Good morning traders. Welcome to the book map all markets live webinar here. This is bruce at book map I'll be your host good morning, and we'll go through Live order flow analysis here and any of the markets that you like Just request it and we can take a look at it. Most people want to look at the s&p. So that's what we go through Let's see Shadow okay, you're answering a question. It looks like Yeah, yeah, we don't we can look at currency futures if you like But we don't have a spot for X. It's also a rollover period guys. So we got some kind of weird Things to look at here within book map in the heat map. We'll talk more about that. All right, so let's cover the Well, we have this webinar every Monday Tuesday and Friday at 10 a.m And we'll go through like I said all markets here. I'm the book map lead educator here we have a host of other educators and traders and streamers All on our discord channel as well as our YouTube channel Just go to our YouTube channel and you'll see here next up is Tom B Then a Doug later today with options Tom B's volume profile s&p trader And they're earlier today. We had rain as well as for crypto markets And we also had Charles with the stock index features going through volume profile If you interested in all the different things that we offer This is the place to go go to book map calm Click on the more button here go to our learning center here and then you'll see the Just scroll down a little bit here This is our calendar and you can look at each day and see all the different events that we have here. Okay, so You know Tuesday We will have John slaws us in the afternoon Options with Doug and the algo boys actually they'll be later today as well Every day every weekday here, right? So they are only in our discord channel So you'd have to go over there to our discord channel to view that stream. Good morning. Kenji. All right Let's jump in here and you can reach out to me on book map Discord as well as my Twitter handle here flow order General disclosure all book map limited materials information and presentations are for educational purposes only and should not be considered specific investment advice Nor recommendations risk disclosure trading futures equities and digital currencies Involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results All right, so let's jump in here We'll take a look at the bigger picture. I think Just again a note on the Rollover period right well, this is what rollover looks like it's actually getting a lot better here But here's previously. Okay, so you see some high liquidity in here But you also see these players here About a point and a half or you know two points away from current price action This kind of halo effect around the price action We see that all the time actually but when the markets are thinner they really Stand out a lot more And then when they roll over to another contract here You'll see that that will kind of get lost in the in the liquidity of a whole lot of other traders in here so a quick way to understand your rollover, let me just show you that from the Learning center here. Okay, so just scroll up Or in the learning center here book map comm Slash learning dash center click on the getting started course here adding symbols Okay, we have a video in here about how to add futures and stock symbol We also have the guide here that goes over our guide In the month a year understanding the future symbols, but also understanding the rollover period in here And in what what we do or what I do usually is I just go in here and look up the contract specs for the S&P I just go to Do a quick Google search for The ES CME volume and then that'll pop it up here, right? So let me let me in fact Let me show you that Because there's a lot of confusion about this for those that don't trade futures or are new to it And you should know the contract specs. It's important. So let's go there and then You can see this is the new symbol here es u3 It has rolled over now We want to understand the details though of the contract specs So click on volume and open interest and we showed this on Friday how the open interest over here see it here Had kind of shifted and changed But now look at how dramatic it is. Okay, there are negative 347,000 open-interest positions They're they're out of the market and look at the hell they've added in here 460,000 have added to the September contract now. Let's look at the volume here. Okay, we can look at Globex and also the Overall volume the Total volume here We still see there is more being traded in the June contract. This is very close though You'll note here and it'll probably happen during this webinar and we'll see the heat map change You'll note it which is pretty amazing to see the kind of transparency that we're talking about here in bookmap and Yeah, we'll we'll see the the difference here, right? So I look for it soon, but that's how to understand which contract is offering the more liquidity and You know, which one you should be trading, right? Okay, and as noted previously rollover can be tricky And the reason being is the behavior of the participants in here are doing something different than Necessarily looking for You know Speculating on the price movement Okay, there's also a lot of well, we're rolling out of one contract into another All right, so you'll see also a lot of pairs trading and hedging You know back and forth so the behavior is a little different I know a lot of traders don't like to trade during this period Okay, but we'll go through the order flow anyway. In fact, I can see this little breakout here probably up to this 57 here Let's see if we can get it here And I also want to cover some CVD in here McLoko we covered the CVD a lot last Last session on Friday And why we look for something like this this 57 58 area to trade right now And we'll talk about this little movement in here Then we're going to take a look at the bigger picture. All right, so let me let me cover this in here about CVD so that There's some clarity around this CVD is a very simple indicator here in the sub chart all it is is The aggressors added together here The name the number of a green Okay, the aggressors here are the green dots. These are market buy orders so When you see a bigger green dot, you know that this is there's more market buy orders here red dot is market sell Okay, and that's it now the CVD will record both together It just mashes them together adds them together Obviously if it's a negative number it adds it so it's actually subtracting from it. All right, so there's our move into 58 already That's all we're looking for for now. Just just 58 Hey, now, let's talk about why God if McLoko is in here would be great See Well, anyway, we might have to may have to go over it another time with him as well but I want to go through each leg and each move in here and that you're going to get a deeper understanding of cumulative volume Delta and This indicator and then start to read it at a and a much much better You know kind of higher Resolution basically you you will you're gonna understand a lot more about it So here's why right? So CVD is going down here We go back and forth and you CVD is also going down here Okay, however, there's divergence here. The divergence is CVD is going down, but price isn't Okay, so what's going on in here? Well, it's either The maybe maybe the selling dried up right here at this point and there's no more sellers And then buyers came in or maybe they're absorbed by an iceberg or maybe they're absorbed by just high liquidity in here Hey, there's a there's, you know, multiple things that can happen Now I don't see much in the in the order book in here at all That's a transacting in here. Maybe there's a little bit in here, but it's not a whole lot So I'm imagining they just stop, you know selling at this area here And buyers just came in and took it up to the top of the range But there might be an iceberg. So let's add the icebergs in here and The iceberg would be really important to understand Hey, here's the on-chart icebergs and let's take a look here I use for the icebergs Okay, no, and it's really there's really not a whole lot of icebergs in here either. All right Now there's also a bigger picture move that we'll take a look at as a gap fill in here, I believe but Anyway, so what is the CVD telling us here? Well, there's a divergence here. It just means that there are more sellers from here to here Okay, so from here to here We have more sellers than we do buyers now one way to a few different ways to look at this and kind of understand this rectangle and the data in it is to We'll use this tool here zoom by drag, okay, and we'll just Left-click hold and drag over here and then release and you can see now this data here is all within our window All right now we can look at maybe some better studies in here And start to understand like the order book and volume and balance here But we can see that there's more selling in here. There's no question about it. It's negative 8% So that's That's what's happened in here All right, we can look at our columns as well We can split out the data in our columns and start to look at some of these details in here So there's more selling down here actually that this is a kind of a point of control most traded volume level here at 43 53 Okay, so and that's just fact all right, so there's more selling down here and Yet price, you know went back up All right, so we're starting to understand these legs a little bit better If we can continue to look at it in here And look at you know a very specific leg We're still in the zoom by drag tool and we can look at this leg in here And start to understand volume pressure in here. You can use control Z to go back And then look at maybe this leg up in here, right and and start to Compare here your volume All right, so for example Look at your CVP Column in here and look at the buyers in here. Hey now what I'm getting at is this Let's just use control