How To Use The Seasonality Tool

HOW TO...

Trades
besomebodyfx terminal
HOW TO USE THE SEASONAL FLOWS TOOL

This is a fairly straightforward tool.

You have access to up to date seasonal charts for any asset you want.

Indices?

Yes.

Currencies? All of them yes, majors, minors, and exotics.

Commodities?

Absolutely.

Now the question becomes…

HOW IS THIS USEFUL?
Well, if you have seen these seasonal charts around already you certainly know how useful these are.
Β 
But if you are not, then let me show you some practical applications.
Β 
Ok, before we get into some examples.
what exactly is a seasonal chart?
Basically…
Β 
Specific assets in specific periods of the year tend to have flows that repeat year after year.
Β 
Think of it as trends that repeat annually in specific periods of the year.
Β 
Here’s the S&P500 for example:

There are many instances here of seasonal patterns but let’s take a random one.

Look at the chart from late June to late July…

Notice the impulsive rally on the seasonal chart during this period?

That’s not random.

That’s a seasonal trend.

The S&P500 in specific period of the year ALWAYS tends to rally.

Literally.

Always.

Here’s exactly the S&P500 year by year between June 27 and July 24:

Interesting right?

But why that happens?

Well, the market is not made just of speculators.

There are many flows like commercial activity and portfolio rebalancing.

The start of July is a particularly interesting one because it marks the start of Q3, and so the turn from the first half of the year to the second half.

So we can imagine there are some sort of repeated flows that have to happen regularly at that time of the year for reasons related to the turn of the quarter and the start of the second half of the year.

We can’t know for certain.

But that’s what the seasonal charts are there for.

They show us when those seasonal patterns happen.

Β 
THE POINT?

The point is that we can use these moves to our advantage.

Same happens in currencies, of course.

There are specific seasonal periods where there’s historically more demand for Dollars.

And other periods where there’s less.

And the same is true for all other currencies, and commodities, and to some extent crypto too.

IN OTHER WORDS…

Seasonal charts allow us to spot these patterns to first avoid getting caught in the wrong direction of one of these seasonal flows, and second ideally position for it.

Simple but REALLY useful.

How to use the smart money index

HOW TO...

Trades
besomebodyfx terminal
HOW TO USE THE SMART MONEY INDEX

Alright so let’s see how the Smart Money Index is used…

It’s very simply, but first let’s start with what this tools is for:

This system spots anomalies in the daily short sale volume across various S&P500 stocks…

Why short volume?

There is a middleman (market maker) for just about every order that is executed on the market. Lucky for us, this middleman always leaves a trail, he is forced to sell short whenever he fills a buy order.

Whenever a market maker fills an investor’s buy order, the
MM is facilitating the trade by SHORTING shares. Thus, short volume is actually representative of investor buying volume…

And this is why short volume is a strong indicator of buying activity in our case.

Β 

Where we take the daily short sale volume data?

https://www.finra.org/filing-reporting/trf/trf-regulation-sho-2018

http://regsho.finra.org/regsho-Index.html

Β 

You might be more confused than before here but let’s get to how the tool works and how we use it for building positions in the S&P500.

With the daily short sale volume data we build this index that we call β€œsmart money index” just because these money have been buying perfectly with very small drawdown every major correction in the S&P500 so they must be smart no? πŸ€ͺ

We then track the anomalies in this index which is illustrated by a value printed above 0.48x… updated to 0.53x in 2023 to fit new volumes standards.

When that value appears that means there is strong short sale volume which means…?

Which means that the market makers are selling high quantities of market shares to these β€œsmart money”.

But enough of this and let’s exactly how we use this tool:

As already noted above the concept is extremely simple, when we get a print above 0.53x we buy the S&P500 and hold for 3 months straight…

The examples below are from when the model was set at 0.48x, but again… now it’s 0.53x, either way… when the number turns green, that’s the trigger.

As you can see we colour in green the cells that printed a number above 0.48x so that we can find them easier.

And before you say it… no it doesn’t reprint or overfit, once a day is closed and a value is printed that’s it, no going back…

Trust me it’s very simple, bear with me a second, this is historical data for the sake of the example:

On column A of the sheet you will find the date, on column B you will find the S&P500 daily closure so the price at which the S&P500 closed on that specific date and last but not least the Smart Money Index value in column C.

