Les Gouh

I trade for income, nothing more, nothing less. My feed is merely a visual timeline of the trades I take and my in-the-moment thoughts—win or lose, risk is always managed. FYI: No aspirations on becoming another FURU (Discord mod).

Caught a small base hit on the ES this morning, nothing sexy or spectacular, just a simple backside trade, sized well enough to capture a decent gain with low stress. Limited on screen time this week as I'm away for work. Setup is far from ideal, but making it work if I have the time in the AM. I'm calling this one the commute trade, set it from the hotel room, profit as you walk into the board room, lmao the grim reality this morning.

@JMHfreeze Let’s go Jeff, clean work brother. 😮‍💨

@LesGouh Excess to excess, let’s go

Took a few shots on goal this afternoon, rode the NQ lower and grabbed some low dte QQQ options. Clean setup, targeting specific origin points of the leg moves higher. I'll admit, we got a bit more follow thru on this and the options moved more than I expected, IV clearly pumped premiums pretty nicely. Currently away for work and trading off the work laptop, so the setup's a bit more mobile than ideal. First time executing via tradingview too, pleasantly surprised. A bit more execution latency compared to Sierra, but the in-trade ux is clean and fairly snappy. Selective shot season, stay safe out there.

@adamjohannsson @StefanBuilds @vibecombinator No sweat, feel free to holla when ready,

@LesGouh @StefanBuilds @vibecombinator Alright, well I’ll keep you posted. For now we’re focused on helping out first cohort of vibe coders succeed

@adamjohannsson @StefanBuilds @vibecombinator Unfortunately, no. But the others, one phone call away.

@LesGouh @StefanBuilds @vibecombinator Yoooo you know the .com owner too?

@adamjohannsson @StefanBuilds @vibecombinator I may know someone that knows someone, that... knows a few more someones, that owns .vc and .ai lmk, if you need a connect.

@StefanBuilds @vibecombinator

@yogi_bear89 Haha, floating in too much space for my liking. Feels like it needs a good flush to reset the board to run again.

@LesGouh That sounds like fighting words

Bitcoin. I'll see you sub 50K.

Live footage of the Monday open. Markets are going to be a wild tomorrow—if you're not already positioned, or have never played in a limit down climate, do not chase this.

🫡

What a wild month, and year, it’s been to be honest. The position trades have been transformative this year, and have really paid off. I haven’t been as active intraday as I’d like or usually would in times like this, so apologies for the radio silence, no blowouts here. The work schedule has been full-on lately, a lot of exec travel, paired with a lot of founder-mode hustle, all of which never make for the most ideal trading or personal life conditions. That said, I was promoted into a VP seat recently, and am now manning an even broader scope, so most extra curricular activities are on the back burner for the time being. I flagged the shift and some of the adjustments I’ve been making earlier in the year on my feed: same playbook, just applied to higher timeframes. Slower moves, less activity, bigger size, less futures, more options, and letting time and price do their thing. Feels like we’re stepping into a messy macro environment ahead. Best advice right now is to slow everything down, take chips off and if you aren’t positioned well already, you’ve missed the easy parts of the broader drop, don’t go chasing it. Chasing tape in these environments is like grabbing a blowtorch, best and easiest way to get burned. Size down, exercise patience, and let the setups come to you. I’m going to continue swinging, have and will be trimming and managing exposure to protect the gains this year, it’s been one for the ages. Just much less active on the day to day grind, as priorities and focus are else where right now, and I have to be selective with time and focus. Alas, keep slaying family.

@shl @garywillmott VibeCombinator.vc needs to be a thing tbh.

@garywillmott I do own IocaIhost.com...

Venture Capital for Vibe Coders: $100k for 10% of future profits, so you can go full-time for a year Send URL to sahil@gumroad.com

An exercise I'll challenge you with is this, go ahead and mark up your structure reads on a blank chart and then turn on the value tools and do your mark-ups/analysis with those and see look for confluence. That way you'll have the edges and swing ranges that are actually important (structure>value) and then the value context is more of a visual aide vs the other way around. Refine, test and adjust your playbooks.

