Trading WORLD CHAMPION Reveals the Orderflow Strategy That Won the Robbins Cup (Step-by-Step) transcript

This is Chris Creamer, one of the youngest World Cup day trading champions ever. At just 26 years old, he traded in the most prestigious trading competition on the planet up against veterans, full-time professionals, people who've done nothing but trade for decades. And he didn't just beat them, he made [music] 100% in a single month. And in this episode, he's breaking down his complete championship winning strategy live in person for the first time ever. >> Yeah, so the easiest way to probably do this is to break it down into four [music] different steps.

Basically, it's context, location, then confirmation. But the way that I look at it and we'll kind of mark it out here. The first thing that I look at is environment. And so, I'm looking to not necessarily trade when the market is balanced, but when the market is starting to force participation on either edge. And when it fails, it creates trap participation or trap participants. [music] And that's when they're offsides. >> Chris has built one of the most sophisticated trading processes I've ever seen.

He uses market structure to define the environment, gamma exposure to understand volatility, volume profile to isolate where he wants to trade, then order flow to time the exact entry. >> So, this is the strategy you generally and traded the World Championship with? >> Yes, this is the exact thing that I did. Yes. >> But then he said something that changed my mind about trading at a world champion level.

This strategy, the one that beat every industry veteran and won the World Cup, is so simple that according to Chris, literally anyone can go out and trade it. >> So, with prop firms, realistically, you do not need to be the greatest trader ever to make money with prop firms. You really don't. And what you need to do [music] is if you want to trade the way that I trade, you can absolutely go do it. The way you go do it is you learn >> What you're about to watch has never existed before.

A Robin's World Cup champion breaking down the exact strategy that won him the title. Live, in person, step-by-step. From the very first thing he checks before the market even opens to the exact moment he enters and exits a trade. And then Chris reveals the process he used to eliminate the bad trades that were destroying his results and finally become consistently profitable. Nothing in this video is financial advice.

Everything discussed is just the insights of a 26-year-old trader who went from losing trader to building a process and taking that process all the way to becoming a world champion. Let's see what Chris is made of. >> Chris, you just won the Micro Day Trading Championship, Robin's World Cup, for the month of July with a 100% return at 26 years old. Very impressive. But what is the number one thing that clicked that allowed you to not just be a guy trying to figure this out anymore, but actually trade at an elite level like that? >> So, I mean, I've been trading for a while.

Uh and in the beginning, I was I had no idea what I was doing, right? So, I'm basically looking for setups, looking for patterns, and it took a while of me just kind of strategy hopping and focusing on like entry models and setups to realize it's not really about that. Because at the end of the day, when it comes to like an entry model or setup, what I didn't realize at the time, I used to put that as the holy grail thinking that if I can just find the right setup or the right candlestick pattern that I can just do over and over that's going to make me successful but what changed was I needed to understand what it is that I was actually doing in terms of what am I participating in who are the other participants what are they trying to do what are their um essentially like limitations and where do they need to start actually participating in terms of being forced to participate and then trying to build context around trade ideas and then what ends up happening is entries setups it comes down to like the final 5 to 10% because at that point all you're doing is you're just confirming or denying whether or not your trade idea is valid in the first place so really shifting that focus over towards really execution because in the beginning all I thought about was money but the money is the byproduct of proper execution and it took me a long time basically to come to terms with uh >> so in the byproduct of the execution now you said you were strategy hopping and you still use some form of a strategy I would imagine but you said forced participation also so this is more on the microstructure side of markets and how they exist mechanically is this what you're looking to exploit >> yeah so basically I'm a day trader I'm an intraday trader and I'm really only trading the first hour and a half of New York open sometimes I trade Asia session but what I mean by forced participation is let's say in the market the market I view it as an auction it is an auction you have buyers and you have sellers you when you have buyers and you have sellers you have positioning and when it comes to positioning let's say we're balanced right you have a very defined range there's position building within the range and buyers and sellers are comfortable in this area.

We're building value here. They Cuz the purpose of the market is determined to determine the value of this asset, right? So, there will be times where they're temporarily in agreement, where they're comfortable. You know, no one's getting forced to participate. They're building positions. The moment that one side basically starts to get more aggressive than the other, well, then it starts forcing participation. This is the way I think about it.

And what I mean by that is when you are a buyer, you basically and you're in a position, you have two options if the trade is going against you. Either you try and defend that position, or you try and add more into your position, or you're going to have to get out. And when you have to get out, well, what do you do when you buy? You have to sell to get out of your your buy position. And so, I'm looking to not necessarily trade when the market is balanced, but when the market is starting to force participation on either edge, and I'm looking for that participation necessarily, or to fail, in a sense.

And when it fails, it creates trapped participation, or trapped participants. And that's when they're offsides, and then you don't need to like catch some type of home run. I'm just looking for 50 points, 100 points. I'm just trying to take sometimes mean reversion, but really, it's more about where we building value, how are we moving out of it? They're making effort, whether it's buyers or sellers, are they being successful with that or not?

And if they're not, then you can try and take advantage of it. And that's what I do, at least. >> Excellent, Chris. I This sounds highly advanced, or sophisticated, I should say. I want to see it drawn on our whiteboard, step-by-step, so the audience has a good idea of how they could implement a process like this on their own, and and not leave it too abstract. So, if you don't mind, let's jump onto the whiteboard.

So, Chris, walk me through step-by-step from the moment you open a chart and get trading, exactly what you're looking at all the way up until you take a trade and then exit that trade. >> Yeah, so the easiest way to probably do this is to break it down into four different steps. Now, basically it's context, location, then confirmation. But, the way that I look at it and we'll kind of mark it out here. The first thing that I look at is environment.