Z will go back And then we can look at this leg in here see how we can use this zoom by drag tool here, which is really nice by the way Is it you can actually outline a little rectangle around it now Only because I'm in the recenter none mode right now if I go into recenter best bid and offer you'll note that now it's just The re-centering will happen here, but it's it's within best bid and offer so you don't have that option with the Rectangle you have just two zones in here one zone that you're gonna outline All right, and then just hit control Z to go back All right, so what I'm trying to get at here is this and this is something that you might want to go and check out with gene over on the Algo boys Webinar right because this is something. I know he looks at and what we're talking about here is you know, you're kind of ABC patterns and volume within your your patterns Okay, and that's something to understand and comprehend Any reversal that takes place is likely gonna have you're gonna see this flow and the shift in this change Okay, so for example if we look at this Out of this tool to get out of this tool you got to click back on it And then we'll use the drawing tools here And then we'll look at a line and I'll just draw this line here. Okay, so this is one leg here Right now the next leg really kind of came up to here and the next leg after that kind of came down to here We want to understand the volume within these areas in here. This directly relates to your CVD There was also questions last week about The M's and W patterns etc And starting to understand that well, this is getting into it and this is why these M's and W's work double bottoms double tops Is to start to understand the shift and the flow Here in the order flow and not not just the order book which we have off right now Because we're not getting too much out of that during this rule over period However, we're getting You know this this difference in the cumulative volume Delta And and we're seeing it in here. There's that divergence that we just talked about And here's here's more to well it kind of came down and made an equal one here But it went a little lower here right, so and We want to understand the volume on this move and this leg here Hey, and you can look at kind of the overall Delta hey, how many traded on down here, and we know there's more sellers here. You can just look at it right here Not only do you see it in the dots? But you see it here in the the volume Delta bars down here Okay, now the move back up look at the how paltry that is Hey, this is pretty pretty anemic pretty weak move back up by the buyers again heavy selling here Okay, you can see it here in the Delta bars However, and there's divergence However buyers came back in and moved it back up here Okay, and then we have the next swing and the move here we understand the swing down to here and There should the seller should be able to take this lower at this point, right? That's what you would assume Now let's look at the Delta bars in here. Actually, there's not a whole lot of buying in here We're looking for that shift in that change in here a lot of times with your CBD where you get a real big Divergence is here on this leg And we're not really getting a much of a divergence here And the reason that we would get that divergence would be there would be big green dots up in here up in this area on this retracement Right, but they failed to take it higher Right, then you will see a big difference here in the CVD Right, but what we're understanding is the back and forth in here and we're looking for this kind of shift in this change and That's what you in a lot of cases like I had mentioned before I don't really look at CVD very much I try to understand the shift in the change in here by looking at the where the volume is Transacting with this back and forth range in here and I look for some sort of imbalance or some sort of edge in here And then we can see that the buyers did come back in here and then the volume Here on the on the Delta bar starts to shift and change. See how we had just a little bit here See how we have a lot more here Okay, so you can look for maybe a move back up to you know where it dropped from here. Maybe hey, maybe even here What about you know, maybe you can even get back up to the top of this range up in here, right? It didn't But if there was enough fires it would have All right, so again understanding this range bound activity in here by understanding the Delta and You can compare that Delta with cumulative volume Delta and This is something worthy to study and look at and you know If you know look for an edge in there This is exactly what this tool is used for cumulative volume Delta, but we're talking about details now by looking at book map All right, and you can see that well everything kind of just went back and forth in here now so far Okay, now we have a little bit of Delta divergence in here. Okay more buyers coming in. All right, so they should be able to reach up to here Right to the swing Maybe they can break it now and come up to here So we're looking for the move back. We were looking earlier for that move back Due to the Delta in here. We're looking for that move to 58 and we went back and forth in here And we're only looking for that move to 58 Right, and now we're looking for it again here potentially Okay, looking for it in here the buyers were coming in and we now we see a retracement back down here on low volume All right, so let's take a look at this and start to study it here So a couple of different scenarios to take a look at and are they gonna is this a retracement here? And we're gonna find buyers off of this what we're getting our answer immediately here. No But let's see we still might get buyers up here at 56 If we do like big green dots up here, then yeah, we would look for this not only back up to the swing here But 58 and maybe 60 Okay, look at the shift here and the volume as well All right now we have there's a little there's gonna be a divergence here as well Pretty strong buying in here. They fail to make a higher high Okay, not or even equal high here And so although we see that buying and that shift in here We're not we're not seeing that the price move Yet at least Okay, so then maybe we need to do another rotation. Maybe sellers take control here at 55 and we'll trade it back down to we haven't even traded down to the figure yet Hey, so maybe we trade down to the figure here of 4350 Right, so understanding the different scenarios in here. All right, let me get to some questions in here Over in YouTube Morning, Bill Oh, hot Tony Morning shadow Abby Yeah, please. Yeah, hit the like button love hearing that Doesn't cost you anything and helps us gauge if you like this kind of content if this creates value for you Please hit that like button Morning Deborah All right, so again, okay, so now we have another divergence here You know, here's a higher high on CVD. It's a little bit higher I'm sorry higher low and in CVD also also a higher high here CVD, but it failed to go higher So I'm still looking for these buyers to try to reach back up here to 57 and then maybe break out I can see there's more buying in here Right, and we made a higher low here and we made a higher low here in CVD, but it all depends on right here Especially right here. This is kind of a point of control I'm looking for that those big green dots right up here at 55 and a half Hey, if we get them we should we should see enough volume or the scenario is this just objectively looking at it We should get enough buyers in here to reach back up to here And that's all I'm just trying to keep it really simple that there is buying up in here We see it in here in the Delta dots as well or Delta bars. I'm sorry. So there there should be enough buying interest to reach back up here Okay, and there and if if there's even more up here Then well it makes sense that maybe if they really pick up and step up the buying Hey, like over in here Right if we see this kind of buying over here Then why can't we? Makes sense that we can come up to 59 or 60 And so that's the scenario here now We're up here already at the top of this little range and I don't see those big green dots right now Hey, in fact, I see the opposite Right. So there if if I were in now we can talk a little bit about risk management for something like this If I were in that trade I was looking for right right around in here those green dots and for them to pull it higher They did I would be taking some off up here say especially after this red dot here I would be taking it off Okay, I would just kind of You know lock my profits But at least one leg of it hey because there's another scenario in here that might happen So we might get this huge selling but we can rotate back up and still find those buyers and then they'll move it in this case They didn't right so so Yeah, if it's all if you're looking for something like this you for a consideration in your your risk management Is just take some off at the top of the top of the range Not only some if you're trading just one lot or if you like having just you know all in all out then that's Something of higher probability that you're looking for Okay, based off of what you would have to do the studying But like based off of what we just covered here in this range and this back and forth in here and what we're looking for Do I look at market profile? Tpo's and footprint charts. I used to Kenji I like them, you know, we've got the the volume profiles here in book map, you know And you can filter for them. We got the session range and the chart range in here And you can do all sorts of resets and filters in here So you can you can do quite a bit here in book map again where to go and find that information is the knowledge. I'm I'm sorry the Learning Center You can go here The more button the learning center and then under this getting started course here You'll see all those all these columns in