So there seems to be a lot of new people on this sub. And makes sense if you have questions a lot of time you'll turn to reddit for the answers (I know I do). Well here are some tips that I think would benefit new traders.

Don't trade ANY Euro pairs. Look I know it's the most traded pair it goes up and down really fast and there's so much potential for you to make money. Turns out there's even more for you to lose money. It's way too volatile specially if you don't know what you're doing. EUUSD is the worst offender.
Trade the Daily. Might think you're cool looking at charts every x amount of times during the day. You get to tell your friends and family that you trade all day and they might be impressed at what you're doing but unless you have some years under you stick to the daily. There's less noise. You can see clearer trends and when you don't stare at the screen all day you're less emotional therefore a more effective trader. I only look at the chart 15 minutes a day to either enter close or manage my trades. Whatever happens when I'm gone is what happens.
There is no holy grail indicator Look for it all you want. It doesn't exist. There are good indicators. There are bad indicators. There are some indicators that are so broken if you do the opposite of what they're intended for you'll actually make a profit. But the fact remains that there's no perfect one. Stop looking. What you should be looking for is an indicator that fits with your strategy.
What currencies to pick. I actually never see this brought up. The notion in forex is that all pairs can be traded equally. To a certain extent that's not false. But until you get the hang of it stick to a strict trading diet. Look for pairs that trend a lot. Duh look for the trend I can hear you say. When I say trend I don't mean a couple of days or weeks. I mean a couple of months. Half a year. Pairs that do that have a higher tendency to stick with one direction for a while. That's where you make your money. An easy way to identify those pairs as well is putting together a volatile currency (USD) with a less volatile one(JPY).
USE YOUR SL Trust me even if not putting a SL has netted you all kinds of gains eventually the market will turn around and bite you. With no safety net you'll lose most if not all your profit. The best offense is a good defense.
How to pick your TP and SL level. Most new traders care so much about that. I put it near the bottom because in my opinion you should know everything listed first. This is my opinion and I use it for my strategy I use the ATR(average true range) indicator. It's a really helpful tool that helps you identify the range at which the candles will either rise or fall. Obviously you want to set your TP inside of that range and your SL slightly outside of it.
Lot sizes. Everyone has a different story about how they pick their lot size. The general consensus is don't risk over 2% of your account. But I'm a simple man and I can't be bothered to figure out what my risk is every single time. So what I do is I put $0.10 for every $100 I have on the account. I then assign $300(minimum) to each pair. That's $0.30 per pair. It's easy to remember. 10 cent for every $100. If you're able to blow $100 with $0.10 then you probably shouldn't trade.
How to avoid reversals. Tbh you can't. There's no way to predict the future so eventually you'll get hit by one. What you can do however is minimize the blow. How I do it is for every pair I take two trades. If you remember in the previous tip is said I do about$0.30 per pair well I divide it 2:1. I take one trade with a TP(2) and one without (1). If my TP is hit I pocket that amount and if the trend keeps going in my direction I make even more. If the trend decides to end or reverses my losses are minimal because at least I kept half.
There is NO right way to trade. Stop listening to people telling the best way to trade is fundamentals or naked charts of to use some specific indicator. There are no right way to do this. It's as flexible and unlimited as your imagination. I personally use indicators but if that's not your thing do YOU! Just remember to manage your trades properly and be level headed when trading. Hell if your trading strategy is flipping a coin with proper trade management you'd probably make some money (don't quote me on that).
Trade money you're willing to lose Don't trade your rent money.

That's all I have for now. If anyone sees this and wants to add more feel free. Hope this helps someone.

Hi guys,
I have been using reddit for years in my personal life (not trading!) and wanted to give something back in an area where i am an expert.
I worked at an investment bank for seven years and joined them as a graduate FX trader so have lots of professional experience, by which i mean I was trained and paid by a big institution to trade on their behalf. This is very different to being a full-time home trader, although that is not to discredit those guys, who can accumulate a good amount of experience/wisdom through self learning.
When I get time I'm going to write a mid-length posts on each topic for you guys along the lines of how i was trained. I guess there would be 15-20 topics in total so about 50-60 posts. Feel free to comment or ask questions.
The first topic is Risk Management and we'll cover it in three parts
Part I

Why it matters
Position sizing
Kelly
Using stops sensibly
Picking a clear level

Why it matters

The first rule of making money through trading is to ensure you do not lose money. Look at any serious hedge fund’s website and they’ll talk about their first priority being “preservation of investor capital.”
You have to keep it before you grow it.
Strangely, if you look at retail trading websites, for every one article on risk management there are probably fifty on trade selection. This is completely the wrong way around.
The great news is that this stuff is pretty simple and process-driven. Anyone can learn and follow best practices.
Seriously, avoiding mistakes is one of the most important things: there's not some holy grail system for finding winning trades, rather a routine and fairly boring set of processes that ensure that you are profitable, despite having plenty of losing trades alongside the winners.

