There was a lot of volume in today’s market. I must admit, it made finding an entry quite difficult.

There are two setups marked on the chart above. I did not take the “1 Tick Trap” because the ATR was too high, and I was unable to enter safely.

Now, let’s review today’s +24 tick profit.

Sometimes the market doesn’t give you perfection

As mentioned earlier, the ATR for today (and yesterday, see Trade 12) was quite high. This made trading challenging because I couldn’t reduce my contracts any further to minimise risk, and the candles were very large.

I started the day observing a downtrend and was looking for short opportunities, but nothing stood out.

Price broke below the double bottom, and in hindsight, this move was actually a trap on a higher time frame chart.

I waited and followed the market, searching for an opportunity. Here, you’ll notice the “1 tick trap,” where the price pushed up, retested the previous support, and stopped out any early buyers.

I considered going long here, but couldn’t find a suitable entry due to the risk being too high.

Learning To Trust The Process

I followed the price up to an area that I felt offered some resistance. While it wasn’t entirely clear, it was good enough.

I marked the above image with “Attractive Area to Short” because of this resistance zone.

You’ll notice that the price did, in fact, hold here, and many traders would have naturally gone short. But I waited. I then saw the price bypass the “blue” box to create my favoured “orange box”—therefore, I knew the trap had been set. Anyone who went long early was now trapped, and anyone looking to sell at the attractive area was also trapped.

The price was also at the EMA, which it has been respecting during this upward move.

Still uncomfortable with the ATR and risk-reward, I stayed true to myself and set up a buy stop with a 12-tick stop loss. You’ll see in the image that this meant my stop wasn’t below a candle (which is odd, I know), but beggars can’t be choosers.

I was triggered into the trade, and the next few candles didn’t fill me with confidence. In fact, I considered closing the trade, thinking I might be wrong.

However, I trusted the process, remembering that in theory, I can afford to be wrong 60% of the time and still be profitable. I let the trade play out.

+24 ticks—another winning day.

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