Five steps.
One checklist.
The five steps from the Trend Trap bootcamp, rebuilt so you can learn them on your phone in about 20 minutes.
Free · 20 minute read · Charts you can replay
Five steps.
In this order.
Steps 1 and 2 are open. Your email unlocks the rest, plus a risk calculator and the checklist I run before every trade.
The Trend
Read the 4 hour right to left and know your direction before anything else.
The Zone
Mark the level where the old ceiling becomes the new floor.
The Trap
The M and W that show price actually reacted, and why they work.
The Breakout
No break, no trade. What we wait for before we enter.
The Shield
1% risk, stops, targets, the 1:3 rule and your two tools.
I learned to ride waves
before I rode charts.
Growing up I surfed every Friday morning. Two years into trading I was back on that beach watching beginners paddle for every ripple, exhausted and catching nothing. That was me on the charts. I was chasing every reversal, collecting complicated strategies because hard felt like it should work, and blowing accounts.
The surfers who caught the good waves did something different. They sat. They read the water. They let the small stuff roll past and went hard on the one set that was actually building. Trend Trap is that, written down as five steps you can check off before every trade.
“We don’t chase them. We replace them.”
The Trend
Buys or sells?
Before anything else, one question: are we looking for buys or sells? Get this right and half the bad trades are gone before they happen.
Uptrend, downtrend or range?
Tap your answer
Most traders don’t lose because of their system. They lose because they fight the flow. They want the top, the bottom, the perfect wick entry to screenshot. Trading with the trend gives you room to not know exactly where it turns and still be on the right side.
Think of the ocean. The waves are the moves right in front of you. The tide is the force underneath that decides where the water really goes. On the charts, the 4 hour trend is the tide and the smaller timeframes are the waves. A drop on the 1 hour inside a 4 hour uptrend isn’t a sell. It’s a wave pulling back before the tide carries it again.
Start on the daily chart and mark the daily high and daily low closest to price, where two candle bodies stopped at the same level. That range shows where big reversals tend to happen. Then drop to the 4 hour and read it right to left, the way the chart is being written.
The rules
Higher highs and higher lows: uptrend. Buys only.
Lower lows and lower highs: downtrend. Sells only.
Equal highs and equal lows: a range. Wait, or find a pair that is trending.
Read right to left. Count only the last three highs and lows.
A new high only counts when a candle opens and closes above the old one. Bodies, not wicks.
The trend flips when a candle closes through the last higher low or lower high. That’s your break of structure.
Never read a candle that hasn’t closed yet.
“It’s not a prediction system. It’s a reaction system.”
The Zone
Where do we wait?
Now we know the direction. Next is where. Not every point in a trend is an entry, so we pick the spot ahead of time and let price come to us.
Drop to the 1 hour. In an uptrend, look left for the last resistance price broke through. What used to be the ceiling is where we expect the new floor. In a downtrend it flips: the last support that broke becomes the ceiling we sell from.
Switch to a line chart for a second so the noise disappears, and find the level with the most touches near current price. Switch back and draw your box to the body of the last candle at that level. Not the wicks, and not a candle that is huge or tiny compared to the rest.
Label it with the nearest quarter level, a price ending in 00, 25, 50 or 75. People, banks and algorithms all love round numbers, so a zone that lines up with one has one more clue pointing the same way. That’s confluence.
Then set a price alert at the zone and walk away. You don’t need to stare at the chart all day. A waiting time is not a wasting time.
The rules
Two zones at a time, max. A cluttered chart is a cluttered mind.
Structure first, quarter level second. Never draw a zone just for a round number.
No fibs, no indicators. Price action only.
We don’t trade when price hits the zone. We trade when price reacts to it.
Price blows straight through? Delete the zone and use the next one.
A zone jammed up against a daily level usually isn’t worth it.
“We don’t chase. We set traps.”
Educational content only. Not financial advice. Trading involves substantial risk of loss and isn’t right for everyone. Charts in this playbook are illustrative drawings, not real market data or real trades. Past performance does not guarantee future results.