So, when it comes to environment, there's a couple different pieces to that. Now, what I want to understand is are we currently in a value up structure, a value down structure, or sideways? Now, what would that actually look like? Let's take a specific scenario so that it's a little bit easier to draw out. Now, let's say that the market has been moving something like this. Now, in a scenario like this, where are we typically creating value?

Well, we would probably be creating value here, then here, and then we are currently searching for new value. Now, maybe that would be somewhere over here. Okay? Now, what I'm looking at heading into the session is I want to understand what the higher time frames are doing. And so, this would be viewed on, let's say, like a 1-hour chart, maybe a 4-hour chart. The purpose of this is to understand what has the week been doing, what's the previous week been doing.

So, it's very basic market structure, higher highs, higher lows, understanding how value is getting created, is it getting created higher and higher? And the second piece of this is understanding gamma or gex. Now, the gamma or gex that I use, I use something called naive gex. Now, there's different, you know, you can use inferred gex, uh which is basically how they calculate their models to determine the the levels.

Um but, I like looking at NQ um levels. So, that would be QQQ, NDX. The CBOE doesn't have the data for that. So, majority of NQ is going to be like naive GEX calculations. >> And what does GEX tell you? >> So, GEX, when it comes to regime or environment, there, let's say we have GEX, okay? It stands for gamma exposure. Now, what this is is Why do we care about GEX? Well, we care about GEX because the options market is one of the largest markets, if not the largest market in kind of the trading world, right?

Now, when the options market are doing transactions, you have dealers and market makers. And dealers and market makers are not necessarily in the business of being uh directionally exposed to the market. So, then what do they do? Let's say they need to hedge a position to stay neutral. Well, they will go to one of the underlying, being futures as one of them, and they will then hedge in that. >> When you look at a gamma profile, what you're typically going to see is you're going to see positive gamma, which is oftentimes represented as like green, or you're going to see negative gamma.

Just say negative. So, you have positive and you have negative. Now, this is very easy to misunderstand because sometimes when people see positive gamma, they think long because it's green, or they see negative, they may think it is uh short because it's red. Uh it's not actually like that. We need to think about this in terms of volatility. So, when we're in a positive gamma environment, typical dealer behavior is they're going to be selling into the rips and buying basically into the dips.

Now, what does that cause? Well, that causes a volatility dampening uh environment, right? It's it's a little bit difficult to slice through like butter. Now, for a negative gamma environment, it's different. They would have to buy into the rips and sell into the dips. Now, when this happens, it ends up causing, you know, more volatility. It's an amplifier of volatility. So, I want to understand where we're at on the chart, if we're in a positive gamma environment and we're or if we're in a negative gamma environment because it lets me know potentially what type of day I'm walking into.

We all know that the killer of most accounts for most retail traders is going to be a choppy environment. People love to trade breakouts. People are always going to be looking for a breakout, but in a positive gamma environment, we may see a lot of failed breakouts because every single time we go and try and make a breakout, you have dealer positioning selling into the rips, buying into the dips. >> So, Chris, for someone who wants to look at GEX, how what's the easiest way to get something like this on the chart and be able to analyze it like how you do? >> I use a platform.

Um it's a web-based platform. It's called Tanuki Trade. It's one of the platforms. Now, gamma exposure, especially in the futures world, is becoming incredibly popular. So, you have all different types of platforms popping up and some of them are going to be naive GEX calculations, meaning that they're just making a a very broad assumption. Um now, you also have inferred GEX calculations. Inferred GEX calculations are basically where there are models or calculations that this platform is making to try and determine a little bit more granularity in terms of dealer positioning.

Now, the thing about that is that CBOE data is expensive. And most platforms that do uh have CBOE data, for one, it's only for SPX. It's only for, you know, ES and and the S&P 500. And then also, they cost like $300 a month. Um so, it it gets a little pricey. So, I'm okay with using naive GEX just by the way that I use it. I'm not necessarily looking for specific uh levels, so to speak, to take a bounce off of a put wall or a call wall, but I do want to understand the environment that we're in.

So, here we are in the environment, okay? We're in a value up structure. Let's just say we're in a negative environment. So, I'm walking into the day thinking to myself, "Okay, we're in a value up structure and we are in a negative gamma environment." which means that doesn't mean we're going to go down necessarily, but it means that volatility may be amplified. We may see bigger moves, faster moves. And so, I want to understand that before the market actually opens.

So, now we kind of have an idea. One thing as well that I look at is I do want to understand where the call wall is, where the put wall is, as well as the gamma flip zone. Now, the gamma flip zone is basically where you start entering positive or negative territory. It's kind of like that line in the sand. So, the second thing that I want to look at and by the way, this is all done before the market opens. I will never do this while price is moving a million miles an hour.

I need to know and build my scenarios before the market actually opens because I'm trying to be prepared, right? Yeah, I need a little bit of structure before I start clicking buttons. So, the second thing that I want to understand is location. Now, when I talk about location, what exactly do I mean? Am I just talking about you know, a box on my chart or No, what I'm what I want to understand is where do I want to do business, right?

So, if we're in a value up structure, now, I typically do not want to go against this type of structure. I mean, maybe it's been happening. Maybe these are daily profiles or cash session profiles. So, we have, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and let's just say we're very bullish. Well, where do I want to essentially participate if I'm looking to follow trend? Well, I don't want to do it up here. That's an expensive place to to want to get involved in the market.

