[00:00] Do you guys ever find yourself having some sort of bias, you know, draw on liquidity, whatever it is, but you can't seem to find an entry or you don't have confidence on what structure wants to do right now? So a lot of you guys I've been seeing, and especially in my Discord as well, I want to
[00:15] start being able to let you guys try to understand how to understand when is the right time for structure, understanding time-based trading, and understanding when and when not to take
[00:28] certain trades just based off of understanding structure. So that's going to be the biggest thing that we're going to be talking about today. So let's jump into the charts and take a look. So here we go. So, the first thing when we're talking about structure and understanding where market wants to go,
[00:45] always understanding what's our bigger timeframe buy. So, that's the first thing that we're going to be doing in this video. We're going to be looking at NQ and just talking about right this second. Where are we right this second to understand, you know, what price wants to do?
[00:57] Because, again, our job as traders is I don't really care what happens tomorrow. I don't really care what happens the day after. My job is to try to understand what's going to happen right now. So, let's look at the chart. starting off on the daily and just look at where we are right now, right?
[01:11] Let's zoom in, say, okay, well, we have a big daily credit value gap here that we're bouncing off of and we're actually coming back up and now we're starting to reject this daily credit value gap as well. We see came above it and then now starting to sell back off to the downside. Okay, so I kind
[01:27] of have a bias here now, right? All right. So now we have this four-hour credit value gap bearish. Okay, so now I'm looking at price here, right? I'm looking at price and I'm trying to understand where can we go here, right? So this is how I normally think about it. Well,
[01:42] if I'm looking at a daily year and I see that we're respecting this fair value gap, you can see that we've now respected consequent encroachment of this, right? The exact midpoint we came up, but now we're rejecting that bearish fair value gap. So again, I want to focus on what is being
[01:57] respected, what's being disrespected. And at this specific time, we're respecting both bullish and bearish fair value gaps. So what do you think I should do in this in this sense here? Well, for me to have an external draw or a confident bias on what the draw on liquidity is, I need to
[02:15] see one of these points get invalidated first before getting a clear understanding of what the draw on liquidity is, right? So for example, if I'm looking at this and I'm bearish or bullish here,
[02:27] I need to see this bearish fair value get ran through to the upside for me to validate that the draw now becomes this high. Now, if I'm bearish, I need to see this big daily fair value get ran through to validate the draw are these lows, right?
[02:43] So right now we're in between. So now, okay, so now we have our external bias, right? We know that we're kind of in between. We can kind of go either way. What's happening right now? So now let's zoom in even more. What's happening right now?
[02:55] So you can see we came up, tried to break above that fair value. up, I ended up just closing right back under and ended up running back under this, right? Which is bearish. We're not respecting that bullish fair value gap. So now where are we? Well, we actually just came back down and we have this low here, this internal low that
[03:10] we just slept. So now this is going to act as our internal sell side, right? So I'm going to take off this bigger timeframe, right? One thing I also want to notice is we are in a four-hour bullish fair value gap, okay?
[03:22] So now again, what's happening right now? What's happening right now? Well, we just came down, we swept our internal sell-side level, and now we're in a four-hour bullish fair value gap. Okay, so at this point in time, am I bullish or am I bearish?
[03:37] Well, I'm a little bit more bullish, but what are the things that I need to see happen first before I actually take a trade, right? This is what I want, this is the main reason I'm making this video, is the idea of what has to happen first before I take a high-quality setup.
[03:55] Now, I'm going to repeat this again because I want you to really understand this. This is how I want you guys to start thinking. When I'm looking to take a trade and I'm looking at the charts and I know what needs to happen, you have to ask yourself what needs to happen first in this chart or in this market, whatever I'm looking at,
[04:13] for me to then get the opportunity to take a high-quality setup. So, for example, I took a yes long today. So, and I'll talk about why I did it as well on NQ.
[04:25] Now, when NQ comes to here, sell side, and my advice for this is we have standard deviation, which is we won't get too much into this.
[04:38] But the reason I did it is because we had standard deviation, and we ended up coming to that four point, and then ended up getting displacement. So now I had confidence that NQ now goes back to this count.
[04:50] we have a big range here. When we take sell side, what normally happens after we take sell side?
