Hey Matt,
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Every time a new candle opens on a higher timeframe — daily, weekly, monthly, yearly — that opening price becomes a key level. Institutions, algorithms, and market makers all reference these prices. When price moves away from an open, it very often returns to "test" that level before continuing.

Think of it like gravity. The open is the centre of gravity for that time period. Price orbits around it, and a break + hold above or below tells you the market's direction.

The Previous Day High (PDH) and Previous Day Low (PDL) are the highest and lowest prices reached during the prior trading session. These levels act as magnets. When price breaks above PDH, it signals bullish momentum — and that PDH often becomes new support. When price breaks below PDL, PDL becomes new resistance.

The market maker's game is to sweep these levels (briefly go above/below them to trigger stop losses) before reversing. Learning to spot a false break of PDH or PDL is one of the most powerful skills you can develop.

The three main trading sessions are: Asian session (low volume, establishes a range), London session (high volume, often breaks the Asian range), and New York session (highest volume, often reverses the London move or extends it).

A "session sweep" is when one session deliberately runs above or below the previous session's high or low to collect liquidity (stop losses and pending orders sitting there), before reversing. The New York session sweeping the London high or low is one of the most reliable setups in NQ trading.

The Fibonacci golden pocket is the zone between the 0.618 and 0.666 retracement levels of a prior move. When price makes a strong impulse move up or down, it frequently retraces to this zone before continuing in the original direction. This is where big money adds to positions or initiates new ones.

To draw it: identify a clear swing low and swing high (or high to low for downtrend). Draw your Fibonacci retracement from that swing. The 0.618 to 0.66 zone is your golden pocket — a box, not just a line.

The TR Pocket has two zones. The retracement pocket (0.212–0.3414) is a shallow pullback zone — price barely retraces before continuing. This signals extreme strength and momentum. The extension pocket (1.212–1.3414) is a common take profit target, where price often pauses or reverses after an extension move.

Think of the TR retracement pocket as "price barely dipped — the trend is so strong it's not giving you a deep entry." When you see price only retracing to this shallow zone, it tells you institutional buyers are very eager and not willing to wait for deeper levels.

A rejection block is formed by a candle (usually with a large wick) that aggressively rejects a price level and causes a strong reversal. The body of that candle — especially the wick area — becomes a key support or resistance zone going forward. Institutions leave "footprints" at these levels and will defend them again.

The key insight is: the market often returns to the zone of a prior rejection to retest it. If it holds again, you have extremely strong confirmation that institutional money is defending that price.

Liquidity refers to clusters of orders sitting at obvious levels — just above previous highs and just below previous lows. This is where traders place stop losses and breakout orders. Institutional traders (the "big money") need to fill massive positions, so they push price into these liquidity pools to trigger those orders, fill their position, then reverse hard.

A liquidity sweep looks like a false breakout. Price spikes above a swing high (triggering stop losses of short sellers and entering long breakout buyers), then reverses sharply. Smart money just got filled selling into all those buy orders.

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) measures momentum on a scale of 0–100. When RSI is above 50, momentum is bullish. When it's below 50, momentum is bearish. An "RSI flip" is when the RSI crosses the 50 level — below 50 to above 50 is a bullish momentum shift; above 50 to below 50 is bearish.

On its own, RSI is a lagging indicator. The power of RSI flips comes when you combine them with a key price level. Price hits a golden pocket, RSI flips above 50 — that's your entry trigger. The price level gives you the location, the RSI flip gives you the confirmation.

No single concept you've learned is a standalone trading system. The magic happens when multiple factors align at the same price level at the same time. Each confluence you add to a trade reduces the probability of it failing.

Think of it like a checklist. The more boxes you can tick at a given level, the higher your conviction and the more size you can put on (within your risk rules).

You're watching NQ. The weekly open is at 21,450. The daily open is at 21,455. The golden pocket of the last impulse leg sits between 21,440–21,460. Price pulls back into this zone. A liquidity sweep takes out the session low wicks. RSI on the 15m flips from below 50 to above 50. You enter long. Stop below the sweep wick. Target: previous session high.

That's 4 confluences in one trade: weekly open + daily open + golden pocket + RSI flip with liquidity sweep confirmation. That's the highest probability setup in the system.

Before price moves to where it truly wants to go, it almost always manipulates first. This means it will briefly move in the wrong direction to hunt stop losses, trigger breakout orders, and fill institutional positions — before reversing hard.

At every key level (opens, PDH/PDL, Fibonacci zones, session highs/lows) expect a manipulation move before the real direction. This looks like a spike above resistance that instantly falls back, or a dip below support that immediately recovers. That spike IS the manipulation — and it's your entry signal, not a reason to panic.

The manipulation cycle: Consolidation near a level → fake spike through the level (stops triggered) → sharp reversal → real move begins. When you see the fake spike and reversal, that's your entry. Your stop goes beyond the manipulation wick. The manipulation is the liquidity sweep — the same concept, just framed differently.

The eval is not about making as much money as possible. It's about demonstrating consistent, disciplined trading within strict risk parameters. Most people fail evals not because they can't trade — but because they overtrade, revenge trade after a loss, or try to make back drawdown too fast.

Your only job during an eval is to hit the profit target without violating the drawdown rules. Slow and steady wins. 1–2 trades per day, high confluence only.

The indicator plots two types of signals on your 15-minute MNQ chart. A green dot below a candle means the system has detected a bullish RSI momentum shift — price has shown weakness, RSI has dipped into a selling extreme, then flipped back up with the right confluence in place. It's telling you: long opportunity here.

A red dot above a candle means the opposite — a bearish RSI momentum shift. Price has pushed into an area of resistance, RSI has stretched into overbought territory, and has now turned down. It's saying: short opportunity here.

The dots are not trade instructions. They are alerts saying "the system sees a setup — now you decide if the location is good enough to act on."

The indicator doesn't dot every RSI flip — it filters for quality. Before a signal prints, the following conditions must all be true at the same time:

The indicator is a confirmation tool, not a replacement for the analysis you've learned. Here's the workflow that works best:

When TradingView fires an alert, the message is formatted as JSON — ready to be sent to a webhook endpoint (Tradovate, Rithmic, or your own automation). Here's what the structure looks like:

// Long signal example
{
  "action": "long",
  "ticker": "MNQ1!",
  "price": {{close}},
  "tp": {{close}} + 25,
  "sl": {{close}} - 25,
  "timeframe": "15m",
  "strategy": "IMG"
}

For now, don't worry about the webhook automation side. That comes after you're consistently profitable manually. The JSON format is just there for when you're ready to scale.

The indicator took everything taught in this playbook and automated the pattern-recognition part. But the judgment layer — is this location good enough? does this confluence stack properly? is the market environment right? — that part is still yours.

Think of the indicator like a smoke alarm. When it goes off, you don't automatically run out of the house — you look around first. Is there actual smoke? Where is it coming from? Is it a burnt piece of toast or a real fire? The alarm is doing its job by alerting you. Now you assess the situation.

A green dot in the golden pocket at the weekly open after a session sweep, with RSI bouncing hard from oversold — that's a fire. A green dot in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon with price floating between two levels and no structure nearby — that's burnt toast. Same alarm, very different response.