What I want to do is I want to wait for us to come into discount. So, then where is discount? Well, if we have value area, then the basic idea of it is anything below value area is discount, anything above it is premium. Now, in a situation like this, we're already looking for a potential opportunity to continue this type of move, but I wouldn't necessarily want again to sell in premium. It just wouldn't make sense. We're going in this value up structure, we could potentially squeeze it further to the upside, have you know, continued expansion, and then you're going to get run over, you know?

It's not a good idea with the way that I trade at least to try and call the top or call the bottom. Bottom, I'd rather just wait for a pullback, right? So, let's say in this area, we have basically discount, okay? Now, as let's say this is the day. You have Asia session here, you have London session creating its range up here, and we're looking higher up. If this move was relatively quick, let's say Asia session pushed it up, you know, recently we've been seeing Asia session move around a lot.

This may be a very inefficient part of the move. What do I mean inefficient part of the move? It means that we've moved through this area very quickly. We didn't spend a lot of time there. We didn't have enough time to actually conduct a lot of business here. Now, in the event where this is also, let's say it's a low volume node, meaning that, you know, not a lot of volume was here, not a lot of business was actually transacted here, and at the open, what does what does the open do?

Let's say that we're watching this happen and the open opens up and starts dropping, okay? We're starting to break out of value area low. This is value area low. We're starting to break out of value area low and we're heading into discount. Do I want to sell it here? No, I don't want to sell right here because you're selling it actually probably the most optimal area to try and buy it. So, what am I doing? I have location.

Here we go. We start moving into it. Now, what am I looking at? Well, at this point, what I'm paying attention to after location is realistically confirmation. So, what is confirmation? Let's say I have a level. Here it is. It's a box. It's on our chart. How do I know that this area here is a valid level? Just because I draw a box on the chart doesn't mean that price is going to respect my drawing. So, I have to pay attention.

What's happening in here? What are the buyers doing in here? Are the seller What are the sellers doing in here? Who's winning? Is there going to be result for that effort? So, then what do we start looking at? Well, now we start going down into the granular side of things. So, let's make a different drawing that's a little bit more zoomed in. So, let's say we're like this. Okay, we come up. Maybe we sweep. We start dropping down at New York open, and here is discount.

When we're in here, I start paying attention to order flow. Now, on my order flow chart, let's imagine this is a candle. I'm typic- I'm typically looking at two different types of candles. One of them is going to have a volume profile inside of it, and the other one is going to have a delta profile inside of it. Now, why do I care about that? I care about that because on a normal candlestick, you have open, high, low, and close.

It's the result. It's like the scoreboard of what the auction actually did. But, it's important to see how these are actually forming. Now, what is something that would be important? Let's say in this scenario here, the candle has a very large wick to the downside. But, in this case, all the volume is down here. All of it. Got the POC here, the point of control, where the most amount of contracts are actually concentrated.

I'm watching this. Now, let's say here's the same candle. It's a Let's just say a 5-minute candle. And down here we have all this delta, negative delta. And it's sellers. This is sellers here. Now, you see all the participation from sellers happening in discount in location and they're not getting rewarded for that behavior or that that that effort. So, then what am I looking for? Okay, now let's say we're we're identifying absorption happening in discount.

Well, now what I want to see is I want to see the shift of dominance, the shift of dominance back to the upside with the buyers. So, what would that typically look like? Now, let's say in this case in this case that this candle closed bullish. Okay, we closed bullish. Now, what is that telling us? This is telling us that price pushed down, it was pushing down aggressively and now they're in location discount in a value up structure where all of this participation of sellers is building at the very extreme of this candle and they're not getting any type of result for that aggression.

Now, the candle flips back bullish. What I want to see at this point if we're using candlesticks is I'm looking for the next candle to open up to immediately pull back. Next candle opens up, immediately pull back. And I want to see that aggression happen from the sellers again, but this time I want it to fail higher up. So, you have failure of sellers here. Let's say here's our volume profile, failure of sellers here.

And we flip bullish. I'm going long. I'm going long. I'm I'm entering the trade here and I'm putting my stop loss where? On the other side of the failed sellers. Because in this case, where would my trade idea become invalidated? It'd become invalidated the moment that sellers are able to push past the area they weren't able to push past the first time. So, if I'm looking at this and I have this candle, I'm identifying absorption happening in discount and we start flipping back bullish.

Now, they fail higher. I don't want them to get back down here. Now, where would I be targeting? Okay, let's say, you know, we enter in entries the moment we flip bullish on this. Maybe we see the ask light up with imbalances from buyers. They're trying to lift the offer. And we see them getting really aggressive back to the upside. Okay, well, this goes back to what we said in the beginning. Think about the people who are entering in here.

Okay, well, now their hand is beginning to get forced. Participation is about to get forced because if you're down here and you entered in shorts, well, you're going to be forced to make a decision. And if you get out of that sell and you're off sides, well, you're going to speed this up. And if we're in a negative gamma environment, not only do you have positioning causing a potential squeeze higher, but you also have dealers who are going to be buying into that rip, and it can be very fast.

So, let's say this is all happening right here in discount. Now, we start popping up. Okay, we do a little bit of this. Where am I watching? Well, I'm watching back into this area of value, where the value area is. The first thing I want to see is I want to see buyers reclaim into value area. Get back in there. In the event that they fail, okay, let's say we entered here, we're coming back into value area. If buyers are stepping in here aggressively on this move and they're unable to actually get back into value area, well, then chances are I'm probably going to move break even or I'm going to cut the trade.