here. Okay, so there's I don't know a dozen videos or so Talking about all the different columns. Okay resetting etc. Okay. Here's a volume column. Here's volume Delta And then also resetting is right here. Okay All right, so Yeah, the the Tpo's and I really like kind of the The concept a lot of the volume profile and just kind of turning things sideways and looking at Where are the majority of traders are trading and transacting? I Just don't like the aggregation of it that this is now aggregation over time Okay, so it there could be massive transactions over here that are rather meaningless here now Hey, because you're just looking for this move you're looking for the aggressor here But you know what you can do is you can you can just zoom in and look at your smaller profile here and Okay, so All right, and you can filter for them in here. Like I said many different ways with resets with the SVP column And you can also use this Delta column here, right? So this is by minus so which is really interesting idea here I really like it a lot because here You can start to start start to understand like the The Delta here In in terms of the horizontal so you'll see these zones look at all this selling down here, right? Now that that could be the fuel to the fire and the stop stop runs to the upside here Okay, where buyers may take control back up here Right, so it looks like a good scenario here if we can get these buyers here. They come All right, so the this is kind of the dot we're looking for here So let's see if them continue here. I want to see more buyers come in Now I want to see them break this range And see if they can come up to our 60 level maybe I Like the swing here 59 first, but In that the kind of Recent highs up here at 60 And now did we get them? No not yet Really back and forth in here guys really choppy so I'm looking for them, but they didn't show up and Now we talked a little bit about trader psychology on something like this as well And and Deborah, I think this will also help be helpful for you. We're looking for that potential breakout here and You know, are you are you getting it into a position in here? Well, if I mean if you if you can find your edge and you know that you have that edge in here like from studying this Information then yeah, you would be getting in here Okay, I like to get into these kinds of areas in here too and look for the follow-through This one didn't work. Right. So I would get stopped out really rather quickly here Maybe take a point loss on it. And that's it move on right so Yeah, and and again like a I don't know if How much my M anticipating this during the rollover period here We've seen these moves Take place and there's no icebergs here nor are there is there high liquidity in here So it's just kind of rotates here And we just don't find buyers or sellers at the bottom edge or we don't find buyers at the top edge Hey, what we see these kinds of moves and In the Delta moving it back up to the tops of these ranges though Okay, so that kind of goes back to a Debra. You're You know looking at the looking at the the the ranges in here really So if we we really want to understand the ranges All right, and then around these ranges in here, okay, so like look at this one here Hey, this looks like a probably a stop run a sellers come in But I'm I'm being very very careful here because I can get buyers back up here Okay, and then think about all of these sellers that are trapped in here at that point In a cluster here Okay, and then if they are Where is it gonna go? Well, the first move I would look for is probably here on the second one would be probably here okay, so from 53 and a half or three quarters on up to 55 and a half and maybe up to 58 Okay, so it broke the range, but it's back in the range now Okay, sellers are coming in at the bottom of this little Swing that we just was just created here. Okay testing low a day We haven't even looked at the bigger picture yet. So let's do that So actually that looks like sellers might might take this down now and and and test the other figure Our cumulative volume Delta totally shifted and changed right here guys Okay, so again this this right in here this activity right in here changed change really everything pretty pretty dramatically in fact Everything we're looking at in here looked very different, right? This is one of the reasons I'd like that cumulative volume Delta I'd like to know this and who took control All right, so here come the buyers trying to stuff it right back at these sellers again It could be a lot of trap volume here on that sell side and look at your look at your your Delta column here A of CVP, which is chart range volume profile This makes really good sense here. See see all this volume here So the what if scenario is get the buyers back up here It back to 54 basically kind of looking at it earlier right in here The 55 and a 53 and a half, but we're looking for basically 54 now And if we can get that it should be a really nice squeeze to the upside All right, so anyway, that's one of the scenarios here And or maybe the squeeze is going to happen We get down here and it's these buyers that are going to get squeezed right in this little rectangle here Between 52 and a quarter and 53 and three quarters. So then in that scenario, we're looking for our sellers here and That move back below the figure here Maybe down to about 48 or so and we're going to we're going to see which one's going to win the battle here We're going to look for that behavior and then You know look look for these tests up into these areas here down in these areas here Salim welcome. You're new Yeah, the heat map Maybe maybe go over stops. I'm sorry to stocks and look at the Thanks, Bill hit the like button once more No, you can only hit it once but Appreciate that Can I explain? Salim, I'll get to your question in just a minute Can you explain the strength level on us? Okay, so the strength level is actually Kind of looking for hidden orders It used to be our old iceberg indicator, but like There are some issues with it before the MBO data came out Then it was really fantastic To kind of understand like wow, okay, these are potential icebergs, but there was just false positives on that and That's when we It was hard to kind of decipher and really depended on to be honest It would made a big difference was the data provider at the time stamps Sometimes the aggressor would come after the You know the the order Trading into that liquidity or vice versa and so we'd get like some wonky type of stuff And then it kind of watered down that strength indicator. I'll let me show it to you though And we'll take the stops and icebergs off the chart here For a minute and get the strength indicator So it's very simple indicator. Oh, it's not here. It's under here. That's right Here at strength level Okay, so you can see these numbers in here, right? So all it's saying here Is like two two hundred and forty five is that what was provided in the order book? and what traded Actually, if we zoom in you can you'll see it's broken into its pieces here, but basically there are more Buyers in here on in the path passive buyers in here that transacted Compared to like one more four more three more here that transacted in here Hey, then what was in the order book? So if it's not in the order book, but it transacted then it must be a hidden order must be an iceberg, right? That's that's what this is showing here Like I said that the problem was a lot with the data providers and the false positives But you can also compare it. Let's look at the MBO data here and look at icebergs So I don't see any icebergs in there the MBO data. Hey, but there's but there's other times when you will see it And it will match up like this 42 right here. Well, yeah now this correctly identified an iceberg in here No question All right, so that's what it is So it's kind of It can it can show you that liquidity that was that traded that was not in the Look at our scenario in here. It looks just horrible. We're looking for one side or the other Looks like buyers are trying to take control here. I don't have a lot of faith in it, but Yeah, looking for them looking for them up here and then our 54 level that's what we're kind of looking for earlier But we don't we're not getting any follow-through here it If we do get them they should be able to move it back up to Like we said here at 55 and a half and then it's 58 level and this is rollover period. So we'll just You know just kind of sit back and watch I think today a bit Yeah, it is choppy got about that and Let's see here other Questions Salim your new to book map and heat map. Yeah, okay So let's look at a stock in fact we see see what's happening during this rollover period is like see this liquidity here On the bid and then over here on the offer. This is algorithmic activity And you can see that is even the same algo see how they're Kind of pulling and then adding up here. They pulled here added here pulled here added here They did it also on the offer. So it's you know pretty sure this is the same algo And it's a larger player that is providing that or that is Yeah, providing that liquidity in Right, so yeah, we can really identify it in here, but Let's look over at maybe Tesla. All right, so the heat map and how this can help you and look how wildly different this is here Okay, we've been looking at Tesla and it's been just amazing And gaps up etc. So Anyway, what we see here is high liquidity here right here at the open at 930 cash open look at high liquidity up here at 250 at 249 50 at 249 And note that transacted. Okay 250 did not Hey, there's 279,000 shares up here at 250 and it has not transacted yet All right, so and then down here on the bid Well, you can see high liquidity that came in a little after the open, but it transacted here at 246 And then down here at 245 this transacted here's that you can see the red dots which are the aggressors the market Sell orders right into