Reading Bentley's setups

Lesson eight: reading Bentley's setups. Part three starts with the trade ideas in Bentley's public report. Every setup uses the same layout. Learn to read one, and you'll know where the idea starts and what would prove it wrong.

Let's read one from the top. This one is a made-up example. First, the badge: long or short, the direction of this trade. Next to it is the setup's name. That's the pattern Bentley is trading, like a range reclaim. Then the timeframe. A four-hour setup plays out more slowly than a one-hour one. And check when it was written. A setup written this morning can be stale by tonight.

Now the levels. The entry zone is a range: here, $80,000 to $80,400. If price never gets there, there's no trade. The stop, at $79,400, is where the idea is wrong. Then target one at $81,000, and target two at $82,200. Last, risk to reward, written risk first: one to two point five. From the middle of the zone, the stop is $800 away and target two is $2,000 away. Risk one, aim for two and a half. Bentley measures it to the last target. To target one, the way lesson six checked it, it's only one to one.

Prices in a list are hard to picture. Bentley's own screen draws them on one line: the price ladder. The stop sits at one end, the last target at the other. The entry zone is a band in between, and a marker shows where price is now. The short piece, stop to entry, is what you risk. The long piece, entry to last target, is what you're aiming for. The report only lists the numbers, so sketch the ladder yourself.

Each setup also has a state. The report doesn't show it, so you work it out. Waiting: price hasn't reached the entry zone yet. Armed: price is inside the zone, and the entry is live. Entry missed: price ran toward the targets without filling. It now sits closer to target one than to the zone. Don't chase it. Entering late puts you further from the stop and closer to the target. The risk to reward you planned is gone. To check, compare the price at the top of the report with the entry zone and target one.

Each setup carries a score out of one hundred, and a confidence label. Below seventy-five is low. Seventy-five to eighty-nine is medium. Ninety and up is high. The score is Bentley's confidence in two things. First, how clean the setup is: entry, stop, targets and risk to reward. Second, how well the market backs it: funding, open interest and crowding. It isn't the odds of winning. A score of eighty-two does not mean an eighty-two percent chance. A high score can still hit its stop, and plenty of setups never trigger at all.

Above the setups sits Bentley's overall bias for the coin: bullish, bearish or neutral. The bias is the lean. The badge is one trade. So the report often holds a long and a short on the same coin. That's not a contradiction. The long waits below for a dip. The short waits above for a push up. Whichever zone price reaches first is the one that arms.

Now the most important line: "Wrong if". It says what would prove the idea wrong. Here: Bitcoin loses $79,400, or the dip comes with heavy selling and rising open interest. The first part is just the stop. The second can happen while price is still above it, and the idea is broken anyway. Read it before you look at the targets. Acting on it is lesson nine. Bentley writes these setups for its own paper trading. Treat each one as a hypothesis: test it on paper, and judge it by what actually happened.

Let's recap. The badge is the direction, and the time written tells you if it's fresh. The entry zone, stop and targets form a ladder, and risk to reward compares its two pieces. The state tells you where price sits. The score is confidence, not the odds of winning. Read "Wrong if" first, and test every setup on paper. In the next lesson: managing the trade. And remember, this course is education only, not financial advice.