30 Posts
Tag: Asx Order Book Series
BY eric
Nov 10, 2026
What Profitable ASX Day Traders Have in Common
The closing post of the ASX order book series. After reading several Australian traders' public journals end to end, these are the habits and beliefs the profitable ones shared, the things they did not have in common at all, and an index of every post in the series.
BY eric
Nov 09, 2026
The Human HFT: What Discretionary Scalpers Do That Algorithms Can't
The best discretionary scalpers on the ASX look a lot like high-frequency trading machines: thousands of trades, holding periods in seconds, edge read straight from the order book. But they can't compete on speed. What they actually compete on is judgement at specific moments, and that tells both human traders and system builders where the remaining edge lives.
BY eric
Nov 08, 2026
The Liquidity Harvester and the Catalyst Sniper: Two Archetypes of Profitable Day Traders
Reading several Australian traders' journals end to end, two very different archetypes of profitable intraday trader emerged: the harvester who takes many small, fast trades with a high win rate, and the sniper who waits for a few big catalyst trades with a large payoff. How each one works, where each one breaks, and how to tell which one you are.
BY eric
Nov 07, 2026
Why Paid Signal Groups Fail
Stock tip Discords, paid alert groups and 'prediction algorithms' promise to hand you someone else's edge. The traders whose journals I read were deeply sceptical, and for good reasons: edges don't survive being broadcast, incentives are misaligned, and in thin ASX stocks the subscribers often become the exit liquidity. What to watch for, and what genuinely helps.
BY eric
Nov 06, 2026
Red Flags in a Quarterly Cash Flow Report
ASX small caps and explorers publish quarterly cash flow reports that tell you, months in advance, which companies will need to raise capital. How to read an Appendix 4C or 5B in five minutes, calculate funding runway, and spot the red flags traders watch: cash burn, admin bloat, related party payments, and the cash that isn't really there.
BY eric
Nov 05, 2026
Commodity Shock Days: How Resources Stocks Lag
When a commodity price jumps or collapses, the ASX's huge resources sector doesn't reprice all at once. Large caps move first, smaller and more leveraged names lag or overshoot, and the move can roll on for days. How traders map the transmission chain, find laggards, and avoid the reversal.
BY eric
Nov 04, 2026
When Your Setup Stops Working
Every trader in the journals I read went through stretches where a reliable setup suddenly stopped paying. Sometimes it was variance, sometimes the market had changed. How to tell the difference with your own statistics, what to do while you find out, and how traders adapted when the regime really had shifted.
BY eric
Nov 03, 2026
Halts, Placements and SPPs: Corporate Action Mechanics for Traders
Trading halts, capital raisings, share purchase plans and their settlement dates all create predictable order flow on the ASX. How each mechanism works, why a recent placement price acts like a magnet, what happens when a halted stock reopens, and the traps of holding through a halt.
BY eric
Nov 02, 2026
Surviving Earnings Season as an Intraday Trader
You'd think reporting season would be a day trader's paradise: catalysts everywhere. In the journals I read, it was often the worst stretch of the year. Why too much news hurts, how ASX reporting seasons and quarterlies work, and a practical plan for trading results without getting chopped up.
BY eric
Nov 01, 2026
Fat Fingers and Panic Opens
Sometimes a price on the screen is simply wrong: an erroneous order, or a panic sell-off out of all proportion to the news. These dislocations were among the cleanest trades in the journals I read. How fat-finger prints and panic opens happen on the ASX, how traders spot them in seconds, and what can go wrong.
BY eric
Oct 31, 2026
Index Rebalance Days and the Closing Auction
A few times a year, index funds have to buy and sell enormous amounts of stock at the ASX close, regardless of price. How the closing auction works, what happens to index additions and deletions, why rebalance closes can overshoot, and how intraday traders approach the close and the next morning's open.
BY eric
Oct 30, 2026
Journaling That Actually Changes Behaviour
Every trader is told to keep a journal. Most journals are diaries that change nothing. The journals I read that led to real improvement shared a structure: a pre-trade checklist, a trade log, a daily report card, weekly reviews with one focus area, and a living playbook. Templates included.
BY eric
Oct 29, 2026
Tilt: The Cycle and the Circuit Breakers
Tilt isn't a personality flaw. It's a predictable cycle with recognisable warning signs, and it comes in two flavours: after losses and after wins. How tilt unfolded in the journals I read, the early warning signs, and the circuit breakers and recovery routines that actually worked.
BY eric
Oct 28, 2026
The Variable Reward Trap: When Bad Trades Pay
The most dangerous trade is a bad trade that makes money. Why markets reinforce rule-breaking like a slot machine, how outcome bias quietly rewires your habits, and the practical tools traders use to judge process separately from profit.