Capital and position sizing

The first thing you have to know is how much capital you are working with. Let’s say you have $100,000 deposited. This is your maximum trading capital. Your trading capital is not the leveraged amount. It is the amount of money you have deposited and can withdraw or lose.
Position sizing is what ensures that a losing streak does not take you out of the market.
A rule of thumb is that one should risk no more than 2% of one’s account balance on an individual trade and no more than 8% of one’s account balance on a specific theme. We’ll look at why that’s a rule of thumb later. For now let’s just accept those numbers and look at examples.
So we have $100,000 in our account. And we wish to buy EURUSD. We should therefore not be risking more than 2% which $2,000.
We look at a technical chart and decide to leave a stop below the monthly low, which is 55 pips below market. We’ll come back to this in a bit. So what should our position size be?
We go to the calculator page, select Position Size and enter our details. There are many such calculators online - just google "Pip calculator".

https://preview.redd.it/y38zb666e5h51.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=26e4fe569dc5c1f43ce4c746230c49b138691d14
So the appropriate size is a buy position of 363,636 EURUSD. If it reaches our stop level we know we’ll lose precisely $2,000 or 2% of our capital.
You should be using this calculator (or something similar) on every single trade so that you know your risk.
Now imagine that we have similar bets on EURJPY and EURGBP, which have also broken above moving averages. Clearly this EUR-momentum is a theme. If it works all three bets are likely to pay off. But if it goes wrong we are likely to lose on all three at once. We are going to look at this concept of correlation in more detail later.
The total amount of risk in our portfolio - if all of the trades on this EUR-momentum theme were to hit their stops - should not exceed $8,000 or 8% of total capital. This allows us to go big on themes we like without going bust when the theme does not work.
As we’ll see later, many traders only win on 40-60% of trades. So you have to accept losing trades will be common and ensure you size trades so they cannot ruin you.
Similarly, like poker players, we should risk more on trades we feel confident about and less on trades that seem less compelling. However, this should always be subject to overall position sizing constraints.
For example before you put on each trade you might rate the strength of your conviction in the trade and allocate a position size accordingly:

https://preview.redd.it/q2ea6rgae5h51.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=4332cb8d0bbbc3d8db972c1f28e8189105393e5b
To keep yourself disciplined you should try to ensure that no more than one in twenty trades are graded exceptional and allocated 5% of account balance risk. It really should be a rare moment when all the stars align for you.
Notice that the nice thing about dealing in percentages is that it scales. Say you start out with $100,000 but end the year up 50% at $150,000. Now a 1% bet will risk $1,500 rather than $1,000. That makes sense as your capital has grown.
It is extremely common for retail accounts to blow-up by making only 4-5 losing trades because they are leveraged at 50:1 and have taken on far too large a position, relative to their account balance.
Consider that GBPUSD tends to move 1% each day. If you have an account balance of $10k then it would be crazy to take a position of $500k (50:1 leveraged). A 1% move on $500k is $5k.
Two perfectly regular down days in a row — or a single day’s move of 2% — and you will receive a margin call from the broker, have the account closed out, and have lost all your money.
Do not let this happen to you. Use position sizing discipline to protect yourself.

