This is how the metric boundaries are designed to work where the market is, you know, the price level is It's kind of stair stepping higher And the fact that this market could not validate above this point is a tell So again, we're always looking for a market to be perfect So as the market is building positive momentum here, it's building higher move lows building higher move lows This thing should just go here and we should continue to have this aggressive momentum And when it doesn't and it fails here It's telling us something. It's not perfect. That's what I go back to You're always looking for the market to be perfect If it's not You can't you got to, you know, this is where hope starts to come in and says, oh, I hope it's going to do something Or maybe you bought it from here You missed this opportunity because you were sleeping or you just weren't on the market And you missed this opportunity because you were sleeping or you weren't on the market And now you're coming in here or maybe you're coming in here But fact is is the market wasn't the super aggressive linear up moving it stopped And so that that's what produced this action And if the market's really good, it should be basing above here It should not be trading here If it was really good, it would have produced a It would have breached this area to tell to tell us that yes, we have broken and a lot more a lot more times than not In all these markets not just crypto The market's going to give you the the tell signal. It's going to give you the big squeeze So if that let's just assume that this thing did Price qualify above here and it's stabilized here, you know, then the next time it comes back up here We'd anticipate start to build positive momentum and just go And then we would look for this resumption of this the fact that it's not doing that Is concerning And so we've you know, we're starting to break this head strategy theme structure Which is starting to come into alignment with a Uh non-event theme So not very interesting And a failure in if the market cannot stabilize here More likely it's going to look to revisit sentiment And if not go test the previous day's low point Or even potentially even take out the previous day's low point a lot of times the market likes to Violate things to the upside and then make a symmetrical violation to the downside, you know So looking for the market to stabilize here But basically going back to you know, really a non-event market really didn't do anything different Because if it's going to trend it's going to trend And so now we're here is this market reversing and we're going to fall back into a Into a digestive trade, you know Now we can kind of shift to the microstructure and take a look at what's happening And basically, you know, we're using this microstructure at each one of these areas It gives us insight to when we want to pull the trigger So right now the market hasn't been able to follow through to the upside It had a you know, basically If you're accepted the the Initial signal here you got paid out It market paid you out. It paid you out a full APMD full APMD and a half You know two APMDs We're here.  So you're not giving it back money Let's get those lined up. So now we're here And we've got an integration that works with uh, this is sierra charts. This is our book map integration And we've got our structure built into the heat map here And we can it's interesting here just to look at the volume dots and to see, you know, you have people You know as the market was trading below this metric You know, we start to get a bunch of sellers that came in Puking out of it and then as the market started to get go back above The metric we're getting buyers are coming, you know, so, you know, and they're just getting screwed uh, I don't have the history of uh What happened earlier here? um, but we're here we are in the moment and so Now we're looking at this um 27, you know, 260 basically And what's interesting here that, you know, we're just looking for fact, you know, what are the facts fact is We know that this market was has been in neutral digestion fact is the market, you know, I tried to Break out to the upside fact is it broke structure and it went sideways. Is it going to stabilize here for a new advance? Or is it over and we're going to pull back to the uh directional That's the decision the market's making right here And so and it's making that decision right here Of this 27 200 And and it's making it between that and 27 260 So between the upside pivot and that's what we call our alert distance metric So what's interesting is the vwap is coming in Right here at the top of the right here at the upside pivot And so this is, you know, so this is great confluence. I'd like to look for um It's a great momentum level Looking at the order book What's happening here? This is a combined order book. So it's combining the binance futures with bivit and oki ex and I've got the large lot Markers in here to identify, you know, who the large lot players are are coming in to just get a sense of You know, is this are the, you know, the buyer's supporting this metric Can we overcome the upside pivot and make a new New play to the crx minus me crx plus that might all maybe all we get today And we may need to wait till the next session. So again as we move through the session um You know market should be making a move soon if it's going to if not, you know, it could just it can just Peter out and just have this, you know, difficult more difficult, you know, terrible sideways action But the market's making a decision here. So basically At the moment it's defending this negative alert distance If the sellers start to push here and the selling pressure starts to build up It's going to be a tell that this is over And the market's going to want to give it up and we're going to give it up to Well, at least back down to the previous day's high point So at least the expectation is we're going to move from 27 200 and we get like a 200 break Back down to here Where it's going to make a decision Are we going to base And this will be the kind of the new consolidation in this range or we're coming all the way back down to the directional And so then we'll start to look is the market starting to form negative structure And if it continues to hold negative structure, you know, as I mentioned before as you go through our tutorials, we talk about You know Because we're in this context because we if this thing starts to fail Um, a lot of times you can see kind of a symmetrical play that doesn't follow through So we'll see what happens there But the key right now is, you know, we're watching this as the market's starting to build up If we're selling it here, our risk is here I like when I trade I like to have a mandate my mandate and cryptos. I'm a buyer And so I look at the market from that perspective. So I'm either hedging I'm flat or I'm leveraging My, you know, my my my buys and so if I'm not, you know, at this point This is This is my risk So until the market is really trading below 26 800 this midpoint. I'm not, you know, that As a as a longer term buy. I'm not Bothered by that. It's still positive If the market starts trading below this price point, I may need to make a decision Do I want to hedge that? Or not On the upside, do I want to press it? It's just I didn't get this trade here.  What's my upside? So this structure is going to change tomorrow And this market Is not going linear. So my expectation is I'm not going to see this So do I really How how committed am I to this? And since I've we've identified that if the market fails from here, we're we're going nowhere And I could buy it back lower if I want to Um, and also if I'm getting out of here and the market starts to make a new mo low It takes out these lows here and starts to Eat through this liquidity. Um I can always put the mark. I can always put my buys back on back above here when we get back up with the view up If I wanted to be more aggressive So now the market starting to is leaning It's more negative that it wants to just do nothing um, so You know, unfortunately bitcoin is slipping back into that sleepy difficult sideways mess So it's kind of thorough overview of the playbook Understanding the context Understanding the structure of that context Along with the the structure bias from the sentiment bias And then what strategy themes Are optimal for that state and structure bias and when What strategy themes are should we use that signal a transition to a new state? So I can leave you with is You definitely want to take everything in your quiver of analytical tools and break them down to What do I have that I can sum up into an if-then statement if the market does this then I do this If the market goes above the 50-day moving average, then I buy You know, basically, but it's a you know, whatever you know, whatever it is Whatever you have if you can't sum it down to if then And then you have too much of a subjective thing like well if the moving average It goes above the 50-day moving average and the rsi is doing this and then that's doing that and And you know, we've got a Economic report coming out or whatever and it turns into some big, you know, big long string or there's some just subjectivity to it You need to take another Look at what you have there as a tool because it's it's just without being It's not sustainable. You know, the subjective feature makes it Not clear and when it's not clear Your body knows it's not clear and it makes it hard for for your body to accept Of non-factual information when when you when it turns out to be incorrect And your body knows that based on the facts that it sees that there's there's conflict there and that's that's what causes stress And so having a good fact foundation You know, you're able to have better clarity so I welcome everyone to If you're interested in some of the tools you saw you can come in and test drive them at come to our Website and any questions feel free to drop them into our Discord channel or you can email me directly Hopefully we're gonna, you know get some volatility to start to pick up that actually falls through but I'm not holding my breath right now But being prepared is all we can do and you know having the facts is, you know, really is part of your You know helps you to slow down your decision making process and make sure, you know that you're filtering out any of your Biases that can influence And you know the emotion in your in your trading decisions So I look forward to seeing you in the room and we'll see you next week Take care. Cheers