Experienced the following?

• Office politics

• Corporate politics

• Workplace politics

And what advice do you receive?

“Play the game”

Because if you don't, you can negatively impact career advancement and make for an uncomfortable work environment.

A driving force to succeed at trading was wanting to avoid all that. But the further I delved into trading, guess what? Due to market politics, you must also play the game when trading.

You play the game to stay in the game

Otherwise, you'll keep losing until you can no longer play. So I'm going to show you. And the easiest way to do it? Yep, real trading examples:

Jan 4

Relative value underpins price moves. Institutions/market makers do their business at specific prices.

The dash-dot fuchsia line on the chart below is one such level.

Can you see the order circled in blue? The darker 'shading' indicates it's bigger than other orders.

It's no coincidence it's a relative value calculation which is why the market traded there. Notice how the price fulfils the order and then retreats? You can play along with this game, but...

Jan 5

The order must align with a relative value calculation. Because if not the likely outcome is a trap.

The trade below illustrates this:

• Large resting order

• No relative value calculation

• Sets up a short trade opportunity as shown

In the trade above, notice anything about the booked profits? That's right; profits are taken into a relative value calculation. Colour-coded levels make it easy to know one type of calculation from another:

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘺 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘴. 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴 / 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘴. 𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘱𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘺? 𝘐'𝘭𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘰𝘸𝘯:

Jan 3

Very few active traders around because it was the first trading session for 2023. But even when trading for only two hours see the role of relative value?

After the data release, the long trade is framed by the Pre-Pro Low™ and 0.6806.

Imagine how many traders were caught either:

1. Trying to short a break of 0.6806

2. Holding a long beyond the Pre-Pro Low™

What the courses/rules/guides say about trading doesn't matter. The politics of trading overrides all of it.

Look:

If it weren't for the guidance and mentoring received trading at a professional firm, I wouldn't know this. But because it's uncommon knowledge, I exploit it. You'd do the same. Right?

When I mentor a trader, we devote our first 1-on-1 session to this topic (and the 2nd and 3rd). Because it's the foundation from which everything else stems.

Further reading:

🔗 How to keep losses tiny by finding the largest edges