The four layers

A trade on ES is built from the top down, in an order that never changes. The two upper layers give the level. The two lower layers give the trigger. A level without a trigger is a hypothesis; a trigger without a level is noise. This lesson fixes the order, and explains why the losing trader always starts with the wrong layer.

Why the order is never reversed

The trader who loses money starts with layer 4: they see a big bubble, a delta, an imbalance, and they enter. They are right about what they see, and wrong about what it is worth, because an imbalance in the middle of nowhere is worth nothing. The profitable trader starts with layer 1 and only goes down if the layer above has answered. By the time they reach layer 4, they already know where they are, and they are looking for only one thing: confirmation that the level is doing its job.