these passive limit buy orders and the transaction took place Okay, so this is what the heat map is showing you it's all derived from the order book Okay, your COB column here stands for current order book or is your level two in stocks And what you see here in the order book at these price levels is liquidity These are shares here at these specific price levels and the green On the bid and they're they want to be buyers on the offer. They're up here And this is where they want to be sellers. This is simple as that What we do in book map is we take that liquidity and paint it into heat map You see that the heat map here red and orange very high liquidity and we can make it bright here for now This is just a dimmer and then yellow white blue and the black is a lesser liquidity And we record it you'll see how it changes in here. We zoom in here You'll see like a they'll add and pull liquidity all the time in here And you'll see the heat map change here with the best bid and offer See how they're adding a bit more here at 46 and a half Right. So and and what's the reaction we get buyers? Okay, that's interesting So if we get enough buyers in here, maybe they'll go they'll come up and trade with these sellers up here at 40 at 47 Okay, so it's this relationship between the buyers and sellers that we're understanding What we do when when the liquidity changes in here, we just record it and plot it on the chart Okay, so here come our buyers, right? So there here comes our move to 47 now. Did they trade into 47? Yeah, they did And some and so here's where the transactions took place right here We zoom right in there And here are the transactions right into that high liquidity Okay, and that's the difference here is we're recording it and plotting it on the chart now note that they're not really in here anymore Okay, they're starting to come in a little bit, but now they're on the bid coming in they were on the offer coming So the equity heat map It it just records it and plots it on the chart historically. That's all you're looking at here Hey, so this is a really nice move here in Tesla Hey, so we just we just saw this kind of reaction with this liquidity down here at 56 and thought well wait a minute, you know, they're there's liquidity here buyers and They're not interested We start to see some buying coming in here. Well, then maybe they'll tangle with and take on these sellers here And they did and there's still more buying pressure So you look for the next level of liquidity in the next after that Okay, pretty simple stuff. It's just an auction or understanding that auction on the higher time frame as well as the Current time frame Let's see the scenario on the upside in the COB with larger liquidity at 54 And 55 must get past that also. Yeah, let's take a look. It's probably past it now. I'm sure yeah with that Tesla bump Well, what we're looking for is Basically we're looking for someone the buyers to really take control of an area and and test up to an area where maybe There's either high liquidity or a lack of transactions up in this area here And that's how it works was with support and resistance. There's a lack of transactions up above this area here so maybe It can make it up to the top of the range And you would have to see maybe a reevaluation of the instrument at that time And then to see more transactions here like we did in Tesla to lift it away from this area here And typically the lift away from that area takes place on high volume And that's why we outlined these kind of high volume Dots in here as these two scenarios in here and then there was all this back and forth in here and we just we kind of just Gave up and we said yeah, okay The nod is to the buyers here because we see them in here, but they're it's it's not really that positive like I Mean the the volume is there But we're we've just seen a lot of back and forth in here. So Yeah, we've almost made it up to the top of the range here at 58 and still looking for it in fact Okay, we still see more buyers in here Right, so we went through that whole CVD a thing Morning Rob. How are you? CVD Kenji will work. No problem in the Thinkorswim version You should be able to you should be able to mimic everything that we've got in here with the Thinkorswim version Okay, you should be able to have Delta dots as well and Delta bars. Oh Rob, you're looking for the settings in the older contract Okay Yeah, yeah, okay, so we can open it up. I had it open up earlier Let's let's do this and I'm not sure exactly where you're going with this but It's a Rob has a tip here to go through and we're gonna look at the ESM contract Okay, and I'll just put in Data is right. So now what you wanted to look at here. I believe was You wanted to if you change inherit a chart setting Yeah, so Yeah, there's this nice feature in book map We've we put it into the into again the the learning center the getting started course here. You can scroll down in the Saving configurations in here inherit chart settings. So it's a minute and a half long and that goes through it but Basically, you open up a new symbol. Okay, and it can dramatic. It's easier just to show it in the video So you Saving right chart settings. Okay, go hide this and Yeah, you can Basically, you might have widely different see how we have the kind of a dome column in here We have different heat map etc Everything's been kind of changed around what you can do is then inherit the chart settings from one to the other here So we're looking at crude oil here. If you jump over to the NASDAQ You can see it's very very different, right? You got the columns are different etc and Heat map settings are different, but you can inherit the chart. So go to chart settings Inherit or you can save it actually and load it from the file or you can go to inherit here And then choose the the one that you want Let's choose the I'm almost as well. Just play it and then see how now the NQ will look exactly like Crude oil here Right. So yeah, it's a great feature and I think that's what you were going to Rob Oh Okay, you got multiple questions on it. Okay. Thanks. Thanks Rob Yeah, just to refer them to this getting this what We created this learning Center for is the Exactly this To answer your question so you can just send them the link right to that Bobby Yeah, your best decision today was to stay out of the choppy waters exactly exactly I mean if you don't know and if you don't really see that edge then just stay away. I Know like FT 71 does not trade for example. I always mention that but yeah, he just doesn't trade during rollover He might be trading today. It's it's it's kind of rolled But you'll you'll see it here the heat map will change Later this afternoon when that volume rolls over It's interesting to see Boy, this is slightly bearish here and guys we haven't even looked at our bigger picture yet So let's let's do that. I mean, I would say this is actually Slightly bearish now not so much due to the Delta In the aggressors here and the heat map. We're not getting much out of it Maybe there's some down here at the at the figure, but it's just this kind of wild You know varying liquidity in here right now, and that's why it doesn't help us, right? We're not getting too much of an edge. However, what we do have here and let me just clear the drawings for a second Is and we can dim the heat map What we do have here in terms of structure Is all of that buying yet? They're failing to to to move it higher here. In fact, they're moving it slightly lower Okay, so wow, all right. Well if that's the case then You know, we're in the middle of the range right now and we're seeing sellers here Well, maybe we can look for some pretty heavy selling right here right now And if we do get that we should It makes sense that we would get a move back down to the bottom of this range here because the buyers cannot make a higher high Even though we see the buyers in here Okay They they are failing to make that higher high and just as I say that we don't get our sellers here We get buyers in fact. Hey, so the buyers should well then make sense, you know, just based off the range Why can't they test up here? If there's enough buying pressure They should they should be able to do that It means that the sellers are not here. They're gonna be up here, right? So they'll this move can unfold if we get enough buyers And now we're just again, we don't have the heat map on we're not getting much out of it today But we're looking for Those buyers to take it here Hey, or are we back if we can rotate back in here? Then I really like it. I really like it better As the scenario here then I'm still looking for those red dots here And I like it even better because the bigger picture is we're still trending down in for today And the bigger picture is that this would be trapped volume for this the sellers to come in and move it back down So we get our higher timeframe alignment here And then the move back down to the bottom of the ring And then probably if we can get that we'll probably get a test to the figure to be honest And look at look at the back and forth in here All right, we did not get our sellers down here. So that didn't You know entice us Yeah, yeah, we brought up the contract specs earlier Rob and Yeah, the September contracts, it's I mean the the open interest has rolled it rolled on Friday or last week But the the volume has not but it probably It probably will be really soon You know one thing we covered on Friday Was you know, we're talking about trader psychology and we're talking about You know knowing an edge and and basically the trader psychology. I Was just saying that I don't really I Believe there's a lot of hype around it. That is just noise and hype The question is do you have an edge and can you manage your trade?  