Traveling this week, so instead of a market read, here's one from the vault.

Plenty of people run the same cycle.

They trade their health and happiness for money, then regret it.

I learned that the hard way in the 2020-2021 cycle. I did great financially but let the rest fall apart. Got really skinny and wrecked a few relationships with people I care about. Not doing that again.

I’m by no means an expert, but for me getting these things right have kept me in the game for over a decade. Diet, exercise, sleep, mental health. Stuff everyone knows, but maybe it’s worth hearing from someone trading professionally.

Don't be lazy and eat dog shit all day. An unhealthy meal a few times a week is fine, you balance it out. I keep most meals clean and sometimes let dinner get loose. Protein, healthy fats, veggies.

Exercise. Mix your cardio and your weights. I row, I ride my bike, I lift five or six days a week. And it's not just about the body. Grinding out that last set when you're cooked and it genuinely sucks, that's the same discipline we need trading.

Sleep's the one everyone ignores, and they shouldn't. Cold, dark, a decent bed. That's pretty much it.

Mental health I'll actually speak on with some confidence, because I've been down that hole more than once and climbed back out. Set goals, chase them. Choose to see the glass half full. Get some sun every day. Cliche, I know, but for us nerdy-ass traders it matters more than you'd think.

Right now I’m living by my advice and taking some time away from screens and seeing some friends and family in the slower months.

The boring stuff adds up over years.

TLDR; sort out diet, exercise and sleep and your head mostly sorts itself out. Been trading three months? None of this really matters yet. Want to still be here in a few years? It's everything.

Cheers.

Pretty nasty selloff this morning with Bitcoin down 4% off news that Saylor sold.

Exactly the opposite of last month. Early June everyone speculated he'd sell, he actually bought, and the market sold off anyway. So not sure how useful this is as a signal.

Strong shorts opened into longs getting stopped out:

The H1 trend broke

The H1 trend was clean off last week's lows, but it broke down over the weekend.

You know my ABCs of trend loss: most likely is range or chop, next is reversal, and least likely is immediate reclaim.

3-4% is the upper limit of daily volatility lately, so I was looking for low time frame momentum loss, climaxes, and the classic orderflow tenants around reversals, and I got it.

Respecting monthly values

I'm optimistic for July, looking for previous month's value area high.

BTC already bounced from previous month's VWAP at 61.3:

If we can't do much after that, the worst case for this bullish framework still holding is a pullback to around 60k, which is previous month's value area low (VAL), the developing monthly VAL and the composite VAL.

The market is cleanly respecting monthly values so I'm going to respect monthly values.

Dealing with swing roundtrips

Still got my swing open from one of these pukes at 59.5.

It doesn't feel good round tripping it after a solid pump, but my TP framework was previous month's value high around 66k. If I have to round trip it, so be it, that's what the swing account is for.

I held to my swing framework in March and was rewarded with my ultimate take profit.

Don't stab in no man's land

The thing I want to warn you against, especially if you're new to low time frame trading, is taking reversion stabs in no man's land during a grind down.

Want a stab at the monthly VWAP or the VAL? Great, look for orderflow triggers there, use some medium time frame confluence.

If you fire off a bunch of longs in a grind down without confluence, you'll get burned mentally and on P&L.

Then, when the real trigger comes at a good location, you're so tilted that you can't even capitalize on it.

TLDR

• Bounce off monthly VWAP (61.3k) that can't hold = down into the 60ks

• Bull thesis invalidated below 60k; absolute floor is 59k

• Don't stab in no man's land, wait for medium time frame confluence

We're getting some alt rotations, but BTC's still in a strong structural downtrend.

I'm not shorting here, I think the opportunity's still on the long side, but if we bleed back down into the former consolidation below 60k, I'm assuming we get another leg down on BTC.

Hype's the one live trade

We covered HYPE on Thursday's stream and so far so good.

Structural support, a higher low and a breakout of this pivot. It's not the strongest coin, but it's very liquid, so you can size up easily even if you don't get the momentum of something like USELESS.

Target's 86, everyone's watching the $100 Hype meme, momentum maybe drags us there, then a lot of selling.

If we get that big BTC pullback I sincerely doubt HYPE survives it, so if we get a bad rejection I'll probably be out.

Alts I’m watching

USELESS is one of the stronger coins.

JELLYJELLY is a high-volatility, low-liquidity coin I’d only play with small size, looking for relative strength on a range breakout.

ZEC’s range looked really nice, the classic giraffe pattern, legs up, consolidates, legs up again, done. That's how I used to remember setups, animal names.

I'd look to get in on relative strength on the range breakout and target the prior highs where sellers stepped in before.

SOL I'd rather buy on a reclaim than up here.

Reward's bigger buying now, but the reclaim's far more probable, so the EV's better.

MSTR's putting in a bit of green, nice to see, but it's still the biggest risk to the whole market.

It's all a bit slow. Let HYPE run, let rotations come to us, there's not much on this list I'd want to long that isn't Bitcoin.

Au revoir.

Zooming out and starting from HTF, developing yearly value offered some rejections from an underside retest of the 1 std. deviation band.

Acceptance into the band would confirm fuel to take out some structural anomalies left behind from prior highs in the 66-67 area.

Developing value shifted higher for most of last week, with a retest of prior weekly VWAP earlier in today's session.

Line in the sand ~61 with constructive spot buying to trade into the 66-67 area.

I remain a short-term bull until these dynamics change, and lean towards this being a counter-trend rally (have been long from ~58).

Bitcoin continues to do the bare minimum. Support is acting as support, and we're seeing mild reactions in the form of relief bounces.

There's no momentum implying a larger rally into range highs just yet. If we reclaim the 4H 200 MAs, that's when momentum upwards, even to a small extent, becomes significantly more probable.

Until that happens, there's not too much to get excited about.

HYPE

As Bitcoin stalls, HYPE threatens outperformance, just as we've been discussing for ~6 months now in these newsletters.

As mentioned in several previous editions, there's no reason for me to diverge away from the strategy that has worked thus far. I will continue to take higher quality bets until the market decides to exhaust and trend lower.

So far so good. All that can be said here is that we're getting a mild pullback after rallying hard from the HTF trend (6H 200 MAs) and nearly making new ATHs once again.

The market keeps doing the heavy lifting, who am I to bite the hand that feeds me?

SOL

SOL continues coiling up around the HTF inflection point. If the broader market is to see any kind of larger momentum upwards from here, I think this is one of the more appealing bets in terms of reward.

It's a laggard, but my eyes are drawn to this chart because it allows me to distribute exposure to different kinds of plays.

I'm hoping the recent deviation back inside the range, plus reclaiming a HTF trend will allow for a larger move into range highs ~$95, which would also be a bearish retest of the higher timeframe 200 DMAs trend.