How we trade.
This is the strategy and approach we built through years of learning, experimenting, trading and making mistakes. We tried different markets and methods, removed what didn’t work for us and kept what did.
We trade futures. This is our way of trading—not the way everyone should trade. What follows is how those choices came together.
Why we trade futures.
We began our trading journey by exploring options, then traded forex and continued learning about different financial markets. Through that learning and research, we eventually determined that we preferred futures and the structure of a centralized, exchange-traded market.
CME’s explanations of standardized futures contracts and exchange price discovery describe the structure that appealed to us. That distinction matters to us. It doesn’t make forex, options, equities or another market wrong for another trader.
Futures are simply the market we chose, for this and other reasons we’ll continue discussing through StreetLight content.
A strategy is more than a setup.
Our approach didn’t arrive as one discovery. It was assembled from choices about who we are, what we can risk, how we behave and how we work. Seven connected parts gradually became one process we could understand and execute.
01 — Personality
Build around the trader you are.
Not the trader you wish you were.
Different people naturally trade differently. Some are patient; some are impatient. Some are comfortable holding positions; others watch every tick. Some are naturally risk-averse; others are aggressive. None of those characteristics automatically makes somebody a good or bad trader.
The important part is understanding who is actually sitting in front of the screen and building accordingly. Don’t build a strategy around the personality you wish you had—or around the trader you watch online. Be honest with yourself. If you’re unsure about your tendencies, ask somebody who knows you well; they may recognize them faster than you do.
Trading exposed our impatience, hesitation and need to be right. We spent a long time trying to trade in ways that didn’t always fit us. Recognizing those tendencies and building around them mattered as much as choosing what to trade.
02 — Risk management
Understand what being wrong can cost.
Risk requires understanding the math. In futures, that means understanding the financial mechanics of the position being traded. CME’s explanations of contract profit and loss and position size are useful places to begin.
- Contract specifications, tick size and value
- Position size and stop distance
- Margin / leverage where relevant
- Account limits and maximum acceptable loss
Understanding risk on paper isn’t enough. You don’t have to enjoy losing, but you need to understand what being wrong can cost before placing the trade—and be able to accept the loss when it happens.
You also need to use a platform that allows that risk to be managed properly, and know how to operate it. The math, the decision and the technology have to work together.
03 — Trading psychology
You don’t graduate from trading psychology.
For us, the psychological work hasn’t finished with experience. Trading keeps exposing fear, greed, hesitation and impatience: dealing with losses, missing a move, taking profits too early, moving a stop or feeling the urge to interfere. Knowing the plan and executing it with money involved can be very different experiences.
Paralysis by analysis can begin here too. “I am afraid to act until I get one more confirmation.” Sometimes collecting more information is how we postpone a decision we’re uncomfortable making.
The machine wasn’t the thing I needed to automate. I was. We found ourselves asking software to execute rules we already knew we should be capable of executing ourselves: follow the plan, respect the stop and wait for the setup. Automation became another useful tool—not a substitute for learning discipline. Rules, alerts, TapeDeck, Cassette Deck and other software can support our process, but they don’t eliminate the human variable. The machine already follows the instructions. We had to learn to do the same.
04 — Technical analysis
Learn the tools.
Then decide what earns its place.
The mechanics of technical analysis can be learned: candles, price action, market structure, support and resistance, volume, VWAP, moving averages, order flow and other tools. Learning to apply them well takes longer. We needed to understand what our chosen tools meant and what information they were actually providing.
Our current process is built around Opening Range Breakouts and Initial Balance structure, with confluences including VWAP, moving averages and order flow where appropriate. We also map support and resistance; some of those areas become what we call Decision Zones. The drawing itself isn’t the edge. What matters is what price does when it gets there.
The lesson we eventually learned was that learning more doesn’t require using more. When there was so much information on the chart that something always contradicted something else, more confirmations didn’t necessarily help us decide.
We took the machine apart to understand it, put it back together and discovered we didn’t need every piece. We removed what didn’t fit our personality, our strategy or the way we could execute. Fewer things competed for our attention when it was time to act. Simplicity came after learning, not instead of learning.
05 — Tools & technology
Know the machine you’re operating.
Platform, market data, order entry, chart configuration and workflow all require learning. So do stops and targets, connections, execution behaviour and what to do when something fails or disconnects. Different traders can choose different tools; whatever you choose, learn how to operate them before money and urgency are involved.
The platform should eventually become second nature, like picking up a pen. You think about what you want to write, not how the pen works. During a trading decision, we don’t want to be fighting the interface or trying to remember how to place and manage an order. The technology hasn’t disappeared. The friction has. Our actual working environment is on Tools We Use.
We may use mobile devices to monitor or manage existing positions, but our analysis and trading decisions are made from a proper trading workspace. That is our preference, not a universal rule about how somebody else should trade.
06 — Market awareness
Market tuition.
A trader can choose to work almost entirely from technical information. We chose to understand more about what is happening around the markets because we believe it helps our own process. Interest rates, Treasuries and bonds, currencies, commodities, economic releases, major events and cross-market relationships give us things to pay attention to. We don’t need to become economists. We want to understand the environment we’re operating in.
We watch the news. We don’t trade the news. We monitor scheduled releases and important events so we know what is happening around the markets. CME describes bids and offers changing with supply, demand and news. We generally don’t build trades around predicting a release or its immediate reaction. Other traders may legitimately do so. We choose not to.
That ongoing education is what we think of as market tuition. The more attention we pay over time, the more the markets teach us. Our balance between technical information and wider awareness continues to evolve; the learning doesn’t really finish.
07 — Trading rules
Boundaries built around our process.
The rules are where everything above comes together: personality, risk, psychology, technical analysis, technology and market awareness. They should reflect who we are, what we’re prepared to risk and how we work. Without boundaries, every new candle can become an excuse to do something different.
“This account will not be lost by the market. It can only be lost by me.”
“My only job today is to execute my rules.”
- Trade only at planned decision levels.
- Wait for the retest and confirmation.
- Respect defined indicator requirements/boundaries.
- Never enter before the setup is complete.
- Accept missing a trade instead of inventing one.
- If I feel urgency, I must wait one more candle.
These are our rules, built around our process—not universal commandments. Another trader’s legitimate rules may be different.
Build your own edge.
We learned, experimented, took things apart, discarded what didn’t help, kept what did and rebuilt. What survived became our framework, and that framework continues to evolve. It isn’t one indicator or one magic setup. It’s the combination of choices we understand and can execute.
The point isn’t to copy StreetLight’s strategy. It’s to build something you understand and can execute yourself. We’re not building a trading academy. We share how we trade, what we’ve learned, what we use, what we no longer use and why—not a blueprint we can hand over and call your edge.
Books, videos and other traders can help us learn, but they can’t live the repetition for us. We still have to watch, decide, make mistakes, miss moves, chase moves and review what happened. Sometimes the correct action was no action at all. Knowledge helps. Experience makes it ours.
“We won’t sell you a shortcut because we haven’t found one.”
If you want to watch the process continue, follow our YouTube channel, watch us trade or join the community. Ask questions and challenge what you see. Take what helps and leave what doesn’t. Your edge has to become yours.