Hey, what if it doesn't? That's that's where you you have to go through these scenarios in here Or at least that's one of the vehicles that I use and I find it very helpful. What if it doesn't what would I do? I'm looking for a move up here Okay, would I be all in all out? Or would I take some off here? Or none if I saw a massive buying in here like I then it's more likely not only to trade here, but but break through Okay, and then how does this mess with my not only my mindset in here with the trader management? Okay in this scenario but What about the time of day and what about the trading environment? And the trading environment here is rollover Right. I'm taking my profit up here. It may be all But you know, I don't know there's kind of quite a bit of buying in here Maybe we can get a break of it and we can trade up to here Okay, that in 60 59 60 that we're looking for earlier in here that did not unfold Right Okay, so there's my there's and what I why I'm covering this in here is it It's just you know how I kind of look at it and who cares how I look at it What matters is is to take away maybe something that helps and and clarity helps Okay, based off of this being rollover period right now then My decision would be to take the profit up there. It's only a small scalp of a move And to take the profit and that's it look for the next one and And if it did blast through here on high volume, I can't let it mess with my head this was the decision I made and Yeah, who knows might what might happen up here Hey Now If you did not take your profit, let's go through that scenario, what are you doing now? Right and this this is where like that This is kind of what I mean about trader psychology. It just comes down to the trade management and how does that mess with your head? Okay, so you're let's suppose you're in here. Hey, you're you're it's hitting you right now at your break-even point I think What would have how would you feel like I think I would just take my stop-loss at break-even. That's it. I'm out Okay, I want a clear mind moving forward and that would clear my mind Okay, if I see buyers come in back up above here, I can always get back in Okay, but what if I'm here in this like well, I don't want to take a loss I saw these buyers and we should be able to I'll get it on the next rotation Well, you might not get that rotation So let's suppose you're caught right now in a long And in this kind of hypothetical scenario here So how do you handle that? All right, do you put your stop down here and get stopped out right where everyone else is getting stopped out? Or do you take your?  You know, I'm just gonna reverse it Completely or are you adding into it that that's the worst Okay, because the sellers might come in and just move this here and all of a sudden you have a big loss on your hands Avoid that one But just go through the different scenarios in here And what if it happened what if this scenario happens? What if that scenario happens? And then start to get into some of the details in here and this will make all the difference and I think clarity of mind And just kind of put it behind you and look for the next one is really really important So You know, this will mess with you mess with your head back and forth a million times over It look this is what we wanted it to do to begin with right and it's back up here now And then do you have revenge trade up here? And you know like I I knew I was right and then you get caught again now one a Way to look at this would be just to think this was one trade event and this is another one In here Okay, Scott's really good at that He'll just look at this is a separate trade event also J trader excellent at that And if it doesn't work out cut the trade Okay, now again, this is very low time frame stuff in here but The scenarios will likely be very very similar on the higher time frames Okay, what more what if you what if you sold the breakdown here?  How are you gonna handle it? If if this is a trap volume in here these sellers should be able to move it down to at least the bottom of this range pretty quickly and They didn't right. So anyway, that's I think the reaction to Your studied edge and I have to say it that way because first you have to know if you have an edge or not Secondly, how do you manage it? And I think Starting early be very aggressive with your management Okay, it either works now or it doesn't type of of management helped me a lot And maybe it maybe it helps you So, you know, you're looking forward to work and if it doesn't I'm not gonna get caught up and I look for the next one Yeah, in here. I mean, you're likely gonna see your stop I mean, you can even see that you can see that the other players in here doing exactly what we're talking about Like these sellers in here. Here's our stop run here up here, right? Well, these sellers in here are likely the buyers up in here And now look at this all these buyers in here as well Look at the stop run here to the downside, right? So a lot of people may be buying in here looking for the breakout And and a lot of them getting stopped out here All right, so all of these buyers now we can match that up to with our CVP column here that has the Delta Checkmark here or the Filter. Oh, yeah, we're looking at we're back at the you contract Shadow Yeah, no, the the M contracts way over here, which is at 4309 right now And the you contract is at 4350 54 yeah, I mean, that's why we go through these these different scenarios in here and we look at the Where we can anticipate stop runs, etc We know that we're looking for that trap volume and I don't you know, I know there's a stop run I don't know if it's these traders in here getting stopped out, but You know that that that's speculative, but I know it's a stop run definitely Be assured of that and how do you use even that information? Well Stops are typically or stop losses at least are typically retail traders So we know their behavior. Okay, so we look after maybe they get stopped out in here that Maybe we can find Sellers move it back into the middle of the range or a bottom of the And then look at this behavior in here. They see see how we don't have really we see some stops in here Not a whole lot though So this is new selling in here. Okay. Does that make sense? So this is new selling Okay, and they're in control of this move from this point on so far They would be out of control if buyers can come back up above 55 and a half Okay, and then maybe they would get stopped out and believe me. I mean there there are in balance Indicators and and traders looking precisely at this and algos program to look at this and then to You know put the screws to you And get you to transact And shake you out of a trade Because it's an advantage for them It's a pretty simple thing to understand That that's where it can be all these conspiracy theories, etc. But just just think about like how You larger players Can I? Get get the smaller players to to transact They like right now we should anticipate a stop run here. Okay back up to top of the range here a 57 and a quarter or so I See a stop run here, and I don't see I don't see one though happening yet here I'm looking for a nice one And back up to here. Okay, so let's just be clear on that up to here Now again, let's just zoom in here again. Because what about these buyers in here? This is new buying and I don't see a stop run yet okay, so Maybe maybe that we won't get the stop run up here by these sellers Maybe we'll get sellers below here in this scenario and And they'll remain in control and We'll get our move into 50 That's the opposite scenario here And then we look for one at one or other to unfold here and at the moment neither are but identifying these areas in here of The buying and selling in here. All right, so See Covered cumulative volume Delta in detail Yeah, understanding trader vint understanding the imbalance and balances in here the I Just think of you know those the shift and away from an area and those that are kind of caught You know kind of caught with their pants down or like you know They there's like oh god now it now. I'm really shaking in my boots I I know I can get squeezed here if I'm a seller in here And I get buying back up above where I sold then You know though these sellers in here will be compelled to to buy So that's what I'm talking about in balances And we actually talked about the imbalance from this huge range in here Earlier with cumulative volume Delta understanding and balances they in this whole range in here Okay, I'm on each leg and I mentioned that gene over in the Algo boys room Over on our discord channel. It said starts at 230 to four every day They'll look at these kind of imbalances in here. All right shadow. I know you don't want me to look at the M contract But I'm just kind of curious What this looks like compared to do we really see the volume roll over yet, and they both look pretty horrible Honest they will stick with the you contract. All right Let's after all of this discussion here and looking for these imbalances and cumulative volume Delta and These different scenarios and trade management Let's take a look here at our bigger picture. They are bigger picture on the daily over here It's an inside day. Okay, we talked about the bullishness of these charts Weekly and and daily for a while. It's still bullish. Hey, but it is an inside day here within all of Friday's price action, so Yeah, we see it's still green here, but you know it can come back down into these lower areas here. No problem This is This is the ES. Okay, so I'm not sure when rhythmic rolls Looks like it's the So maybe this is what you're talking about shadow But the the rhythmic This is at 43 12 here Yeah, so it's probably looking at the M contract it is it's looking at the M contract All right, so for that bigger picture But that's what I have here it's just said memory look it says just ES here CME it's their What do you call it their permanent Symbol right it'll it'll roll tomorrow pretty sure All right, we'll just use the the higher time frame charts for now So just don't look at the price action or I'm sorry the price a number Just look at