Review: YTC Price Action Trader 📚

9 Apr 2026

Once again I'm going through that phase we all know too well: the search for the Trading Holy Grail. Trump's threats to obliterate civilizations¹ have made price action super choppy these past days, and I've been stopped out three times in a row by sudden counter-trend moves (single bars, really), even though my analysis proved right. Sad to see my targets being hit, without me.

This week I decided PATS was not enough so I acquired (ahem! 🏴‍☠️) Lance Beggs' YTC Price Action Trader² to see if I could learn something useful. I am so used to Mack's style of trading, I really do see everything in terms of channels (and usually my analysis at the end of the day is identical to his).

However, I struggle to see the horizontal support/resistance key levels so many talk about. I could place any line, anywhere on the chart, and see prices bouncing or breaking them. I also struggle with multiple timeframes. I first learned from Pradeep Bonde (Stockbee) and later from Mack (PATS) and they only use one chart and that's it. All the information you need is in there. Need more info? Zoom out. Look left. Observe the live candle.

Horizontal Support and Resistance Levels

My trades last only 1 or 2 minutes, I'm in and out. I currently have yesterday's H/L/C on my chart, as well as overnight H/L and that's it. I have spent the week plotting lines à la Lance Beggs, looking at a 30min chart (and a 20k ticks chart), looking at the 3min (in addition to my 2k ticks). As far as I can see, everything in a chart will, at some point, be respected or be broken.

I fail to see how a horizontal line from 15 days ago will have incredible implications on my scalping today. Even the lines I currently have on my chart are not used as S/R. I should probably remove them for a few days and see how it feels.

I'm not saying support/resistance don't exist. I recognize levels and ranges and take trades of their S/R, but I'm focused on today's price action only. I don't like cluttering my chart with lines for every price ending in 0 or 5, for every swing made in the past month, for every level where prices bounced off 3 or more times weeks ago.

I still see prices moving strongly downwards (probably breaking out of some kind of line). I still see the move stalling and transitioning to a sideways chop (probably failing to break a line somewhere). I still look left to establish reasonable profit targets.

Anyway, Lance does admit he sees S/R levels as potential barriers to a trend which provide some counter-trend orderflow, rather than obligatory reversals. He also makes the point that a S/R level is not a specific price, but rather an area of potential trading opportunity.

Strength and Weakness

I enjoyed Lance Beggs' way of gauging strength/weakness by looking at two or more bars together, and observing the live bar to see where momentum goes.

For a while now, I've struggled with the emphasis placed on Signal Bars and the way they close. They do look identical between platforms when using time aggregation (5min, 1min, 1D and so on) but I trade using tick aggregation (where each bar represents 2000 trades) and sometimes my signal bars look wildly different from Mack and Thomas Wade (I wrote briefly on how to fix it -- but sometimes Mack's charts are the wild ones!).

They will see and take trades based off of the shape of an individual bar, that looks like absolute shit on my chart. Their signal bar is the sign of a high probability trade, and mine is a sign to stay away, even though both lead to the exact same result, the exact same move, starting from the same point, ending at the same swing.

Lance Beggs' method takes care of this. Instead of seeing the individual bar, you look at the momentum within, the way it forms, the relationship between this bar and the ones before and after. He does that by looking at a lower timeframe chart, but suggests towards the end of the book that if it feels overwhelming, it's ok to look only at the live bar forming on my trading timeframe.

Setups

Lance teaches a few setups that map directly to the ones I already trade. The biggest difference is: I learned to count the ticks and look at signal bars the Mack way, and enter on a stop order one tick above/below the signal bar. Lance's way is more fluid. Instead of signal bars, he gauges the strength/weakness of all the bars in a region of interest and uses limit orders most of the time, to get better prices. We are often looking at the same trades, in the same regions.

