u/HRH47

Hear me out. I can't stand the usual social media traders rhetorics "market makers hunt your stops on NQ specifically" "just trade ES, it's more forgiving" anymore

I absolutely hate the back and forth behavior of ES... you enter, it goes a few points in your favor then comes back to your entry, goes up, comes back.... And if you don't have a perfect entry, you will be stuck in a constant chop for a 4 points reward if you're lucky

NQ moves are wide and beautiful. You don't even have to catch the most perfect entry, as long as you mind a level and don't go against the global market structure, you will secure a win

Today was absolutely beautiful. A mix of bounces at supports made at the LVNs on the volume profil and retracements to keep that healthy market structure.

I feel like the people claiming that NQ is impossible to trade because "all it does is stop loss hunting before going your way" are either over leveraged and have to place their SL 2 point under their entry; or just they are entering at random levels on the noisy 5 minutes timeframe

Following all the questions I got on my previous post, I decided to make this one with a simplified but clearer explanation on how to use footprint chart as a confluence to a price action entry strategy and hopefully address any doubts or confusion you may have had

This time, this trade is in hindsight. But it works the same live. Can be used to scalp/daytrade/swing

First of all, the basics and most important:

1. you can not use TradingView to do this properly, you have to use a professional charting software because TradingView does not support true footprint charts. It lacks the raw tick-by-tick orderflow data required to build them properly
2. chart has to be set in ticks to remove noise caused by the time based candles
3. you have to set your footprint to show the total delta for both each price levels AND total delta of each candles
4. Futures will always be the superior market for this, as volume is centralized, every transaction flows through one exchange, giving you a complete and accurate picture of market activity compared to forex or crypto for exemple

Now here's the exemple:
(in the red rectangle) I saw a few cluster of candles around the level 4598.6 and when looking at them on footprint, I saw 2 divergences (green candle printing and negative delta and red candle printing a positive delta). That indicates me that price will have a push to the upside or downside very soon (as there's literally, 2 opposite divergences in a row and I don't have a crystal ball in real time, I couldn't have known where price would push, so I would have waited for absorption on one side to confirm to confirm whether buyers or sellers were dominating)

(in the pink rectangle) Absorption that literally happened at the bottom of the next candles: two green candles printed 2 red total delta (-99, -26) AND at their lows, only negative delta at EACH price levels (sellers sold) but price DID NOT push down. And that happened exactly at the 4598.6 level I originally marked. Buyers absorbed sellers and price started to fly!

It's really all about not rushing to enter at a random level, but sit and observe what buyers VS sellers are doing to confirm a level or not

Most retail traders rely on lagging indicators like RSI or MACD without understanding why price moves, so they chase signals without reading market structure.. They don't understand that price seeks liquidity

See these high volume nodes on the volume profile? that's where majority of trading activity happened so they act like magnets: price is always getting pulled back to them because that's where the liquidity is!!!

It's not about candle patterns or indicators but all about the underlying order flow

Trading with orderflow made all the difference in my trading compared to simple price action. I use Bookmap to have an eye on global liquidity and Footprint to confirm my entries on price action

So, ES / SP500 took off today and I caught the start of the move after market open. Here's the entry model:

(2 - right window / candles chart) First, I identified support at 7190 with price action

(2 - left window / footprints chart) Triple buy confirmation at 7190:

1. The -159 delta candle made a lower low but showed less selling pressure than the prior -273 delta candle. Classic absorption/reversal signal
2. Two negative delta price levels (-207 and -175) printed GREEN imbalances, meaning buyers below were absorbing more than sellers above: that's strength
3. The confirmation candle exploded with a +744 delta and double GREEN imbalances: pure buying pressure

(1 - bookmap / yellow circle) Clean liquidity sweep right under the 7190 level gave me the final green light. You can literally see the liquidity grab I circled in yellow before the move took off

I wish I held longer tho lol, it went to 7250...but a win is a win. Insane pump.

I never thought I'd reach this state with trading lmao I use to stress sooo much when entering a trade being scared that it'd go against me. Orderflow is basically letting the market prove itself before entering instead of trying to guessing an entry level