Transcription
All right, guys. Welcome in. Uh, today I'm going to be going over volume footprint. Okay, how to appropriately read volume. First things first, what has gotten me a 93% win rate all of the year of 2025, all done live, all recorded, and all posted. What's gotten me that 93% win rate with a 3.5 risk-to-reward ratio is trading volume.
I'm learning to read order book level two, learning to read time and sales using volume footprint in conjunction with these along with my levels which pairs for really good sniper entries. That's how I get such precise entries. That's why I'm able to trade with a 15% or a 15 point on futures stop-loss and not get stopped out, right? Be correct, have a winning trade the majority of the time. So, I'm going to go into depth and what I use and how I see these things play out. what to look for, what not to look for, etc. It's going to be about four years worth of experience in a few minutes.
So, all right. So, getting into this, I want you guys to be paying attention to I'm going to go over where my entry was and go over how I caught this trade. This was a trade done live. As you can see, um I will be posting this later on my YouTube, so just go look for the live trade here. But trade I called out live, entered this myself. Beautiful trade, great move to the upside. And as you can see, it pretty much traded level to level, which that is how I trade. I like to use my levels in conjunction with volume for the sniper entries, the high win rate, etc. But what did I see? How did I know to get in this trade, the whole nine?
I'm going to show it right here on the screen, but this is the watch list I posted from the live in our pre-market prep. So, this is 15 minutes before the market open. This was my game plan. So, as you can see right here, we're seeing now this uh watch list. This is what I post every day within the group. But as you can see, I was watching for a bounce around a certain level. If we fail that level, I'll switch my bias to shorts. Otherwise, I was biased for longs on the day. That's what's helping me choose, right, between going calls or puts, uh, longs or shorts. That's why I'm choosing longs and calls in this situation because we're above a 4hour level and I'm wanting to see a move to the upside. And as you can see, breakout for calls on watch at 25794 for NQ or 623 for QQQ.
All right. So, now we'll head back to the other screen. So, as you can see, watching 623. This is QQQ on the left. This is all on a fivem minute time frame, by the way. And then I have NQ here on the right. This is to apply to both options and futures, folks. All right. So, you can see my uh entry here around 25794. What was I seeing at this entry? So, what made me actually take the entry was seeing heavy orders come in on order book level two time and sales at the ask. The market operates off of an auction theory. Okay, people pay the ask. Price should move up. So, I'm watching the order book level two time in sales. It's showing me heavy orders coming in at the ask right at my level at 623 on QQQ. So, I watched that on my broker and I'm watching volume footprint.
On volume footprint, I am also seeing that correlation. Now, before I saw all these heavy orders step in, there were more buy than sell orders. There was more orders coming in at the ask. Right at my entry, price started to retrace literally right when we entered uh pushed up about 10% profit, 10 15% profit and then this thing started to pull back. All I wanted to see all I wanted to see was a hold of the 62265 area or a hold above 67 on NQ, right? I just wanted to see us stay above that and I was still going to like this trade to the upside. I was still going to like it. I was still going to be a fan. And all these sell orders were already kicking in, right? That's why you see at the point of control, that's what this is called. The white zone per candle is called a point of control where the heaviest influx of volume is at the same time. That's the point of control. We want to be aware of the point of control. I also call them areas of interest because where those migrate to and where those shift to, we should see a respect of that if that underlying trend is to continue of that particular asset. So keep that in mind for the future here.
So now as price starts to move back above once we see these larger buy orders actually start to flow through now. All right, things I'm seeing come in on level two are actually getting executed on time and sales. Price is starting to move to the upside here. It's giving me the confidence now to hold this trade. I'm like, hey, look, we've already covered at this point now when we pushed up. I have this level up here I want to be cautious about. I've covered roughly a good portion of my position around 25% profit just in case. But now I'm prepared for the pullback. You will also see this on my live video later. I literally called this out live. I said, "Be prepared. There's a lot of selling pressure hitting the tape." So, a lot of sellers coming in at this at the top of this level here. Sure enough, price starts to pull back. Price starts to pull back. Okay, I have this order block right here. This is QQQ blown up. this order block. This is all I was telling students during the live and all I was telling myself as well cuz I'm trying to hold this trade. Guys, all we got to do is see the market hold this order block. As long as we can hold this order block, we should see a nice move to the upside. This order block is simply a zone where there was heavy volume in the past and I am looking for buying pressure to the upside.