Kelly Criterion

If you’re wondering - why “about 2%” per trade? - that’s a fair question. Why not 0.5% or 10% or any other number?
The Kelly Criterion is a formula that was adapted for use in casinos. If you know the odds of winning and the expected pay-off, it tells you how much you should bet in each round.
This is harder than it sounds. Let’s say you could bet on a weighted coin flip, where it lands on heads 60% of the time and tails 40% of the time. The payout is $2 per $1 bet.
Well, absolutely you should bet. The odds are in your favour. But if you have, say, $100 it is less obvious how much you should bet to avoid ruin.
Say you bet $50, the odds that it could land on tails twice in a row are 16%. You could easily be out after the first two flips.
Equally, betting $1 is not going to maximise your advantage. The odds are 60/40 in your favour so only betting $1 is likely too conservative. The Kelly Criterion is a formula that produces the long-run optimal bet size, given the odds.
Applying the formula to forex trading looks like this:
Position size % = Winning trade % - ( (1- Winning trade %) / Risk-reward ratio
If you have recorded hundreds of trades in your journal - see next chapter - you can calculate what this outputs for you specifically.
If you don't have hundreds of trades then let’s assume some realistic defaults of Winning trade % being 30% and Risk-reward ratio being 3. The 3 implies your TP is 3x the distance of your stop from entry e.g. 300 pips take profit and 100 pips stop loss.
So that’s 0.3 - (1 - 0.3) / 3 = 6.6%.
Hold on a second. 6.6% of your account probably feels like a LOT to risk per trade.This is the main observation people have on Kelly: whilst it may optimise the long-run results it doesn’t take into account the pain of drawdowns. It is better thought of as the rational maximum limit. You needn’t go right up to the limit!
With a 30% winning trade ratio, the odds of you losing on four trades in a row is nearly one in four. That would result in a drawdown of nearly a quarter of your starting account balance. Could you really stomach that and put on the fifth trade, cool as ice? Most of us could not.
Accordingly people tend to reduce the bet size. For example, let’s say you know you would feel emotionally affected by losing 25% of your account.
Well, the simplest way is to divide the Kelly output by four. You have effectively hidden 75% of your account balance from Kelly and it is now optimised to avoid a total wipeout of just the 25% it can see.
This gives 6.6% / 4 = 1.65%. Of course different trading approaches and different risk appetites will provide different optimal bet sizes but as a rule of thumb something between 1-2% is appropriate for the style and risk appetite of most retail traders.
Incidentally be very wary of systems or traders who claim high winning trade % like 80%. Invariably these don’t pass a basic sense-check:

How many live trades have you done? Often they’ll have done only a handful of real trades and the rest are simulated backtests, which are overfitted. The model will soon die.
What is your risk-reward ratio on each trade? If you have a take profit $3 away and a stop loss $100 away, of course most trades will be winners. You will not be making money, however! In general most traders should trade smaller position sizes and less frequently than they do. If you are going to bias one way or the other, far better to start off too small.

How to use stop losses sensibly

Stop losses have a bad reputation amongst the retail community but are absolutely essential to risk management. No serious discretionary trader can operate without them.
A stop loss is a resting order, left with the broker, to automatically close your position if it reaches a certain price. For a recap on the various order types visit this chapter.
The valid concern with stop losses is that disreputable brokers look for a concentration of stops and then, when the market is close, whipsaw the price through the stop levels so that the clients ‘stop out’ and sell to the broker at a low rate before the market naturally comes back higher. This is referred to as ‘stop hunting’.
This would be extremely immoral behaviour and the way to guard against it is to use a highly reputable top-tier broker in a well regulated region such as the UK.
Why are stop losses so important? Well, there is no other way to manage risk with certainty.
You should always have a pre-determined stop loss before you put on a trade. Not having one is a recipe for disaster: you will find yourself emotionally attached to the trade as it goes against you and it will be extremely hard to cut the loss. This is a well known behavioural bias that we’ll explore in a later chapter.
Learning to take a loss and move on rationally is a key lesson for new traders.
A common mistake is to think of the market as a personal nemesis. The market, of course, is totally impersonal; it doesn’t care whether you make money or not.
Bruce Kovner, founder of the hedge fund Caxton Associates
There is an old saying amongst bank traders which is “losers average losers”.
It is tempting, having bought EURUSD and seeing it go lower, to buy more. Your average price will improve if you keep buying as it goes lower. If it was cheap before it must be a bargain now, right? Wrong.
Where does that end? Always have a pre-determined cut-off point which limits your risk. A level where you know the reason for the trade was proved ‘wrong’ ... and stick to it strictly. If you trade using discretion, use stops.

Picking a clear level

Where you leave your stop loss is key.
Typically traders will leave them at big technical levels such as recent highs or lows. For example if EURUSD is trading at 1.1250 and the recent month’s low is 1.1205 then leaving it just below at 1.1200 seems sensible.

