Short posts applying the framework to real market situations. Useful whether you've read the book or not — but more useful if you have.
Absorption is the mechanical event where market orders meet enough resting liquidity and price fails to move—understanding it changes how you read every consolidation.
The phrase 'failed breakout' attributes intent to price. Let's replace it with a mechanical description that actually helps you read the chart.
The most disciplined trade is often the one you don't take. Learn why patience is a mechanical skill, not just a mindset.
A falsifiable thesis is the only kind worth trading—without it, you're guessing, not reading the market.
You have likely stood there, watching a candle slice clean through a prominent daily high. You expect continuation, but instead, price reverses and closes back inside the range. You call it a "failed breakout." I spent years using that exact phrase, believing it explained the market, when in reality it was only exposing my own lack of mechanical understanding.
Trading education often becomes a personality cult. TTM reframes the guru trap, moving the authority from the author to the market's mechanical reality.
The chart does not record *who* placed the orders. It does not record *why* they placed them. It does not record whether the participant who moved price was a hedge fund executing a macro thesis, an algorithm rebalancing a portfolio, or a retail trader who finally hit their buy button. The mechanical outcome — aggression meeting liquidity — looks identical regardless of who produced it.
Every transaction has both a buyer and a seller. That's not insight — it's arithmetic. The question that actually matters is different, and until you're asking it, you're working with the wrong map.
The word "aggression" gets used constantly. The concept behind it almost never gets examined. That gap is costing you.
When you draw a line on a chart and call it support, you're making a specific mechanical claim. Most traders never examine what that claim actually says — or how much uncertainty it hides.
You have said this sentence, or one like it, hundreds of times: "Price is testing support." It sounds like analysis. It feels like understanding. And it is quietly making you worse at trading.
Why does price seem to reverse the moment you enter a trade? This post breaks down the mechanical reasons behind that frustrating experience — from crowded entries and stop clusters to liquidity and exhausted aggression — so you can start reading charts structurally instead of emotionally.
There is usually a mechanical explanation for why price moved through your stop before continuing.
Most traders are looking at the chart asking one question: which direction is price going to move? It's the natural question. It feels like the important one. But it's actually the second question — and jumping to it before answering the first one is a large part of why trades that seem logical end up going nowhere or reversing immediately.
Most traders learned to read candles as signal generators. A hammer means potential reversal. An engulfing candle means momentum shift. A doji means indecision. Learn the shapes, recognize the patterns, place the trade.