Slangin lots

Financial Markets | We’re all degenerates, the only variance is the complexity | The piper always gets paid

[Imre Gams @ImreSG]

I hope everyone has an incredible end to the year.

I want to leave you with a few of my thoughts.

These are observations from my time as a performance coach to professional traders on a prop desk.

Some of the traders I worked with were transitioning from institutional roles…

Futures pits. Desks at firms like Credit Suisse, Natixis, and Millennium.

Many of them struggled badly.

This surprised people.

After all, these were some of the most knowledgeable traders in the world. In many cases, they knew more about markets than I did.

But they were playing a different game.

In the pits, you had a front row seat to the auction. You could see and feel emotion. You could sense pressure building before price ever moved.

On institutional desks, much of the work is spread trading and risk distribution. Diligent, precise, but not the same kind of repeated asymmetric risk-taking that proprietary trading demands.

When those traders moved to prop, they had to adapt.

Some did. Many didn’t. And they were either ultimately cut or willingly walked away.

Here’s the lesson…

Learning order flow, market profile, and how trade is facilitated down to the exchange level is critical. It’s non-negotiable.

But it’s also the easy part.

That’s just knowledge. You must have it. But knowledge alone is not an edge.

Edge is synthesis.

It’s the ability to take that knowledge, apply it to a specific market, identify repeatable inefficiencies, and then build a risk framework that allows you to survive normal variance.

And finally, it’s the ability to execute that framework unflinchingly, over and over again, long enough for positive expected value to do the work.

That’s edge.

Most people stop at learning.

Some go deeper and understand structure.

Very few can put it all together and then delay gratification long enough to let the math play out.

That ability is not something humans are naturally born with. This is why trading is so fucking difficult.

So what separates successful traders from unsuccessful ones?

It’s not one thing. It’s not a setup. It’s not run of the mill psychology hacks.

In my opinion, it’s extremely similar to elite sport.

For example, at the Premier League level, every player is technically gifted. Every player is fit. The margins in skill are tiny.

And yet, a few players stand above the rest.

The difference is mental.

So it is with traders.

Not surface-level psychology, but something deeper.

The ability to confront what I call the darkness. Your insecurities, your trauma, your perceived inadequacies. Not avoiding them. Not numbing them. Using them as fuel.

If I had to name that quality in one word, it would be grit.

Not bs hustle culture grit… Real grit:

The refusal to accept failure as an outcome, combined with an obsession with winning that does not waver under pressure.

Some of it is genetic. Some of it is environmental IMO.

This means grit is something that each of us can improve and develop over hard time.

I follow this mantra: I can do extremely difficult things. Things others either can’t or aren’t willing to do.

Enjoy this time. Reflect on what you’ve built this year.

But don’t forget…

The only easy day was yesterday.

[DCP @Dcpcooks]

I’ve said my political party doesn’t exist for a decade.

The K shaped economy was a policy choice

It’s all a policy choice

Both sides are guilty of these me vs them bullshit games

While they take huge checks from lobbies to enrich and insider trade at the same time

It’s actually amazing we’ve let the uniparty divide the people for personal gain

The fall of Rome tweets are going to rise like corn this summer 🤣

[Swingtrader @Swingtrader]

Brilliant article by @profplum99 - I don’t think this could have been articulated anyway possibly better.

https://t.co/UpG6MwvmiM

[Slangin lots @orderflowbro]

ES: U turn pattern on the 120/240?@LindaRaschke

[Slangin lots @orderflowbro]

@Dcpcooks That’s one of the best games I’ve watched

[Mel Mattison @MelMattison1]

$34K to $287K vs. $41K to $910K vs. $36K to $1.5 million.

Those are the price changes in median home values since 1975 for Illinois, California, and San Francisco, respectively.

A lot has been made that US money printing has helped the rich while leaving behind the average American. But isn’t it more complicated than that?

A high-school educated carpenter or union worker in Chicago or San Francisco paid basically the same price for a home in 1975. Meanwhile, one home is now worth less than $300K while the other is worth $1.5 million.

There has been a widening wealth gap in recent decades, for sure, but it’s not just about social class. It’s also very geographically based. As much as certain Americans have been left behind, it may be more accurate to say certain American locations have been left behind.

A lot of blue-collar millionaires on the coasts have done just fine, while their flyover country brethren have languished. Just one more dynamic to ponder as one thinks about the state of the American worker and American economy.

[Ziggy @ZigsOnTheBid]

Happy Monday. Most futures traders will be taking a look at the economic events for the week ahead.

One way to stay on top of what's on deck for the day is to display scheduled news on a chart.

Did you know GC has a free news study?

Link is below in the next post ⬇️

[Slangin lots @orderflowbro]

@ZigsOnTheBid Thanks for posting this. I’ve been wanting something like this for a long time.

[Slangin lots @orderflowbro]

If 5461 fails, looking for 5433-30.

[Slangin lots @orderflowbro]

@LindaRaschke Can the same be said for three consecutive down bars?

[Slangin lots @orderflowbro]

@Dcpcooks Sorry to hear that. At my restaurant, the kitchen AC went out in the middle of June on a Saturday. Got to 100 plus degrees in the kitchen. One of my HVAC guys came out and temporarily fixed it until Monday. My advice, find a couple of good tradesmen and treat them like royalty

[Walter Deemer @WalterDeemer]

Today was a 90.4% downside day. Need a 90% upside day or back-to-back 80% upside days to reverse it, DVOL/(UVOL+DVOL); Lowry’s definition. Data per https://t.co/iX5L1DKg9b. See https://t.co/0CaG1R5Gbo for explanation. Can also follow @HamzeiAnalytics.

[Slangin lots @orderflowbro]

@jestertrading33 Im curious as to the Auction Interest study as well?

[Jared Dillian @dailydirtnap]

Gee whiz, gold is pretty high.

A thread.

[Slangin lots @orderflowbro]

@SqueezeMetrics It’s still a bear market

[Slangin lots @orderflowbro]

@PrivatePRT Well done

[Doublewide Capital LLC @DoubleWideCap]

The short term auction and intermediate term auction. Short term auction gets a little too long look for a test of the intermediate term auction. Intermediate term auction holds? Look for a trip back to the short term auction. @tradewithprof concept.

[Tom Dante @Trader_Dante]

How I prepare for the market open each week

A thread

[Smashelito @smashelito]

$ES A quick replay of the absorption below 4130, and the aggressive buying that followed during today's RTH session.

#footprint #orderflow #smashlevels

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

This week's CPI report is the first that will be calculated with a new methodology.

Example:

- 2022 CPI = 2019+2020 consumption

- 2023 = ONLY 2021 consumption

Previously, CPI was calculated using 2 years of data, now it will be just 1.

What a convenient time to change this.