Most people treat VWAP like a moving average.
That’s already the mistake.
VWAP isn’t a trend indicator.
It’s a receipt.
It shows you where real money transacted — not where price happened to print, but where size actually changed hands.
And when you anchor VWAP to the IPO, it stops being a trading tool and starts acting like a map of long-term positioning.
This is why it sits near the top of my charting filters.
What VWAP is actually telling you
In plain terms:
VWAP shows the average price weighted by volume.
Which means it approximates where the largest concentration of capital entered.
Not opinions.
Not narratives.
Cost basis.
Above VWAP, participants are generally in profit.
Below VWAP, they’re generally underwater.
That distinction matters more than any indicator setting you’ll ever tweak.
Why IPO AVWAP matters more than almost everything else
Anchoring VWAP to the IPO does one thing extremely well:
It tells you whether long-term holders are winning or losing.
Above IPO AVWAP
Most holders are in profit
Less urgency to sell
Supply tightens
Breakouts tend to stick
Below IPO AVWAP
Most holders are underwater
Rallies get sold into
Supply overhang persists
Price churns or bleeds
This is why so many stocks feel heavy for years — and then suddenly don’t.
Nothing mystical changed.
They reclaimed the level where memory flips.
Reclaims are where the real moves start
Look at enough charts and you’ll notice a pattern that isn’t talked about enough:
The biggest expansions tend to happen after IPO AVWAP is reclaimed — not before.
Why?
Because once that line is reclaimed:
Long-term sellers disappear
Pullbacks get bought instead of faded
Time starts working for the position, not against it
That’s when trends stop needing constant confirmation.
What this looks like in real portfolios
To make this concrete, here are examples from the Alpha Framework Portfolio — not cherry-picked bottoms, just IPO AVWAP reclaims.
$LMND
IPO AVWAP reclaim around $50 → $86 ≈ +72%
$LMND ( ▼ 0.97% ) is ready to breakout higher to $100 then $185
$ONDS
IPO AVWAP reclaim around $2.20 → $15 ≈ +582%
$EOSE
IPO AVWAP reclaim around $3.15 → $19 ≈ +503%
No perfect timing.
No macro calls.
No heroic entries.
Just alignment with the point where long-term capital flipped from underwater to in profit.
That’s the part most people miss.
IPO AVWAP isn’t about predicting upside.
It’s about removing structural resistance.
Why VWAP matters most when everything else breaks
There are moments when traditional structure fails:
The 200-day gets lost
Channels break
Moving averages flatten into noise
This is where most people either panic — or freeze.
Anchored VWAP doesn’t disappear in those moments.
It often becomes the only level that still matters.
Not because it’s magical — but because it’s where capital remembers committing.
Why this framework works best in growth stocks and recent IPOs
This approach isn’t universal.
It’s most effective in growth stocks — especially companies that have gone public in the last 4–6 years.
Why?
Because in newer IPOs:
The shareholder base is still forming
Cost basis is tightly clustered
There’s less “forgotten” capital from decades ago
Memory is cleaner and more relevant
In mature stocks, legacy holders, buybacks, and decades of distribution dilute the signal.
In newer growth names, IPO AVWAP is the memory.
It represents:
The average cost of the earliest public capital
Where institutional positioning first anchored
The line that separates early belief from regret
That’s why reclaiming IPO AVWAP in growth stocks often marks a regime change, not just a bounce.
Below it, rallies struggle.
Above it, trends breathe.
This is also why the biggest percentage expansions tend to happen in:
Companies still proving their model
Businesses exiting their first full market cycle
Stocks moving from skepticism to acceptance
IPO AVWAP doesn’t just tell you where price is.
It tells you when the market has decided the business deserves another look.
And in growth, that decision matters more than almost anything else.
How this shows up in my process
Very simply:
If a stock is below IPO AVWAP, it starts with a handicap
If it reclaims and holds IPO AVWAP, it gets my attention
If it holds above and uses it as support, I stop fighting the tape
This doesn’t guarantee upside.
It removes structural headwinds.
That alone changes the entire risk profile.
The part most people miss
VWAP isn’t about precision entries.
It’s about alignment.
Alignment with:
Where money actually entered
Where pressure flips from sell-side to buy-side
Where time stops being an enemy
That’s why VWAP is one of the only indicators I use on every chart I look at.
Not because it predicts the future —
but because it keeps me aligned with real money, not narratives.
If you’ve ever wondered why some stocks suddenly stop going down —
and others never seem to go up —
This is usually the level everyone ignored.
— Connor
Alpha Before It Prints
Editor’s note:
For the next few weeks, we’re keeping the Alpha Framework Portfolio publicly accessible via SavvyTrader.
This is the live portfolio started with $125,000 where we express posture, sizing discipline, and exposure — including names like Zeta — before ideas become consensus.
Updates to the portfolio can be followed via email or text for those who want visibility into changes as they happen — adds, trims, and exits — without needing to check in daily.
That portfolio will move back behind the paywall once this window closes.
One important detail on how this is set up:
Savvy does not allow retroactive edits, performance smoothing, or after-the-fact positioning.
Every add, trim, and exit is logged in real time, time-stamped, and publicly visible by design.
That constraint is intentional — it forces discipline and makes the portfolio a record, not a narrative.
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