Day Trader Steve — Market Flow Newsletter No. 06
Six weeks later, not much has changed. There's a reason why they say, "Sell in May and go away."
• Intro & Last Edition Recap:
Last edition we took a hard look at the reality of where Crypto had landed after nearly 7 months of bear market conditions. $BTC had already blown through my original $75k bull market invalidation line, eventually establishing a potential bottom around $60k before retesting that exact zone again in June.
The 4-year Bitcoin cycle is ALIVE and well. Full stop.
We also looked at the complete disappointment that was “Alt-season.”
$BTC topped around $126k instead of the ridiculous $250k-$300k projections floating around CT.
$ETH didn’t even manage a 4x from prior cycle lows, and most Alts performed exactly how you’d expect when the underlying market leader underperforms.
However, TOTAL3ES is still sitting roughly 100% above the 2022 cycle lows, showing that despite dilution and awful relative performance, real capital was still finding its way into stronger names like $TAO, $HYPE and $TON. The takeaway was simple: there was no guarantee the bottom was in, but if we could exercise some patience and caution, the next year could provide some extremely interesting accumulation opportunities.
• Fast Forward to Now:
Nothing much is different. 6 weeks of hugging the trendlines, price action could not be more boring. There is practically no volatility to speak of. Capital is on vacation - literally.
It’s unbelievable how many industries are seasonal, finance being the main one. Everyone is on summer break, so we can expect things to pick back up going into Q4.
Take a look at last edition’s TOTAL3ES chart vs. today’s:
06/21/2026
08/09/2026
$357B was tested again around the end of June, just immediately after edition no. 5 was published. I asked if we thought this level would hold, and my assumption was that it would. I can’t overstate how important this level is for Alts and the crypto industry as a whole.
I’m not saying it can’t be broken - but my estimation is that it will be extremely short lived and signal true bottom if one deviation lower actually occurs.
If you look at the previous cycle’s price action during the 2022/2023 stage 1 accumulation zone, it’s quite clear we likely have AT LEAST another 6+ months of up and down volatility before the start of another bull market run.
Again, not saying history will repeat - but it always rhymes. Everyone thought the 4 year cycle was dead. Need I say more?
• What’s my Gameplan?
I’ve distilled my trading execution list down to the following:
Tier 1: BTC / ETH / SOL
Tier 2: HYPE / NEAR (high beta Alts)
Tier 3: XLM / TAO / ZEC / TRX / INJ
Tier 4: BNB / LINK / SUI / DOGE / DASH
Tier 1 is for accumulation - blockchain doesn’t go anywhere without these three.
Tier 2 is for swings and day trading. They are clean charts with significant volume and use case which make swing patterns easy to trade.
Tier 3 are specialist charts which I only trade on very specific timeframes built around automated alerts.
Tier 4 are noisier charts, harder to trade but still relevant projects for crypto as a whole.
EVERYTHING. ELSE. IS. NOISE.
My strategy is simple. Two buckets. That’s it.
Bucket one is that I want to accumulate as much BTC + ETH + SOL as I can over the next 6+ months. These are long-term holds that I don’t stress over. RARELY with leverage.
Spot = ownership. Perps are riskier because exchanges can die at any minute.
Bucket two is short term leveraged trades. Several weeks, several days, many times intraday. There may be long-term use case in these tokens (and that’s fine) but I don’t care. All I’m trying to do is extract USD and compound the portfolio.
That’s it for today’s quick update - I expect price action to continue being pretty boring into September, maybe even October.
In case you missed last edition’s video, I’ve linked it below for a more comprehensive overview on the TOTAL3ES CRYPTOCAP chart.
If you want to learn more about my proprietary VWAP Trading system, be sure to join The Heron Room and I’ll send you my free VWAP rulebook guide.
As always, Trade Smart, Reduce Your Risk, and Stay Safe!
— DTS
Part of Great Blue Digital
www.greatbluedigital.ca
www.daytradersteve.com