vsa with Malcolm

that s smack where i entered long yesterday lol..as for ur idea of a professional trader, yes it s true that institutions manipulate price, but unless u have the funds to withstand deeper DD, i wouldn t go against the flow. SM are represented imho ofc by banks, insitution, funds and so on..and not always there s a consensus amongst the Smart Money. and believe it or not even they lose trades. wyckoff, weiss talk about weak holders, and i read that as people poorly funded that can t sustain the DD till price eventually goes their way..cos u can be right about the direction, but if ur timing is bad and small account...well, i guess that s the main issue for most traders, myself included no so long ago..till i managed to drill some basic concepts into my mind. anyways, people are different, we see different things looking at the same picture, that s also 1 of the reasons why same strategy same chart but 2 people will most likely get different results. ofc, this is only my way of seeing things, but then again, no1 s perfect.

SP Pre-NY session long now, very nice opportunity in a spring like action:

Update: GBPUSD long is on the money. Market is giving some very nice and clear VSA reading. After the long, buying came in supporting our position, the down bars were with no supply. As I was doing the annotations in this screenshot, market printed some more shakeout bars, those are meant to scare novice traders out of their positions. The SP pre-NY trade is also on the money, but we are almost at NY open where volatility and volume will increase, so have to keep a short leash here:

Updated: long positions closed. Holding position when NY open is tricky when you are trailing top a trade because of the increased volatility. If you get lucky the you have an open drive in your favor, great! Ride it. In this case today, market moved against the positions with very high volume and bars closing poor below "lines in the sand". Closed all positions immediately. Pre market long in SP turned into a scratched trade with 2pts profit, and the long in GBPUSD netted us 28pips of profit:





NY session opened above previous VA, which is bullish, but quickly took a dive into previous session VA. If we don´t get a rejection with price closing above it in A period, the 80% VA fill rule will activate:

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Update: An aggressive scalper could have opened a short here with a tight stop:




EDIT: Forgot to mention earlier: Can you guys guess the time where the trade was taken and market went down? Yest, the infamous 10:00 - 10:10 am reversal time.

Update:

Update: stopped out the remaining 2 contracts netting a total of 17pts, plus the 9pts and 2pts from earlier, we are at 28pts of profit for the morning. You could even stop trading for the day:

Update: Short again on what it looked like a "no demand" bar at resistance forming, this was aggressive move cause the bar hadn´t closed yet. Bearish EvR on the up move too:

Update: 1st target of latest short hit for a profit of 10pts. Looks like price is going to test yesterday´s low:

Look how you have to be nimble and adapt to market conditions as they change, instead of getting attached to your analysis and bias. In period A, NY session got rejected from previous session VA, which was a bullish sign. But then period B returned and got accepted, thus activating the 80% VA fill rule, which happened:

Update: Price is collapsing in a climactic parabolic manner, this is unsustainable and we are reaching the ADR for the day (meaning not much more room to move to the downside), getting ready to close remaining contracts:

Update: Remaining contracts closed at the hit of the ADR completion line, netting extra 82pts. Add that to previous 28 pts and we are at 110pts of profit for the morning, which is insane:

I was checking the 24h TPO charts, and I merged several days to check were price was in the big picture. It was hanging above the VAH of the big ass profile before dropping (zone considered premium price to sell), you can see price halted right at the POC of the big ass profile. On 5min the wave volume shows big bullish EvR, someone is holding the market there:

Update: 1H chart shows a massive bullish effort vs result bar, with that "bag holding" look = strength. A buying opportunity presented itself at a no supply bar that followed the bar the broke a local level of resistance after the climactic action happened and a small trading range formed. If at the market at the moment it happened, certainly would have taken it. IF the bullish picture continues, will look for a long in a weak pullback:

Update: so another opportunity for a long (at least in my style) presented itself. Long at the close of no supply bar at local support, with the stop 2 ticks below YL. Bear in mind that this is actually not a good time of day for trading, the doldrums, everything slows down:



It is good practice to also make an analysis that contradicts the other, so you don´t get stuck in a bias and stays in the zone, or flowing with the market. For example, I can argue that the down move had volume increasing, and now the rally has decreasing volume, which might be a correction. Will the market make another leg down? If the ADR was not exhausted, I would give this hypothesis more weight, but it is definitely a possibility. A low possibility, but it exists:

Update: Partial profits on the long we took at doldrums netting 24pts in one contract. 2 contracts left in play with stop adjusted below line in the sand. You can see how supply overcame demand (one of the 3 Wyckoff laws) in the afternoon little uptrend, with volume higher in up moves and lower in down moves, a couple of bullish EvR and no supply tests here and there where you could have added to your position:




EDIT: As I was typing this post, the stop was hit, netting extra 33pts in the remaining contracts. So 57pts in the afternoon plus 110pts from the morning, we have incredible 167pts of profit for the day! Crazy. Market gives us another trading opportunity with a beautiful upthrust of the overnight low with a pop in volume, next couple of bars confirm the supply hitting the market:

Update: Partial profits on the short at local support + high volume node of area to the left, netting more 17pts. 2 contracts left in play, stops adjusted, line in the sand elected:



EDIT: Catastrophic stop hit, netting extra 5pts in the remaining contracts. So 22pts in this lat short, plus 167pts we have 189pts of profit for the day! Beautiful.

What about order flow tools... I think they are really helpful. When wyckoff and tom traded in the 30’s and 90’s they didnt had all the tools that we have today... so why not use technology to our advantage

some time ago I started to test some graphics such as footprint, volume, delta, etc ... for me they are being of great help. The VSA / Wyckoff analysis continues the same, what changes is the information we have available, trade is about collecting the information available to make the best decision

some charts below

@odines

I tried implementing those footprint charts into VSA method but did not find that they helped/improved the analysis at all. I certainly tried: watched all courses you can think of regarding order flow and footprint. Spent a couple of months on the simulator looking at them in tandem with the regular charts, and I thought I was just looking at more clutter. I am not saying people can´t trade using them, there are strategies to this type of chart, but not VSA. It is just that VSA is already "fool proof" on it´s own, it does not require anything else other than the price bars, volume and structure. I will say that the only other indicator that I like seeing if I have a platform like Sierra opened is the cumulative delta bars, they surely help spotting fake/trap moves. The one in the screenshot your posted is not as good as the cumulative version. Seeing the delta per bar like this is not very useful to me, I can reach the same conclusion by comparing range of bars and size of volume, after a while you get the hang of it.