BY eric
Oct 27, 2026
The Apprenticeship Curve: Why Year One of Day Trading Is Tuition
Every successful trading journal I read had a long, unglamorous start: small size, small losses, endless mistakes, and progress that only shows up in hindsight. The four phases of becoming a day trader, how long they tend to take, how to keep the tuition cheap, and what a plateau looks like.
BY eric
Oct 26, 2026
Execution Hygiene: Hotkeys, Size Guards and Borrow
Some of the most expensive mistakes in the trading journals I read had nothing to do with market judgement: a fat-fingered order, a forgotten pre-open order, a short without borrow, the wrong ticker, a platform outage on the busiest day. A practical execution hygiene checklist for ASX day traders.
BY eric
Oct 25, 2026
Fewer Trades, Better Months
In the trading journals I read, the best months kept turning out to be the ones with the fewest trades. Why overtrading destroys edge, how a hard daily trade cap and a morning-only window can transform your statistics, and how to find your own limits from your trade history.
BY eric
Oct 24, 2026
The Averaging-Down Death Spiral
Read enough trading journals and the catastrophic losses all start to look the same: a conviction trade goes against you, you don't cut, you add, and you hold through a squeeze until you can't. Why averaging into losers works often enough to be dangerous, the difference between planned scaling and unplanned averaging, and the rules that stop the spiral.
BY eric
Oct 23, 2026
Size by Grade, Not by Mood
Most traders size positions by how they feel: bigger after wins, bigger still after losses. The traders whose journals I read converged on grading every setup before entry and sizing from the grade. How to build an A+/A/B grading system, why it adds edge without adding risk, and how to step size up only when you've earned it.
BY eric
Oct 22, 2026
Commission Drag: The Silent Partner in Every Scalp
For a scalper, brokerage is not a rounding error. It can take half of your gross profit. How commissions, spread and tick size interact on the ASX, why high-priced stocks are so expensive to scalp, and the single journal metric that shows whether your edge is real: commission as a share of gross.
BY eric
Oct 21, 2026
Win Rate vs Payoff: Two Shapes of a Profitable Trader
A 75% win rate can lose money and a 40% win rate can make a fortune. Expectancy, profit factor and breakeven win rates explained with synthetic examples, plus why the two profitable trader shapes feel completely different to trade and how to improve payoff without wrecking your win rate.
BY eric
Oct 20, 2026
Measuring Order Book Imbalance in Code
Turning discretionary depth reading into numbers you can test. Python code for order book imbalance, microprice, a protection ratio, a resistance score and an auction mispricing feature, plus how to label and evaluate them honestly without fooling yourself.
BY eric
Oct 19, 2026
When the Tape Stops Confirming: Time Stops and Liquidity Exits
Most traders only exit on price. The scalpers in the journals I read exited on time and on liquidity: if the move didn't come quickly, or the order they were leaning on disappeared, they were out. Why time stops work for intraday trading and how to measure your own.
BY eric
Oct 18, 2026
Spoofs, Icebergs and Reloading Orders
The order book is not always honest. Some walls vanish when price gets close, and some of the most important orders are barely visible. How ASX intraday traders distinguish fake size from real size, detect a reloading seller, and trade around the moment a hidden order finishes.
BY eric
Oct 17, 2026
Cross-Market Leads and the Indicative Open
The ASX opens after Wall Street, the commodity markets and often a stock's own foreign listing have already traded. How intraday traders turn overnight leads into an expected opening gap, compare it with the indicative price, and trade the difference.
BY eric
Oct 16, 2026
Why Did It Gap? Mechanical Gaps vs Information Gaps
Not all gaps are created equal. A gap caused by real news tends to run. A gap caused by one large order, an index flow, an ex-dividend adjustment or a placement settlement tends to fade. How ASX intraday traders tell them apart before the open.
BY eric
Oct 15, 2026
Reading the ASX Opening Auction
The ASX open is a single price auction, and for intraday traders it is the most information-dense few minutes of the day. How the pre-open works, what the indicative price and surplus volume tell you, why the last 30 seconds matter, and how traders decide whether the open is mispriced.
BY eric
Oct 14, 2026
Protection: The Liquidity You Lean On
The most repeated idea across every ASX intraday journal I read: only enter where a large resting order sits behind you and little stands in front of you. How to judge protection relative to volume, size your position from it, and exit the moment it goes.
BY eric
Oct 13, 2026
Why the Best Intraday Traders Barely Look at Charts
A chart shows what already happened. The order book shows who is waiting and the tape shows who is forcing. Why profitable ASX day traders make decisions from market depth and time and sales, and use charts only for context.
BY eric
Oct 12, 2026
Reading the ASX Order Book: How Intraday Traders Actually Find Edge
A new tyolab series on ASX day trading built from patterns that kept showing up across the public journals of several Australian intraday traders: market depth over charts, the opening auction, protection, sizing, commissions and the psychology that holds it together.