If you were going long, just below the double bottom support zone seems like a sensible area to leave a stop
You want to give it a bit of breathing room as we know support zones often get challenged before the price rallies. This is because lots of traders identify the same zones. You won’t be the only one selling around 1.1200.
The “weak hands” who leave their sell stop order at exactly the level are likely to get taken out as the market tests the support. Those who leave it ten or fifteen pips below the level have more breathing room and will survive a quick test of the level before a resumed run-up.
Your timeframe and trading style clearly play a part. Here’s a candlestick chart (one candle is one day) for GBPUSD.

https://preview.redd.it/moyngdy4f5h51.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=91af88da00dd3a09e202880d8029b0ddf04fb802
If you are putting on a trend-following trade you expect to hold for weeks then you need to have a stop loss that can withstand the daily noise. Look at the downtrend on the chart. There were plenty of days in which the price rallied 60 pips or more during the wider downtrend.
So having a really tight stop of, say, 25 pips that gets chopped up in noisy short-term moves is not going to work for this kind of trade. You need to use a wider stop and take a smaller position size, determined by the stop level.
There are several tools you can use to help you estimate what is a safe distance and we’ll look at those in the next section.
There are of course exceptions. For example, if you are doing range-break style trading you might have a really tight stop, set just below the previous range high.

https://preview.redd.it/ygy0tko7f5h51.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=34af49da61c911befdc0db26af66f6c313556c81
Clearly then where you set stops will depend on your trading style as well as your holding horizons and the volatility of each instrument.
Here are some guidelines that can help:

Use technical analysis to pick important levels (support, resistance, previous high/lows, moving averages etc.) as these provide clear exit and entry points on a trade.
Ensure that the stop gives your trade enough room to breathe and reflects your timeframe and typical volatility of each pair. See next section.
Always pick your stop level first. Then use a calculator to determine the appropriate lot size for the position, based on the % of your account balance you wish to risk on the trade.

So far we have talked about price-based stops. There is another sort which is more of a fundamental stop, used alongside - not instead of - price stops. If either breaks you’re out.
For example if you stop understanding why a product is going up or down and your fundamental thesis has been confirmed wrong, get out. For example, if you are long because you think the central bank is turning hawkish and AUDUSD is going to play catch up with rates … then you hear dovish noises from the central bank and the bond yields retrace lower and back in line with the currency - close your AUDUSD position. You already know your thesis was wrong. No need to give away more money to the market.

Coming up in part II

EDIT: part II here
Letting stops breathe
When to change a stop
Entering and exiting winning positions
Risk:reward ratios
Risk-adjusted returns

Coming up in part III

Squeezes and other risks
Market positioning
Bet correlation
Crap trades, timeouts and monthly limits

***
Disclaimer:This content is not investment advice and you should not place any reliance on it. The views expressed are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other person, including their employer.