So, as we retrace back into this level, I've already called out the rejection. We know the rejection is going to happen. We're prepared for it. That's why we've scaled out of some of our position. And now as it's pulling back down, not only is it technically giving a re-entry for anyone who didn't take the breakout, they can now look at this retest zone, right? A break and retest. But as I'm looking at this, I'm just telling myself, as long as we see these buy orders, orders start coming in at the ask, we start seeing some buying pressure and volume footprint in this key zone, we should see this healthy continuation to the upside. And I called it in the beginning of the morning. I said, we should be able to see price just trend up all day. That's literally what I said. And sure enough, we swipe this back over to before, you see price moves up all day for the most part. It just keeps climbing to the top side, uh, going up for roughly 200 points or on QQQ, this was about 304% profit on the contracts on QQQ, where our contracts on QQQ, we actually got filled at a dollar on the 624 calls. The lowest these ever went during this big news pullback, the Jolt job opening during that big pullback, which you can see was nowhere near the entry, but the contracts lost a lot of value. The the most negative you would have been was negative 1%. Negative 1%. That was the lowest your contracts would have gone and then you would have seen a return of 300% profit.
But James, how would you stay in this trade? Like why why would I have stayed in once I saw the retest of that order block? Simple. As I see the point of control, okay, where you see these white zones, as I see the shift to the upside on each candle close, that's giving me confidence to hold this trade. As I'm seeing continuous buying pressure, keep retesting my levels, moving to the upside. I see another candle close above my level. Good. I see a respect of 25874. Okay. Hey, that's all right. As long as we can stay within our range basically, because we remember that order block was down here as well. So, we had an order block at the very bottom, which we broke above. Ideally, we shouldn't see us coming back to the entry. So, for NQ traders, this was pretty easy to hold all day because you can see it just moves cleanly. But on top of this, at the same time, you have this 4hour key level zone here. So, you can see a lot of these candles are having large wicks to the downside. Large wicks to the downside often tell me price doesn't want to be in this range. For some reason, whatever underlying asset you're looking at, the wicks within that range that they're forming, a lot of people will have a lot of words for that. I just like to call it an area of interest. We do not want to be there. Price doesn't want to be down here. It's showing us that by bouncing off of my 25815 level non-stop. It's also showing us that by the massive reactions to the bounces we're having in this zone.
So now we can look at this going forward as we're looking at this volume footprint chart and you're more zooming out right now. You're just trying to determine, hey, where is the volume actually sitting at? Where am I seeing real volume? Where are all of the players in the game? We can see that there is a massive area of interest right here at the top. What does this actually line up with as well? This actually lines up with the top of the zone right above the 4hour level. So here's that 4hour key level and we're sitting above it. That again would be giving me confidence. Okay, we're holding above the 4hour key level. That's a good sign. Now this is 50/50 because you have to sit here and decide, do you want to sit in a trade that's consolidating for an hour? That's where it starts to get difficult. This is where it starts to get unrealistic. It really just depends on how long you plan to trade for the day because obviously trading a holding a trade all day. It's not the most fun thing to do. I myself prefer to be in and out of the market within an hour. I don't like to sit around for too long. Uh unless the trade just keeps going heavy in profit. But something like this where it's a constant war and it's fighting in between its levels, that's where you really start to have to weigh your odds, look at the volume, see where volume's sitting, see where your levels are, and see where your trade is in correlation with your entry. Make a decision. Set and forget. Walk away.
All right. So, this is the kind of trade where as you're watching this play out, you can just go, look, I'm just going to leave the stop where it's at. I've already scaled out of the majority of my position. So, if your running position goes and hits your stop loss, it doesn't really matter because you've realized profit on 80% of the position. Let's say a net ROI of about 50 points or 50%. You don't really care if 20% of your position goes to negative 10%, right? Or negative 10 points, whatever it is. So, you can let the trade run if you share the same bias of, hey, I think it's just going to run all day. So because that was my bias from the beginning of the morning. I said as long as we stay above the certain level we should see a move to the upside.
