The Man With 3 Brains. Matching Your Mind With Your Market
On May 11th at 12 pm EST, we’ll be holding our next (and overdue) Group Therapy session titled “The Man With 3 Brains. Matching You With Your Market”. As usual, this is a more interactive session with plenty of back and forth.
I’ll kick off with a bit of an explanation of what I’ve been doing over the past year and what I discovered about my mental “wiring” that gave me skills in one area but useless in another. I’ve since met a lot of people like this who basically have conditions that seem to be defined by their downsides, yet these conditions also come with upsides.
Anyway – we all know we have different personalities. Yet every single trader I meet wants to trade ES (95%) or NQ (1%). In this session, we’ll consider some other markets as well as the “non-trading” skills that might make trading them easier. But rather than keep it simply academic, we’ll consider other things, like ADHD, Dyslexia…
We’ll consider these things, not because we want to do a mental health seminar – but because these conditions are extreme examples of people that on the surface might simply be troubled/have issues – but in fact, their condition has a flip side that gives them advantages in certain areas. By looking at these extremes, it might help us understand our own “quirks” and “perks”
Also – if you are good at your job – that might not be the skill. You might be good at that job because of your wiring which might bring benefits elsewhere that you don’t know about.
It might not even impact the market you trade – but it might impact the tools you use. Like dyslexic people that are able to think multi-dimensionally – using all their senses – so whilst they might not be able to use their sense of smell – they might be able to engage their ears to complete their mental picture. There’s a very interesting article here: Dyslexia – 8 Basic Abilities
This isn’t all about mental wiring – it’s about figuring out who you are, what your skills are, and how to adapt them to trading. Like should a specific personality type lean more on news? Should a math whizz that became an accountant lean more toward trading individual equities on quarterly releases?
For those that think you are 100% normal. Consider your family, I know anyone thinks they have a normal family. So, you might be carrying baggage from that or have developed some skills because of it. Like my ability to shut up when my extended family is in a fistfight at a wedding. You can’t beat turning up in a Limo and going home in an ambulance.
Now – for this to work – I’d like brave souls with strange wiring to write to us – in confidence, if you wish and tell us the “downsides and upsides” you got from your non-standard brain.
The reason we are announcing this early – is we’d like to hear some experiences – about skills that you adapted that flopped and those that really worked well. I’ll start with my story, then we can look at others.
The takeaway is hopefully, you have a chance to alter your path in trading to one that is better for you, more enjoyable, and with a higher rate of success.
And of course – I am no doctor – nor will I pretend to be one but hopefully our resident psychologist will be there to advise.
Register for the event HERE
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Order Flow itself is simply information. Just like charts, it can be used in a number of ways, some good and some bad. But let's first break down order flow into it's components so we all agree what we are talking about:
Order Executions/Tape Reading - This aspect is the real flow of orders. It's the information we see in Time & Sales, Footprint Charts, Cumulative Delta. It is looking at market orders, either as they execute or historically. I guess this is the "true order flow". Every trade is a buy and a sell. We look at market orders because we consider them to be more aggressive. When someone trades with a market orders, they are giving up a price to get an instant fill. Limit orders on the other hand just lazily sit there waiting for a market order to hit them. Often these are market makers with no directional conviction. So we see market orders as being more significant.
But we don't use these in isolation.
Volume Profile/Positions - The tape reading part helps us assess various things like momentum, traders getting stuck, balance of trade BUT the volume profile helps us understand where people are positioned and likely to get stopped out. I sometimes call this "Order Flew". It's important to know when trades will be "washed out" - for example - if we have a volume cluster on the S&P500 Futures and the market moves up 100 points and back down to it, it's unlikely short term traders on either side that were positioned there will still be there. But recent, nearby volume helps us assess areas of positions.
Market Depth - The bids and offers, the lazy passive orders waiting to be hit. This is part of the story but in terms of overall importance, I'd put it at around 20% at most. For example - if you return to the high of the day on any market, the offers will be quite large directly above the high. It means nothing at all. It's just a quirk of the market. It does not help you tell if a price will hold. On the other hand, if you see large depth and as we approach it, we see more added to the depth in front of that price, it means others are front running that depth and that is a useful bit of information.
This is the key - it is all just information. Just like price charts are information. When people look at Order Flow, they consider it to be a technique more than a set of information. They look for things like iceberg orders and decide to make a one rule trading system to fade every iceberg, For these people - yes, order flow trading is overrated because they are trying to ignore everything else going on in the markets and construct a trading system a chimp could execute.
For those looking to improve a decent trading approach, the best thing to focus on in Order Flow is momentum. Once you can read momentum you can:
- Avoid getting into positions when momentum is against you.
- Confirm trades are working after entry when momentum goes your way.
- Exit trades in profit when momentum fades.
That's perhaps the easiest way to use order flow because momentum is easier to read. It's about the market continuing to do what it's already doing. On the other hand, reading a turn in the market with order flow takes a higher level of skill and a little longer to learn.
Order flow can't put lipstick on a pig. It won't help you 'improve' something that doesn't work anyway, which is why whenever someone calls me, the first thing I ask is what they are currently doing and we discuss whether they need a reset or whether it will actually help.
When Jigsaw started back in 2011 - we were one of the first in the space and certainly had the best education. It was always going to attract the underbelly of the trading education/tools world and now we see stuff out there that is so complex but so impressive and futuristic that new traders are drawn to it like moths to a flame.
So here's my advice when looking at Order Flow
- Order Flow can't improve something that doesn't work.
- Order Flow can be used on it's own, without charts to enter and exit the market but you also have to be able to recognize different market states that need different/altered setups. There is nothing magical about this.
- Don't start jumping at shadows and take 50 trades an hour in your first week looking at Order Flow, be selective. It can be exciting to see cause and effect play out in front of you for the first time but don't overtrade.
- Do drills to learn how to read it before you trade it.
- Markets can only go up and down. Don't overcomplicate it. If you have too many Order Flow tools on your screen - you will not be able to make consistent decisions. Less is more.
- Take time to choose a market with a pace you like. Interest rates might send you to sleep, the DAX might give you a heart attack.
It is hard to see how a set of information could be overrated. It is true that some methods of presenting this information are better than others. It is also true that some people simply get on better with different tools (e.g. Footprint vs DOM).
There's a middle ground between complexity and simplicity that will leave you making consistent decisions where you improve over time. For those people, Order Flow will be way underrated because they will be the one's getting the most out of it.
Those that jump in with both feet on day one and those that have 100 different tools up, for those, it's a painful experience.
Keep it simple and manageable. Start with momentum reading and build from there. You will never look back.
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