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When the Market Owes You Nothing
by Tony Rago |
Monday morning, 9:30 AM. The NASDAQ gaps up overnight. Big earnings on deck. FOMC looming. All-time highs across the board. |
A trader in my room asks where I think the market is going today. |
Here's what I told him: "If anybody sits here and tells you they do, like at 9:30 in the morning when the market opens we're going here today, they're probably guessing at best, lying maybe. We have to let this stuff materialize, but this is giving us all the clues." |
The market never tells you where it's going. It only tells you where it's been and what needs to happen next. |
The Concept That Changes Everything |
There's a phrase I use constantly in the room. When I see a signal fire from the 50 and price closes above the 62, I don't start calculating profit targets or visualizing some big move. I say something simpler. |
"Higher prices are owed." |
That's my terminology. That's how I frame what comes next. Not prediction. Not hope. Just a recognition that price has unfinished business. The market has created a condition, and that condition hasn't resolved yet. |
Monday was a masterclass in this concept. We identified a signal from the 50. Close above the 62 opened the 77. The 77 got tagged. Then another signal appeared. Close above the 88 meant the next round level was in play. The entire sequence unfolded exactly as the methodology said it should. |
A hundred points. From the 62 to the next major level. All of it telegraphed by the signals themselves. |
"So the bottom line is we have unfinished business or higher prices are owed to us. I would say to you, we're not shorting the market because higher prices are owed." |
This isn't mysticism. This is probability. When certain conditions align, specific outcomes become more likely. |
The Golden Setup is built on recognizing those conditions and acting on them without imposing your own narrative about what should happen. |
Where Traders Actually Struggle |
A member named Daniel reached out Monday. His intraday trading was suffering. He'd been trying different approaches, switching strategies, working harder to find edges. |
I asked him a simple question: "Have you gotten away from your normal strategy or the way that you trade?" |
He had. He'd been doing what most struggling traders do. Trying too hard. Looking for complications. Adding more and more until the simple thing that used to work got buried under a mountain of new ideas. |
"I know it's super easy for me to hop on here and say, oh, you should have done this and you should have done that. I don't want to be that guy. But maybe just whatever's not working right now, maybe try to just step away from it and embrace some other way of doing it." |
I told him to get back to basics. Previous day high and low. Overnight high and low. Opening ranges. Those levels usually give you everything you need. |
The problem wasn't that Daniel needed more. The problem was he needed less. He needed to stop fighting the tape and start listening to it. |
All Moves Originate From Somewhere |
Here's what I emphasized multiple times this week, and if you take anything away from this article, it should be this: all moves originate from specific levels. You want to be long as close to where the signal originates as possible. |
That's any 50 on the chart. When we get a close above the 62, we want to be long as close to that 50 as we can get. Not chasing it ten points later. Not waiting for confirmation that makes the risk too large. Right there at the origin. |
The signal from Monday shows this perfectly. The 50 triggered. The 62 closed above. The entry was right there at the 56 level. Close to where the signal originated. |
"We want to be long as close to this as possible. So where does that put us? That puts us in this bar right here. This is the 50. We're long." |
Was it choppy? Absolutely. Did some traders get stopped out at breakeven? Probably. But the ones who stayed focused on the bull bias, who understood that higher prices were owed because the signal said so, those traders caught the move. |
The methodology doesn't promise every trade works. It promises that when you follow the signals and manage your risk correctly, you're trading with probability on your side. |
The New High Problem That Isn't |
Multiple times Monday, someone would question the setup. "Tony, we just did a new all-time high right here. How are we going higher?" |
I pointed back to the chart. "That's what this is telling me that we're going higher. So we don't want to short it." |
This happens constantly. Traders impose their own logic about what the market deserves. Too expensive. Too extended. Overvalued. None of that matters. Price doesn't care about your opinion. |
"Who says this is expensive? You're the only one that says that. Price is not telling you that." |
We're doing all-time highs almost every single day right now. The signals still work. The 50s still matter. The round levels still act as magnets. The fact that we're in uncharted territory doesn't change the methodology one bit. |
When price tells you higher prices are owed, you don't argue with it because you think the market has gone too far. You listen. You position accordingly. You manage your risk. And you let the market do what it's going to do anyway. |
What Actually Works |
The traders who made money this week did the same thing they do every week. They watched the same levels. They waited for the same signals. They executed the same methodology. |
They didn't predict. They didn't impose. They didn't complicate. |
They let the market show them where unfinished business existed. Then they traded it. |
The Golden Setup isn't about being right. |
It's about being positioned correctly when the probabilities play out. It's about understanding that all moves originate from specific levels and getting as close to those origins as possible. It's about recognizing when higher prices are owed and not fighting that reality with your own biases. |
Next week brings the same opportunities. The same signals. The same methodology. Whether we gap up, gap down, or open flat, the levels will be marked and the signals will either fire or they won't. |
Your job isn't to predict which. Your job is to recognize when they do and act accordingly. |
See you in the room Monday. |
Tony Rago
Creator of the Golden Setup |
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