A short post today due to time constraints. I’ll talk about the two trades I took, which brought in +9 ticks.

Lessons learned from yesterday were applied in today’s market. This line that I’m about to read is a reflection on myself. Today, I felt like I understood more about what the market wanted to do, so I went with it.

Let The Market Show Its Hand

In the first trade (more orange boxes), you’ll see how the market trapped traders looking to go long too soon. The market had been making a strong bearish move, and I noticed the price slowing. I was looking for a reason to scalp a long trade, but not yet.

First, the market presented a bullish candle after giving traders what looked like a “bottom” from the previous downward move. Many traders entered long here but were subsequently trapped (labelled as 1st trap long).

After this, the price showed two bearish candles, which wicked below that single bullish candle. This would have inevitably stopped out some buyers. This is exactly when I wanted to enter—for two reasons:

So, my first trade, targeting 5 ticks, was made.

Don’t Get Greedy

The image above shows both my first and second trades.

For the second trade, I noticed that the price had pulled away from the low wick, where I drew the blue line. Price had also been rejecting the EMA multiple times during the day, so I figured people would continue to go short at this point.

I noticed that the price had stalled, and some buying pressure was entering the market. But then a large bearish candle presented itself, wicking below the previous buyers. Once again – the trap!

After this, the price quickly jumped up, at which point I entered. I wanted to set my TP to the higher blue line. In many cases, in fact, most of the time, I see prices take out highs and lows by just 1 tick. However, the ATR was quite low today, and I was happy to get just in and out with a 4-tick profit. So I took it, closed my charts, and moved on with my day.

Not a bad hour’s work.

I couldn’t help myself – another +10 ticks

Ok, I know I said I had closed my charts. I hadn’t—I was typing this blog post when I just couldn’t help myself.

In the picture, you’ll notice a short trade before my drawing. This was a gut trade; I have my reasons, but none that I can actually write out. I don’t recommend this type of trading; it won’t work long term, but in this case, I could just see what was happening.

The second trade was in line with my trapping system. Notice the “attractive short.” Price had been in a downtrend, and here, price gave a long wick bear candle. Many sellers thought this was a chance to get back in with the original trend. They were wrong.

Immediately, the price reversed, trapping these traders. It was here, with these two trades, that I took another 10 ticks from the market.