So let’s take a look at what’s happening in the image above, if you take a look at the first value at the bottom it’s December 6th 2018 (2018/12/6) and the S&P500 is trading at 2696, going ahead a few days and we see that the S&P500 is trading lower and lower everyday so it’s more or less in a bearish trend so when it’s time to finally buy the dip safely?

Well that’s theΒ Smart Money IndexΒ job… The volume anomaly appears when the index is above 0.48x, so as soon as we get that print we open a buy position and hold for 3 months straight…

Why 3 months?

So technically here we could be holding forever, no joke! Here we could be just buy the dip when the index says to and hold until we are satisfied with the profits or just trail stop loss higher and higher (when the S&P500 starts to trend after a crash you don’t stop it easily), then usually more signals are generated while the market goes up hence more positions are opened and profits compounded…

BUT for the sake of the strategy we picked a timeframe to hold the position and then sellback so we picked 3 months because that’s the average duration of a prop trader portfolio.

Back to the example, the S&P500 is β€œcrashing” (as the perma bears would say) until we finally get a print in the index above 0.48x in January 2nd 2019, so we open our buy and hold for three month straight and well yes that was basically the bottom, we encountered a small drawdown of 62 points but closed the trade in 357 points of profit.

Here is the visual representation:


Now let’s see some clear stats…

Yes there hasn’t been any trade in 2013, in 2014 and in 2018, why?

Because we didn’t have enough of a correction to trigger a buy signal so no position was opened.

For some this may be a bummer but hey this is an extra tool that you add on your portfolio of trades so it’s extra performance added to what you already perform with regular trading, this system didn’t generate trades in those years but we have other ways of profiting from the market too, plus don’t forget it’s an extremely “stress free” and effective system, just open the position and cash it after 3 months, don’t forget the value of the profits are relative to the amount of work you put into a position…

It’s more valuable a 40% a year made with just a few hours of work every month/week or a 100% a year made with 8 hours of work everyday?

I will take both because i’m a market junkie πŸ€ͺ but yeah you get the point…

On total 37 trades for a total of 4068 points so far, without taking into considerations the trades opened in the 2020 recent correction where the tool predicted the bottom with just 100 points of drawdown (may seem a lot but it’s nothing in 2020 crash volatility) and those positions are floating well in profit now…

Win rate? 36 winning trades and only 1 losing… (a mere -15 points)

Average win is 6 times more than the average loss (which is only one) and for us it’s very important the drawdown during a trade which on average is around -50 points which is half than the average win, those are some great stats…

So do we have a winnings system here?

As much as i would love to say YES, we can’t ever say that for certain as past performance is NEVER indicative of future results, but hey… we have something that has proven to work over the past 11 years with great risk reward and stats which give us a high chance of more profitable years ahead, and most of all it’s extremely effective to use and β€œstress free”, wait for the signal, deploy your position and wait 3 months to cash your profits, what else you want? I would pay gold for such a system…

Ah don’t worry you don’t need to opt in the terminal everyday to check where the index is at, we will of course notify you on Telegram every time we get a print above 0.53x

Enjoy

How to use the money flow predictor

HOW TO...

Trades
besomebodyfx terminal
HOW TO USE THE capital FLOWs TOOL

This is a fairly straightforward tool.

You have access to up to date seasonal charts for any asset you want.

Indices?

Yes.

Currencies? All of them yes, majors, minors, and exotics.

Commodities?

Absolutely.

Now the question becomes…

HOW IS THIS USEFUL?
Well, if you have seen these seasonal charts around already you certainly know how useful these are.
Β 
But if you are not, then let me show you some practical applications.
Β 
Ok, before we get into some examples.
what exactly is a seasonal chart?
Basically…
Β 
Specific assets in specific periods of the year tend to have flows that repeat year after year.
Β 
Think of it as trends that repeat annually in specific periods of the year.
Β 
Here’s the S&P500 for example:

There are many instances here of seasonal patterns but let’s take a random one.

Look at the chart from late June to late July…

Notice the impulsive rally on the seasonal chart during this period?

That’s not random.

That’s a seasonal trend.

The S&P500 in specific period of the year ALWAYS tends to rally.

Literally.

Always.

Here’s exactly the S&P500 year by year between June 27 and July 24:

Interesting right?

But why that happens?

Well, the market is not made just of speculators.