So then hey James what would be a good signal on volume footprint to see a good hold of the level? Well not only am I seeing a strong bounce of 62350 every single time we come down and test that level but there's no volume down there. There's no volume down there showing us there's no one really interested down here at this level for any action. All the volume is sitting up here above the 4hour level. That's it. So, as I see this playing out, that should again give me further confidence. Okay, the second I can see us break out of this range, this trade should continue. Then I can bring my stop into profit. And as you can see, that would have led you to realistically hold the trade kind of all day, right? Again, look where the area of interest forms. Boom, you have a nice volume area right here where the point of control is formed on four separate candles. Boom, nice move to the upside. And that's how you can look to treat this trade. Then obviously as the trade comes back in a range that's when you can choose to get out of the trade in profit if you're still holding it because then you can tell yourself for instance once you see this massive point of control form to the upside to start identifying a reject you can say all right the volume is now sitting up here and then you see this sharp reaction of this price break down below. Now I can tell myself okay I have this area of interest right over here to the left. If we break this area of interest right here, which looks like it would line up right about here on NQ, I can say, okay, if I break through 923 with aggressiveness, if I see a fiveminute candle close below this level, I will exit the trade and profit with the rest of my runners. And then boom, that could be your exit. You can take a nice net ROI on this trade and call it a day, right?
Um, and again, you don't have to sit at the computer. Simply just set set a limit order. set of this is um just a small sample of stuff I go over live every single day in my community. Um, again, the link is below in the description if you guys want to join. I will continue to give out good quality free content like this. Uh because there are too many day traders, too many people that try to get into day trading that have a bad stigma about it and understandably so. My my stats are kind of unrealistic. So, you know, that's why I'm posting these live trades so people can see the proof of concept, the live execution, the whole nine, because in a world full of editing, uh, these live trades and these live executions, to me, it's the best way to learn. It's the best way to see proof, uh, because obviously no one's manipulating the market real time. So, that's something nice to see is somebody who can trade NQ and QQQ live, which I do every single day, and perform well consistently over and over and over again. And for those that are struggling, okay, keep in mind learning to read volume properly because volume footprint, this is a nice tool, but it's not like a uh this isn't going to make it's not going to flip your trading into profitability right away, right? That that's something that takes time, building a good system, having good risk management, showing up every single day, not giving up, uh sizing appropriately, scaling out appropriately, right? The whole nine. Uh but this is difficult, okay? It's not as simple as like, oh, I'm going to trade a 15-minute orb and that's going to work every single day. No, it's not. A 15-minute orb is not going to work every single day. A 15-minute orb is a very outdated, simple strategy used for clickbait that works every once in a while. Uh anytime I've back tested a 15-minute orb, it's got about a 40% win rate with a pretty low risk-to-reward ratio. The only way a 15-minute orb actually works is if the market trends all day, and that obviously doesn't happen very much. So, you have to keep that in mind. Reading volume is what helps you avoid fakeouts. It's what helps you take sniper entries. It it's what helps you have an actual good win rate. You see all these traders out there pushing 60% win rates. We don't want to settle for a 60% win rate. We need to be right the majority of the time. We need to have over an 80% win rate and that qualifies as a good system. Okay? Unless you have this absurd seven to1 risk-to-reward ratio. You want to have a good win rate because that's telling you you understand what you're looking at with the market. You don't want to be rocking 40 point stop losses or 40% stops. Your stop losses, this is my opinion. Again, it's my opinion. Your stop losses should be somewhere under 30 points or 30%. I use 15% and 15 points. If you are trading with over a 30% or over a 30 point stop loss, we're now getting into the realm of a swing trade where we're trying to trade overnight, which exposes us to a whole new set of risk because you do not control the overnight price action. It is very difficult to be a successful swing trader. any trader hard to be successful but that is something we want to keep in mind.
