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Hi all,
I’m relatively new to Brooks trading and was wondering if you could critique my trade and tell me what I could have done better. This is a trade I took on the SPY this morning. Here’s my thought process:
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We opened this morning with Bar 1 being somewhat indecisive, but the next three bars showed a breakout to the downside. These three bars closed below their midpoints with relatively large bodies compared to the overall bar size, leading me to believe we should see a second leg down.
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Bar 5 was a bull bar but not strong, barely closing at its midpoint with a body less than half the size of the total bar. I waited for Bar 6 to take out the low of Bar 4, given that Bar 5 was green, and I wanted to see if we could make a new low before entering the trade.
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Price did take out the low of Bar 4, so I went short. However, the price completely reversed. When Bar 8 went above the high of Bar 7, I exited the trade. In hindsight, I’m glad I did since the market returned all the way to the high of the day (HOD) and beyond.
I would really appreciate it if you could point out my mistakes and recommend any specific videos from Al Brooks’s studies that address these issues. I’d love to know what they are.
Thank you so much.
Peyman,
Two things. Look at the last 25 bars of Friday. It was a tight trading range. Where you were shorting was a breakout of that range and most breakouts fail. Secondly, zoom out on your charts. You should see we're in a bull channel starting on last Thursday. Draw that channel and look at where you shorted. Hope that helps.
Hi Peyman,
Two things stand out to me right off ...
1. Going short below the bull bar
2. Going short tick below the low of the day
It seem like your actions were exact opposite 🫡
To your defence, the second leg down was a probability (me thinks)
I could be wrong
Thank you, J and Mike, for your response. What I found interesting about this trade is that, despite the tight move down with little overlap between B2-B4, the bulls treated it as if it were a Trading Range or a Broad Channel. They bought the close of bar 4 at open of bar 5, then bought more when bar 6 touched the low of bar 4, and even scaled in a little lower. Perhaps, as J mentioned, they were looking at the longer timeframe and saw the bottom of bar 4 as the lower area of that lower channel.
Another interesting observation was that the Bulls who bought the low of B4 managed to make $1.06 on SPY, equivalent to just over 10 points on ES. I wonder if this indicated some weakness on the Bear side.
Have some annotations .. relevant or not ... 🫡
Very interesting Mike! 👍 I just noticed the 2nd breakout even though I had not noticed it before. So when B7 closed above the Close of B5 and Open of B6 there was a Body Gap created and therefore we can call it a BO.. got it... many thanks!
I am not understanding the "Correction" though. Could you please explain which price action created the Correction? thanks again.
Hi Peyman, yeah overlapping bars created a micro tight range and last bar closed above, it broke out of that range (could still fail)
This was an opening reversal setup. You should review video 48A. The Opening reversal is one of the most important and profitable set-ups in the BTC repertoire as it can set you up for a swing trade for the day. It has an outstanding Traders-Equation with a Multi-R reward for a 50% probability.
On the open if you see a strong directional breakout, you should expect it to reverse 50% of the time, no matter how strong. In this case, the market was vacuumed down to the trendline of a broad bull channel.
The strength of the down-move was surprising given the fact that we were inside the prior days range and with so much TR price action to the left, but all this made an opening reversal more likely in my view.
Opening reversals can be extremely abrupt and don't require second legs. In this case there was a small second leg I got in on the 3 minute chart, above the H1 and bought more above the H2, with a 2R stop from the initial signal bar.
It seems like your analysis of your own trade is only considering the immediate bars of the day without taking into account the wider context to the left.
Hey Kevvy, thanks for taking the time to review my trade analysis and offering your insights! I really appreciate your suggestions. You make a great point about considering the wider context, I'll definitely take that into account moving forward. And I'll for sure check out video 48a as you recommended, thanks for the tip! Looking forward to learning more and improving my analysis.
You should take a closer look at least at the prior days PA or even better the context of the week like Kevvy wrote.
Watching on each day in isolation can cause to a false interpretation of the PA and what is really happening. Most PA is usual context driven and always a transition between setups.
You already get many info without looking at a setup while b1 is forming. It's a TR bull bar after a gap up. Followed by b2-4 which is a big down.
So gap up = big up + big down you might expect a TR.
B5 being an inside bar is a pause, a TR for itself and a triangle that means BOM.
b6 is a FBO and might be the 2nd leg which you expected.
A FBO to one side tends to get a successful BO to the other side.
Beside that, a BO above or below a DT (MDT 4-5 here) often leads to a MM up of at least this range and vice versa for a DB.
Hi Hubert K,
Thanks a lot for the detailed bar-by-bar analysis! I completely agree with you that I need to take a closer look at the prior day's PA and even the context of the entire week. Watching each day in isolation definitely has its pitfalls, and your insights highlight how crucial it is to understand the broader picture.
Your breakdown, especially about the transitions and the importance of setups within context, makes perfect sense. I’ll be more mindful of these elements moving forward. Thanks again for sharing your expertise!