[05:02] We go back to discount of whatever that range is, right? Which is 50% of the range. So this is where I was expecting market to go on MQ after we took sell side here, all right?
[05:14] So that's an internal bias. What has to happen? So if I short biased or if I want to take a shorter I want to take a long whatever it is if I want to take a long after looking at this what am I looking for I looking for ES to have
[05:28] a validated long bias, as well as NQ to have a validated long bias, and what things are now adding on to this long. So basically, the way that I like to think about this is, how many things
[05:42] Can I add on to this setup that gives me more conviction? What is in my favor here? Okay, so if I'm long, what's in my favor? Number one, we just swept sell side. Number two, we're in a four-hour bullish fair value gap.
[05:55] Number three, standard deviation has now met its algo point of interest, which means, confidently speaking, we should go back to discount. Okay, that's number three. Number four, ES at the time has also swept sell side.
[06:10] Number five, ES is also bouncing off the four-hour fair value gap. Number six, ES has also just ran through a bearish fair value gap. Number seven, or whatever number I'm on,
[06:22] ES also has equal highs acting as buy side that I'm expecting to get taken. So all of these things are now starting to add up, where I can basically say this is when a point in time
[06:35] where everything in structure is in favor of what I want to trade, is in favor of what my bias is leaning towards, right? Now, I'm not guessing. Now, I'm making a decision based off probability,
[06:50] but I'm not guessing saying, okay, we're here. I think that we're probably just going to bounce based off of just this one thing. I'm looking at all these things because that is what a high probability trading setup is, is when you can see all of these things giving you even more confirmation onto your bias.
[07:07] So when I say, a lot of people get confused when I say this in my Discord. I normally say, there's not enough structure, or wait for structure. There's not enough structure, or either wait for structure. What I mean by this, when I say wait for structure, is wait for more things to validate your bias.
[07:25] When I say wait for structure, that's when I personally mean, I don't have enough confidence in what the market wants to do right now, right this second, for me to take any sort of trade. For example, if we're looking at ES today, so this is the long
[07:40] we took on ES, but let's say we cleared this. We go to before this even happened. If we were going to go to here, right? Now, at this point in time, I'm bullish, right? Why am I bullish? Because we have ES sweeping low. If I zoom out to the four-hour, we can see that we're in a
[07:54] four-hour fair value gap here, as well as this one-hour fair value gap right under us. So I'm bullish at this point in time, but when I zoom into the one minute, I am very picky with my entries because I want every single thing to validate when we're going
[08:11] now. I don't like to enter, set a wide stop loss, and then, you know, have to deal with the drawdown and then eventually go in. I want to get the best entry possible based off of what structure is telling me. So at this point in time, when we take this sell side here, a lot of you guys are
[08:30] automatically trying to jump into a position when there's no structure, right? You see this right here and you're like, oh my God, I'm going to take a long in this fair value gap. This is way too early. And there were people in the live session today when we were trading that were like, oh my
[08:43] God, I need to take a long right here. We have, oh my God, sell side's left. We have displaced up a fair value gap. And then look what happens, just ends up getting ran through, right? So why does that happen? Why do I say wait for structure?
[08:56] Well, number one, the first thing is notice what level and what time frame is this point of interest that we're looking to take along also. Because the thing that's giving us our bias here is we think that we're going back to
[09:10] buy side because we are in a four-hour bullish fair value gap. We just swept a one-hour sell side level. So do you think a one-minute break of structure
[09:22] and a one-minute fair value gap is going to give me a good entry? No, you're going to get faked out so many times trading on a one-minute break of structure and a fair value gap. That's why I wait for a bigger timeframe validation.
[09:35] So let's continue to play this out. Market's still going. Okay, we swept internal, right? So now we swept internal sell side. So now any sort of longs are a little bit better, a little bit better probability, right?
[09:47] Again, I'm still, there's not enough structures and not enough, you know, stuff telling me what to do. Now, you can maybe notice that we now have accumulation. How do the markets move, right, in waves, right? A lot of this accumulation, manipulation, distribution,
[10:01] that's basically the power of three, right? When we get this first initial move to the downside, there's no structure here, right? This is the distribution. Now, what normally is going to come after?
