Interview noteThis page restates a public interview in new words. Dollar results, win rates, and payouts are claims made by the speaker or the host. They are not this desk's record, and they are not a result to expect.
Tom Vorwalt, will not treat a setup as legal until the day's context is drawn: balance, the gap, and the place where the idea would be wrong. The caption also spells the surname Voorwald. He runs Trade the Traders after twenty years as a professional, with world champions on the team, and the hit rates below are his, not an audit.
Why it matters
The desk is several styles on one map. Patrick Niel fades. Serge scalps, and will swing a little inside the day when the numbers work. Henrik uses a PBD model when the market is moving. Carsten holds longer. Lars writes the morning memo: geopolitics, the overnight, and whether a futures gap is likely to fill. Tom assembled the group in 2013 because institutional rooms were never one person at one screen. The host frames futures as zero-sum, with a prepared team often on the other side.
The idea in plain words
After the memo he is not decoding the market in the abstract. He is checking a picture made before the open: the widest path he can draw for the session, and which style is allowed where. He wants large-number math, and a guess at whether the money arriving is retail or institutional.
ATAS is the platform. Five minutes is usual. He watches how fast the book moves, the size in it, and the session's volume profile, but levels come first. On the S&P, with the price in front of him used only as a stand-in, 7,554 is the middle of the prior balance. That prior day, as he reads it, trended: single prints, a very low close, built late. Price inside the value area means balance, which decides which setups may be taken. On more than seven trades in ten, he expects that gap to fill, so the prior close becomes a counter reference. A finished auction on the footprint puts downside back in play.
He refuses stops parked on the obvious price. Leave balance upward and accept the new area, and he thinks the odds favor a trip to the far side, often past it. Risk sits where liquidity says the long has won, above that price. Only then comes the setup. On a five-minute chart the sequence he calls PBD is a P, a break of that P to the downside, and a pullback that is the entry. Payoff is set first.
How to use it
The P is his model, built from closes and candle shapes. Balance, then acceptance underneath, then a large chance of travel under the impulse. An ordinary P leans up. A broken P that accepts lower prices leans under that impulse. The order is context, the setup at the named price, then a payoff fixed before the click.
About 200 trades near a 40 percent hit rate suit counters only when reward exceeds 2 to 1. Better than 5 to 1, already measured, is a trade he says he must take. Separate markets beat a bundle of Nasdaq, S&P, and DAX futures. He would rather mix crude with gold, a DAX contract, and a market such as corn. Scalpers inherit the side once price is back inside balance. Breakout traders wait for balance to fail. A B mirrors the P. Put the ideas together and he cites a hit rate above 65 to 70 percent. Hedgers, he says, exceed 95 percent of futures users, so trends appear when they must trade away from a fair price. He joins visible institutional flow and skips a fade standing in front of it.
What usually goes wrong
Three candles in a line, useful when liquidity sits at the low, still get dropped if the chart can stop them. He thinks more than 90 percent of traders carry a psychology problem, which is why he uses psychologists and says hedge funds do too. A huge hit rate stapled to a huge payoff is usually the loss. Around 2004 a stock-breakout system failed him, though it still helps other people on small breaks, because he could not take the fast stop and leave. A 37 percent hit rate, known ahead, is a wait many cannot do. Scalpers are another force, likened to Counter-Strike. Real size waits for 200, 300, or 500 trades. A bad day is a loss past the one he accepted. In 2003 and 2004 someone called 2 percent a trade sensible. The Lehman period showed a market leaving a large balance.
Questions people ask
What has to exist before the order?
Context, a setup at the price that context named, and a payoff already measured. Near 40 percent winners over about 200 counter-trades earns only if reward exceeds 2 to 1. Better than 5 to 1, prepared ahead, is one he says he must take.
Can one morning feed more than one style?
In his account, yes, if the markets are separate bets. Scalps take the context's side. Breakouts wait for balance to fail. Combined, he cites a hit rate above 65 to 70 percent. That figure is his, not a public test.
When is the obvious fade skipped?
When large liquidity is visible and the fade would stand in its path. He joins that flow. Once the money is moving, he does not expect anyone to stop it.