the price action Yeah, so this was what we had today, and this is classic just classic On an inside day it gapped up Okay, but it's still inside all of Friday's price activity. So what did it do filled the gap? We actually saw that the gap up on the daily and weekly chart and we're wondering Ah, you know, I don't know about that, you know, it was this I think this day here It gapped up and we're like, yeah I'm I'm not looking for I'm not seeing that continuation here. So I'm looking for the sellers to come back in and to Retest some of these areas in here and fill the gap Okay, so same thing happened here. Here's our even shows it better here on the 15 minute chart 15 minute chart. Here's the gap up It opened up here At least on the M contract and it filled it and then it's been bouncing around in here And we're starting to see maybe maybe we're starting to see our shift and change here on these On the 15 minute chart. See look at the wicks. Look at the buyers starting to come in All right So I would actually look for this scenario here look for a retest back up to the top of this recent range in here And let's see if we get enough buyers and maybe we can get a move up into the higher range here where it opened All right, that would be one of the scenarios to to look at here All right, so we're let's let's see. Let's let's take a look here Just a note before we do look at the The gap up here and the gap and go and then it filled later on Friday And then it came back in and chopped around in here All right, so anyway, just note that on your gap fills And let's see what we see here. All right, so Are we starting to see that shift in that change here? Wait, I don't know. It's kind of hard read right now Got a lot of high liquidity in here and see in this Tier on the offer, but the buyers are coming in. There's no question about that Okay, so the next test would be here on the on the U contract would be up here at at 60 And then maybe you can get to highs of the day here at 63 And this is where CVD can be helpful And just read this whole range in here and try to understand where the buying and selling imbalances are I'm not really seeing much at all And we had our divergences earlier in here We covered that in detail. Okay, and what about now? Yeah, I'm seeing a divergence for sure here. This is a Swing here and look at all this buying in here And it's a lower high here. Typically that divergence you'd look for sellers to come in I'm I wouldn't I wouldn't look for that here In fact, I really like all of this buying in here buying up here It I would look for the scenario here Looking at CVD as well and this back and forth and this range that maybe we can get sellers down here If we see this abandon to the buying kind of abandons it up here and we come back down to about 55 Let's call it and we see sellers in here And then that would be different Right, and then what what we're kind of looking for in here Won't unfold we look for the sellers to come in and try to drive it back down into maybe Not only oh eight, but I would say oh seven and lows of the day Yeah, yeah, we can make the bubble smaller in here problem Just a note to like a guy's like it's in that learning center area. I was telling you about before But you know, I'm always almost always showing in here during these webinars the All of the volume dots, but there's you can filter for them And so that you can you know go through the video in here for volume dot filtering volume dot clustering Now in this learning center area here, so A lot of a lot of traders do that Because they they don't want to get kind of sidetracked by these smaller moves in here And you know, maybe they're not scalping. They're looking for kind of a higher time frame move So what you can do is you can come up to your studies here volume dots And then there's a clustering feature here. Okay, that'll filter Okay, you can see that it kind of works like It takes the volume that's around a kind of a sphere of influence and we'll kind of cluster it together Kind of like a water drop and another little drop will become part of a bigger drop But that's one way to look at it here. We can also take the clustering off Have it on none Or bring it all the way back down to zero here. We can look at minimum a displayed Volume and also trade size. So a minimum trade size. This would be your block trades if you start to filter for that I don't really find this one too helpful for me But some traders like it At their block block trades in here Minimum displayed volume. I find better And what this one does here is will will take kind of the volume Well, basically you might have a block trade of like let's say a hundred and Yeah, actually, this is looking pretty good now here With this volume filtering it looks pretty good that we're not going to get that move to the to the upside here That we're looking for It's it's rejecting off of here on this 15 minute chart Hey, so now I'm looking for those sellers again in here and try to bring it back down to these lower areas here Hey, we have some pretty big volume dots in here What this does here at this filter play around with it. See if you you know you get an edge And maybe for your time frame. It's it's something that works better for you basically saying within one pixel Width here 128 transactions took place Okay, so it's based on your zoom level in that sense. So if I zoom out more it's gonna have to be even a smaller area and It'll be tighter if I zoom in that condition may not be true and you won't see a volume dot anymore So let's look at this one here if I zoom in enough. See how it disappears. It's no longer 128 Minimum that traded within this area within one pixel Okay, so very quick transactions by zoom out. I'm kind of compressing Time together. So that condition will be more true and so Anyway The reason we have this filter here is because in the algorithmic environment You won't get as many block trades for like, let's say a hundred instead You'll see a hundred lots trade very quickly, but they're one lot each And that's how we're filtering for And so yeah, play around with that. Maybe maybe you find that this this is really helpful for you Kind of all over the place as you can see in here. I Do like seeing this volume down here though And but you can see that there's pulled away from that now All right, so this might help with the volume and balances is what I'm saying. Okay, so Yeah, play play around with that might be something to take a look at this would be a trap right now And this has been trappy all this whole range in here Let's see obsess Accumulate Bubble sizes is more noticeable to see buyers versus sellers. Yeah, it's still it's still is in the Delta mode here Okay, so by minus cell but where this condition is true 128 or more Okay, it filters out the less candle trader. Yeah the rollover will change Like I said the behavior of traders is different during this period. They're doing different things Rolling from one contract to the next so therefore trying to understand the order flow and the heat map can be Challenging because we don't really know what you know, we know they're going from one contract to the next Okay, we're we get a lot of chop during that period typically and it can be really kind of aggravating And and and maybe it really diminishes your edge Hey, because like what like we're saying looks like wow sellers sellers some buying here sellers here, okay? All right sellers, maybe you're gonna take it down at this point We get this scenario here and then we didn't get it Right, it looks pretty good in here should do it And now do we get buyers up here? No So that doesn't look good either In fact, if we do get our sellers back down here again Then I would look for the follow-through back down to at least 53 Maybe 50 And so I hope I answered your question on that It's not your not your typical time To trade the behavior. They're doing different things with the trading. I don't know how to say it like I don't know if the analogy kind of works or not, but like Consider sales during Christmas or sales during the year Christmas is a different time Right, so can you trust all the sales that you get like during Christmas? Yeah, yeah, you roll over you have to exit one the you know current month and Roll over to the next month That's correct Hey, look at that cluster of buying now Back up above and look at that stop run and we're looking for that stop run over here right right here, right? We outlined it here now. We're getting getting that huge stop run anyway guys, yeah pretty Be lackluster Session here, but yeah, thanks for coming everybody hit that like button We'll we'll be here tomorrow and we'll go through think of some things that you'd like me to cover Or maybe specific instruments as well. I'm happy to go through them with you guys But you know, we'll go through our process here looking at bigger picture and then looking at the order flow within the the day here to give us some sort of You know go through scenarios to give us some sort of edge in here. All right Thank you all and I'll catch up with you tomorrow. Bye. Bye


