The DAX is the market I know best. After 14+ years of active trading, it's where I've focused most of my screen time, and it's the market the Trader's Edge Formula was originally built around. This isn't a step-by-step "here's exactly what to do" guide — the specific entries and confirmation criteria I use are something I work through directly with 1:1 coaching clients, tailored to their own account size and risk tolerance. What I want to share here is the framework: why the DAX, why entry location matters more than any indicator, and — more importantly — how the Trader's Edge Formula governs every trade I take, regardless of which specific setup triggered it.
Why the DAX
High volatility, tight spreads with most brokers, and a predictable session structure around the European open — the DAX offers genuinely good day trading opportunities, consistently. Rather than spreading my attention thin across many markets, I've focused deeply on one and mastered it.
That said, the DAX isn't the only market I trade. I also trade individual UK and US stocks — Tesla, Nvidia, Greggs, Domino's among others — watching for overbought and oversold conditions, breakouts, reversals, and the sharp moves that often follow quarterly earnings, where a stock can gap 30-40% in either direction on a surprise result. That's a subject for its own post another time. The core discipline is the same across every market: genuine technical levels, confirmed entries, and every trade sized and stress-tested through the Formula before it's ever placed.
Price Action First, Indicators as Confirmation
I use a small number of technical indicators — but they support and confirm what price action is already telling me, rather than generating signals on their own. Trading indicator crossovers in isolation, without reference to what price is actually doing at that level, is one of the more common ways traders talk themselves into a weak setup.
Why Entry Location Is Everything
One of the biggest differences between traders who consistently hit good risk:reward and those who don't isn't the indicator they use — it's where they enter.
I look for genuine support and resistance — levels many traders scroll straight past — and that's where the edge actually comes from. Shorting from the top of real resistance, buying from genuine support, gives you room: a wide, realistic target, and a tight, defensible stop close to where you know you're wrong.
Most losing trades I see aren't badly managed — they're badly entered. A trader buys in the middle of a range, not at support, and ends up with maybe 35 points of realistic upside against a 50-point stop: worse than 1:1 before the trade's even opened. Then, because the entry was poor, they cut the trade early the moment it wobbles — not because their system told them to, but because they never gave the trade room to breathe in the first place. And because they never had a clear target from a genuine level, they don't let winners run either.
Get the entry location right, and both sides of the equation improve at once: a wider realistic target, and a tighter defensible stop. That's the mechanism behind hitting risk:reward ratios that beat the Formula's baseline target, not just meet it.
The Strategy Isn't the Foundation — The Formula Is
No matter what specific setup triggers an entry, every DAX trade I take still runs through the same five-step pipeline:
1 Zero to a Million Blueprint
Sets the target before a single chart is opened — the monthly return I actually need, calculated from my financial goal.
2 TEF Simulator
Determines the win rate and risk-per-trade required to hit that target — before any specific DAX setup is even considered.
3 Position Sizer
Sizes the specific DAX trade precisely, checked live against the R:R target.
4 Drawdown Defender
Stress-tests whether the strategy's parameters can survive a genuinely bad sequence, not just the average case.
5 Strategy Analyser
Tracks whether actual DAX results are matching the plan over time — and by how much.
The strategy tells me when to enter. The Formula tells me how much, and whether the whole thing is mathematically sound in the first place. Traders who only focus on entries and ignore that second half are the ones who blow accounts even with a genuinely good strategy.
Practising the discipline, not just the theory: the same principle that applies to learning any strategy applies here — small, real stakes build the emotional discipline that demo trading can't.
Risk Warning: Spread bets and CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with IG. You should consider whether you understand how spread bets and CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
Want the Specific Entries and Confirmation Criteria?
The exact setups, confirmation criteria, and trade management rules I use — including precisely how I define genuine support and resistance, and how I manage stops as a trade develops — are something I go through directly with 1:1 coaching clients. That level of detail doesn't translate well to a generic blog post anyway, since it has to fit your specific parameters from the Formula, not a one-size-fits-all rule applied to every account regardless of size or goal.
Work Through This Directly, 1:1
Coaching is by application only, and operates from a waiting list — Adam personally selects who he works with, based on genuine fit and readiness. A short call is the first step.
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Not ready for coaching yet? The Trader's Edge Formula gives you the same mathematical framework — the Blueprint, Simulator, Position Sizer, Drawdown Defender and Strategy Analyser — with ongoing group training included, so you can build the foundation before deciding if 1:1 coaching is the right next step.
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