One of the good things about trading is that everybody can have their own unique style. albeit two different trading styles conflict, it doesn’t mean that one strategy is true and one is wrong.
With thousands upon thousands of stocks to settle on from, there’s always an abundance of effective ways to trade.
Technical analysis is usually lumped together into one specific style, but not all indicators point within the same direction.
We’re all conversant in commonly used technical concepts like support and resistance and moving averages, alongside more refined tools like MACD and RSI.
No single indicator may be a golden goose for trading profits, but when utilized in the right situations, you'll spot opportunities before the bulk of the gang .
One technical trading indicator that tends to fly under the radar is that the Fisher Transform Indicator.
Despite its lack of recognition , the Fisher Transform Indicator may be a useful gizmo to feature to your trading arsenal since it’s fairly easy to read and influence .
What is the Fisher Transform Indicator?
One of the best struggles in marketing research is the way to affect such a lot of random data.
The distribution of stock prices makes it difficult to locate trends and patterns, which is why technical analysis exists within the first place.
Hey, if the trends were easy to identify , everyone would get rich trading stocks and therefore the advantage provided by technical analysis would be whittled away.
But since technical trends are difficult to identify with an untrained eye, we believe trading tools just like the RSI and MACD to form informed decisions.
The Fisher Transform Indicator was developed by John F. Ehlers, who’s authored market books like Rocket Science For Traders.
Visit Equiti Forex
The Fisher Transform Indicator attempts to bring order to chaos by normalizing the distribution of stock prices over various timeframes.
Instead of messy, random prices, the Fisher Transform Indicators puts prices into a Gaussian Gaussian distribution . you would possibly know such a distribution by its more commonly used name – the bell curve.
Bell curves usually want to measure school grades, but during this instance, it’s wont to more neatly smooth prices along a selected timeline.
Think of stock prices like players on a five – if you organize everyone during a pattern by height, you’ll have a way better understanding of the makeup of the team.
So what does the Fisher Transform Indicator look for? Extreme market conditions.
Unlike other trading signals where many false positives are delivered on a day to day , this indicator is meant to pop only during rare market moments.
By utilizing a normal distribution , much of the noise made by stock prices is ironed away.
Despite the complex mathematics, Fisher Transform tends to offer clear overbought and oversold signals since the extremes of the indicator are rarely reached.
How Can Traders Utilize the Fisher Transform Indicator?
One of the advantages of the Fisher Transform Indicator is its role as a number one indicator, not a lagging indicator.
Lagging indicators tend to inform us of information we already know. a number one indicator is best at remarking potential trend reversals before they occur, not as they’re occurring or after the very fact .
There are two main ways to trade the Fisher Transform Indicator – a sign reversal or the reaching of a particular threshold.
For a sign reversal, you’re simply trying to find the indicator to vary course.
If the Fisher Transform indicator had been during a prolonged upswing but suddenly turned down, it might be foreshadowing a trend reversal within the stock price.
On the opposite hand, the Fisher Transform Indicator might be used as a “breach” indicator for identifying trade opportunities that support certain levels.
A signal line often accompanies the Fisher Transform Indicator, which may be wont to spot opportunities in not just stocks, but assets like commodities and forex also .
Examples
Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL)
Google has been one among tech’s best stay-at-home plays during the coronavirus pandemic, but you wouldn’t have thought that back in late March when shares cratered down near the $1000 mark.
A bounce eventually came, but the stock didn’t rebound quickly.
However, the Fisher Transform Indicator provided a playbook for the stock beginning in February.
The extreme boundary was reached around the same time because the market was high, offering a sell signal before the top of the month. because the shares fell, the Fisher Transform Indicator moved right down to the boundary and bottomed before the stock.
Buying when the indicator eclipsed the signal line in mid-April would have allowed you to catch most of the rebound.
Nikola Corporation (NASDAQ: NKLA)
Before becoming marred in controversy, Nikola Corporation was the most well liked stock of summer 2020.
The obscure car maker was toiling within the $10-12 range before exploding higher in June.
And I don’t mean just a fast double or triple up – Nikola reached a high of $93 before the music stopped.
When a stock goes parabolic, one among the toughest things to work out is when to require profits and bail.
Nikola was a cautionary tale since the corporate seemed pretty shady from the beginning , but traders using the Fisher Transform Indicator got a sign that the highest was in before the stock began its quick descent backtrack .
The June high coincided with the Fisher Transform Indicator reaching its highest level since December of 2019, a sign that sounded the alarm for observant traders.

Hi, I live in Portugal where making 800€ its an "decent" amount of money per mouth. I'm not rich, but I'm not poor either but I'm a bit limited about the deposit volume. I can't give 1000€ and to speak frenkly I'm looking for a good broker with a good laverage where I can spend about 10€ - 100€ max.
Like a said, I'm new, I'm a student and I hope someday I will make a living with forex. I know it's a lot of work, I don't know what strategies I'm looking for or what indicators are usefull or not, the only strategie I know so far is the how to identify a trend.
I'm curious about all the groups on Instagram about courses, but I like to think that I'm not that dumb and I don't want do fall in a scam choosing a wrong "guru".
I have some books to read about forex but again, I don't know if they are good or "modern".
So, my questions are: . Is there a good broker with a honest laverage for someone who can only spend 100€ max? . What are the main strategies to study first? . What's better, 1min trade? Day trades? Months trade? . Are robot are actually good and if yes, how to install? . Are copy trading actually legit??
Thanks for the time spend reading my problems and sorry again for the bad English.