What's going on YouTube leap right here with dr. Developer today? We're going to talk about why software development is a creative endeavor Let's go Okay, so most of the time when I tell people I'm a software developer One of the first things that they say is wow you must be really smart You must be really good at math and I just I don't feel like I'm much smarter than your average person Although there's a caveat. I do meet a lot of software developers. So my my worldview may be skewed But I don't I don't feel any saw smarter than your average person and I'm not really into math or sciencey type stuff I'm not even super detail-oriented I wanted to be a musician when I was a kid. I've been playing music since junior high school, you know which is Mathematical I guess I mean I play drums. So it's a lot about time signatures and subdivisions and things like that but for the most part Music everyone can agree that music is a creative endeavor But when they think about software development, they think of it as being all about logic and math and I don't think that's the case sure there's a Mathematical logical component to it. I need to be able to create logic structures and follow that but for the most part I Feel like it's a creative endeavor at least these days Back in the day. I didn't used to be that way. I mean in the 50s and 60s They were creating programs for Computers to try and compute how much fuel I'm gonna need to get a hundred ton rocket out of the earth's atmosphere and into orbit Okay, you know, that's that's very math oriented and very science oriented and a lot of the people who are using that Software was were scientists and mathematicians And the program programming languages they were using they were making it up as they went along So most of the time they're writing an assembler And so they're very close to the metal These days computers run everything I mean back in the day computers took up an entire floor of a building Right, so a computer would be as big as one four thousand square foot floor of a building so Wasn't really practical, but now my phone is Hundreds of times more powerful than that computer and it sits in my pocket And so computers kind of run everything from e-commerce sites for business to ATMs to even my thermostat in my house is I can control it with an app on my phone I can control my lights in my house with my phone and So there's a lot more people who are not science and math nerds using computers these days and So they need to be more usable for people who are not math geniuses, right and And One of the things that we think about when we think about programming computers as software developers We think about the languages that we're using and we're not programming in a similar anymore There's probably not a lot of people programming in C unless you're writing like trading apps or Video games or something like that, but most people are probably writing in a in a 4g a language like See like C sharp or Java. They're writing in a fourth generation language That is, you know, three or four levels are removed from the actual metal and so It's a much more creative endeavor today than it probably was back then So if we think about what you kind of need to be a computer programmer now versus then Let's talk about a few things that you probably need One of the things that I think you need is you definitely need is To be able to abstract think you need to be able to like visualize chunks of functionality and pieces Especially you start talking about things like microservices, but even without microservices We are talking about components that interact with each other and This one talks to this guy and sends this message and is expecting this message back and These things have always been there at least in my lifetime It's always been that way when you're programming you need to be able to think five six seven levels deep and So when this guy sends that message to that guy That guy is going to take that message and send it to this component over here Who's going to calculate some value and send it off to him and now we're three four levels deep And I need to be able to keep track of all that so being able to think abstractly is a huge skill for for computer programmers It's also one of the things that I think is most annoying because most people aren't Aren't doing that for a regular daily job. So it's Not uncommon for someone to come to your desk and say hey, man Can you take a look at this and your six or seven levels deep in this abstract web of things that you're thinking about? So being able to like put that aside and Help them with their thing and then come back and get seven levels deep again It's a major It's a major problem but I digress So the other thing that you need to be able to do is you need to be able to think About a business you need to be able to think about business problem-solving You need to understand how the business works and how to model that abstractly in a piece of software I've always said if you can understand the flow of paper in an organization Then you understand how the organization works. So if we think about like Back to the old way of doing things before computers A customer would put in an order and someone would write it up and they would send that to the order Fulfiller and that order for filler would take the order to find all the things that go with that order Package them up send the Mac out to the customer And it happens a little bit that way now. It's just all computerized But you're thinking about the flow of paper in an organization helps you be able to model business and Understanding how business works and how business solves problems will make you a more effective software developer and That is a creative process as well because you need to be able to think about How business out in the world is working and be able to immediately change Directions if the industry changes or if some big news hits or some big new regulation hits Being able to change direction Leads back to that being able to abstractly think about something and now I've got all these Six or seven pieces and oh this one won't work anymore. So we'll just change it out with this That's being able to visualize everything in a business process and being able to swap out pieces or Figure out how these two pieces should communicate The other thing is critical thinking skills and this is probably one of the ones that I think is Most lacking in most people. It's critical critical thinking. So You need to be able to think critically about what you're doing How should this work? How does it work? Do those match up? What if it doesn't work that way? How can it break? What if it's not what the business needs even if it's what they asked for what if it's not what the business needs? because you need to be able to talk to the people who run the business the day-to-day of the business or the day-to-day of even a department in the business and extrapolate or at least extract from them How they do their job and how their their job or their piece of the Organization works and be able to fit that into how the overall organization works and you need to be able to think critically about that you need to be able to Doubt that you need to be able to say well. What about this? This comes to not only Extracting requirements from people When I first got into the business one of the things that I was told early on as far as gathering requirements is your two Two best friends in this world are the words. What else? that's That's still helpful, but it's not the only thing really You need it to be able to ask what if what if so I'm writing a piece of software that I want customers to be able to come in and order a record Okay, what if the record they want isn't in stock? What if we don't have that record? How do we handle that? What if someone else buys the last one of those records? Right before that customer How do we handle that situation? those sorts of things Thinking critically about the business process and about what you're going to be building Is one half of that but also being able to think critically about your software in general like In this goes to like testing like unit testing So I have a method here that calculates these things and takes in two variables Well, what if those one of those variables is null? What if one of those variables is a hundred million? What if one of those variables is a negative number? What if those very one of those variables is supposed to be a string, but it's an integer Coming in as a string whatever the case Those sorts of things are things that you need to be able to think about and be able to constantly Be skeptical of and that will make you a better unit tester and a better and better at dealing with the Organization, which brings me to the other thing that you need to have is people skills You need to know How people think at least to a certain extent you don't need to be like a psychiatrist or or a Psychology major you just need to be able to understand how people are going to use your software You need to understand how they do their job today And you need to understand How what you will be building will help them in the future One of the things that people get all up and arms about a lot of the time is They believe they really people really believe this that I'm going to build a piece of software that puts them out of work Never in my 23 years of building software has anyone ever been put out of work by a piece of software that I built ever Now I have actually built software that made that person's job easier I Have made it so that they don't have to deal manually with every order that comes in Only with those exceptional orders So not only do they not have to deal with the mundane routine things that the business do does But they get to actually deal with the interesting things like This is an exception to the rule of our business I have to manually get in there and handle it as a human being so You also as a software developer, you don't work alone most of the time You work as part of a team even like me. I work remote As a matter of fact, I think just about everybody on our team is remote. I'm trying to think of There's only a couple of people that actually work In an office. Everybody else works remote because we travel a lot so I I still have to deal with my team all the time. There's slack. There's text messages There's emails going back and forth all day long talking about what we're building and what we're doing and You need to be able to work with people from diverse backgrounds and people from who didn't grow up like You grew up and people who don't understand The software the way you understand it a lot of the times I found that to be super helpful when I'm working with someone else and we go to get requirements I almost never I can't imagine a