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This interview features Jesse—widely known as “Casper SMC”—sitting down in New York on the Words of Wisdom podcast to unpack how he evolved from crypto degen beginnings into a disciplined indices trader. He explains the journey from harmonics to ICT concepts, why prop firms only clicked for him after he already had an edge, and how tightening his trading window around the New York session helped him focus. You’ll also hear why risk management and identity—treating trading like entrepreneurship—became the real levers behind his results.
In this piece, you’ll learn the core of Casper’s playbook: build a higher-timeframe narrative first, then execute simply with liquidity, market structure shifts, and fair-value gaps—anchored by the ICT “power of three” and time-of-day discipline. He breaks down sizing by stop, using clean session rules (e.g., 9:00–10:30 ET), and focusing on performance over outcome so you don’t spiral after a loss. If you’re a newer trader, you’ll come away with a beginner-friendly way to create a plan you can actually follow—and if you’re experienced, you’ll pick up crisp filters to trade less, risk less, and keep more.
Jesse “Casper SMC” Playbook & Strategy: How He Actually Trades
The Core Framework
Here’s the simple big-picture idea before any lines are drawn: define the day’s likely path, then only take trades that match that story. Jesse builds a high-timeframe narrative and then keeps execution brutally simple—same setup, same time window, same risk.
- Start each session by marking weekly and daily swing highs/lows and the prior day’s high/low; note where liquidity is resting above/below those levels.
- Identify the session bias before the New York cash open: bullish if price is drawing to liquidity above PDH/weekly swing; bearish if drawing below PDL/weekly swing.
- Focus on New York only, 9:00–10:30 ET, with a hard stop at 11:00 ET—no exceptions.
- Trade 1–2 instruments max (e.g., NASDAQ or S&P); ignore everything else to protect focus and execution quality.
Pre-Market Prep (15 Minutes that Matter)
The goal here is to arrive at the open with a clean plan, not to predict the future. You’ll prep levels, scenarios, and disqualifiers so your entries are nearly automatic when price shows its hand.
- Mark PDH/PDL, weekly swing points, overnight high/low, and any obvious equal highs/lows.
- Draw one HTF imbalance or fair-value gap (H1/H4) that the price might want to rebalance into during NY.
- Write a one-line bias: “Longs into PDH cleanup if NYO takes Asia low first,” or “Shorts into PDL if NYO sweeps overnight high.”
- List two invalidation conditions that cancel trades (e.g., “No trade if NYO drives 1% away from levels before 9:35 ET” or “No trade if VIX gaps +10% premarket”).
Entry Triggers: Liquidity → Shift → FVG
Execution is built around a three-step story: sweep liquidity, confirm a shift, take the first clean imbalance. This keeps decisions objective and repeatable.
- Wait for a liquidity grab: price sweeps a prior swing/PDH/PDL by at least 0.10% on indices, then snaps back.
- Confirmation: market structure shift (MSS/CHOCH) on the 1–3 minute chart in the direction of your pre-set bias.
- First entry only: use the first fair-value gap (FVG) after the shift; enter on a limit at the FVG boundary.
- If no FVG forms within 5 minutes of the shift, skip the trade—no chasing.
Risk & Sizing Rules
The edge survives because risk is standardized. Jesse treats risk like a subscription fee—small, fixed, and paid only when the model shows up.
- Risk a fixed % per idea (e.g., 0.25%–0.5% account risk); never stack more than two tickets per session.
- Stop goes beyond the sweep origin or the opposite side of the FVG by 0.05%–0.12% on indices (choose one standard and keep it).
- If the stop required exceeds your max ATR-based allowance (e.g., 0.35× 1-min ATR(14)), skip the setup.
- Daily loss limit = 1R; two losers or −1R ends the session immediately.
Time-of-Day Discipline
Most of the edge comes from trading when the market is most cooperative. Jesse compresses his window and accepts not catching every move.
- Trade entries only from 9:00–10:30 ET; after 11:00 ET, the platform closes.
- If no clean setup by 10:30 ET, the day is a pass—no “late saves.”
- NFP/Fed days: first 10 minutes are auto-no-trade; require a post-event sweep and reset before considering entries.
Trade Management: Partials and Protection
Winning days come from paying yourself without killing the move. Jesse’s rules make sure runners have room while risk gets removed fast.
- First partial at +1R, move stop to breakeven minus fees/slippage.
- Second partial at the next liquidity pool (e.g., PDH/PDL or equal highs/lows); trail the rest behind the most recent 1-min swing.
- If price re-enters your original FVG after +1R is paid, close the remainder—structure is failing.
