Trade Plans Learning Center

What Trade Plans is

Trade Plans is a daily set of day-trade levels for four US index products (SPY, ES, QQQ and NQ) and the Australian ASX 200 / SPI. Each plan publishes the evening before the session it covers, so the levels are on your chart before the open rather than appearing during it.

A plan is a set of prices, not a set of instructions. It marks where the market has repeatedly turned, and leaves the entry, the timing, the size and the exit to you and the strategy you already trade. Nothing in it says buy or sell, and nothing in it calls direction.

The three kinds of level

Every price in a plan is one of three things, described relative to where the instrument closed:

• Resistance sits above price. Sellers have stepped in there before, so a move up into it is a spot to expect friction.
• Support sits below price. Buyers have defended it before, so a move down into it is a spot where a fall may slow or stop.
• Pivot is the level nearest the last close. Price usually interacts with it first, which makes it the natural line to judge the session against.

None of the three is a forecast. They record where the market has reacted before, which is a different claim from saying it will react again. The glossary defines every term a plan uses.

The five instruments

The list is short on purpose. These are the most liquid index products a day trader can work with, and they pair up:

• SPY and ES both track the S&P 500. SPY is an ETF that trades in a stock account in any share quantity. ES is a futures contract that trades in whole contracts for close to 23 hours a day.
• QQQ and NQ both track the Nasdaq 100, in the same ETF and futures pairing. NQ moves considerably more per session than ES.
• ASX 200 / SPI is the Australian index. The ASX 200 is the cash index and the SPI 200 is the futures contract written on it, which is the instrument that actually trades.

Because SPY and ES track the same index, trading both is the same exposure twice rather than diversification. The same is true of QQQ and NQ. Most sessions one instrument sets up more cleanly than the others, and the rest are context.

Free and paid

The free tier gives you the previous session's levels together with a breakdown of how price actually behaved around them. That is the honest way to judge whether the levels are worth anything to you, because you are looking at a session that has already closed and can check it against your own chart.

The paid tier gives you the levels for the upcoming session, published the evening before, with the resistance, pivot and support points, plus the MyLinedChart levels for automation and journaling. Details are on the subscribing page and pricing.

How a session works around the levels

The routine that gets the most out of a plan is deliberately boring:

1. The evening before. Mark the pivot and the level either side of it for the one instrument you have chosen. Those three do most of the work in a normal session, because price has to travel through them before it reaches anything further out.
2. At the level. Set alerts rather than watching the screen. A level is a decision point, not an entry trigger. Price arriving at support does not mean buy. It means you now have a clean place to find out whether buyers are there.
3. On confirmation. Take only the setups your own strategy already recognises, and skip the rest.
4. After the close. Check whether you followed your process, not whether the trade won.

The most common mistake is entering the moment price touches a level instead of watching how it behaves there. If the level holds and price turns, you have both a reference and an invalidation. If it breaks, that is information too, and the loss stays contained because the level gave you a defined place to be wrong.

Matching the plan to your holding period

These are day-trade levels, built from the regular session and intended for positions that open and close inside it. If you normally hold for days or weeks, the levels still mark real structure, but they turn over every session, so they are a poor fit for a decision you will not revisit until next week.

Pick based on how you actually hold, not how you intend to. A trader using intraday levels to manage a multi-week position ends up reacting to noise that has nothing to do with the reason the position exists.

Why some sessions are marked sidelined

Some days the levels do not resolve into anything worth trading, and the plan says so rather than manufacturing a setup. A session with no clean structure is a legitimate outcome, and sitting it out is a position. The S&P pair in particular sidelines together, so SPY and ES appear less often than QQQ and NQ.

Where to go next

• Beginner FAQ if you are new to levels entirely.
• How the levels are calculated for the method behind the numbers.
• How to use the levels for the session-by-session mechanics.
• A sample plan to see the format before subscribing.
• Glossary for any term that is unfamiliar.
• Trade Plans FAQ for questions about delivery, tiers and coverage.

Is this financial advice?

No. Trade Plans publishes objective market structure and levels. There are no signals, no calls on direction and no recommendations. You make and own your trades.