Firstly, thanks for the overwhelming comments and feedback. Genuinely really appreciated. I am pleased 500+ of you find it useful.
If you didn't read the first post you can do so here: risk management part I. You'll need to do so in order to make sense of the topic.
As ever please comment/reply below with questions or feedback and I'll do my best to get back to you.
Part II

Letting stops breathe
When to change a stop
Entering and exiting winning positions
Risk:reward ratios
Risk-adjusted returns

Letting stops breathe

We talked earlier about giving a position enough room to breathe so it is not stopped out in day-to-day noise.
Let’s consider the chart below and imagine you had a trailing stop. It would be super painful to miss out on the wider move just because you left a stop that was too tight.

Imagine being long and stopped out on a meaningless retracement ... ouch!
One simple technique is simply to look at your chosen chart - let’s say daily bars. And then look at previous trends and use the measuring tool. Those generally look something like this and then you just click and drag to measure.
For example if we wanted to bet on a downtrend on the chart above we might look at the biggest retracement on the previous uptrend. That max drawdown was about 100 pips or just under 1%. So you’d want your stop to be able to withstand at least that.
If market conditions have changed - for example if CVIX has risen - and daily ranges are now higher you should incorporate that. If you know a big event is coming up you might think about that, too. The human brain is a remarkable tool and the power of the eye-ball method is not to be dismissed. This is how most discretionary traders do it.
There are also more analytical approaches.
Some look at the Average True Range (ATR). This attempts to capture the volatility of a pair, typically averaged over a number of sessions. It looks at three separate measures and takes the largest reading. Think of this as a moving average of how much a pair moves.
For example, below shows the daily move in EURUSD was around 60 pips before spiking to 140 pips in March. Conditions were clearly far more volatile in March. Accordingly, you would need to leave your stop further away in March and take a correspondingly smaller position size.

ATR is available on pretty much all charting systems
Professional traders tend to use standard deviation as a measure of volatility instead of ATR. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Averages are useful but can be misleading when regimes switch (see above chart).
Once you have chosen a measure of volatility, stop distance can then be back-tested and optimised. For example does 2x ATR work best or 5x ATR for a given style and time horizon?
Discretionary traders may still eye-ball the ATR or standard deviation to get a feeling for how it has changed over time and what ‘normal’ feels like for a chosen study period - daily, weekly, monthly etc.

Reasons to change a stop

As a general rule you should be disciplined and not change your stops. Remember - losers average losers. This is really hard at first and we’re going to look at that in more detail later.
There are some good reasons to modify stops but they are rare.
One reason is if another risk management process demands you stop trading and close positions. We’ll look at this later. In that case just close out your positions at market and take the loss/gains as they are.
Another is event risk. If you have some big upcoming data like Non Farm Payrolls that you know can move the market +/- 150 pips and you have no edge going into the release then many traders will take off or scale down their positions. They’ll go back into the positions when the data is out and the market has quietened down after fifteen minutes or so. This is a matter of some debate - many traders consider it a coin toss and argue you win some and lose some and it all averages out.
Trailing stops can also be used to ‘lock in’ profits. We looked at those before. As the trade moves in your favour (say up if you are long) the stop loss ratchets with it. This means you may well end up ‘stopping out’ at a profit - as per the below example.

The mighty trailing stop loss order
It is perfectly reasonable to have your stop loss move in the direction of PNL. This is not exposing you to more risk than you originally were comfortable with. It is taking less and less risk as the trade moves in your favour. Trend-followers in particular love trailing stops.
One final question traders ask is what they should do if they get stopped out but still like the trade. Should they try the same trade again a day later for the same reasons? Nope. Look for a different trade rather than getting emotionally wed to the original idea.
Let’s say a particular stock looked cheap based on valuation metrics yesterday, you bought, it went down and you got stopped out. Well, it is going to look even better on those same metrics today. Maybe the market just doesn’t respect value at the moment and is driven by momentum. Wait it out.
Otherwise, why even have a stop in the first place?

Entering and exiting winning positions

Take profits are the opposite of stop losses. They are also resting orders, left with the broker, to automatically close your position if it reaches a certain price.
Imagine I’m long EURUSD at 1.1250. If it hits a previous high of 1.1400 (150 pips higher) I will leave a sell order to take profit and close the position.
The rookie mistake on take profits is to take profit too early. One should start from the assumption that you will win on no more than half of your trades. Therefore you will need to ensure that you win more on the ones that work than you lose on those that don’t.