But, if they're successful and they get back into value area, you can either target sometimes I target the POC, sometimes I go for a swing high. Let's say orders are clustering up here. It's a psychological level. You see it on level two. You see it on the book. A lot of the times on the book orders get pulled. Yes, but when they cluster around psychological levels, sometimes swing highs or swing lows, oftentimes they're there to actually get filled.

So, it becomes a target. It It a target. We're We're searching for potentially new value and what are we doing here? We have to remember the bigger picture. We're continuing this value up structure. So, chances are this might be a pretty good target. So, the the setup may look like this. Here is our stop loss, right right below seller failure. And now we're looking for something like this. Maybe we ended up getting out right here for like a 1.5R, maybe it went to full TP, maybe it's a 6R.

I mean, I don't know. I'm I'm watching that aggression. Now, when I'm in the trade, I'm paying attention to this. Now, what I want to see is I want to see the aggression from buyers continuing. I do not want to see buyers moving back into here having all this aggression and it's the inverse of this. Because now oh, red flag, we have buyers struggling to to push. They're putting all this effort and we're staying below value area.

Well, then I'm going to be a little concerned about my trade. Maybe move it break even. So, I use these candles during trade management to then in their footprint candles, you know, it's the bid by ask. I have them set up with bid by ask volume and delta. And I want to make sure that the aggression from the buyers are resulting in actual price progression. And every single time they continue putting in the effort, getting that result, I begin to trail behind that aggression because sometimes, if you know, we see that aggression and then the aggression fails, well, we may start pulling back.

So, this is kind of the idea. It's a very basic idea of how I'm looking at the market. I want to understand what we're doing in the higher time frame. I want to understand the regime of volatility that we may be in. Now, keep in mind, Greeks goes way more into detail, but I don't really think it's the time and place for that right now because it's options and you if you start talking about Greeks, you got to start talking about >> We'll save the Black-Scholes model for another time. >> It's >> You know, Chris, I did have a couple questions first. >> Go ahead. >> Excellent.

But this is our discount zone, correct? >> Correct. >> How do we identify specifically that this was the discount zone? >> That's a great question. I actually use Fibonacci retracement for that. Uh so, what I'm looking at is I'm usually going from swing low to swing high. In this case, it would probably be from here to here. And I'm marking out fib levels. Now, the fib levels specifically are uh the 705, the 788, and the 886, okay?

And it basically creates a zone. This is basically like golden pocket idea, right? And so, I'm watching for us to get in here. Now, this is actually a very good thing you bring up because I need to make sure that this is outside of value area. If I draw a fib and we have the fib level sitting inside value area, I don't really want it. And I also want to see internal structure before we enter into discount. So, potentially a sweep, right? >> So, what by internal structure, and I know we're drawing it out, so it's a little, you know, but how can >> [clears throat] >> we verify that we have this good internal structure going into this move?

What's going on here is very clear. We're moving between value areas, basically, finding new value, moving up and up and up. And then we're looking at this discount zone here, right? When you mention internal structure, what specifically is happening in that area that you want to see? >> Well, I just want to see a swing point. That's real it's really not as as complex as that. It really just should be a swing point, you know, we push up.

I mean, it's very rare with the market, you know, this is not how the market looks, right? The market doesn't do this. It it has pullbacks. It breathes a little bit. And so, I draw these fibs. Now, the thing about these fibs is this 886 is incredibly important. Why? Because this is the final area where if we're going to actually come back up, we're going to do it in the way that I trade before we get past the 886. The moment that, let's say, we see a selling into this, okay?

And buyers, maybe they're there, maybe they're not, but if they cannot shift the dominance back towards the upside to continue this value up structure, and we end up going below the 886, I'm I'm not taking the trade. >> That invalidates >> It's in invalidates it. Because if the pullback's going to happen, it should happen after we get out of failed auction lower, out of value area here. So, that's how I determine it, but it's fibs outside of value area, discount or premium determine based on what we're doing. >> And for our order flow candles that we see here, we're looking for value area, POC, all on either a bid ask or volume profile candle, delta candle to be on the lower wick itself. >> I I want to see it at the extremes.

I want to see it at the extremes and a failure of that. Now, there's a very big difference, and I trade on 5-minute charts, by the way. Now, I look at the hourly, the 15-minute, and I use the 5-minute. Sometimes I'm using the 1-minute, but I'm looking at 5-minute candles, and what I want to see is, let's say there's a candle that comes down, and this is a bearish close, okay? And there's a wick, like this. And all the participation's building down here, let's say.

And you can say, "Well, Chris said that if participation is building down here, that's a bad sign for sellers." But let's understand what's happening here at this candle. It's a bearish close. Let's say it's a strong stronger close. Yes, absorption can be can be happening, but absorption doesn't mean automatic reversal. That's not how it works. Absorption happens constantly throughout the chart. So, what I need to see is I need to see the dominant shifting back the other direction.

So, what ends up happening is you'll see it kind of in the extremes of the candle, in the wicks of it. And then price coming afterwards would sort of be a confirmation that there was absorption in this area and now dominance is shifting. Well, the the indication of there being absorption in this area is you're seeing aggressive participation of sellers. I mean, you can watch the book, but a lot of the times it's like iceberg orders and it's algorithmic orders on the book and it's loading so quickly.

The easiest way for me to see it, some people use CBD, uh but the easiest way for me to see it is in these two candles as a combination. So, I like to view it that way. Is it the right way to do it? Well, there's different ways to view information. I like it this way. So, I'm looking for aggressive participation of sellers. We can tell by the delta in this candle. It's basically like a ladder of delta at each price level you could see what was happening.

