On Ganesh Chaturthi today, I took two small Bitcoin trades.
Together, they captured approximately 548.5 BTC price points:
Trade 1: Short from 77,836.5 → exit at 77,516.0 = 320.5 points captured in ~20 minutes
Trade 2: Short from 78,171.0 → exit at 77,943.0 = 228 points captured in ~1.5 minutes
I am deliberately not mentioning position size or monetary profit because that is not what I find interesting about these trades.
What matters to me is why I entered, why I exited, and perhaps most importantly, why I was comfortable doing nothing while the market was uncertain.
After spending considerable time studying markets, I increasingly think about trading not as predicting where price will go, but as trying to understand a constantly evolving battlefield.
We Cannot Predict the Market
One principle has become increasingly important to me:
We never truly know what the market will do next.
We can identify probabilities. We can study structure. We can observe liquidity, volume, order flow, momentum, divergences and participation across multiple timeframes.
But none of these gives us certainty.
That changes the objective completely.
Instead of asking:
“Where will Bitcoin go next?”
I find it much more useful to ask:
“What is happening right now, where are the important territories, who appears to be gaining or losing control, and at what point would my interpretation no longer be valid?”
That is a very different way of approaching a chart.
The Market as a Battlefield
I increasingly visualize market structure in terms of a battlefield.
Price is territory.
Buyers and sellers are opposing forces attempting to acquire or defend that territory.
Liquidity, volume and aggressive buying/selling represent resources being committed.
Order blocks, fair value gaps and important liquidity areas can behave like strongholds or strategically important territory.
A move into such an area can become an assault.
A rejection can represent successful defense.
A breakout alone does not necessarily mean victory. The attacking side may capture some territory temporarily and then discover that maintaining it requires increasingly greater resources.
Likewise, apparently aggressive sellers can generate enormous selling pressure without moving price meaningfully lower. If price refuses to fall despite substantial sell-side aggression, that itself contains information.
The question therefore isn’t simply:
“Who is buying or selling more?”
It is also:
“What are they accomplishing with the resources they are spending?”
Trade 1: Knowing When Not to Stay in the Crossfire
My first trade was a short entered at 77,836.5.
Bitcoin had already been falling for some time. Below price was a 15-minute bullish Fair Value Gap (FVG).
As price approached and tested that area, the character of the battle began changing.
My original short was already profitable, and I had moved the stop sufficiently to protect the position. I could therefore have simply left the trade running.
But I chose to exit manually at 77,516.0, capturing approximately 320.5 points.
Why?
Because the objective wasn’t to extract every possible point from the move.
Price was stalling and beginning to reject around the bottom of the 15-minute bullish FVG. Sellers were no longer beginning a fresh attack from favorable territory; they had already pushed Bitcoin substantially lower.
Meanwhile, they were now encountering an area where buyers had a structural reason to fight.
My thinking was essentially:
When both sides begin fighting intensely, I don’t necessarily need to remain in the crossfire.
Interestingly, Bitcoin subsequently swept somewhat below the FVG after I exited.
It would therefore have been possible to capture more points by holding longer.
But that doesn’t make the exit wrong.
I preferred a more confirmed profit while the evidence available to me was changing.
Soon afterward, buyers stepped in aggressively and produced a strong bullish pin-bar-like response.
I did not know beforehand that this would happen.
That is precisely the point.
The exit didn’t require predicting the bullish reaction. It required recognizing that the conditions supporting the short were becoming less asymmetric.
Then I Went Back to Observing
Afterward, I was thinking about writing an article about the Ganesh Chaturthi trade.
I even found myself thinking:
“I wish we had made a few more points for the article.”
That thought is actually worth examining.
It could easily become a trading mistake.
Wanting another trade because it would make a better story, wanting to recover a loss, wanting to reach a daily target or simply being bored are all external reasons to participate in a market.
None changes what buyers and sellers are actually doing.
So I didn’t need another trade.
I continued watching.
And then another situation developed on its own.
Trade 2: An Opportunity Between Two Opposing Structures
The second trade was entered short at 78,171.0.
This time, Bitcoin had moved into a 5-minute bearish Order Block and began rejecting from inside it.
That gave sellers a structurally meaningful area from which to defend.
But there was an important complication.
Immediately below the bearish Order Block was a 3-minute bullish Fair Value Gap.
That created an interesting, compact battlefield:
5-minute bearish OB above → seller territory
3-minute bullish FVG below → potential buyer territory
Rather than assuming that rejection from the bearish Order Block meant Bitcoin should continue falling indefinitely, the lower bullish FVG provided a logical place to expect the battle to change again.