There are many flows like commercial activity and portfolio rebalancing.

The start of July is a particularly interesting one because it marks the start of Q3, and so the turn from the first half of the year to the second half.

So we can imagine there are some sort of repeated flows that have to happen regularly at that time of the year for reasons related to the turn of the quarter and the start of the second half of the year.

We can’t know for certain.

But that’s what the seasonal charts are there for.

They show us when those seasonal patterns happen.

Β 
THE POINT?

The point is that we can use these moves to our advantage.

Same happens in currencies, of course.

There are specific seasonal periods where there’s historically more demand for Dollars.

And other periods where there’s less.

And the same is true for all other currencies, and commodities, and to some extent crypto too.

IN OTHER WORDS…

Seasonal charts allow us to spot these patterns to first avoid getting caught in the wrong direction of one of these seasonal flows, and second ideally position for it.

Simple but REALLY useful.

How to use the institutional activity data

HOW TO...

Trades
besomebodyfx terminal
HOW TO USE THE INSTITUTIONAL ACTIVITY SCORE

This data is extremely helpful for you to get a view on what the institutions are doing in the markets, being able to see week after week their activity will give you a great edge every week.

But how can you make use of it?

Well, first of all, you can of course follow the trades shared.

Easy to do, very relaxing approach and you can set and forget the pending orders, the trades on the institutional activity section are based mostly on that plus of course some technical and some fundies.

But at the same time you have the freedom to use the data for your own intraweek trading.

The concept here is simple…

If institutions are adding for instance longs on the EUR then for that week you want to look ONLY for EUR longs.

That way having the smart money on your side will allow you to ride the big moves and not get trapped in the wrong direction.

But let’s see some real life examples.

EUR DATA SENT SUNDAY 10/27/2019

This is just the first example, you can clearly see how by having access to this type of data you can get a clear bias for the week ahead and be always in the right direction.

AUD DATA SENT ON SUNDAY 10/13/2019

I can go ahead with these examples for pages and pages.

With this info you have the power of having a clear directional bias for the entire week.

It’s useful for intraday trades, for swing traders, for everybody.

Knowking where the money are moving and in which direction is what will make you profitable over the long run.

CAD AND JPY DATA SENT SUNDAY 10/20/2019

With some common sense and some basic technical analysis, you are able to catch the best entries.

And the best way of doing this would be to pair a currency where institutions are moving in a specific direction against a currency where they are moving in the opposite direction.

For instance…

In the example above you can see we sent the institutional data Sunday 10/20/2019, and from that there was a clear bias to long the CAD against the JPY.

Institutions were adding longs in the CAD while adding shorts and closing longs in the JPY.

Volume during the week wasn’t much but still a solid gain with a good technical entry.

We can go on and on...

I can keep sharing examples, but i think we have proved a point here, the most info you have the better odds of taking a good trade you have.

Knowing where institutions are moving money, having a fundamental factor backing up the direction (you can have this by reading our daily briefings in the network channel) can be your holy grail if you use it wisely.

But so what does -10/+10 etc mean?

You will see how the institutional activity is illustrated in “scores”, between -10 and +10.

What does the score represent?

The score represents the average amount of money moved by institutions in the given currency.

For example…

A -10 in longs means that institutions have closed a relatively big amount of positions relative to their average activity.

While instead a +3 in longs in the CAD will be a relatively average low size and thus not much relevant.

OUR TRADES...

On the same page every week you will see our trades.

These are literally the easiest signals to follow, you have no excuses here.

The trades are sent usually as pending order on a Sunday before the market open, and you have all the time in the world to set and forget the order on a Monday.

Literally you can follow the instructions and forget about the trade until the next update on the next Sunday.

Down below you can see an example of a recent trade in AUDUSD.

Pending order set at the market open and the update is then sent the next Sunday…

After that the next update will be the next Sunday and so on.

Makes sense?

With these type of trades no action is taken during the week.

This is a great way of trading for traders that don’t have time to follow the markets during the week or that want to have some freedom while trading.

And this is why we use both approaches…

This long term relaxing approach and a more intraweek approach in the telegram channel, you can easily follow both by being a private network member.

The good aspect of this is let’s say you got bored of trading every day and you want to go on holiday or you want to take a break, easy peasy, switch to a longer term trading style, it takes literally 1 hour on a Sunday to study the institutional activity and find trades or to follow our long term trades, 1 hour on a Sunday to be free the entire week.

