Two Setups, One Green Day – May 28 ESDaily Gameplan

Waiting’s not optional — it’s the edge.

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Ah… the flow state.

It doesn’t come every session. But when it does — when price tags your levels, builds the structure, gives the confirmation — it feels like the market is speaking your language. The open was 5886.25. The close 5933.50.

There was one pullback of > 10 points.
That’s the flow state.

Tuesday brought us exactly that: two clear opportunities.
Both pre-mapped in Tuesday’s plan.

One was a clean structure reclaim — and failed. The other, a deeper LTB flush into 5868 support, stuck the landing.

This was a day where the plan mattered more than the results.

We don’t hope trades work.
We follow rules and let price decide.

And that’s why Trade #1, despite taking the L, never got the follow-through we demand. Price needed more liquidity. Oh well. We stopped, took the loss, and waited. No flinching. No revenge clicking. Just traded the next setup.

Trade #2 came quickly. LTB flush. RSI <40 didn’t allow a direct bid. No divergence. Again we waited. Structure reclaimed. We pressed the trigger. That one paid — T1, T2, and T3. Runner is still live.

Two setups. One hit. One didn’t.

But the green day came from discipline, not prediction.

******************

I want to pause here and point something out:

Yes — the trades were close together.
But that’s not the same thing as revenge trading.
That’s not the same thing as getting trigger-happy.

These were planned. These were mapped.
These were levels we identified well before the flush into 5893 ever occurred. (Price was sitting at 5911 when the May 27 Gameplan was published.)

There’s a big difference between:

“I followed structure and traded a second setup.”

…and…

“I got ticked out, got mad, and had to make it back.”

That’s not what happened here.

We didn’t “have” to get it back.
We didn’t press because we felt down.
We followed the playbook, executed the next A+ opportunity — and that’s what worked.

Trade Review May 27 - Trade #1 - FBD 5893

After the May 21 selloff and the retracement back to 5893, this level stood out as a Critical Reclaim Area. Between May 22 and May 26, 5893 acted as a clear CT — we tagged it five separate times and couldn’t push through… until we finally broke it in the early morning hours of Tuesday, May 27.

That reclaim at 3:00 AM on Tuesday made 5893 a textbook Failed Breakdown candidate on any retest. This was an area with memory — a level I’d take 10 out of 10 times if the structure looked like it did here.

Here’s the screen shot of the entire trade so you can follow along:

Here’s what happened on Trade #1:

I alerted on X at 7:05AM we were nearing the opportunity:

We got exactly what we were looking for and I updated X along the way:

• Flush/Temporary low/

• Short-term divergence came at 8:55AM.

  

• Reclaim candle at 8:56 AM

That was the trigger.

• Entry (8:56 AM):

• 9:22 AM: Price pushes to 5900.25, just shy of our T1 = 5902

But that was it. Price couldn’t stick the move.
Structure didn’t hold. The reclaim was sold.

Just before the bell, we saw price roll. It tried to find its footing right at the 9:30 open and failed hard. There was no absorption, no demand reclaim. Nothing to defend the bid.

Bears won the 9:20 to 9:35 battle.

ES fell 31 points.
The tape told us everything we needed to know.
We listened.
We got out.

• Stop (9:31 AM) at 5882:

When price tells us to get out, we listen. Note: If there is one thing here that stands out it’s the 8:19AM candle. We marked 5893.25. then rallied to 5902.25 in the subsequent 2 minutes. Not a flush, not an acceptance. Just a pivot point. That’s not our trade. We trade when ES seeks liquidity and it does that by taking out critical areas.

Trade Review May 27 - Trade #2 - LTB + Flush 5877-5873

While Trade #1 stopped out, price kept pushing lower. I looked at the May 27 “5850 Failed and Reclaimed. What Now — Levels I’d Consider Getting Long” print out.

We were ready, newsletter printed out.
Alert setup on ThinkorSwim.

We had this 5877–5873 LTB zone mapped out. It was a clean RBR from the prior London session, aligned with the 1-hour structure RTH May 22 close (before the gap down), and sat just above 5868, a newsletter-listed support level, a CA.

I wrote this in the May 27th letter and had it highlighted old school style with an actual highlighter😄:

2nd Opportunity. LTB - 5877 - 5874. We have a RBR forming at this area and Tuesday morning we launched from this level, and continued at the London open. The risk is small and it works well with the FBD of 5893. We need divergence and/or price to be above 40 on RSI. Less this, we could wait for a FBD and take a confirmation trade if price seeks further liquidity, down to 5872 or so.

When price entered into the level at 9:34 AM, RSI was under 40 and there was no divergence. That kept us out of a direct bid.

We waited.
Let price build. Let structure talk.

And it did.

Price bottomed at 5868. Price reclaimed the top of the LTB (5877), which had just acted as resistance.

That was our signal and I announced on X.

ES reclaimed 5877 — I’m long 5875.75. Stop was 5862. Looking for 5891 / 5905 / 5923

T1 Hit (5891) – 10:00 AM - Just below the 5893 reclaim (70%). While I hate mentioning this (this trade vs that trade), it’s a concrete fact: T1 being hit was a big deal for the daily P&L. We recovered the loss from earlier.

***Note: 8 full ES points (loss on Trade 1) Is Less Than 70% of 15.25 (T1 on Trade 2)***

If we turned, and stopped out — We still would’ve guaranteed a profit on the day.

T2 Hit (5905) – 10:30 AM - Next level up - Took another 10% and moved stop on the remaining 20% to breakeven (5876). Alerted here.

Price was definitively in the flow state at this point and there was nothing left for me to do as I packed my bags and got ready for the trip home.

From 10:30 to 12:42 we rallied 25 more points and before I closed the laptop I took T3 a bit early, as mentioned here on X.

T3 hit (5919.25) - 12:04AM - Original was 5923 which hit 12:37PM.

Result:

• Full redemption after Trade #1

• Three targets hit

• 10% runner still live

Risk-free green session, executed by the rules

Textbook setup. No emotion. Just structure, confirmation, and taking profits when they’re due — exactly how our profit-taking strategy is built.

No home run expectations.
Disciplined scaling. High-probability targets. Risk-free runners.

We are still long as of this publication.

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So now the question is…

Where do we go from here?

• Does the squeeze continue?

• Do we make new highs and run into 5945 supply?

• Does price chew into the 5971 CRA next?

• Or do we rotate back down into the 5905–5893 structure we just left behind?

Momentum is slowing. But the structure hasn’t broken — In fact, pretty clean.

Let’s see what the market decides.