The Playbook
This is the actual rule set I trade by — not a marketing page. It's written down here so I can't quietly bend it, and so you can see exactly what discipline (or lack of it) is behind the numbers on the dashboard.
The daily bias rule
Before the session starts, the daily 200 EMA decides the only direction I'm allowed to trade that day. Above it: longs only. Below it: shorts only.
No exceptions. This gets checked before anything else, every day.
The 8/21/200 EMA Setup
Six steps, in order, every trade.
Set the bias
Daily 200 EMA determines long or short for the day. Checked before the session, no exceptions.
Mark the levels
On the 15M chart: prior day high/low, swing highs/lows, and supply/demand zones.
Wait for price
Drop to the 1M chart. Wait for price to actually reach one of the marked zones — don't chase it there.
Confirm with the EMAs
The 8/21 EMA on the 1M chart needs to confirm the pullback is happening in the right spot.
Trigger the entry
Only after confirmation — a rejection wick, a reclaim, or a displacement candle. Never before.
Exit with a plan
Target is the next marked level. Stop goes beyond the zone. TP gets split every single time — no exceptions.
Trade with the trend on the timeframe you're entering on
I used to anchor on the higher-timeframe bias first and trade off that alone — that's backwards. Two back-to-back losing days taught me why: I shorted against a unanimous bullish bias on one day, then went long against clear 15M/1M bearish structure on the next, even though the 4H/1H were still bullish.
The fix: trade with the trend on whatever timeframe I'm actually entering on. Higher-timeframe agreement is a confidence signal, not the entry trigger itself.
Mistakes I'm actively tracking
Every one of these has cost real money and gets tagged in the trade log when it happens.
Fading strong momentum on "it's too far, must bounce" reasoning instead of waiting for actual structural confirmation. One specific version of this: reading a bullish macro report and treating that as permission to buy dips, without checking whether the execution-timeframe structure actually confirmed a reversal first.
Held a full position toward a single target with no split, on a genuinely well-confirmed trade. Price reversed near the target and round-tripped all the way back to the stop. The read was right — the exit plan wasn't.
Once in a losing trade, hoping price reverses instead of cutting it — moved the stop back and turned a normal loss into a bigger one.
On a strong, unanimously bullish trend day, price wasn't pulling back to my expected levels. Instead of waiting, I kept re-entering aggressively trying not to miss the rally — 22 trades in about six hours, 40.9% win rate. Reviewing the log after, the losses were almost entirely on short trades where I was trying to call a top against my own confirmed bullish bias, not on the longs themselves.
Lost a trade going long on the Dow off a bullish macro read while the Dow was actually diverging down from the Nasdaq on sector rotation. The instruments don't always move together — checking breadth across MNQ/MES/MYM/M2K before assuming one macro read applies to everything is now a standing habit I'm building.
Where things stand
Right now the focus is mastering MNQ specifically — not spreading across every instrument at once. The full, unfiltered day-by-day numbers behind this playbook are on the Dashboard.