So, we want to be negative delta. Why? Because it means that there's more aggressive sellers than aggressive buyers. This will cause it to be negative. So, we needed to see it there. Now, in these candles that I haven't drawn out, it's a bid by ask. In these candles, you'll see like X's, you know, they'll be like this and then you'll have like numbers on the side and it'll be this ladder of numbers. And I have an indicator that lights up these numbers in bold when there is an imbalance of 400% or more.

Meaning that just so you know, on the ask, we have sellers, right? But when it when we are filling those orders, it's buyers. Because the only way to, you know, let's say you're putting an order, passive limit order on the sell on the ask, you are only going to get filled by an aggressive buyer. So, basically, the way I'm looking at this is the right side is aggressive buyers. Left side is aggressive sellers. And when we start shifting in the other direction, and we start lighting up in bold numbers, that's how my chart's set up.

It's showing me that there's a real aggression coming back the other way from the buyers, and I wait. Doesn't mean I go long because we can be whiplashing around. I want to see us try again. And when we try again and we fail for the second time and flip again, I'm going long. No, Chris, it's clear where your stop loss goes. At this specific location with your basically your confirmation or where you start looking for a trigger, the final piece of the puzzle here.

Our stop loss generally goes under it. Now, with the targets, you had mentioned it could be at the POC, could be at a previous swing high. Is there any systematic way that you handle this or choose which target to use or would it be more discretionary? So, >> Ever thought about getting into prop trading? Perfect timing. Right now, we have a huge offer for you. You can grab a 50K futures challenge for just nine bucks.

Or, if that's still too much, the 10K crypto challenge for only a single dollar. Links in the description. And now, back to the video. >> Typically, I'm I'm aiming for swing points, okay? I'm usually aiming for the swing points because if the market never takes a swing point, what are we going to be doing? We're going to be doing this until we flatline. That's not what the market does. We go and we take swing points.

So, I'm usually looking to target highs or lows a lot of the times. But, as we enter into areas, let's say the POC, let's say the call wall is sitting here, you know? Once we approach it, even though my target's all the way up here, well, I may start trailing the stop, trailing the stop. >> Okay. >> And so, it's usually swing points being the target and typically why also there's uh orders clustering in this area, but I usually will have a full target and I'll trail my stop on the way up and it more more often than not will result in kind of like anywhere from a 1.5 to 2 R.

So, it's really not crazy risk to reward um but that's really all I need um to be completely honest. >> So, with that RR what what win rate do you generally see? >> It usually floats around 60 to 65% um and then the profit factor will float around like 1.8. It fluctuates a little bit. And it it also, you know, it's important to note that a lot of the times I'm trading prop firms and 1.5 R is more than enough for uh prop firms because prop firms, right?

They you are required to be pretty aggressive when it comes to risk management. Why? Because you got $2,000 of drawdown. What are you going to on a 50k account? What are you going to do? Risk 1% of that? 20 bucks? You can't. So, you have to risk more, right? And to risk more it it's slightly dangerous, but you know, 1.5 R makes sense. Why? Because if the drawdown is 2,000, let's say the drawdown is 2,000. That's what you got.

But the profit target is 3,000. That's literally a 1.5 R. So, if you just constantly take 1.5 R trades, then you'll be fine. >> Well, I'll tell you what, 1.5 R at a 65% win rate, it's really good. So, yeah, this would definitely be something >> It it the the issue that a lot of people run into is they're so overly focused with with like high big R, you know, like they're like, "Oh, I want to hit a 10 R or a 20 R." And then they send a screenshot and they're proud of their like small stop loss and it's like the guys who are like, "Oh, bottom tick top tick." I don't care.

I want to be right. I don't want to look cool. I want to be right. And if that requires that I need some extra confirmation that's going to ruin my bottom tick, I do not care. It's going to make it so it's a worse R, but more often than not I'll probably be more I'll be right more times than I'm wrong. And it helps also psychologically because if you keep going for a 10 R and you're profitable trader, you know, you're probably going to be losing a decent amount of trades, but the wins are obviously much larger than the losers.

So then it kind of works out. But for a beginner trader, that's tough mentally because you're losing, you're losing, you're losing. Then what do you do? You just start doing random stuff because you're frustrated and now your account's gone. I mean, that's basically like majority of prop firm traders that never pull payouts. >> So just to be clear, you use this in prop environment, challenge and funded? >> Yes, but I'm I'm extremely aggressive in evaluations. >> And you also use this on your personal? >> Yes.

So this is the strategy you generally end traded the world championship with. >> Yes, this is the exact thing that I did. Yes. I mean, there's obviously like it's not so cookie-cutter like, you know, this is this is a basic, you know, overview of what I'm looking at, but there are scenarios, there are edge cases, there are things that happen and my goal at the end of the day with all of this stuff, okay? My goal at the end of the day is to just watch effort versus result.

Who is being successful in that effort in causing price progression and who is not? And I'm trying to understand where are we likely headed to and where is the best place to do business? Now, there are sometimes where we can sit here and talk about all different types of scenarios all day, but my my job is to try and read what's happening in the auction, but the battle between the buyers and sellers and try and make the most informed decisions I can.

And more often than not, what's the best informed decision that I can make is to not participate. Because as a trader, the most important thing that you can do, your biggest advantage is that you have selective participation. And most traders don't take advantage of that. They think like if if you're not trading um, you know, that you're you're you're doing something wrong, okay? When I started using order flow, two things will happen.