All right. All right guys um when it comes to volume footprint just remember this is not a magic pill. You are not going to become a millionaire overnight because of this. However, it's a very useful tool to utilize just like reading bookmap just like using order book level two time and sales. These are all tools you can use to help expand your trading knowledge and just give you a little extra edge in the market. All these things culminate into a successful system to help you become profitable. But again, that does not mean every single trade should be a winner. That does not mean you're going to make thousands of dollars overnight. It does not mean you're going to become a profitable trader when you just pick this up in six months. That's not realistic. So, please be realistic. Use proper risk management. Um, and as you're going through this, just make sure you're journaling and keeping track of the strategy you're using. What's working for you? What's not working for you? What are you not understanding? Um, a lot of value when it comes to reading volume. A lot of value can actually be uh uh achieved by not trading and watching volume play out. So you can focus on your volume and not get too caught up in your profits or your losses and just sit there and go all right at this key level. I was planning on entering calls. So let me watch what happens at this key level. If we're actually going to break it with strong volume and if that trade works, i.e. if you were watching my live trade today, if that trade works, I want to go back and see what was volume doing at that level. What do I need to see for a trade to work? and vice versa. If you go to enter a breakout of a key level and it completely dumps and rejects you and you get stopped out right away, that is also valuable to go back and watch. I want to know what happened there. Did a bunch of orders come in at the bid and all of a sudden I got dumped? Did I see a bunch of sell orders come in uh over here on the sell side on volume footprint and that's what dumped the price? Right? I want to go back and play that out in real time and see what happened. So, there's a lot of value to be found in the volume.
Guys, this is in my opinion the best way to read the stock market. Um, every single trader I know that does extremely well legitimately, they use volume for their entries. They use volume. I know very few traders that are, well, I don't know any traders that are successful, they don't use volume. Um, so just something to keep in mind. All right. Wonderful strategy to use. All right, guys. 1% better every single day. Leave any questions you got in the comments. I love answering questions in the comments. Um, and you all have a good one. Unaware of how to get volume footprint up on Trading View. How do you do this? All you have to do is go up here to the top. All right. I'm on Trading View. I do have the highest level subscription, I believe. Yeah, I have the highest level subscription, uh, the Ultimate or Pro, whatever it's called. Um, but all you have to do is come up here. You're selected on your stock. So, whatever stock you want to be on, right? Let's say it's XBX, whatever, doesn't really matter. But when you're on the stock you like, all you have to do is, sorry, I'm trying to make this look normal. Come over here. Says volume footprint, right? These are your candles. So, normally it would look like this, right? Your candles. So, all I do again, come to the top right here where it's going to be right by indicators. Click this. You're going to have all these options. Volume footprint is the one you're looking for. All right. And that's what shows you this volume broken down candle by candle. Wonderful, wonderful way to trade.
So, hopefully this video provided you guys a lot of value when it comes to volume. Just remember, this is not a magic pill. You're not all of a sudden going to be a profitable trader just because you started reading volume overnight. It does take time. Okay? But you have to remember proper risk management combined with a good trading system is going to equal profitability at some point. But if you show up trying to rush the process, if you show up telling yourself, hey, I'm here to make money, instead of saying, I'm here to trade my system and I'm going to take whatever the market gives me. Because remember, we don't control what the US stock market does. That's when you start becoming a profitable trader. I want you to think about it like you're opening a new business. If I open a business for the sole purpose of making money, I will never do as well as the person who opens that business because it's their passion. Usually, when this is someone's passion and they show up to basically participate in whatever the system is, those are the people that do better. But you cannot force money out of the stock market, especially if you're coming, which is what a lot of people do with the mindset of like revenge trading. Oh, I was losing a bunch of money in this group. Let me come over here. I'll make all my money back. No. No. Every single trade, every single day, every single week, month, and year, they are all different. They're all their own thing. If I took two losses yesterday, now that I'm coming back to the market open today, I've completely forgotten about those. I've learned my lessons from them. I journaled. I wrote down what I need to do better. Now, I'm coming into the new day, completely fresh mindset. I'm not carrying the the FOMO, the fear, the greed, whatever negative things came from yesterday. I completely left it behind me. Okay, again, that's why your windshield is massive and your rearview mirror is really tiny because we don't really care what happened back there. The negative stuff's in the past. We learned from it. We took what we could. We grew stronger. Boom. Onto the future. All right.
All right, guys. 1% better every single day. Boom. Y'all have a good one. Uh, wish you guys the best. As always, anything you need, put it in the comments below.