LessonThis is a lesson restated in new words. Any figure in it is an example from the source, not this desk's record.
Patrick Nil says that the shape of the chart is liquidity. A large player cannot work size in a thin market. About seventy percent of days, in his account, are spent searching for it, and those days are ranges. About twenty to thirty percent of the time is a trend. The rest is the range. The host introduces him as the current leader of the Robbins World Cup and a top-five finisher in that competition twelve times. A later interview on the same channel calls him Patrick Niel. He will not give every rule for how a zone is drawn. He says some of them are not free. The competition record and the rates below are his account and the host's introduction, not an audit.
Why it matters
He draws the same impulse-and-range model, and he is specific about when a range is allowed to be traded, where the stop sits, and why he will skip a breakout that looks obvious. On what he calls the P, the impulse up into a range, he can take the continuation higher. He prefers to wait until price comes back, and then he is short, because a return toward the start of the move is the trade he likes even though he calls trend-following the best trade in the abstract. The ratio he wants there is about three to one. If there is a second push up, the next range is the next reference. On that short he would take a first target at the upside of the zone, a second where he is watching what happens, and the last at the start of the whole movement. The host's phrase, which he accepts, is fair value to fair value to fair value. He does not get that short every day.
The idea in plain words
Zone size changes which trade he will take. A huge movement and a small zone is the one he likes for the breakout. The long aims at the upside, the stop sits back, and the ratio might be eight to one. A large zone, with the stop on the low, does not even give him two to one, and he will not take that breakout. He will still take the range trade, stop and target across the range. Smaller ranges are the breakout trades. Larger ranges are the range trades. Two ranges sitting on the same level are better still, and he cannot say why except that they work better.
The pullback is not optional. Without it he is trading what he calls false breakouts. The confirmation he wants on the short side is a low, a second lower low, a pullback, and then the break of that low. If he is not in because the confirmation never printed, it is a bad day, and he would rather have the bad day. He also waits for a third confirmation, one, two, three, somewhere in the zone, before the pattern is good enough. He waits because the probability of the breakout is higher if he is late. The cost is missing the move when it leaves without him. Three points on the P, then the break, is almost always a trade. The same three points are what he wants before a range trade.
A reclaim from beneath the range is, for him, the perfect long, and he would not take gain at the top of the range. He keeps the hold. He does not know why that move does not die at the old high. The attempt down did not have enough power. If he has several positions he might take one off, perhaps thirty percent, and leave the rest, often in a multiple of three. After that partial he is at flat and cannot lose the original risk on what remains. The mirror, a push above the range that reclaims to the downside, he will sometimes take and does not like. When price is going up there is a lot of power, and more power usually follows. Oil and the DAX are where this bias has favored him.
How to use it
The working chart is the fifteen-minute, and a real P takes about a day, sometimes half a day, sometimes more than a day. If the P finishes in the evening he does not take it. He cannot see the night, and eight hours until the next look is too long. At two or four in the afternoon, with two more hours of session, he can watch whether it comes back or continues. The four-hour is the big picture. The fifteen-minute is the decision. The five-minute or the three-minute is sometimes the execution, because the stop gets smaller. A forty- or fifty-point stop is acceptable if he wants three hundred points. It is too much if he only wants fifty. The breakout, once it is there, is skipped for time and almost nothing else. Important news nearby, or two in the afternoon, when the market often changes, and the same caution in oil. Otherwise he takes the long and he takes the short. Volume profile or a footprint is the confirmation he loves. Without either, it still works. Traveling, which he has been doing a lot this year, he does not have the footprint, and the trade still exists.
At an all-time high, with no next fair-value area, the target is one of two things. Sometimes he copies the initial move and projects it, a measured move, and manages the trade tightly. Sometimes he trails and has no target. Normally he works with a target. The measured move is experience, not a formula he derived on the whiteboard. The stop he uses now is market structure, not a dollar amount chosen first. A one-hundred-point stop or a seventy-point stop comes from the chart. Then he decides whether that distance is one contract or five. Sometimes the stop is thirty points and sometimes it is two hundred. Size follows. When there is nothing to the right to lean on, he has used a two-hundred-point distance to the target and a thirty- or forty-point stop, which is more than three to one, so the target does sometimes decide the stop.
The one thing he will call mandatory is the stop that stays put. Nervous traders shrink it, and when price comes close they push it further away so they are not tagged. Then the trade cannot work. He learned it about five years ago, on the oil position during COVID. Crude fell from sixty to forty to twenty to fifteen. He decided he did not need a stop, because it was only fifty dollars and nothing could happen. It went to ten, to eight, to seven. He got out of the rest. It went to minus forty-two. Widening a stop, or deleting one, fails on the day the market does the thing that was not supposed to be possible.
He used to be at the screen about eight hours, roughly eight to four. This year, traveling, it is about three, and the trading has been better. The difference between a profitable trader and a champion, in his answer, is consistency. The same thing, the second time, and every day. Most people change the rules because they are afraid. Scalping makes his heart faster. It is not for him. The fit is seeing the chart, deciding, and leaving. The markets are mostly the DAX and oil, a little gold, on the private accounts. Other futures might be one trade a week or one every two weeks. A DAX range will fake ten points and come back. The same picture on the ES fakes nothing, or one or two points. He tests with his own money. A demo, or a prop account, does not feel like a test. The number he wants is a payoff ratio of about two. Win rate does not matter much when the payoff is three or four to one. In wheat he will only take a trade if the payoff is bigger than three, four, or five, because the win rate there is not high, and that signal might come once a month or once every two months.
What usually goes wrong
Across thousands of trades the worst run was perhaps fifteen losses in a row, and he has not had more than fifteen. Normally four losses in a row is the break. If the first three are losses, it is usually the afternoon, and he closes everything and leaves. At the end of each World Cup year his win rate has been between sixty and seventy-five percent, a sixty-eight, a seventy-four, a seventy-two. If fifteen losers did arrive and they were the model, he would take a holiday. It has happened once. The environment he wants is a range. Slow markets are perfect. Big trends are the problem. If oil moves more than twenty percent in two weeks, he cannot accept that it should be different from last week, he fades it, and he has three kinds of trouble. He stopped trading oil in March of this year, or just after, into the beginning of April. A war he places in Dubai or Iran caught him while he was there. Four months without his favorite market was protection. He is a swing trader. Waiting four days for a target, and having a headline hit the stop an hour before the target, is the failure mode he refused to keep paying for.
Questions people ask
When is the breakout the trade, and when is the fade?
A small zone after a huge movement is the breakout, and the ratio might be eight to one. A large zone that does not even offer two to one is the range trade, from one side to the other. He still wants three touches in the zone, and a pullback, before either one. Two ranges on the same level are better, and he cannot say why except that they work better.
What stop rule does he call mandatory?
Leave it where the structure put it. Do not shrink it and then shove it farther away when price comes close. The COVID oil tape is the example he gives: from sixty down through fifteen, a stop he deleted because the risk looked like fifty dollars, then ten, eight, seven, and an exit of the rest before the print went to minus forty-two.
What win rate does he report from the World Cup years?
Between sixty and seventy-five percent at the end of each year, and he names a sixty-eight, a seventy-four, and a seventy-two. The payoff ratio he wants is about two. He says the counter-trend win rate is a little higher, and that trend-following is still the better trade in the abstract. Those are his figures, not an audit.