Either you start taking more trades because there's more data and you start thinking you see more things or you do the opposite, which is what I did and I use it mainly to filter trades out. Some days I might not take a trade. Some days I take one trade. Some days I take two trades, but I'm not sitting there all morning like scalping back and forth. Um, not saying it's the wrong thing to do, but I just I don't like making like back-to-back-to-back decisions because it starts to wear down on my focus as well as my mental capacity to make calculated decisions.

I want to only have to do it couple times a day. Keeps me from making unnecessary decisions. >> So, Chris, and just to be clear, there is going to be pieces of discretion in here that can't be perfectly mapped out across the process. This is generally how the process works from start to finish >> Right. >> in a theoretically perfect environment, right? Now, is there anything objectively other than 886 here that makes this entire thing fail, fall apart, or you don't touch it? >> Yes, when when participation is low.

Let's say we're in an environment where every 5 minutes. So, typically I'm trading MNQ and I look at MNQ order flow, which most people, you know, they disagree with that. They say you should look at NQ, but it is what it is. I pay attention to MNQ. It works for me. I do it. So, I'm looking at MNQ 5-minute candles. I have a threshold I have a threshold of 20,000 contracts per 5-minute candle because the moment we begin to drop below 20,000 contracts per 5-minute candle, participation is dying out.

It's getting lower. Chances are we're probably heading into the lunch hour. And for me to catch something like this, well, I need a bunch of participation. I need there to be volume. I need there to be people transacting and and doing business. The times where we start doing slow grinds, volume tapers off, and we're kind of just like doing whatever, I don't I don't touch it. I don't touch it. That's part of the reason why I only trade like an hour and 30 minutes of the day.

It doesn't mean I'm not looking at the charts. I mean, dude, I'm looking at the charts constantly, but you know, I really only want to participate when there's a lot of volume happening. >> Chris, thank you so much. I mean, extremely detailed, well thought out, something that traders can come to at any time, years in the future, and come into a process that you've found a lot of success with, and it's demonstrable as well in the World Championship.

So, let's jump off the whiteboard. I'll ask you a couple more questions, and we'll see what we got. >> Cool. >> So, Chris, from your entire process, what is the best way for a trader who might want to try it to deliberately copy and practice it until they're able to execute it efficiently? >> So, with prop firms, realistically, you do not need to be the greatest trader ever to make money with prop firms.

You really don't. Um, and what you need to do is if you want to trade the way that I trade, you can absolutely go do it. The way you go do it is you learn auction market theory, you download a order flow platform. There's tons of information out on the internet. You can understand how what you're looking at and how to read it, and they have great platforms out there. You got ATAS, you got deep charts, you have all these things available to you to go on replay mode to test things out, to kind of get the reps in.

Um, but really, being a profitable trader uh doesn't really come down to that. What it comes down to more so is the way that I think about it is you have A game sessions, B game sessions, and C game sessions. They have nothing to do with the P&L. They have to do with how did you actually execute? And consistency in terms of profitability doesn't come from more A-game sessions. It comes from eliminating the back end and focusing on the back end.

It's back end optimization, not front end optimization. You do not have control over how many A+ setups you get. You just don't. You have control over the dumb losses, the losses that weren't a cost of doing business. They were unnecessary. And where most unprofitable traders lie is they have those C-game sessions. The C-game sessions that destroy a week worth of A-game sessions, a month worth of A-game sessions, and that's what causes in the prop firm industry this like loop of like boom and bust.

You know, you pass an eval, get into funded, fourth day blow the account. And it's just that C-game session. And it's it's this misnomer or like this misconception from a lot of traders where it's about more knowledge, more information, more data, more strategies, more setups. It's not about that. Yeah, you need to know what you're doing. You need to know what you're looking at and what we're actually participating in because this is a beast of a of a thing that we're kind of doing here.

It should be respected. It shouldn't be taken lightly. But you have to focus on making the bad losses cuz there's a good loss and a bad loss. Making the bad losses less frequent. That's where consistency comes from. It doesn't come from strategies necessarily. >> What's the difference between a bad loss and a good loss? >> Let's say what I drew drew out on the board. I take that trade. Now, I'll take that trade.

Let's just say nine times out of 10 unless something's happening. Maybe there's news coming out right before we're in the area. There's Let's just say I take it nine times out of 10. That's something that I trade constantly. I know that I trade it in the way that I trade it, it'll do fine. So, I trade it. As long as I properly executed on it, meaning I didn't hesitate, I didn't chase, I didn't get FOMO, I didn't get in early, right?

As long as I did exactly what I needed to do and it loses, well, that's just what happens when you operate in a probabilistic environment. You're You know, there's such thing as variance. You're not going to win every single trade and if someone out there knows how to win every trade, please let me know. I would love to be a billionaire, you know what I mean? But, you have to understand losses happen, but there's a difference between a good loss and a bad loss.

Now, what is a bad loss? A bad loss is when you Let's say you know, the market opens, some massive move happens and you're sitting there slightly frustrated as a trader. You're like, "Ah." You know, maybe you're in a community, you see everyone posting profits, you're frustrated. So, what do you begin to do? Well, the way that most traders think is in order to get results, they have to participate. To a certain extent, that's true, right?

But, they force that participation by doing what? Bending their rules, bending what they should be looking for. Maybe they didn't In my case, let's say a bad loss would be we come into discount in that scenario. But, I don't see sellers, you know, getting absorbed and dominant shifting back the other side. I just see we're in discount and I go, "We're in discount. I think I think we're going to go up." And so, I try and anticipate that, I try and guess and I don't let the let it confirm itself first.