[10:13] Accumulation, right? So when we get the distribution move to sell side or to whatever the draw on liquidity is, most of the time right after, we're not just going to get a straight up move. Now, we might. Now, let the market tell you
[10:26] that it's going to do that first though, right? Because right now, there's nothing telling me that we want to skyrocket up, right? Wait for the market to move and then look for an entry and look for the validation of what the draw on liquidity is. Because I already have an idea
[10:38] that the draw is going to be the equal highs. I already have an idea it going to be that because we now swept sell side We starting to accumulate on this four fair value gap so let keep watching Notice we actually getting displacement to the upside now
[10:51] And not only that, but look at the bigger time frames. We now have an imbalance on a five-minute fair value gap, or on a five-minute time frame. So now is when I can start looking for potential longs, whether it be in this fair value gap,
[11:07] whether it be later on, whether it be right now. now is when I can actually start looking for longs because I let the lower timeframes accumulate and settle down. And now the market is picking back up, showing break a structure to the upside on
[11:22] a bigger timeframe, right? Notice on the five minute, right? Look how cleaner this looks. Look how much cleaner this looks when we have a low here and a five minute displacement to the upside. That one minute, when I zoom into the one minute there, this is nothing. This little move here
[11:38] does nothing. It doesn't need anything, right? Wait for more structure to start to form. So now, at this point in time, the trade I ended up doing is I was even more picky. I said, you know what? I'm not, I don't trust this just yet. What's going to really make me trust this and the way that I'm
[11:55] going to look to trade this is I'm going to look to trade the inverse fair value gap. So again, I like to focus on what is being respected, what is being disrespected. That is giving me a clear understanding and even more confidence in what my bias and what the draw on liquidity is.
[12:10] So if I'm bullish here and I think that this is the draw on liquidity, what needs to happen for that to happen, right? What needs to happen for my bias to then work? Well, notice we have this 15-minute bearish for a value gap. So if we're bearish,
[12:25] this needs to hold and we would sell off, right? If the draw is lower, this would hold and we'd sell back off, right? If it is. But if the draw is higher, this then gets ran through and should act as an inverse fair value guess and then go higher, right?
[12:40] And now that we've swept sell side, I am now expecting this to get ran through, but I'm not calling it. I'm not guessing it's going to get ran through. I'm going to wait for it to get ran through even more, even more confirmation onto what my already existing bias is telling me.
[12:55] You can be in longs right now. It would not be bad to be in longs right now pre-existed to that break of the fair value guess. But I'm so picky and want the A+++. I want everything to validate my bias.
[13:07] So guess what? I wait. I wait. I wait. I wait. Boom. Fair value gaps gets disrespected on a bigger time frame. Gets absolutely ran through.
[13:20] What do I look for? A pullback back into that fair value gap right here. Inverse fair value gap. Looking at the 15 minute. Right when we break through this, after sell-side's taken and we have these equal highs above us,
[13:34] that's when I know structure's now formed. We're ready to blast off. We're ready. Because everything that needed to be done is now done. Right? Sell-side's now been swept. We've now shown validation of us holding a bigger time frame for our fair value gap.
[13:47] We've had accumulation at the lows. We've gotten displaced into the upside. We've ran through a bearish fair value gap. What else do... Everything here is in favor of my bias. Everything that I just listed is in favor of my bias, right?
[14:02] So I wait for it to get ran through. I added longs with the team. And I marked these two highs, these three highs. Equal highs here and three equal highs here.
[14:14] These are where I think the market's going to. So I put my stop. Set my two TPs. Look at the risk-reward. And notice what happens right after.
[14:28] big move back up. Again, what's being respected, what's being disrespected creates another five-minute bullish for buy gaps, continues to respect it, and then we get a monster move to the draw.
[14:42] This is efficiency in price. When the market knows where it wants to go, when the algorithms are hunting the draw on liquidity and we're drawing to whatever those highs or those lows are to stop out those traders,
[14:54] this is what efficiency looks like. Now, what gave me this bias, not only on ES, right? But not only on ES, but when parabolic moves happen like this,
[15:08] when do we normally see that happen? When we get fast moves like this. Let's go back to NQ. What was NQ doing at this time?
