turns out by wednesday, whichever side of mondays open price is sitting on calls the weekly close ~76% of the time. held out of sample.
data > https://gist.github.com/jondenison10/619d33bc7c7cf514cde0776a74072ec1
so ive been trading NQ off market structure for about a month and writing up my reads to keep myself honest. last week was about as clean as it gets so i figured id post it and let you tear it apart.
it set up as a monday-high trend week. the high went in monday at 30,968 and that was the ceiling for the whole week, price never got back to it and just bled lower every day, closed friday at 29,316 near the lows. four of five days red. what made it readable was the daily path. down days tend to print their high first, and we got four straight high-first days before friday finally flipped and went low-first.
the news lined up too. micron earnings and PCE were the catalysts going in. micron ripped 17% and futures popped 2% premarket, looked like a bottom. then the market couldnt hold it and PCE didnt spark anything. when it cant rally on its own good news thats usually the tell, and it just leaked lower the rest of the week.
into this week im watching the weekly equilibrium around 30,064. were under it at 29,283 so i stay bearish leaning until price closes back above it. below that im tracking 28,227 and 27,614. its a short week with opex and JOLTS on the 30th and the jobs report thursday, so im expecting whippy headline driven stuff, not clean trend.
anyway thats my read. where is it weak? what are you watching into opex / the jobs print?
I trade NQ/MNQ off market structure and session profiles. Posting my weekend review in case the framework is useful to anyone, and because writing it out keeps me honest. Critique welcome — I'd rather have the read torn apart than agreed with.
It set up as a Monday-high trend week: the weekly high printed Monday at 30,968 and held as the ceiling all week. Price never reclaimed it and closed Friday at 29,316 — bottom quarter of the weekly range. Five sessions, four red.
What made it readable was the daily path. Down days tend to print their high first (high-first / "OHLC" path), and last week ran four straight high-first days before Friday:
Four consecutive high-first sessions into a Friday close on the lows is a market distributing, not basing.
The structure lined up with the macro flow:
Mondays after a trend week are usually low-information for me, so I sit out and let structure develop. From Tuesday I'll trade with the weekly lean toward the downside reference while it holds below equilibrium, and treat counter-trend bounces as short-duration scalps, not position trades. Around OPEX and the jobs print I size down and let the event resolve before committing.
On the risk side, for transparency: my win rate runs below 50%. The edge isn't hit rate, it's that average winners are roughly 3x average losers — cut the losers quickly, let the structure-aligned trades run. Being wrong cheaply is most of the job.
This is a probability framework, not a forecast. "The odds lean this way given the structure" is the most I'll claim, with the invalidation level stated up front. The market resolves it, not me.
What's everyone else watching into quarter-end / the jobs print? Interested in where this read is weak.
Haven't told anyone but my mom and wanted to celebrate with some strangers. Im taking my third payout going into week 4 since starting 3 express funded accounts. Payout strategy is 2500 buffer and request payout at 5k for half.
