Ben Davis

So What's The Data? A flurry of replies all asking the same question. As well as a flurry of replies calling me an idiot for making the statement that narrative doesn't matter as much as people think it does. My way makes me money. If your way makes you money there is nothing wrong with that. No need to change. I simply choose not to enter a trade based on vibes. I'll now give the real life example I referenced in the last post. The coin was DFM that I identified at a 250K mcap. And I still don't even know what that coin is about as it didn't matter. Got in at 250K and got out at 4M. Because of data. It's now 1M at the time of writing. Volume is dying. Bots are leaving. Liquidity is still "thin air". Short of a new data catalyst, it's dead. My method is relatively simple. You may have a better method. Maybe I'm retarded (saves some of you from saying it). But this method has worked for me and I've been able to obtain around an 80% win rate. On low mcap memes. I happen to be proud of that number. For screening, I use GMGN. I don't trade there, but they do have some of the better screening tools. On the Trending tab I set up the following filters: NoMint - checked Burnt - checked No Blacklist - checked MC - 225K 5M volume - 9k Why 225 and 9? Because many traders filter for 250K and 10K. I like to be first, for things worth trading. I'm still actively experimenting with these initial filters but lean on the side of not going too filter heavy. Then, on my display view, I make sure I'm on 5M for time selection and that I have columns enabled for both 5m% and 1h%. If something is hot on the 5M but still way down on the 1H I won't even bother looking at it. I'm looking for confluence. I also check token age from this view. I don't filter it out as a hard rule but typically I'm not hopping on the bandwagon for an old token just because it has started to pump. But I do like being aware of it. The next thing I do is copy the CA and if we are still a very low mcap (sub 1M) I'll pull up the Bubblemaps. Does it look cleaner or more dirty than most Bubblemaps I look at every day? (more on that later). If the coin is over 1M mcap the first thing I will do is pull up the CLOBr liquidity map. This tends to not matter until you get into the 2M+ mcap range, but I want to know right away if LP farms are bogging price action down, what sell pressure is right above current price, how much support is below - is support v resistance asymetric, etc. If it's a brand new coin it may have not even had time to make it to CLOBr yet - and again for very low mcap the CLOBr map doesn't really matter as much as usually the only source of liquidity is the PumpSwap pool anyway. Then I pull up GeckoTerminal (or DexScreener or similar, whatever one you like to use) and look at volume. How is volume progressing, is it getting more intense, looking the same, or declining. I look at the trend over the past 5M vs 1H vs 6/24. The volume bar graph also helps paint a visual picture but I prefer cross-checking by clicking on the 5M/1H/6H/24H time frames specifically because you can easily see transaction counts, net buy vs sell, etc. I additionally look at holder counts. Not is it going up or down, that doesn't matter on your early launches. I'm looking to see if the expected holder count appears to be normal & organic for token age + mcap. I also visually scan the order flow for obvious signs of volume botting. I also scan for addresses I know to be bot addresses that trade anything worth trading all day long. Are those known bot addresses buying or selling? If they aren't even present that's a signal to me the token likely isn't worth trading. I don't even bother looking at bundled reports. Assume they all are. Now here's where my strategy and what the data tells me may differ from most. I'm looking for red flags. Because crime moves this space more often than not. So I'm looking for the warning signs of crime so I can trade them. The more sophisticated the crime, the higher the anticipated price action. People don't put a ton of effort and expense into just rugging something at a 500K mcap. Here's how the data guided me on my successful trade of DFM this AM and why I was able to get in at $250K and out at 4M before the crash back down to 1M. My filtered view from step one fired off at $225K as it was supposed to. It took me a couple of minutes to complete my checks before I bought in at $250K. The first thing I noticed as a crime signal was bubble maps. Too perfect. It's still too perfect as of the time of this post. Real life is messy. This means the people who bundle went to great lengths to do it intelligently. Time+effort = longer runway. Holder count vs age? Also very high. Not organic. The second thing that stuck out to me is the distribution on this low mcap meme coin is something we all dream of. Not a single wallet held more than 0.3% of total supply. That...just...doesn't...happen...ever. Again, signs that great pains have been taken to paint a perfect picture (when real life is messy by default). I checked the order flow and saw a lot of known bot addresses buying and selling - this passed a critical check. If it's not good enough for the bots to transact, it's not good enough for me either. I saw volume holding steady across a period of time. This means that either organic traders were engaging or more likely that someone paid for sustained volume bots. Many cheap devs will run a volume bot once, just to grab everyones attention. And you'll notice the volume cycle drops off significantly. Here the volume was sustained. So either more money is being invested into the volume bot for a longer duration or organic buyers and sellers are hopping in - doesn't matter to me which it is, just that it's happening. There was no magic. No big secret formula. I simply looked at the data and said "This looks too perfect. Things are only made to look this perfect if it has a runway ahead of it" So I buy red flags. Because the effort put into crime can be a strong signal into how long the crime will continue. As I rode my position up I started looking at the CLOBr liquidity map. We crossed 1M, no liquidity added. 2M, no liquidity added. Past that point I was glued to the screen watching for the first sign of anything turning the tide. Was volume dying? Were sells being met with buys? Volume didn't die and holder count just kept increasing, but at 4M I bailed. Because at that point there SHOULD have been a better liquidity picture. I know from vast experience in staring at these things all day every day that you simply cannot be at a 4M mcap without better liquidity than simply the PumpSwap pool. All of my experience told me the risk/reward systems in these bots would start giving heavy weighting to the "thin air" below current price. I wanted to bail before they did. Sure I missed the move from 4 to 5.3, but after 5.3 it just utterly tanked. I even told my TG group that I would ape back in the moment they added the typical large fake liquidity layer to paint support below. But they just never did. In short? This goes back to my general trading thesis that I taught people about months ago. (It's on the TL, don't make me scroll). This is crypto. Assume everything is manipulated and that nothing is organic. The way to make money is therefore looking for signs of manipulation and walking in harmony with the Apex Predator so as not to become the prey. Was this helpful to you? Please let me know. It means a lot. There's a small army of people who love to just crap on anything that comes out of my mouth and I took an hour out of my day to type this up, hoping at least one person would benefit from it. 🫡 From the depths — The White Whale 🐋