I just try and anticipate it. Well, if that trade loses or that trade wins, that was a bad trade because over time, if it wins, it's not going to it's not going to be good. So, it's it's it's basically reinforcing bad behavior and that bad behavior is what causes C-game sessions cuz if you lose that, now you're frustrated. Oh, I didn't follow my rules, whatever your rules are, right? I didn't follow my rules and then now you're trying to, you know, make your money back because you're uncomfortable looking at a red P&L and it just spirals out of control.

Now you're tilting, and the account's gone. >> You know, Chris, it's an excellent point. Now, specifically when it comes to your rules or a plan, how did you figure out that your rules or your discretionary system, how did you figure out that this is something that works? >> So, first of all, when it comes to rules, any type of rule where you're like, "Don't overtrade. Uh don't oversize." Those are not rules, okay?

Rules require uh an action attached to it, and they have to be specific, and it has to be specific to you. Now, every trader, to my belief, right, has some sort of line in the sand for them. Now, that line in the sand is where they go from making calculated decisions to not making calculated decisions, to making emotional decisions. For everybody, it's different. For one trader, it might be a certain dollar amount PNL.

For another trader, it may be a certain amount of break evens or a certain amount of losses or even to the point where overconfidence, maybe they're winning so much, now they're not making calculated decisions anymore, they're making emotional ones, overconfidence. You have to identify where those are for you. It's a difficult thing to do because a lot of the times when it comes to trading and these these things where you're trying to self-diagnose them, a lot of the times they're invisible to the person it's happening to.

And so, what you have to do is you have to be very self-aware, incredibly self-aware. A lot of the times, if a trader tilts, and you ask them, "Where did this start breaking down? Like, where during the session did you start making those bad decisions?" They'll probably point at the big trade that lost. That's not where the That's not where things broke. Otherwise, you know, let's say it was a you sized up, and then you have removed your stop-loss, and and then you say, "Now you're tilting." No, something caused you to do that.

Some sequence of events occurred, and you have to find out where it is. Now, once you diagnose that, and you find out where it is, well, now you build solutions around it. So, let me give you an example for me. When I collect data on my trades, I notice a pattern where by the time we're an hour and a half into the open, my trades just get dramatically worse. They just get dramatically worse. I don't know why. Maybe it's because uh I'm not as focused as I am.

Maybe, you know, at that point I probably missed out the move of the morning, and now we're trying to force something. Whatever it is. I know that's not good. So, then what do I do? Well, I have a hard shutoff time. Now, I know if I lose three trades in a row, I'm going to be frustrated. I'm going to be pretty frustrated. And chances are, I should never be taking three trades in a row cuz most days I'm taking one or two trades or none.

So, if I'm taking three trades in a row for a set of What are the chances I'm getting three solid setups in an hour? With the way that I trade. Probably not very good. So, what do I do? Well, if I know that if I take three losses in a row, there's like a 50/50 chance I start making bad decisions. Okay, well, then stop after two losses in a row. Same goes for everything else. You have to identify where those like breaking points are, and it took me an incredibly long time to do it, and it was honestly a pretty painful journey of losing a lot of money before I kind of understood this is that, this is the where this begins to break, this is where this begins to break, and you stop yourself before you get there.

Now, here's the thing about that. You have to stop yourself. If you don't have any self-control, trading's not for you. You need self-control. You can't go through life without self-control. Where you going to end up? Jail or dead, right? So, trading is no different. You need self-control, and it's it brings out this like gambler behavior in a lot of people where they have no self-control because money and emotions are a terrible mix. >> How do you deal with them? >> Well, at this point I've been doing this for a while, so kind of like you know, when I lose, the only time I'll get really frustrated is when I do something that I know I wasn't supposed to do.

Now, I'm not perfect. I'm human. There's days where I make mistakes. And the moment I start the moment I make a mistake, let's say it's a bad mistake where I entered prematurely or I chased or I just tried to assume something was going to happen rather than watching it. I have to shut it down. Because the way that I think about it is I went through that stage of waking up every single day. I'm on the West Coast. I wake up every day at like 4:00, 4:30 in the morning.

And there was a long period of my life where I woke up every day, I lost money, felt frustrated all day, woke up and did it again. It was a constant like losing streak. And it was honestly a really tough time mentally because what do people do? Well, they you tell people, "Oh, I'm trading." And then they ask you, "How's your trading going?" And then you're just like Sometimes it's so embarrassing with how much money you lose, you don't even want to tell people.

So, you kind of shut down the conversation. So, it was just this terrible time in my life. And so, anytime now, right, where I get frustrated and I'm and I'm maybe clicking on the size, making more contracts, right? I'm getting ready to add more contracts. I have to remind myself of that phase of my journey that I I never want to be in ever again. That's my motivation. And so, for some people they may not have that because they they can't look back at a time where, you know, they were maybe struggling.

Maybe they got into trading and they just hit a nice little variance run and they've been all sunshine and rainbows. And so, they've never felt that. But for me, I felt it. And I felt it for a long time. So, I think back to that and I remind myself as I sit there and I say, "I don't like that version of myself. I never want to go back to that version of myself because that version of myself was miserable. I'm not anymore." >> What was the definitive turning point between that version of yourself and this version now? >> Well, that version of myself was focused on money.

I was trading and I This is I would never recommend anybody to do this. I quit my job. I went to go travel. I traveled and I said, "I don't want to get another job." Scrolling through Instagram, oh, this guy just made 40 grand in 15 minutes. He says he day trades. I'm going to try and learn that. I had all these savings. I had I had money. I lost it all. I lost it all. I went through this like hell loop of a cycle of like doing the same thing over and over and over like I'm sure many traders know.