@LesGouh This made me realize I might be overly reliant on DVA and CVA tools for finding locations to participate. Been struggling with a lack of triggers, so this could be the missing key. Will study this and try to integrate it. Much appreciated, very helpful.

You’ve probably noticed I haven’t traded futures directly for a few weeks—no issues, just trying to balance my work schedule and overall cognitive load. Over the years, I’ve realized how much more locked-in I need to be for futures vs options. To maximize my edge, futures require precision, participation, and mental capital, while options offer more flexibility, better timing, sizing, bigger moves, and dynamic risk management (accepting zero on positions). I mentioned this earlier in the year, but I’m currently focused on broader opportunities across individual names/markets. It expands idea generation and trade setups week to week and takes a lot of the intensity out of things. A shift from the tick-by-tick grind, but a good one given what’s on my plate atm. It’s also given me an opportunity to focus on other portfolios I actively manage—a really tangible net positive this year. If you have a lot on, I highly recommend broadening your approach. Trading isn’t just about duking it out daily for ticks and points—adapt, expand, and build a well-rounded approach.

@mister_tendies /cc @orderflowtrade3

Use the vwaps as more of a loose guide to aide contextual reads vs using it to define structure. A big reason why you’re having issues is because vwaps/value tools are too loose. To strengthen your reads, pay more attention to structure as it relates to price action alone. Ie, swing highs/lows. This will  give you a much truer representation of structure since this are where actual transactions had taken place. It’ll make gauging traps and protecting stops a lot more effective. I say it a lot, but knowing where your strongest edges are helps to add more confidence to specific setups which with enough practice will allow you to size heavier and or get in/out earlier. Dissect things enough and you’ll start to notice themes where perhaps the first sweep of a high/low isn’t the one you want to take (theoretical example). Just small nuances you can start to add to help increase strike rate and also instil more patience and rules for yourself. Use your VWAP and value tools around that as a hand wavy guide to support what structure is actually doing. This shift alone will make your reads a lot more effective.

Hey Kim, have a lot of content and examples on the feed, definitely a treasure trove. Similar q&a here too: x.com/LesGouh/status… In short though. Structure and where are folks offside in/around that. I'll size and play things accordingly (whether options and/or futures) depending on how much room I think we have to move and where we are in the bigger picture. In this case, no need to swing for the fences given we're at the low of an extended move within the cycle, more about framing up potshots at edges that have a good ev.

@LesGouh Mind sharing what is it u look at for this trade example?

Similar to yesterday, just sticking to playbook setups as they present themselves. Quick base hits given where we are in the broader $ES_F / $SPY leg. Smaller size, quick targets until something changes.

All about timing the turns as you move lower down the timeframes. You want to see structure starting to cascade into the direction you're looking to play. Again, comes down to being able to read price action, and knowing where your stronger edges are. Dissect any of your favorite moves, and/or moves you've missed but would have loved to have caught and try to look for where structure shifted. Clue: its just ranges.

@LesGouh Any advice on how to adapt entry triggers to higher timeframes? E.g. footprint mousetraps give me great R/R on LTF, but I find it hard to find similar patterns when I look at higher timeframes.

Scaling out 80% into this flush, will leave a few runners. #ES_F

All about being selective, picking shots carefully. Definitely not the time to go long for long, especially when you're looking at the bigger picture. Screenshot here capturing the opex landscape on the #ES_F. It's clear that Q4 is a complete down quarter for this cycle. I'm currently riding short with puts on the $SPY, looking for lower, looking for a flush into the last monthly cycle of the Q2 opex from last year. Seems like a key area for us to target at the moment if you're looking at this structurally. It'd be interesting to see how we close this current march monthly cycle out. I'll reiterate again, this market is all about being selective.