Sad to say but incredibly common: retail traders often take profits way too early
This is going to be the exact opposite of what your emotions want you to do. We are going to look at that in the Psychology of Trading chapter.
Remember: let winners run. Just like stops you need to know in advance the level where you will close out at a profit. Then let the trade happen. Don’t override yourself and let emotions force you to take a small profit. A classic mistake to avoid.
The trader puts on a trade and it almost stops out before rebounding. As soon as it is slightly in the money they spook and cut out, instead of letting it run to their original take profit. Do not do this.

Entering positions with limit orders

That covers exiting a position but how about getting into one?
Take profits can also be left speculatively to enter a position. Sometimes referred to as “bids” (buy orders) or “offers” (sell orders). Imagine the price is 1.1250 and the recent low is 1.1205.
You might wish to leave a bid around 1.2010 to enter a long position, if the market reaches that price. This way you don’t need to sit at the computer and wait.
Again, typically traders will use tech analysis to identify attractive levels. Again - other traders will cluster with your orders. Just like the stop loss we need to bake that in.
So this time if we know everyone is going to buy around the recent low of 1.1205 we might leave the take profit bit a little bit above there at 1.1210 to ensure it gets done. Sure it costs 5 more pips but how mad would you be if the low was 1.1207 and then it rallied a hundred points and you didn’t have the trade on?!
There are two more methods that traders often use for entering a position.
Scaling in is one such technique. Let’s imagine that you think we are in a long-term bulltrend for AUDUSD but experiencing a brief retracement. You want to take a total position of 500,000 AUD and don’t have a strong view on the current price action.
You might therefore leave a series of five bids of 100,000. As the price moves lower each one gets hit. The nice thing about scaling in is it reduces pressure on you to pick the perfect level. Of course the risk is that not all your orders get hit before the price moves higher and you have to trade at-market.
Pyramiding is the second technique. Pyramiding is for take profits what a trailing stop loss is to regular stops. It is especially common for momentum traders.

Pyramiding into a position means buying more as it goes in your favour
Again let’s imagine we’re bullish AUDUSD and want to take a position of 500,000 AUD.
Here we add 100,000 when our first signal is reached. Then we add subsequent clips of 100,000 when the trade moves in our favour. We are waiting for confirmation that the move is correct.
Obviously this is quite nice as we humans love trading when it goes in our direction. However, the drawback is obvious: we haven’t had the full amount of risk on from the start of the trend.
You can see the attractions and drawbacks of both approaches. It is best to experiment and choose techniques that work for your own personal psychology as these will be the easiest for you to stick with and build a disciplined process around.

Risk:reward and win ratios

Be extremely skeptical of people who claim to win on 80% of trades. Most traders will win on roughly 50% of trades and lose on 50% of trades. This is why risk management is so important!
Once you start keeping a trading journal you’ll be able to see how the win/loss ratio looks for you. Until then, assume you’re typical and that every other trade will lose money.
If that is the case then you need to be sure you make more on the wins than you lose on the losses. You can see the effect of this below.

A combination of win % and risk:reward ratio determine if you are profitable
A typical rule of thumb is that a ratio of 1:3 works well for most traders.
That is, if you are prepared to risk 100 pips on your stop you should be setting a take profit at a level that would return you 300 pips.
One needn’t be religious about these numbers - 11 pips and 28 pips would be perfectly fine - but they are a guideline.
Again - you should still use technical analysis to find meaningful chart levels for both the stop and take profit. Don’t just blindly take your stop distance and do 3x the pips on the other side as your take profit. Use the ratio to set approximate targets and then look for a relevant resistance or support level in that kind of region.

Risk-adjusted returns

Not all returns are equal. Suppose you are examining the track record of two traders. Now, both have produced a return of 14% over the year. Not bad!
The first trader, however, made hundreds of small bets throughout the year and his cumulative PNL looked like the left image below.
The second trader made just one bet — he sold CADJPY at the start of the year — and his PNL looked like the right image below with lots of large drawdowns and volatility.
Would you rather have the first trading record or the second?
If you were investing money and betting on who would do well next year which would you choose? Of course all sensible people would choose the first trader. Yet if you look only at returns one cannot distinguish between the two. Both are up 14% at that point in time. This is where the Sharpe ratio helps .
A high Sharpe ratio indicates that a portfolio has better risk-adjusted performance. One cannot sensibly compare returns without considering the risk taken to earn that return.
If I can earn 80% of the return of another investor at only 50% of the risk then a rational investor should simply leverage me at 2x and enjoy 160% of the return at the same level of risk.
This is very important in the context of Execution Advisor algorithms (EAs) that are popular in the retail community. You must evaluate historic performance by its risk-adjusted return — not just the nominal return. Incidentally look at the Sharpe ratio of ones that have been live for a year or more ...
Otherwise an EA developer could produce two EAs: the first simply buys at 1000:1 leverage on January 1st ; and the second sells in the same manner. At the end of the year, one of them will be discarded and the other will look incredible. Its risk-adjusted return, however, would be abysmal and the odds of repeated success are similarly poor.

