Plan 9-12-24: PPI Inc.

What this letter is:

• A Daily visual plan that I use to trade /ES futures

• Discord with intraday price action analysis

• Swing setups for other tickers

• A high time frame view of markets - /NQ/RTY/YM/DXY/2Y/10Y/Crypto

What this letter isn’t:

• An alert service.

No writing here is influenced by market fundamentals.

The focus of this stack will always be efficient trading. A simple daily letter outlining short term bull and bear scenarios coupled with a bias displayed visually on easy to read charts. Price action examples are explained and annotated when they’re relevant to the current day.

Levels given take into account channels, volume profile points of control, key zones acting as either magnets or potential squeeze targets.

Discord Link:

DM me once in discord if you’re a paid subscriber to add permissions to the channels for live intraday updates and swing tickers.

Twitter Link:

Subreddit Link:

The Subreddit is being developed to archive and organize price action concepts covered in this Substack over the years and a resource to practice price action concepts by reviewing past plans.

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Notes on Trades:

IMPORTANT - Execution is as important if not more so than levels. Please read my pinned guides to understand the concepts of reclaims, back tests, entries, exits and stop losses for help with execution.

There is no perfect play, only optimization of risk to reward using probabilities, market mechanics and strict rules established through back testing.

Targets don’t predict pullbacks nor do supports predict bounces. They’re simply points of interest to pay closer attention to price action. If a target is hit it doesn’t mean price will instantly pull back, it just means the probability becomes higher.

When bullish on /ES all supports are stronger in liquid individual tickers and dips are buyable. In contrast when bearish on ES resistances are stronger and pops are shortable. Having an accurate bias is everything as playing individual tickers is often just a proxy for playing the index itself.

How to Follow a Plan:

Every day an overall roadmap and a bear/bull scenario are given. The bear/bull scenario are the highest probability setups I see at the time of writing - not a prophecy as to whether they will occur.

These plans are based on recognizing similar scenarios/setups over my past experiences trading. To execute a plan it’s a traders job to identify which scenario is likely playing out based on how price is interacting with the levels outlined in the plan. After that trade management sees profit taking at resistance and trailing a stop loss for runners.

Trade plans aren’t set in stone. They need to be confirmed in real time by the various mechanisms to move price ie failed breakdowns, breakouts, back tests, support/resist flips, sweeps etc. All of these concepts are outlined with examples in the articles pinned to the top of the Substack.

Lastly there is a certain cadence to a trading day. The key times to trade are 2:00 AM, 7:30-10:30 AM and from 3:30 to close (market time). These represent the London session open, the cross over between New York open and London close and the MOC at end of market session. These all provide “volatility windows” for price to make a move. Typically price follows a setup during one of these windows which we intend to capture. Then price spends the next few hours (or days) chopping the various levels to confirm the move that has just been made. This letter does not focus on the scalping strategies necessary to trade intraday chop but this is a common time when traders end up giving profits back from the clean move already captured.

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Daily Recap:

Price ended up tracking closer to the bear scenario. Breakdown to follow.

The channel invalidated the CPI false breakdown setup for open by testing the bottom of the channel overnight which left the options as a straight breakout or breakdown and a re-entry on the back test of the range (be it short or long).

Low time frame scenario pivots were laid out prior to the catalyst but rather than post them all here I’ll review how it played out in the recap, Ultimately price did do a sweep setup - it just opted to sweep below the bottom of the channel versus sweeping and stopping at the bottom of the channel.

Ultimately price pushed through the low time frame reclaim level to re-test the highs.

It’s important to divide the high and low time frame for what moves price intraday which is noise versus higher time frame trends. The first move of CPI was a false breakdown that reclaimed on the low time frame which drives price higher but reclaiming on the high time frame confirms trend and that had yet to happen.

The reason this matters is because buying supports once trending is an easier way to make money than to predict when a trend has started before it has confirmed on the higher time frame. In this way it will feel less satisfying to not bottom tick but even if buying pullbacks higher on the chart will have a better margin of safety knowing the buy is supported by a higher time frame trend.

All the CPI candle provided was non directional low time frame noise. Once the higher low failed there was a potential breakdown trade that worked out but until price broke the channel there wasn’t much there.

There was a potential breakdown short that worked out:

Once price hit drawdown the short re-entry was at 5488-90 if the channel reclaims - if it didn’t reclaim the opportunity wouldn’t present and it would just breakdown towards the bear targets. The breakdown ended up being what happened.

When price hit the higher time frame drawdown target which was a back test of the false breakdown from last Friday it was time to look for a reclaim level. The higher risk/higher reward trade is the knife catch as they produce the bigger wins but can easily break versus waiting for the reclaim as the safer bet that pays less.

The knife catch worked as well as the reclaim:

This sent price on it’s path to the high time frame back test of the green bar:

Full Recap: