weekend ed

March 07, 2026

Map It Before Monday
by Tony Rago

Hey trader,

Tuesday morning, the NQ opened into a firestorm. 

Yet, I managed to avoid any serious pain. And it’s a lesson I want to share with you today.

The VIX was above 25, and the overnight range had already carved out 641 handles.

Bars on the five-minute chart were printing 100 points each. I walked in with a plan anyway.

Before I touched a button, I had already mapped the session. If the 24,633 level converts to support, we go to 24,750.

If 24,750 holds, we go to 24,812. If we can get and stay above 24,833, the macro chart opens up even further.

Three conditional statements. That was the entire roadmap for a session where most traders were paralyzed by the size of the bars.

"If you guys have listened to me for any amount of time, you know that I'm a if X then Y kind of guy."

That approach produced the best trade of my week. It also kept me solvent on two days where the NQ tried its hardest to shake everybody loose.

That "if X then Y" framework isn't something I improvise each morning. It's built into the Golden Setup System.

Every level I just mapped for you, the 633, the 750, the 812, comes from the same repeatable structure I've been trading for over 20 months. The levels are auto-plotted before the open. The conditions are predefined. My only job is to wait for the "if" and execute the "then."

If you want to see exactly how I build these conditional roadmaps and why they held up in a 641-handle overnight range, I broke the whole system down step by step.