I exited the short at 77,943.0, capturing another approximately 228 points.
Price subsequently reacted upward from the bullish FVG.
Again, predicting that bounce with certainty wasn’t necessary.
The important thing was understanding where the short had a structural advantage—and where that advantage could begin deteriorating.
Above is my Ganesh Chaturthi BTC trades screenshot on Delta Exchange — actual execution history showing the two short entries and exits discussed in this article. Position size and monetary information have been intentionally hidden because the focus is on the trading process, price movement captured and decision-making rather than monetary profit.
548.5 Points Were the Outcome, Not the Objective
Across the two trades, the captured movement was approximately:
320.5 + 228 = 548.5 BTC price points.
But I think focusing exclusively on that number would miss the most valuable part of the day.
Tomorrow, the same analytical process might produce zero trades.
That would not necessarily represent failure.
If the battlefield is unclear, if buyers and sellers are committing similar resources without establishing meaningful territorial advantage, or if the potential reward doesn’t adequately compensate for the risk, doing nothing can itself be a successful decision.
The objective isn’t maximum trading activity.
It is selective participation.
Structure, Liquidity and Participation
A large part of my current workflow revolves around what I think of as:
Structure • Liquidity • Participation
I monitor Bitcoin across multiple timeframes rather than relying on one chart.
Higher timeframes help establish the larger battlefield.
Lower timeframes help reveal how individual engagements are developing.
During execution, this allows me to ask several different questions simultaneously:
Where are the important structural areas?
Where is liquidity likely concentrated?
Which side is attacking?
Which side is defending?
How much participation accompanies the move?
How much territory is actually being gained?
Is an apparent breakout being accepted or rejected?
Is one side spending progressively more resources for progressively less progress?
And perhaps most importantly:
Has the reason for remaining in the trade changed?
From Visual Observation Toward Quantifying the Battle
This battlefield interpretation is also influencing an experimental trading research system I have been developing.
One of the ideas I am exploring is Capture / Defense Effort.
The basic concept is simple:
If buyers or sellers expend a certain amount of volume and aggression, how much price territory do they actually capture?
Imagine buyers aggressively attacking a bearish stronghold.
Their assault might progress through something conceptually like:
ATTACKING → MAX PENETRATION / CAPTURE ATTEMPT → HOLDING → RETREATING → REJECTED
Or they may successfully capture the territory.
The interesting information isn’t merely that an assault occurred.
We can potentially compare successive assaults.
Did the second assault penetrate farther than the first?
Did it require less volume per point captured?
Did defenders require increasingly greater resources to push the attackers back?
Did attackers reach the same penetration but fail to hold it?
Is defense strengthening—or gradually being exhausted?
These are questions I eventually want software to help quantify rather than relying entirely upon visual interpretation.
Understanding Before Opportunity
Perhaps the biggest lesson I took from today’s trading is this:
We don’t need to search for trades. We need to search for understanding.
The distinction sounds small, but I think it changes everything.
If I am looking for a trade, every chart pattern can begin looking like an opportunity.
If I am looking for understanding, “I don’t know yet” becomes a perfectly valid conclusion.
I can wait.
I can watch buyers attack.
I can watch sellers defend.
I can observe liquidity being swept.
I can see whether supposedly aggressive participants are actually acquiring territory.
And occasionally, all these pieces produce sufficient asymmetry that an opportunity becomes apparent without having to force one.
My evolving process could perhaps be summarized as:
UNDERSTAND → WAIT → OBSERVE THE BATTLE → IDENTIFY ASYMMETRY → PARTICIPATE → PROTECT → EXIT → RETURN TO NEUTRAL
Then start observing again.
A Ganesh Chaturthi Trading Reflection 🙏
Ganesh Chaturthi celebrates Lord Ganesha, traditionally revered as the embodiment of wisdom and the remover of obstacles.
For me, that makes today’s experience an especially meaningful reminder that trading should not be about excitement, prediction or constantly being in the market.
It should be about trying to see clearly.
Patience before action.
Reason before conviction.
Risk before reward.
And the willingness to change one’s interpretation when the evidence changes.
Today’s 548.5 captured BTC price points were certainly welcome.
But the more valuable outcome was another opportunity to practice something I increasingly believe is fundamental:
Don’t ask the market to give you a trade.
Understand the battlefield, observe the fighters and the resources they are committing, manage your risk—and allow the opportunities to reveal themselves.
🙏 Happy Ganesh Chaturthi!
Shakti Saran
— Trader Shakti
www.tradershakti.com
I am not a financial advisor or certified trading professional. Trader Shakti shares my personal trading experiences, observations and reflections for educational, informational and motivational purposes.
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