The financial market will always be a wonder to many people, who have the belief that it is not manipulated and in all the AMM stuff you have always been feed with.

Let me reveal a little secret to you, the crypto market is like a game of chess, but in this game, some few set of people are at a higher advantage and are the market makers.

It is a game between the 95% profit chasers and the 5% market makers, who do you actually think is going to get that money.

This is something that will blow your mind and change your perspective on how money works.

Don't miss this opportunity and read carefully every word.

You see, between 2007 and 2013, there were 2 cartels of 5 banks (Barclays, JPMorgan, Royal Bank Of Scotland, Citigroup and MUFG) that rigged the forex market using chat rooms to exchange information about:

• orders
• prices
• trading activities

They had the insider knowledge and the power to make huge profits.

This reveals one huge and crucial concept: every financial market is manipulated.

If you think otherwise, you are living in a fantasy world, and you will end up losing a lot of money.

Crypto is no different.

It's a playground for manipulation, where retail emotions are amplified 100x.

🔸 Smart Money vs Dumb Money

Financial markets are divided into 2 groups:

• Smart money (Banks, Investment funds,
Exchanges and very few selected people) ~> The winners

• Dumb money (retails) ~> The losers

Every time you open a position, you're trading AGAINST smart money.

You're trading against entities that have dedicated their lives to mastering financial markets and have invested billions in knowledge and working systems.

The key difference is that Smart money know exactly how Dumb money think and act, while the latter have no clue about the concept of Smart Money.

SM know that DM use classic trading indicators in the wrong way (buy when RSI is low and sell when RSI is high) and they also know that people rely on very basic concepts to make their financial decisions.

That's why they win.

🔸Trading types

To grasp the next important concept, we need to look at the different ways of trading.

In this context, we have 2 methods:

• Discretionary trading ~> deciding when to buy/sell based on our gut feeling and experience

• Algorithmic trading ~> deciding when to buy/sell based on cold algorithms

The latter is the one used by smart money as it eliminates the emotional factor and the one in which smart money invest the most.

And most of the algorithms work on “breakout” strategies.

This means that, at significant levels, there will be buy and sell orders (classic breakout/trend following strategy) from retails and the algorithm will exploit the liquidity located in those specific areas.

The more orders ~> the more liquidity

The more liquidity ~> the more potential profits

🔸 “But bro, why should I care about this?”

Because, as we saw before, banks and investment funds know where the orders and the liquidity are.

They push the price toward HTF zones and do everything they can to manipulate the price and snatch that liquidity. (see wicks)

This makes retails poor and themselves rich.

“Everyone is saying 60K so the meltdown will be biblical.”

“Everyone is saying 30K so I'm gonna open a giga long.”

This is not a retails debate and these statements don't matter at all.

It’s a liquidity game, get it in your head.

🔸 “So, what should I do?”

Everyone has their own strategy, I'm not here to change yours if it's working.

But if you want a deep understanding of how the market works, I strongly suggest you to study:

• Imbalances
• FVGs
• Volume profile
• Fibonacci retracements

All based on HTFs, as I always advocated.

This will give you a solid insight of potential areas where the price could go and the ones where smart money are focused.

That's the secret here.