Weekly Plan 3/20/23; Feat. Trade For Opportunity
This weeks blog is inspired by a collaboration with TFO. I’ll dive into my weekly recap, TFO will provide his thoughts, and I’ll input my plans for this week!
To Recap Last Week:
The market started the week off fairly choppy after bouncing from low $3800’s; specifically $3820s. If you are a reader of this substack you knew I wanted a bounce off this area as I thought it would hold. At the time it seemed far fetched, but I wanted a bounce back up into $3900’s targeting $3975(March contract for futures).
I can’t make this up… the proof is in the newsletter… The market traded exactly how BT and I were expecting. It was like we made a code for the market to follow last week ;)
Early in the week we wanted longs off $3820. This area was reached and we chopped around until Wednesday. In Wednesday’s newsletter I adjusted my pivot to $3860, this was the low on Thursday that we rallied off of into the last bull target. Immediately after the market closed on Thursday I sent a reminder in the Substack Chat saying I am no longer bullish near the last target of $3975 or $4010(June contract)… This was the high for the week and we bled nearly 70 points lower.
*Trying to keep recaps short and sweet, please see previous newsletters if you question the levels :) All of my levels regarding the S&P500 are from ES (S&P 500 Futures.. now switching to June contract). Newsletters Sunday and Wednesday. This will provide subscribers with better ideas for levels and direction throughout the week.*
TFO:
Hey! I’m super excited to be featured in KR’s newsletter this week. From the time I joined fintwit in early 2021, I’ve crossed paths with KR many times and have always been impressed with his work. I’ll do my best to honor his level of quality by sharing a bit about my journey and what I’m focused on right now to help myself become a better trader. Feel free to connect with me afterwards on Twitter, YouTube and more via my Linktree.
About Me
I’ve been trading for close to 4 years now. I began with options and have moved to futures in the last year or so. I primarily used to swing trade traditional pattern-based breakout setups, but I always felt like I was missing something, and that I didn’t have a firm understanding of broader price action. I started searching for tools that would help me understand, and ultimately found myself in the rabbit hole of “Smart Money Concepts,” authored by ICT, or the “Inner Circle Trader.”
I found ICT’s YouTube channel early last year when he began his 2022 Mentorship Series, which was my first introduction to Smart Money Concepts and really opened my eyes to some ideas that truly helped me make sense of why price moves in the ways that it does. Although ICT can be extremely long winded in his videos, I’ve learned a ton from his teachings and genuinely owe a ton to the information he’s shared.
My Transition
Since last year, I’ve also quit my job to become a full time trader. I planned on doing so for a good while; I knew that trading was an obsession from my first few months of discovering it. As someone with an engineering background, I became laser focused on trying to make sense of the data involved with trading, whether it was simple candlesticks/OHLC, options flow, etc. Doing so as a hobby wasn’t enough to satisfy me though, especially with the limitations that came with having a busy day job.
While I wasn’t nearly confident enough in my own trading to think that I could support myself at the time, I took a calculated risk by quitting. I payed off all my debt over the prior few years and saved a decent emergency fund to give myself a year or so to see if I could learn to trade consistently. If it didn’t work out, I would simply get another job and try again later, as I knew this was what I wanted to do.
I had a bumpy start but the pieces have begun to fall into place. I recently coded a trading bot that passed a 100k funded evaluation, and have a few other things in the works to support my manual trading.
My Focus
While ICT and his Smart Money Concepts have proved extremely useful for my own trading, it’s been a lot to digest. I’ve barely scratched the surface of all the material that he has released over the years. So in an effort to retain everything I’ve learned thus far, I’ve utilized my coding background to automate a lot of the core Smart Money Concepts into a few fairly extensive TradingView indicators.
Similar to my motivation to code trading bots, my overarching goal with these automation efforts is to simply remove subjectivity from my trading and focus on an objective edge. Every trader has heard of an “edge,” but how many have actually studied and back tested their strategies to verify that they’re trading with something that is statistically proven to work over a long period of time?
Oftentimes with manual back testing, we’ll see incredible results because we’re focused on the instances where our edge worked, but subconsciously ignoring instances where it didn’t. I started leaning so heavily into code because I knew that I needed to verify that I was using a proper edge, and that a machine wouldn’t make those same mistakes; it would simply output the brutally honest truth about a strategy’s success.
This is how I coded my trading bot that secured a 100k funded account. I added my core rules, back tested, optimized, tweaked the rules a bit, and repeated the same process until I had something that I was comfortable running on a live account. This is my most recent back test over 1 year of data on NQ futures (approximately 500 trades).
How to Get Started
I get a lot of questions about where to start with coding, but there’s no good answer. It’s like learning how to ride a bike without training wheels, just a lot of trial and error until you can somewhat manage to inch forward. I’ve been coding for over 10 years at this point, so what works for me may not work for everyone else. But I do believe that it’s an absolutely invaluable skill to have, especially in a field as data-oriented as trading. I recommend doing whatever you can to learn enough to help your trading in some way, shape, or form, whether that’s systemizing your strategies, back testing, collecting data to refine high vs low probability conditions, etc.
I have a few coding videos on my YouTube channel on making scripts in TradingView and NinjaTrader, though I’d recommend looking for more videos and channels that resonate with you. I always recommend the channel “Part Time Larry,” who helped me get started with Python a couple years ago via some really interesting market-related projects. You could also consider introductory courses on sites like Udemy, Coursera, DataCamp, etc. if you want something more structured - anything is better than nothing. You just have to take that first step.
Feel free to send me a message if you have any questions. If you want to learn more about what I do and the things I’ve been making, you can check out my Linktree to find me on Twitter, Youtube, and more. Thanks for taking the time to read my section - good luck in your trading!
*If you haven’t already, download the app and turn notifications on to access the Substack Chat. This is where I post intraday updates aside from the two newsletters a week. Please like to keep interactions up, this will help other traders find the newsletters! :)*
KR’s Thoughts:
Now that we have transferred over to the June contract for futures, everything will be referencing to that from now on. Technically, we are trading back in range established early last week. Overall would not be surprised to see more chop. Thus I’ll be keeping light.
I am going to keep it simple starting the week considering last week was as perfect as it gets. We are now sitting at $3947 after the impressive rejection of $4010. I’ll be looking for another test of $4010 if we can continue to hold over $3920. Below $3920 may open another test of lows; $3870, $3840.
Main reason I’ll be keeping it small is due to the result that we are back in range. As always, I’ll provide updates in the Substack Chat and in the Wednesday blog!
Individual names:
AMD: I tracked this name from $72, now sitting at $100. I am no longer interested in chasing the upside. Late bulls may be in hurt if they chase this imo, I would not be surprised if it reverses around $100-$108.
NKE: Looks a little interesting here if it can hold over $117.50. Upside levels are $123.50, $125, and $128.
UPS: Is now holding over VWAP and the slight downtrend. I’ll continue to like upside if $184 can hold. Long targets are $195, $202, and $212.
All charts shared by me are from Trendspider use this link HERE if you’d like to look into their charting software! Occasionally I will share charts from Thinkorswim.
Disclaimer:
This is my personal analysis and is not to be taken as trading advice. I am not a professional nor am I licensed with anything associated with the Stockmarket. Trading involves risk and you will lose money. Everyone has a different risk tolerance, portfolio size, and style of trading. It is important to trade within your comfort.
So much good analysis here thank you!