ton It's been a little many many years since I went to go get requirements without another software developer with me Because inevitably I will come out of a requirements gathering session and think I've got it These are the 17 things that they need and I'll go and start discussing them with the other software developer Who was in the meeting with me and they'll go that's what you thought they meant. I thought they meant this And be like, oh, that's quite different than what I was thinking We're gonna need to put a pin in that go ask them again ask some more clarifying questions So it keeps you from building the wrong thing now. How does this all come back to being creative? So Let's take musicians as an example because it kind of fits the entire gamut, but it applies to all creative endeavors First of all, you're creating something from nothing. Okay You've got a business who Sometimes you're creating something to replace something else, but for the most part you sit there with an a blank open text editor and you start writing software But it that's akin to like a painter with a blank canvas and Or a composer with a blank sheet of sheet music, right? You're creating something from nothing and all art has constraints as a matter of fact one of the things that I Do a lot of agile coaching as well and one of the things that I always kind of turn Agile people on to our software developer people in general Is a book called managing the design factory by Donald Reinersen? And basically it's about how do you manage creatives? How do you manage people who are working on stuff? That is creative and is therefore by its very nature Non-deterministic meaning I don't know how long this is going to take. There's no way for me to tell you How long it's going to take for me to paint a painting There's no way for you for me to tell you how long it's going to take me to write a score But and it's the same way with software. There's no way for me to tell you how long it's going to take me to build this piece of software Best little side story best meeting I ever had we were meeting with a company that wanted a piece of software built and it was first startup and So we're in the meeting and there's probably five of us from my consulting company and two or three of them from this startup and They really really wanted an estimate they really really wanted a quote of how much it's going to cost and So one of the people God bless and man asks So what else is out there that's like this? What other piece of software does something similar and they were like nothing nothing There's nothing else out out there in the world like this and all this is a totally new thing And he was like well if nobody's ever built it before how could I possibly tell you how long it's going to take to build it? That's beautiful Thank God for him for asking the question, but Getting back on topic creative endeavors are generally not Deterministic and software is non deterministic. I don't care what anybody says about if you ask any software developer What's the bane of their existence besides computer bugs? It's probably going to be Estimating that's one of the things that they suck the most at it's one of the things that it's just hardest thing to do Because you just don't know you just don't know how long it's going to take And so that lines up with these other creative endeavors and so basically you're making something out of nothing You need to be able to creatively think about those those problems that you're trying to solve in the business Which mean bringing in those people skills to be able to talk to people and say hey, I'm having this problem I can't figure out how to model this This business process in my software and you need to be able to talk to them and have them give you feedback on How that should actually work and then be able to translate that into some for GL somewhere like C sharp or Java You also need to be able to Understand those business processes as they give them to you and understand the flow of paper even through a Part of an organization if you're trying to write an accounting system or you're trying to write An order entry system you need to understand how they would do it if it was on paper And so getting those understanding those business Problems that they're trying to solve and getting them out of a person takes those business problem solving and people skills and critical thinking skills and Puts them all into one creative bucket. You need to be able to creatively think about that software and I'll leave you with this Like I said, I play music and I'm in several different bands and It could be because of the people that I hang out with but I kind of have two sets of friends I have a lot of music friends and I have a lot of computer programmer friends and The Venn diagram of how much that overlaps is actually pretty large It's surprising to me when I go out and just I meet a bunch of new programmers and I tell them that I'm a drummer we immediately start talking about music and It's amazing how many times I find that this computer programmer is a Musician is a place keyboards or place guitar or paints or draws And I think that that goes to the very center of what we're talking about here and that is Building software really is a creative endeavor that doesn't mean that it's completely technical But there is a major major chunk of building software at least in today's world That is creative now is all software development creative Don't they still have to try and calculate how much fuel they need to get a SpaceX rocket out into the end of the orbit? Yes, yes, they do And I'm sure they did a lot of big math formulae To try and figure out how to land a SpaceX rocket back onto a pad. That's that's a given but There's gonna be some creative aspect of that as well Not only do you have to understand physics But you have to be able to take those physics and apply them to the real world and understand that It's not necessarily going to be a computer. That's flying this rocket. We're not Creating a rocket so that we can put a rocket into outer space We're creating a rocket so that we can put people in outer space and we can have people Driving these vehicles into outer space So they need to be able to be understood by astronauts by Pilots And they need to be as simple as possible. So there's a creative aspect of building that. What about things like? machine learning Right, you talked any talk anybody. I've talked to his any good machine learning Is I think some of the smartest people I've ever met And they are super into math and That's that's fine But one of the better Machine learning people that I know is also a really killer guitarist and singer and So I think that when you're talking about machine learning, you're trying to teach a computer how to learn you're trying to teach a software program how to learn and So you need to be able to understand creatively how the human mind works how? Humans solve problems because that's what we're doing. We're teaching computer programmers a computer programs how to learn like human beings do so you have to start with the understanding of how human beings learn and That is a very abstract and creative thing What about Big data like data analysis, right? Well, you're not just analyzing numbers, right? If I were going to go back and analyze every order that was ever placed by Amazon ever That's a lot of data But I'm not gonna I'm not going to analyze that data just so I can figure out how many clock radios were ordered. I Want to know what those trends are and I want to be able to apply them to the world so when I start putting together my formula for how I'm Analyzing that data how I'm going to group that data. It's a very creative thing of How can I get the most bang for my buck from this chunk of data? What can I give the business? How can I understand the business's needs to understand the? The analytics that I'm going to give them to help them make better business decisions so Yes, I think all software has a creative Component to it. Are there some pieces of software or some endeavors in software that are more creative than others? absolutely People who are does you know computer web designers who are designing webpages That's a much more creative endeavor than the people who are creating API's But at the same time Creating the API I still think is a creative endeavor because you it's even more creative because you have to be able to visualize What that UI is and what it's going to do with the data that you're building you're applying so you can build an API That's easy to use right? And even when we get into Identity management, we have to think about how are these people going to be wanting to log in? What's going to make it easier for them to log in and still make it secure? So yes, I think all software is a creative endeavor To certain degrees right? But yeah, I just I just want to put this out there today. I've been thinking about this for a while And mostly it starts with everybody telling me that I must be a super smart math genius because I'm a Computer programmer and I just don't feel like that's the case. I feel like I use more of my creative muscles during the day writing software Then I do my real math And logical or math and science he type things definitely logic is as part of it obviously, but That's kind of the reason that got any computers is so I didn't have to do calculating They can compute that stuff. I don't have to do math anymore All I need to know is what the formula is and the formula is usually based on real-world things so Yeah, just wanted to talk about this and I hope this is useful for everyone Hey, so if you found this useful or if it doesn't apply to you make sure you leave a comment below If you like the content make sure you subscribe to our channel hit the little bell icon right next to it So you get notified we release content every Tuesday and Thursday, so Thanks for joining us today, and we'll see you next time