[15:24] Where were we at on NQ? right here. So when we're taking longs on N2, or if we're taking longs on ES,
[15:37] we want to look at N2 to validate our bias, right? We want to look at N2 to validate our bias. So when I'm looking at N2 and I say, okay, sell side's now been swept, okay, we're having a run up, we have some nice imbalances here,
[15:50] probably have, you know, you know, 15 minutes, whatever it is, right? Okay, I'm going to mark this out. This is what I want to see hold, right? Okay, and also I'm in a four-hour curve, I got, right? I'll take this off so it's even easier to see. Now, what do we expect price to do? Again, like we were talking
[16:02] about before we have an entire range here An entire range which is that fib that I have right This whole range that has now been met We have had a high sold all the way off the sell side.
[16:16] And with standard deviation that I had drawn in today, notice where we ended up stopping at. Notice where we ended up bouncing initially.
[16:29] NQ ends up selling off. bounce off the 2.2.5, re-bounce to discount of this range, of this range now,
[16:42] sweeps buy side, distributes lower to sell side, bounces off 4. Now this is a market maker model, right? This is a market maker model. We have manipulation. This is buy side of the curve.
[16:54] This is sell side of the curve. Now that sell side's now taken, where do we expect price to go? And this is where you'll find the most parabolic moves, and this is when you will find the most efficient and fastest moving moves
[17:06] or moving trades towards whatever the drama credit is. At this point in time, I know NQ is going back here. Right here.
[17:18] 50% back to discount, premium and discount, regular ICT concepts of this entire range that has now been fulfilled all the way back to sell time. right? I'm very confident that at this point in time, we go back to
[17:31] discount. So now another thing, to be even more precise, to be even more precise on where we're going to stop, because I don't know if we're going to stop at
[17:43] 50%, I don't know if we're going to stop a little bit above it or maybe below it. Use standard deviation internally. Looking at sell side, where was the first, and let me mark this, this is
[17:55] our 50% mark. where was the manipulation move here using standard deviation before we now had this initial move to the upside on a bigger time frame? Right here.
[18:08] This is our manipulation, right? Below our sell side level before that big move back up, right? Which is now we're looking for distribution back to the upside, right? But this is now our manipulation move. So now I use standard deviation.
[18:21] right here. Go from the high to the low where the manipulation started
[18:33] to where the break of structure was to the upside. And this is where I want to see headed. Notice, I'm not looking at this because this isn't in discount. This is where market's going.
[18:46] I delete this 50%. I have my four area, my projected of where I want aligned with every bias. Notice, every single bias here. All of the things that we've been talking about this video on what is giving me confidence or conviction to where the market wants to go right now, all of the things are lining up with this.
[19:07] So, let's see how this plays out. Where do you think we stop? Where do you think we stop? Where do you think the algorithm is telling you right now? We know. On a bigger time frame, we know. and Q wants to run to discount of this range.
[19:19] But where are we stopping exactly? To the tick. To the tick is where we stop.
[19:35] And just in case you can't fathom this, let me draw it in again, so I'm not mistaken. To the tick.
[19:47] Now, all of these things aligned with each other is when you're going to get confident conviction and understanding of what the draw on liquidity is, right? And again, all of this is just experience.
[19:59] It's building confidence with these concepts and with these ideas. The concepts of standard deviation, the concepts of discount premium, the concepts of sell-side, buy-side liquidity, understanding power of three, manipulation, distribution, accumulation, understanding where market wants to go now.
[20:15] I don't care about what it's going to do in the future. I don't care about what happens after we've now, you know, what happens in between. I'm focused on what is the market telling me right now.
[20:27] And what we've just been going over today is exactly that. All from the start of creating a bias, right? Right when I see the equal high form, I know that's going to be a target. Even in the morning, this morning, looking at yesterday, I said, we have nice equal highs here.
[20:42] I'm looking for us to come down sweep south side and then this to become a future target because I know That there's stops resting here that we're probably going to come back to hunt, but I need a lot of things to happen first Before I can take that trade. I already have the trade id in my head
[20:57] But there's no way that i'm taking it right now because it's not ready yet. There's not enough structure so I'm, hoping you guys enjoyed this video and got a better understanding of how I think and how I wait for structure and
[21:14] build conviction and build confidence through time. If you did enjoy this video, make sure to subscribe, leave a like. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments as well, but enjoy the rest of your day, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.