ES Breakout Trade from Live Trading Room | Using Delta, Order Flow & Volume Profile

For those of you that haven’t traded with me before, I usually wait for that first 30 minutes—unless my trade idea develops right out of the gates. In this instance, we did not hold this level, so now I wait for that first 30 minutes to get a good look at the first 30-minute candle.

Negative 371 on this candle right now, with a ton of buying and selling activity happening within this body. We’ve got 7 minutes left until that first 30-minute candle closes. Got a positive 860 now on the current candle… 970 now… just over 1,000… 1,050… 1,080… 1,100… 1,200… back down to 1,000. It’s constantly rotating—a ton of buyer and seller activity within the body of this candle and up at this upper wick. A lot of folks are placing some awfully big bets right through there.

Now, for me to go long here, I need this to close above, pull back, hold this 60.50, and then we can take this thing long. We’ve got another 5 minutes yet to go on this candle. What I look for is the structure first—so if I have the setup, then I go look to the delta. Then I check the delta to see if it’s within the range I’m looking for. I want to see aggression move us through here and close out above. That’s what I want to see.

If I get that close through, I will then go look for the delta to see if it’s within the range that I want it to be. In this particular instance, anything above 2,000 is ideal. I prefer 2,500 and up—3,000 is great—but I want to see aggression with some initiative action through here on the delta.

So if this busts through and holds, you’ve got a balanced profile range right through there. You’ve got a level that holds. You’ve got breakthrough and closure. If this fails—some of you guys might even be shorting right now depending on what your strategy says—I’m not looking for that rotation back through all the way down. I’m looking for that pop to the upside.

If this closes up here at 60.55, and I get a pullback that holds, this won’t be manipulation—this will just be a bullish run, pullback, a dip, and then a rip back up to the upside. And again, that first 30 minutes is going to close here in about 90 seconds, and it looks like we’re developing a hammer candle here—heavy rejection to the downside. Right now, we have just an abundance of aggressive buyers and sellers duking it out, swapping back and forth.

Okay, did not get the close through—910 off the open—so what I want to look for here is something like this: I want to see price close through here, take out this high, and hold it.

Order submitted. Okay, so I got a buy stop just hanging out up in here. On a two-minute candle, I’m starting to see a little initiative action here. We’ve got a triple-stack buy imbalance right at my level—1,300 on this two-minute candle—but I want to see the close through. I want to see that initiative action right here get rewarded.

So far, it did not take out this high. This is fairly unusual activity. Let me flip over to order flow.

So those block orders I’m talking about—this is a two-minute order flow chart right here. Look at all this activity right through here. Who’s going to win this battle? 500… 500… all these blocks are within that 500 range. This is not normal activity—you don’t normally see this many 500 blocks just stacking on top of one another. So I would call that, at this particular moment, some indecision—some heavy market indecision.

We’ve got competing forces here just duking it out. Usually, if they’re peppered, they’re in that 100–200 range—real close to the hundreds. But the fact that you’ve got all of this clustered right through here is highly unusual.

What I want to see—for me to go long—is this high cleared. I want to see a closure through here. I want to see some healthy bullish activity that tells me we’re going to move up—or that we’re likely to move up—and retrace some of this. I may not get an entry until up here. That’s fine. I’d rather not gamble and take a shot at a bullish breakout. I’m definitely not going to front-run this thing. So I would 100% wait.

Again, I still want to see a close through this range right here. At the top of this candle at the moment—the top of the 10-minute—I’m going to go ahead and put my buy stop at the top of the current 10-minute. I want to see this thing take it out. There are some aggressive buyers at the top of this 10-minute, and if they get rewarded, I’ll be filled in. If they don’t, I won’t. Worst case scenario, they fill me in and take me back down.

Filled. All right, I’m filled in. We’re gonna find out, aren’t we?

All right, so I want to see acceleration through this node right through here—60.56 is what I want to see.

Filled. Target filled. All right, I’m going to take a little profit off here—it’s not developing how I want it to. I’m going to keep a runner. This is a very nice deep pullback—broke, in my estimation, this little downtrend. Little structure shift, little bit of movement up. Again, I want to see this accelerate through here.

We’ve now double-topped—well, it’s not really a double top—but we are tagging this one right here. Should be up about three points on this trade so far. We’re just going to let this thing run for a little bit. Want to see a little more delta pour in. We’ve got 1:17 left on this candle.

If there is a retrace through here, it’s all okay. I took some off after eight ticks just to pay for this thing—I didn’t like how it was developing right out of the gate. But we’ll let it run for a little bit here. Should be up about four points—let’s see if we can get that push.

1,500. Okay, so here’s a new 10-minute candle coming in. Possible that we’re going to get a little bit of a dip here. So up four and a half points at this point. If this comes up and takes this out and pushes forward, I’m going to go ahead and move my remainder to break even—but I want to see a little separation here. I don’t want to kill this thing, and I also don’t want to lose profits.

All right, I’m going to go ahead and move this to break even—a couple ticks above. Should be up five points so far, and I want to see that delta accelerate and ramp up. If we clear here, we should be in the home front.

All right, so I’m actually just going to move my stop up to the current candle low and we’ll see if we can squeeze this thing out to the top. We should be up almost six points now. Worst case scenario, I take three points on this trade at this point. The rest to target is going to be… essentially, whatever happens happens at this point.

All right, so now we’ve taken out this right here. We’re at about eight points. I’m just going to kill this thing—I don’t like how it’s developing so far. Squeezing up. All right—come on, get… all right, we’ll just take the eight points.

I know it’s a few points before target, but we are taking out at least this 61. So you should have grabbed about eight points on that trade so far. If you’re hanging into it till target—kudos to you.

Hey everyone, it’s Dale here. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you’d like to trade alongside me and our team of prop firm funded traders every day, then click the link below the video and hop aboard. We’re looking forward to trading with you.