How to trade the retail sentiment

HOW TO...

Trades
besomebodyfx terminal
HOW TO USE THE RETAIL DATA ON THE TERMINAL

The concept here is very simple.

The short term sentiment signal is, as the name says, a short term sentiment momentum signal.

So it tells us to sell when retails are buying in bunch and buy when retails are selling in bunch. 

Those have some very specific parameters that when triggered it signals that retail traders are piling into shorts or longs.

And yes, the signal is already set up to indicate the opposite of what retails are doing.

So if it’s red it means retails are buying and instead you want to short.

If it’s green it means retails are selling and you want to long.

But let me get into more details…

How can you trade the retail sentment?

The first wayΒ youΒ can tradeΒ itΒ isΒ by opening a positionΒ accordinglyΒ to the short term momentumΒ and catch someΒ pipsΒ using some simple technical analysis.

Basically the short term momentum works as a contrarian to what retails are doing.

And with retails we mean the “dumb” money of the market, so once a signal is fired that means thatΒ retail tradersΒ are committing to a specific side in bunches, as a result, youΒ ONLYΒ want to trade against them as the markets will likely push against them.

So if the short term sentiment is giving a bearish signal on EURAUD for instance, like in the example above…

At that point you want to look at the “timing” section.

Why?

Because the timing is key.

The perfect timing isΒ 5/-5Β andΒ 6/-6, and the closer the timing is to those values the better it is.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, you missed the perfect timing because you were away from your desk, at sleep or at work etc…

You log in the terminal and you see a bullish momentum inΒ EURUSDΒ with timing atΒ 15.Β Well,Β that’s way off fromΒ 5Β and means the move more or less has already happened and most of the retails are already trapped.

And…

You DON’T want to just chase the price selling or buying at any given price.

And certainly you don’t want to get into a short term signal too late, when most of the move has already happened.

No.

So the “timing” section matters.

And in this specific example you can see EURAUD on the short signal has a timing of 6%.

That’s close enough to 5%, which means the signal is still… fresh.

Ok, now what?

Now it’s up to you to open the trade with some basic technicals.

The sentiment spreadsheet tells you where retails are getting trapped and where you should focus and in what direction you should look for a trade.

But the rest is done with the chart…

See what’s the target there?

It’s retail stops, yes.

That’s the whole point of this tool.

To see where retails are being trapped, and to then expect the market to move towards a zone of liqudity, where most retails stops are placed.

For instance…

If price is approaching a technical support…

And the sentiment is showing this…

Do you think that support level where A LOT of retails have their stops right below there is going to hold?

Unlikely…

Makes sense?

Perfect.

As you can see, it’s VERY short term type of stuff.

Once a short term momentum signal is triggered you should just want to target the very next liquidity level.

That can be just 10 to 15 pips away.

So again…

Just short term type of stuff.

After the liqudity level has been swept then the trade is done.

The medium term signals...

Alright, with the short term section cleared, let’s talk about the medium term ones…

First, what are the medium term signals?

They triggerΒ once many multipleΒ conditionsΒ areΒ met.

So there aren’t many of these every week.

And they operate similarly to the short term signals, but on a more larger time horizon.

So instead of 10 to 15 pips moves these can target larger liquidity levels that can be 50 to 70 pips far.

TheΒ keyΒ hereΒ isΒ to matchΒ thisΒ up with some ofΒ yourΒ technicals.

Don’tΒ just followΒ blindlyΒ theΒ suggestionsΒ butΒ useΒ yourΒ skills to catch good entries with good riskΒ rewards.Β 

And also, keep in mind…

There can be some false signals here so make sure you keep an eye on it once it triggers,Β the spreadsheet is resetted every new day so the next day the signal will disappear but it remains valid until retails current longs remain below 55 for BUY signals and above 45 for SELL signals.

THE BUBBLE CHART...

The bubble chart is an MUST HAVE tool for intraday traders.

The use is very simple…

It works in 2 zones, the bottom left rectangle is the buying zone,Β the top right rectangle is theΒ selling zone.

So if a currency is in the buying zone then it’s a good buy, and any currency in that zone is a good sell.

But what does it actually show?

The chart is giving you a visual representation of fresh retail action.

