Trade Plan: Thursday, August 2nd, 2023

Daily balance has been broken — more big moves on the way?

Hi all! Back with another trade plan. Yesterday was a red day for me again unfortunately, after initially being up a few R on the session! My actual executions within traders were good but it was a challenging day of finding longs at the right time; in this case, entries were poor.

Timeframe Overview

The 10-day balance has broken!

Monthly OTF: up, ends: 4500

Weekly OTF: balance, ends to the upside: 4560; ends to the downside: 4530

Daily OTF: down; ends 4590

Wednesday Session Recap

Let’s look at what we stated in the plan for Tuesday:

Buyers are still in control of the auction, but in terms of a weekly OTF up, we’re slowly drifting towards 4560, which would break that trend…

Ultimately, this scenario played out and we were caught a bit off guard as the open was way below any of our levels.

ES opened for business at 4568. In A period, an unconvincing attempt by buyers was made to start moving upwards, but buyers couldn’t even break the day’s VWAP, nor come even close to the local ON swing highs around 4580. In B period, the opening range low at 4558 was also broken, signaling even greater weakness. Here again, buyers stepped in, in an attempt to accept within the OR, but this was rejected. B period low was at 4550, defining the IB low. One final attempt at accepting within the IB was made during E period where we one-touched above 4550 to 4551, but this was rejected and buyers could never get us back to that level for the rest of the session. Overall, this was technically a “trend” day down, but likely a difficult one for both longs or shorts to make decent intraday trades as retracements and chop were present. ES closed for cash at 4537.50.

Market Structure

The daily balance has broken, and we are now in a weekly balance. Wednesday’s session left us with a bearish-looking ‘b’ (lowercase b) volume profile, with the TPOC centered at 4541, and the VPOC lower at 4536. There is a tiny poor low from M period below 4528.

Trade Plan

A lot has changed since Tuesday’s session. Going into Thursday’s session, I will observe Wednesday’s TPOC of 4541. Above 4541 targets 4549, as a bit of confluence here, as this is both the VAH and the session halfback from Wednesday (it’s also an LVN). (the session halfbacks are commonly used by AMT practitioners after a big trend day like Wednesday’s). Above 4549 targets 4558, a bit of an LVN at the juncture of A, B, and C periods. It would take strength but then I would observe 4570, the high of Thursday’s session. Below targets 4533, what’s looking to be like today’s ON low and also the beginning of a low volume area. Below that is 4528, the VAL / poor low from Wednesday. Below that, I don’t see anything until 4520.

Key Levels

Pivot: 4541

Bull Levels: 4549, 4558, 4570

Bear Levels: 4533, 4528, 4520

Notes: BoE rate decision at 07:00, Jobless print at 08:30, Services PMI 09:45, Non-manufacturing PMI at 10:00

Stay safe out there! Things could get wacky!

Trades & Session Review

+$46. Doesn’t make up for the garbage the past few days but I realized with a $500 account, 3 MES or 2 MNQ (what I was previously trading) is too much risk for a $500 account. So today I was trading 1 lots, like a real big kid :) In MES, had some trouble / papercuts in the morning but found the D period extension over VWAP — this one I found through our beta Session Matcher tool on AMT JOY! I’ll make a seperate blog post on how I found the trade. Sadly I took profit too soon on this (target was OR high), but it was a 3R trade and that’s all you can do with a single lot! 🤷‍♂️

Here’s the MES D period trade:

Because I was watching ES too intently in the morning, I missed the huge momentum on MNQ, but still caught the last half of it, taking profit nearly to the local high to the tick!

Here’s the MNQ trade:

In the afternoon in MES, I got caught up in the battle around the 4525s and gave a bit back (maybe some over trading going on), but I’m overall satisfied with the day. Once again focused and preparing for tomorrow.

Cheers and as always, good luck out there!

-Chris

A reminder that I am still ultimately a beginner to intraday trading and trading futures. This is not an alert service and none of this is financial advice.

Originally published at https://amtjoy.substack.com.