🚨 Market Masters is off today🚨
But Roger Scott will be live at noon ET for his VIP trade room to cover earnings, how to use VWAP for day trading indexes, and then he’ll analyze your favorite stocks and give trade ideas [tap to join him]
I’m going to show you something I rely on every single day — and it’s not some fancy indicator or a $500-a-month data feed. It’s a simple charting tweak that helps me see what most traders miss: The rhythm of the market.
I call it my color-coded bar system, and once you start using it, you won’t look at charts the same way again.
Why I Ditched Candlesticks for Color Bars
Here’s the thing about candlesticks — they came from Japanese rice traders centuries ago, and if they worked that well, those traders would’ve dominated markets. They didn’t.
So I built something simpler. If a stock makes a higher daily high and a higher daily low, the bar is light blue. If it makes a lower daily high and a lower daily low, the bar is pink. If it’s neither — mixed signals — the bar is yellow.
That’s it. But what it does is reveal something most traders miss: Stocks tend to move in one direction for three to five days before shifting. With color, that rhythm becomes obvious instantly, without having to interpret wicks, bodies or clutter.
When I first showed this to other traders, you could see the shift right away — that moment when the noise disappears and the structure finally makes sense. The rhythm is always there, but most people miss it because they’re focused on complexity instead of direction.
With color bars, I don’t waste time trying to figure out whether the market is leaning bullish, bearish or neutral. One glance gives me the answer.
Every morning, I pull up the S&P 500 (SPY), Dow Jones Industrial Average (DIA) and Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) and scan the bars. That quick read tells me whether I want to be aggressive, defensive or patient. Because the system is so visual, those decisions happen fast — and in trading, speed matters.
Why Big Gaps Don’t Fool Me Anymore
Lately, the market has been popping on news-driven gaps, and here’s what I’ve learned: Those moves usually aren’t sustainable, especially when they’re driven by headlines instead of organic price action.
I’ve said it before — these news-driven spikes aren’t solid, and they’re rarely durable. The color bars make that obvious. If a stock gaps up but doesn’t follow through with a clean blue bar — or worse, flips to yellow or pink — it tells me the move lacks real strength.
A gap means nothing if the structure doesn’t confirm it. Sometimes I’ll strip everything off the chart except the bars just to see the truth of the move, and more often than not, those news pops fade as quickly as they appear.
You also start to notice how often the market repeats itself. Big moves tend to echo — you’ll see similar price action show up again days later, almost like a copy.
The color system makes those patterns stand out, and once you recognize them, you stop trying to outsmart the market and start trading in sync with it.
You don’t need complex indicators to do this. You just need to see what price is actually doing — and once you start seeing the market in color, you’ll wonder how you ever traded without it.
Trade well,
Jack Carter
Jack Carter Trading
Follow along and join the conversation for real-time analysis, trade ideas, market insights and more!
- Telegram: //t.me/jackcartertrading1
- YouTube: //www.youtube.com/@FinancialWars
Important Note: No one from the ProsperityPub team or Jack Carter Trading will ever contact you directly on Telegram.
*This is for informational and educational purposes only. There is inherent risk in trading, so trade at your own risk.
P.S. Former Billion-Dollar Nasdaq Market Maker Makes A Shocking Options Revelation
Thanks to one powerful market phenomenon that triggers on some of the most popular stocks out there, it’s possible to uncover the one trade primed to give the best shot at a payout…
And I’ll show you the ropes and how you can jump in on the next opportunity!
Check out the Shocking Options Data Here
Disclaimer: We develop tools and strategies to the best of our ability, but no one can guarantee the future. There is always a risk of loss when trading. Past performance is not indicative of future results. From 1/1/21 through 3/20/26, the average return per options trade alert published in real time (winners and losers) is 3.29% in 3 days, with a 96.2% win rate.