- Hard time-stop: flatten everything by 11:00 ET regardless of P&L.
Session Filters: Trade Less, Keep More
These are the “don’t touch” rules that save you from low-quality action. Filters reduce noise and protect your mental capital.
- Skip the first setup if the overnight range is <0.35% on your index and premarket volume is thin.
- Avoid longs directly into a daily supply or shorts directly into daily demand unless the level is first swept.
- Reject entries that print three or more overlapping 1-minute FVGs—grindy conditions.
- If the first two 1-minute candles after 9:30 are wide-range in both directions (whipsaw), require a second sweep before any trade.
Prop-Firm & Scaling Logic
Sizing up is earned by consistency, not bravado. Jesse’s approach makes scale a by-product of process, not the goal itself.
- Do not increase risk until you log 20 consecutive sessions following all rules with ≤1 rule violation.
- When scaling, add size only on partials (e.g., keep base risk 0.25%, add 0.10% only after +1R is secured).
- Cap total exposure to 1× your base risk during any one session; never “average in” losers.
- For prop accounts, mirror the same daily drawdown and time-of-day constraints as your personal book.
Psychology You Can Measure
Mindset isn’t motivational posters—it’s trackable behaviors. Jesse anchors psychology to metrics you can review and improve.
- Journal three binary checks post-trade: “Did I trade the bias?” “Was there a sweep?” “Was there a clean FVG after MSS?”
- Record session mood pre-open on a 1–5 scale and skip trading if ≥4 (agitated/tilted) or ≤2 (exhausted).
- Use a 30-day dashboard: win rate, average R per trade, average adverse excursion (AAE), rule-violation count; only change rules after a full 30-trade sample.
- If you break any hard rule (time window, risk cap, chasing), end the session and write a one-paragraph root cause.
Chart Markups & Repeatability
Clean charts make clean decisions. The visuals should make the story obvious at a glance, every day.
- Limit drawings to: PDH/PDL, weekly swing, overnight high/low, one HTF imbalance, and your entry FVG—nothing else.
- Color-code: liquidity pools one color; entry FVG another; MSS candle highlighted; keep it the same daily.
- Save and reuse one template; if a level isn’t used in the trade idea, delete it post-session.
- Export a single screenshot per trade (before/after) and attach to your journal with the one-line bias you wrote pre-open.
Play Calls: Longs vs. Shorts
Same logic, mirrored mechanics. These pre-written “plays” remove hesitation when it’s time to click.
- Long Play: NYO sweeps Asia/overnight low → 1–3m MSS up → first bullish FVG limit entry → stop under sweep/micro swing → partials at +1R and PDH.
- Short Play: NYO sweeps Asia/overnight high → 1–3m MSS down → first bearish FVG limit entry → stop above sweep/micro swing → partials at +1R and PDL.
- If price reaches target liquidity without printing a clean FVG after the MSS, skip—move was too impulsive.
- If the initial sweep fails (price closes beyond the swept level on 1-minute for two consecutive candles), cancel the setup.
Maintenance: Weekly Review & Tweaks
Edges fade if you don’t maintain them. A short, consistent review keeps the playbook honest and evolving.
- Tag every trade with one of three outcomes: “Model A clean,” “Model A late,” or “Non-model—violation.”
- Cull the bottom 10% of trades by R after each 4-week block and note the common context (time, level, volatility).
- Keep one “kill rule” live for the next block that specifically removes that low-quality context (e.g., “No trades on gap-up >0.8% days”).
- Archive a “Best 10” folder of textbook executions—review before Monday’s open to reset pattern recognition.
Size Risk First: Fixed R, ATR Stops, Daily Max Drawdown Locked
Jesse (aka “Casper SMC”) builds every session around risk before he even thinks about entries. He decides on a fixed R per idea—typically a small, repeatable slice of equity—so wins and losses are apples-to-apples and easy to track. From there, he sizes the position to the stop, not the other way around, which keeps him from forcing trades just to feel “big.” The result is a calm, mechanical rhythm where he can show up daily without the emotional yo-yo of random bet sizes.
In practice, that means calculating the stop using a tight ATR multiplier or the other side of the sweep/FVG, then back-solving for shares/contracts so the dollar risk equals one R. If the required stop is too wide for his R (e.g., >0.35× 1-min ATR), he passes—no compromises. He hard-locks a daily max drawdown at −1R to −1.5R and stops trading the moment it’s hit, which protects his equity curve and psychology. And when he’s green, he still caps total session risk and refuses to “press” unless the model prints again, keeping his edge clean and compounding steady.
