(binned per thread starter's request) Market bottom rotation trad

Ballz in TIK, 3,93 shorted heavy. Holding for aggressive fade to 3,25. Weak volume, very low chance of short squeeze. Load the boat type of play.

Biggest trade in last month for me. Strong fade all the way to 3,25. Ending the week there.

Manipulated low float trash, why volume is very important. Understanding key players in this kind of assets is the true king to the edge.

A simple rule to follow if you are short seller:
-pops should be on weak volume
-washes on heavy volume

That simply means that soaker is offloading. If both above rules are in reverse, it is usually the soaker is soaking and it will spike higher, stay away from shorts, or think going long. Very simple and extremelly effictive two rules. If pops are on weak volume especially on SSR names, its usually due to short covering and not the real demand from buyers kicking in, which is bearish overall. If you get 1 minute candle wash on heavy volume where no significant levels of PA are present its usually the soaker offloading the shares.

On long term watchlist TSLA. If we get to 400 this could open massive short squeeze. Goes without saying TSLA is the most shorted thing on the planet.
Placed some alerts around 390, will buy some call options if we get break.

Hi Jan, I tried a few charting platforms for backtesting on equities, but I had to deal with poor data or limited 1m history. Do you have any recommendations? 0-30$/m would be great. Thank you

Sure, Tradestation is your best bet. There is no cost, however you do need to make a deposit of 500 bucks to open live acc with them to have access to platform, but there is no monthly cost. They have years of intraday data, a must to have especially on researching low float runners. I generally use them to trade options with them especially on NFLX and MSFT, for example if there is supply takeout forming on either of those two its always better RR to go trough options and Tradestation has pretty decent options platform.
They are the only low cost solution to data, anything else you can quickly start seeing numbers between 1- to even 50k per month to have access to intraday or tick data historically. Pretty ridiculous if you ask me.

Perfect! Thank you

Revisiting this plan, dont have that much conviction on it. Considering that typical TSLA bear is extremelly confident and stubborn, maybe those wont get squeezed until margin calls are due. Will still consider it but small size. Could be a solid play next year though once they turn profitable (if what Musk says is true) then that could very likely turn into monster squeeze. Keeping it on soft watchlist on the whiteboard.

Some tape things to follow on low float stocks. Usually i dont bother with reading much tape on high floats high cap stocks because its harder to read and i am not good at it, so only examples that relate to low floats. Those tips apply to any asset not just stock that has low outstanding supply / float and has market maker activity on it.

Most important concept are covers. Its usually hard to spot MM soaker when he is on its first legs, somethimes its possible due to unusally large bids, but often only a volume serves some insight, however covers are different, when MM holds big portion of activity for that day on asset he will usually use tricks to cover and get out.
On low float runners usually its one or bunch of soakers and they will press on the bid and squeeze the shorts and keep doing at as long as new fresh buyers are coming in to which hey can offload the size. Once the buying dries up thats when soaker is likely to start covering, and it usually happens in two phases. First is slow exit where soaker will present on level 2 tape massive bids to attract more buyers into which he will start selling the initial buy position.
So when 100k shares bid appears and its completely off the whack to normal bid ask sizes thats usually soaker trying to offload the long. When that appears in low float its usually the death sign, because once the half of size he offloads usually he will flush the rest of half trough market order, and when that is in, its a death candle. Big wash and usually asset will be unable to re-form as the supply of other buyers overhelms the buyers and it drops more.

1.So one thing to watch is when tape on low float runner starts to display massive bids over size of 100k shares, thats when the game starts, thats when you start loading the boat on short side.

2.The other useful tip on tape is when liquidity dries up and the volume gets low, when all of sudden big bid or big offer appears that is completely agains the trend, that again is most likely MM trying to cover big and lure in some counter order flow to help with that.

Example of 1 :


Example of 2 (didnt save the screen of level 2 on Friday):


Reading tape is the same as reading price action. If you dont know what you are going to look at then you are going to end up with fantasy story. Anyone seeing a chart can make up 100s of reasons why and what, same goes with tape. So you need to be focused on annomalies, and also on actually researching and backtesting your findings with the way price responds.

Shorting- volume. Its all about fading demand and supply that is always present, especially on trash.

Volume, when shorting asset that is up big (any asset) that is the volume profile you want to see.



This is what you dont want to see. Stay away.




And if one is long, the same rules apply, just in reverse.

Textbook trade. EA. 2.5R

gbpusd on watch if it bakes HH.

GBPUSD strong squeeze on pullback leg setup, had it mainly on watch because liquidity was deep and was likely someone was playing that.

USDDKK missed.

USDTRY also missed, but will play the bounce if it gets.

USDTRY sharp bounce, didnt get a fill though as someone flushed market order so was unable to fill on limit.

3 trash names traded today on short side. Had small size on all of them, but decent fades on all.

DFFN weakness short last one for today, looking for wash bellow 3,60

DFFN paying for dinner, solid wash after neckline gave away. Covered all 3,22.

A grade weakness setup on USDTRY but not shortable, too big spread.