Sharing and Explaining what worked for me without giving away my Alpha
As said in my last post, i've been consistently profitable for a while now, and i'm sharing a little peek into what has worked for me, without giving away the actual edge. if it helps someone here in any way, that's already a win.
to begin with, i've made more than 75K (not USD, but similar value) over the last 5 months with this method. for where i live, that's a pretty significant amount and would already put me in a very comfortable spot and a life of luxury thanks to what i worked on
my first year trading options was nothing but losses. i traded pretty much every basic indicator you could find on youtube, stacked 4–5 indicators on my chart, and kept hoping that one more confirmation would somehow fine-tune my entries. i even bought a few things that ended up being completely useless.
eventually, i switched to live markets and started looking at trading from a different perspective. i studied a lot, experimented with different techniques, and eventually came across something that worked extremely well with volume.
the core of the method is absorption. pretty basic thing
absorption is essentially when aggressive buyers or sellers push cvd (cumulative volume delta) to a new high or low, but price fails to follow through with it. if you understand what cvd is, it's actually a pretty straightforward concept.
as i've shown in the 4th image on tradingview, there are plenty of free indicators that can help identify potential absorption and give you a signal.
but that's only one part of the story.
an absorption signal by itself is nowhere near enough for me. i'd say it gets the trade maybe 50% of the way there. the other half comes from your discretion and the confluences/tools you build around it. this is where everyone's approach can start becoming very different.
for example, if you already have a support or resistance level that you would have considered trading naked, seeing absorption develop around that area can completely change the quality of the setup. but i've found that it doesn't necessarily work with every single concept or level out there, figuring out what actually pairs well with absorption is something that took me a lot of screen time
i personally don't trade this directly on tradingview because the volume there is aggregated, but its recommended for entry level and i've used it in the screenshots to make the concept easier to understand and show roughly what triggers my trades.
and no, this isn't a holy grail. there isn't a magic indicator that's going to give you 100% accuracy. the point is to understand why the absorption is happening and then build your own framework around it.
you don't need a 90% win-rate either. if you can consistently find a genuine edge, manage your risk properly, and get somewhere around 70%, you already have something worth working with. this is what i do day in day out with a better accuracy
this is just the surface of how i approach it. there are quite a few things i deliberately haven't gone into because that's where the actual edge starts to come together and i dont want to throw it away. but if this info could help, that's already a win
if you understand the basic idea, start watching absorption around the levels you already trade and see what you notice. you might be surprised by how much more information is sitting underneath a move than what the candles alone show.
goodluck and happy trading!