Trade the Mechanic, Not the Forecast: Liquidity Sweep → Structure Shift → Entry.
Jesse (aka “Casper SMC”) doesn’t guess where the market will go—he waits for the market to tip its hand. His mechanic is three steps and never out of order: first, a liquidity sweep, then a clear structure shift, then the first clean entry. By anchoring to this checklist, he removes the need to predict news, sentiment, or narrative; the chart either prints the sequence or it doesn’t. That binary framing lets him say “no” quickly and saves his capital for A-setups.
The sweep tells Jesse where trapped orders sit; the structure shift confirms control has flipped; the entry comes from the first fair-value gap after that flip. If the FVG doesn’t form fast, he passes—no chasing impulse candles. If the shift is sloppy or occurs into obvious HTF supply/demand without a sweep, he passes again. Jesse’s language is simple: “mechanic or no trade,” which keeps him consistent across different days, ranges, and moods.
Volatility-Based Allocation: Scale Exposure Only When Range And Volume Agree
Jesse (aka “Casper SMC”) sizes up only when the tape proves it can carry the weight. He looks for alignment between realized range and intraday volume—if both are expanding versus their recent averages, he’ll permit a modest scale on the next A-setup. If the range is big but the volume is anemic, or volume pops without directional range, he keeps base risk. This keeps him from over-sizing in choppy, headline-whipsaw sessions that chew up stops.
Practically, Jesse compares the current morning range to a rolling 10-day average and checks opening hour volume versus its 20-day mean. If both clear his thresholds, he adds a fractional unit only after the first trade hits +1R (never before). If the additional size drags risk above his daily cap, he cancels the add—rules over feel. And the moment range compresses mid-session or volume dries up, he reverts to base size, protecting the equity curve while letting favorable volatility do the heavy lifting.
Diversify Smartly: Underlying, Strategy, And Holding Duration—Not Random Tickers
Jesse (aka “Casper SMC”) doesn’t confuse a watchlist with diversification. He keeps his universe tight—usually one or two indices—and diversifies by how he engages them: different setups, different time horizons, and different risk profiles. That means he can learn the personality of his primary underlying while reducing correlation between trades through entry logic and duration, not by spraying symbols.
In practice, Jesse might run a fast NY open playbook and a slower continuation model later in the session, each with separate rules and caps. He treats a same-day scalp and a partial runner held to the next liquidity pool as distinct “buckets” with their own stats. If two ideas are driven by the same liquidity draw, he only takes one to avoid hidden overlap. And if conditions favor mean reversion over momentum (or vice versa), he shifts which model is eligible rather than adding random tickers—process first, exposure second.
Process Over Outcomes: Time-Boxed Sessions, First Clean FVG, Hard Passes
Jesse (aka “Casper SMC”) keeps his focus on executing rules, not chasing P&L. He time-boxes the work—New York 9:00–10:30 ET—and treats everything outside that window as noise. By committing to the first clean fair-value gap that follows a real structure shift, he removes the temptation to shop for perfect entries. If the setup doesn’t meet the criteria by the cutoff, it’s a hard pass, not a “maybe later.”
This process-first approach protects Jesse from revenge trades and overtrading when conditions degrade. He pays himself at +1R, moves to breakeven, and then lets the model—not emotion—decide if a runner survives. When volatility turns grindy or levels are messy, he defaults to no trade and logs the day as a win in discipline. Over weeks and months, Jesse’s consistency compounds—not because every day pays, but because his playbook keeps the losses small and the headspace clean.
In the end, Jesse (“Casper SMC”) makes trading look simple by making it rule-based. He starts with risk—one fixed R per idea—then sizes to the stop, not ego. His tape-reading is mechanical: wait for a liquidity sweep, confirm a market-structure shift, take the first fair-value gap, and skip everything else. He time-boxes the work to the New York morning and protects his equity with a hard daily max loss, partials at +1R, and breakeven protection once paid. When range and volume expand together, he allows a controlled scale; when they don’t, he reverts to base size. The result is fewer trades, tighter execution, and a calmer head—especially on headline days.
Jesse also shows that “diversification” is about behavior, not a giant watchlist. He sticks to one or two indices and diversifies by play type and holding duration, avoiding overlapping bets that ride the same liquidity draw. Journaling is binary—did the model print or not?—so performance reviews are objective and tweaks are rare. Prop accounts, personal accounts, high-vol days, grindy days—same playbook, same caps. Above all, he treats trading like entrepreneurship: protect capital, protect focus, and let repetition—not prediction—compound the edge.
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