Um the wrong things. And I kind of got to the point where I was actually in debt. I was in debt. I had no money, no income. I depleted most of my savings. And all I had left was like my crypto investments that I'm like taking money out in a bear market. I'm like this is terrible. So, I kind of got to this breaking point where I just honestly felt like a loser. Like I felt I was so disgusted in myself. But I was to the point where I was so far in at this point.

I had sunk so much money, so much time. I made the decision, albeit it was a reckless decision, that I was either going to figure it out or I was going to lose everything in the process. It's a terrible way to go about it, but that's just kind of how my mind works. But that doesn't mean that I go and I go try and get more aggressive and fight the market. I changed the perspective. I said, "What's the What's the problem here?" Well, the problem is is I'm focused on money.

That's not where the the focus should be pointed towards. It should be up towards the execution. So, I completely sized down to one micro on a prop firm where you're basically not passing accounts, you're not getting payouts, but you're getting reps in. And I slowly tried to remove the the concept of money from it as much as I could. You can't You can't do it completely, but I try to do as much as I could. And I just only focus on the execution.

Well, then guess what happens? When you focus on proper execution, money becomes the byproduct of that if you're doing the right thing. And then it becomes easier, and then it's just repetition, and then it What What it comes down to at that point is just paying attention to regime changes, paying attention to changes in the market in terms of volatility or whatever, and then adjusting. So, that was there was just a point where I was just like, "This is it.

Like, this is where people would quit." >> So, you had to remove money basically from the equation here, and this would kind of help improve your trading psychology then as well, right? Where you're not as emotionally attached to a position. Would you say that being able to separate those two is what was the definitive turning point for you? >> Well, it's not that I can separate it. I understand the money is obviously still an element.

It's like, "Why do we trade?" Well, we trade to make money. It's It would be It would be a lie for me to say that I never think about money. Of course, I do, but that was the main focus. The main focus now has shifted toward execution, and I still understand money's being thrown around. I'm winning, I'm losing money, right? But I'm I care more about how I performed in terms of execution than I do in terms of P&L.

I care way more about how I traded rather than what those trades cost in terms of dollar amounts. >> So, if you were if you had to start over then, how would you make this process go quicker to get from starter Chris to now Chris? >> I tell this to traders when they when they're in the beginning of their journey. They need to understand what it is that we're participating in, okay? Like, this is a very You're You're in a market.

You're trying to trade a market with whatever you're trying to trade, and we're going up against not only yourself, right? But also other participants in the market. It's this kind of like uh PVP arena almost, and you have all these different people who will have all these different ideas and all these different goals, and it's this entire auction of just trying to determine the price of an asset. And some of those participants are retail traders like yourself, and some of them are large institutions or people who need to fill large size.

And so, it's important to understand the mechanics of the market. Like like to just hop in and then start drawing lines and then like getting frustrated when your lines don't work out. Well, you know, you should understand what drives price. It's just basic market mechanics. Now, once you do that, you should go and you should find a strategy. Now, it's important on the strategy that you pick, because some people have a personality where a strategy that presents a bunch of setups every single day is not going to be good for them.

Let's say someone can handle that. They can handle split-second decision-making. It's not They're not going to carry it over in other trades. So, you have to find the strategy that complements your weaknesses kind of well, and your strengths. And then, don't hop around. Just focus on that one. And focus on that one, and focus on the actual the actual execution of that strategy. And if it turns out to be a BS strategy and it doesn't work, well, then you know, if you execute on it properly, you're going to find out, you know, hopefully.

But you just it's not you should never, as a new trader, go on YouTube, look at a strategy, some guy goes, "This one setup changed my life." Now, you're like trading this guy's setup, and you're like, "It's not working for me." Next guy, next guy, next guy. And then you just Now you know all this stuff, all these different Now you're looking at the chart, and you're like, "But this strategy says this and this one says this." And now, you're just screwed.

So, just focus on one thing. >> Chris, is there any final piece of advice you'd want to leave for struggling traders who might be inspired by your story or your process? >> If you're struggling with trading, you have to you have to really be honest with yourself on why you're struggling. If it If you most are going to believe it's an information problem. A lot of times, it's not going to be an information problem.

Um it has to do with their behaviors. And a lot of people, some people, unfortunately, are just not going to be good at trading. They're not. The way that they behave is just not going to complement trading. Now, if you're struggling, just understand that most people struggle. You're not alone. I know you guys go and you may look on the internet, and all you see are people winning. How am I the only person that loses?

Okay? I would recommend to stop looking at that stuff and just focus on yourself. Focus on, you know, executing properly, having the proper uh system to protect yourself from yourself, and just keep doing it. And you'll eventually get to a point where you're either going to start making money or you're not. You know what I mean? And the thing about beginning struggling traders, I guarantee you majority of them are just super focused on the money.

I mean, that's why they trade. Okay? But, let's let's How about if you're struggling, let's take a month, size all the way down. Size all the way down to the point where this size is almost insulting to you. It's like nothing's happening. Perfect. Because now, you can focus on actually executing properly. It's not going to result in, you know, huge P&Ls that you can screenshot and put on your Instagram, but it's going to start building the right habits.

And that's if you're struggling, you need to change your mindset to that. Otherwise, I don't know what to tell you. >> Chris, thank you so much for coming in. >> Of course. >> First live interview I've ever done. And I have to say it was quite remarkable. >> Well, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. >> 100% return on that July micro competition Robin's World Cup. >> Yeah. >> 26.

It's really impressive, man. Seriously. >> Thank you. >> IQ Capital, built by traders for traders.