Range setups:

• TST => 3T: a test of S/R which is expected to hold. Mack calls this a triple test or multiple test.
• BOF => FBO: a breakout failure, as prices break S/R then reverse. We call this a failed breakout. PATS traders often skip the first FBO (too aggressive) and wait for a LH/HL to enter with additional confirmation.
• BPB => BOPB: a breakout pullback, as prices break S/R, form a weak pullback then continue in the direction of the breakout. Some people call it "break and retest". Mack used to teach this back in 2010, but not anymore. He prefers to trade them in trends (after a small consolidation). I think it's the setup with the lowest probability of working, so PATS traders rarely take those.

Trend setups:

• PB => 1E: a simple pullback with-trend. Mack calls those 1st Entries and rarely takes them (only in really strong trends). I have learned a variation of this from Pradeep/Stockbee called WSS (Weak Structure Short). Within PATS, we usually skip those and wait for the setup below.
• CPB => 2E or 2LPB: complex pullback with-trend. This is the most similar to PATS 2nd Entries and Two-Legged Pullbacks, basically the bread-and-butter of our strategy.

There are a few setups we trade with PATS, that Lance doesn't mention.

• Failed 2nd Entry (F2E). Basically a failed counter-trend move. We trade those as trend continuations and as reversals.
• HL/LH. Used as confirmation setups in a few scenarios: in a range, after a FBO; in a trend, after an ugly-looking 2E signal bar; after a channel breaks and makes the last push to a new high or low, we trade the first HL/LH as a mean reversion back to the 21-EMA.

Framework

In addition to finding horizontal S/R levels and gauging strength/weakness in areas of trading opportunity, Lance describes a trading framework in very clear rules. Basically Al Brooks, in easy words.

1. We expect a trade to keep going until the next S/R level, unless we see evidence of weakness within the trend. If showing strength, see principles 5 and 6.
2. When we see weakness within the trend, we expect higher probability of a complex correction rather than a trend reversal.
3. A range is also expected to keep going sideways, unless we see evidence of strength towards the S/R boundaries.
4. When we see strength at the edges of a range, we expect a breakout.
   • Weakness post-breakout: expect a breakout failure and a reversal back into the range.
   • Weakness on the pullback: expect a breakout pullback and continuation in the direction of the breakout.
5. We expect a test of a S/R level to hold, unless strength is displayed on approach.
6. If strength is shown on approaching a horizontal S/R level, we expect a breakout.
   • Weakness post-breakout: expect a breakout failure and reversal. If there's no strength in the direction of the reversal either, prices will probably setup a complex pullback and a new test of the level.
   • Weakness on the pullback: expect a breakout pullback and continuation in the direction of the breakout.

Conclusion

Lance also touches on market analysis, post-trade review, writing a trading plan, business management, trading psychology, affirmations. He touches briefly on risk management and position size (basically, 1% risk per trade and 3% max. daily loss; increase position whenever the 1% risk affords you a new contract). He likes to scalp out at 1R and run the rest until the next S/R level, but doesn't explain how many contracts are exited at each level. For example, both Mack and Pradeep exit 80% of the trade at the first target, and swing the remaining 20%.

The ebook has a few trade examples analyzed bar-by-bar, and some charts here and there, but it's mostly text-based. I can see he learned from Al Brooks, and a lot of the rest is just standard knowledge at this point.

As usual, it's possible to learn everything for free on youtube. When it comes to trading, thought, it is my humble opinion that the best resources are books and charts. Pradeep used to say "Burn all the books!", lol. But I think good books will always inspire, teach, make you think outside the box, give insights and ideas, examples. But they won't make you profitable. So yeah. After reading, burn all the books. Then open the charts and start doing the hard work.

Did I find the Trading Holy Grail? Absolutely not. I'm still committed to PATS because it is the thing that makes the most sense to me, my brain, my lifestyle. But I did learn one or two good things and that made reading the 624 pages e-book worth it.

Next up on my reading list, YTC Scalper.

books, trading