Fabio Valentino’s Nasdaq Futures Playbook: Two Live Models for Reading Order-Flow & Volume Nodes
World–cup futures champion Fabio Valentino dissects a live Nasdaq session, showing exactly how he turned a 3 % overnight gap into +1 000 USD risk–free profit in under 90 minutes. The walk-through delivers two repeatable models—trend-follow and mean-reversion—built on volume-profile and aggressive-order-flow filters rather than price patterns alone.
Key take-aways for Australian traders
- Session timing: New-York open (23:30 AEDT) gives the cleanest volatility expansion; London (20:00 AEDT) is mean-reversion only.
- Market state first: skip balanced, low-volume nodes—wait for “inefficiency” (one side >60 % of delta).
- Entry trigger: 30-contract aggressive print through a prior low-volume node; stop 1–2 ticks behind the absorption cluster.
- Risk cap: 0.25 % per trade on personal capital; 0.5 % in prop-firm evaluations.
- Scale rule: take 50 % at 1:2, move stop to break-even; never hold overnight—margin call risk > gap risk.
Model 1 – Trend-follow (New-York open)
- Pre-market profile: identify overnight high/low and value-area extremes.
- Wait for first 5-min candle to close beyond value with >40 delta divergence.
- Enter on first 1-min pullback that prints inside the prior low-volume node.
- Target previous session high/low; trail stop below each new volume-node support.
Valentino’s live example: 21 822 low-volume node absorbed 120-contract sell spike; long at 21 825, stop 21 800, exit 21 950 for +1.2 R.
Model 2 – Mean-reversion (London or lunch doldrums)
- Market must be inside previous day’s value area for >70 % of overnight range.
- Look for 3-touch compression; delta <±20 % on each test.
- Trade the third failure: fade the spike, stop 1 tick outside compression extreme, target mid-profile.
Win-rate drops to ~55 %, but average risk-to-reward 1:3 compensates.
Order-flow toolkit (free equivalents)
- Volume-profile: TradingView “Visible Range” set to 1-min; colour low-node zones manually.
- Cumulative Volume Delta: use the built-in “CVD” indicator—watch for 3-candle divergence against price.
- Large-lot filter: flag prints ≥30 contracts on NQ (≈150 on ES) within a 1-min bar; most platforms show size in DOM.
Psychology & position maths
Valentino caps daily loss at 2 % of equity, split across up to 8 trades. A 0.25 % unit means eight consecutive stops still leaves 98 % capital intact. He risks only same-day profits once the account is up >1 %—a buffer most retirees can adopt without endangering cash-flow needs.
Bottom line
The edge is not prediction; it is reading who is trapped and where they must exit. By combining session context, volume nodes and aggressive-order footprints, Australian night-owls can capture high-probability bursts on Nasdaq while respecting strict, small-unit risk rules.