The further a currency is on the bottom left the more retails are selling.

And giving that we take a contrarian approach to the “dumb” money you only want toΒ BUYΒ that currency, at the same time the further a currency is at the top right of the chart the more retails are buying it and so we only want toΒ SELLΒ it.

The rest is just mixed so don’t bother with currencies in the top left zone and bottom right zone.

But so what this chart does for me?

It gives you theΒ BESTΒ pairs to trade every single day! So you can have that edge to make some profitable scalps.

Basically the bubble chart is resetted every day before the European open, so every day you get fresh new sentiment from the chart.

So you will see how every morning before the European open the chart will reset itself to the middle line, and the currency will then start slowly moving in the buying or selling zone as the live retail positions get opened in the market.

This is a great tool to help you get fresh market sentiment visually and to get the best pair to trade and the direction to take every single day, the furthest currency in the bottom left is the best buy and the furthest currency in the top right is the best sell.

For instance, you log into the terminal and you see…

The CAD is the best BUY at the moment while NZD is the best SELL, making NZDCAD the best SELL of the market, that’s the pair you should focus on for the day, don’t get distracted by to many things, focus on 1 or 2 pairs for your intraday, that’s it.

And remember…

Always use some technicals to time the entries, this tool is just an extra confirmation to your trades.

Further confirmation...

We need to get further in-depth with the intraday trading so that you can have the most edges possible for your trades, here comes the average daily range and the Daily confirmation as further confirmation.

First of all, for further confirmation you should want the Daily Confirmation to be in line with the signal and your direction…

Green is giving you the confirmation to buy when there is a bullish signal, and red gives you the confirmation to sell when there is a bearish one.

So if you get a signal to BUY you want the “sentiment semafor” to be GREEN if it’s RED you should skip the trade, and viceversa for a SELL signal you want the “sentiment semafor” to be RED.

Ok?

Alright.

The last confirmation is the average daily range.

This is useful for you to set take profits and stop losses, but it’s also very useful to see if there is more juice in the pair to move or not.

So let’s say we get a short term signal to sellΒ EURUSDΒ and it has a daily average ofΒ 60Β pips, and price has already movedΒ 80Β pips since the beginning of the day.Β 

That suggests you to be a little bit more careful with the trade because the pair is already beyond its daily average move.

So in that case you should want to size lower, or even avoid the trade if it doesn’t line up well enough on the chart.

FOR THE LONG TERM TRADERS...

Below the bubble chart you will see some data that is more for medium-long term traders.

That data is showing behavior of retail traders during the week and the month on specific assets, what needs to be looked at here is the commitment in certain directions.

What do I mean?

I mean that we want the data to show a clean trendline showing us how retails are gradually committing into a specific direction, so that we can trade against them.

This tool is more of a “overall” outlook of what the retail traders are doing in the market, it’s interesting to use it to find currencies where they are committed to one specific side…

So for instance in the example above if retails started the month at 90% longs in AUD and the week after they are at 80% and after a few days since the beginning of they week they are at 60%, that shows us that they are closing their longs and adding to shorts.

So what we want to do? trade against themΒ πŸ˜‰

If they add to short we add to longs and viceversa.

Ok i know i know...

Your might be confused now.

But this is why we are here, by being part of the private network we will suggest you the BEST trading opportunities every time we see one.

Plus, all of these retail data will start to make sense after months of using it.

Don’t expect to start learning the retail behaviors in a few days, you will need to watch the data and the charts for a long time before you will metabolize how everything works, how retails get trapped, how and where they add positions, where they get stop hunted and more…

But with that in mind…

From now on you have no excuses, you clearly know where theΒ retailsΒ areΒ stuck,Β if you fall into the market traps again then it’s better if you close your broker account.

This tool will not only be useful for your personal trading but if you follow a signal provider for instance you can filter some of his “bad” signals by seeing if the “dumb” money are buying or selling.

And just as a side note, the average retail trader is wrong 80% of the time, this means that every now and then they will be right, so don’t expect the markets to always go against them, 20% of the time they will be right, use the other 80% at your advantage.

PleaseΒ note the spreadsheetΒ isΒ fullyΒ automaticΒ andΒ doesΒ notΒ requireΒ anyΒ input fromΒ yourself, but it’s wise to refresh the page here and there to make sure you are up to date.