Sharpe ratio

The Sharpe ratio works like this:

It takes the average returns of your strategy;
It deducts from these the risk-free rate of return i.e. the rate anyone could have got by investing in US government bonds with very little risk;
It then divides this total return by its own volatility - the more smooth the return the higher and better the Sharpe, the more volatile the lower and worse the Sharpe.

For example, say the return last year was 15% with a volatility of 10% and US bonds are trading at 2%. That gives (15-2)/10 or a Sharpe ratio of 1.3. As a rule of thumb a Sharpe ratio of above 0.5 would be considered decent for a discretionary retail trader. Above 1 is excellent.
You don’t really need to know how to calculate Sharpe ratios. Good trading software will do this for you. It will either be available in the system by default or you can add a plug-in.

VAR

VAR is another useful measure to help with drawdowns. It stands for Value at Risk. Normally people will use 99% VAR (conservative) or 95% VAR (aggressive). Let’s say you’re long EURUSD and using 95% VAR. The system will look at the historic movement of EURUSD. It might spit out a number of -1.2%.

A 5% VAR of -1.2% tells you you should expect to lose 1.2% on 5% of days, whilst 95% of days should be better than that
This means it is expected that on 5 days out of 100 (hence the 95%) the portfolio will lose 1.2% or more. This can help you manage your capital by taking appropriately sized positions. Typically you would look at VAR across your portfolio of trades rather than trade by trade.
Sharpe ratios and VAR don’t give you the whole picture, though. Legendary fund manager, Howard Marks of Oaktree, notes that, while tools like VAR and Sharpe ratios are helpful and absolutely necessary, the best investors will also overlay their own judgment.
Investors can calculate risk metrics like VaR and Sharpe ratios (we use them at Oaktree; they’re the best tools we have), but they shouldn’t put too much faith in them. The bottom line for me is that risk management should be the responsibility of every participant in the investment process, applying experience, judgment and knowledge of the underlying investments.Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital
What he’s saying is don’t misplace your common sense. Do use these tools as they are helpful. However, you cannot fully rely on them. Both assume a normal distribution of returns. Whereas in real life you get “black swans” - events that should supposedly happen only once every thousand years but which actually seem to happen fairly often.
These outlier events are often referred to as “tail risk”. Don’t make the mistake of saying “well, the model said…” - overlay what the model is telling you with your own common sense and good judgment.

Coming up in part III

Available here
Squeezes and other risks
Market positioning
Bet correlation
Crap trades, timeouts and monthly limits

***
Disclaimer:This content is not investment advice and you should not place any reliance on it. The views expressed are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other person, including their employer.

Its a bit lengthy and I tried to condense it as much as I can. So take everything at a high level as each subject is has a lot more depth but fundamentally if you distill it down its just taking simple things and applying your experience using them to add nuance and better deploy them.
There are exceptions to everything that you will learn with experience or have already learned. If you know something extra or something to add to it to implement it better or more accurately. Then great! However, my intention of this post is just a high level overview. Trading can be far too nuanced to go into in this post and would take forever to type up every exception (not to mention the traders individual personality). If you take the general information as a starting point, hopefully you will learn the edge cases long the way and learn how to use the more effectively if you end up using them. I apologize in advice for any errors or typos.
Introduction After reflecting on my fun (cough) trading journey that was more akin to rolling around on broken glass and wondering if brown glass will help me predict market direction better than green glass. Buying a $100 indicator at 2 am when I was acting a fool, looking at it and going at and going "This is a piece of lagging crap, I miss out on a large part of the fundamental move and never using it for even one trade". All while struggling with massive over trading and bad habits because I would get bored watching a single well placed trade on fold for the day. Also, I wanted to get rich quick.
On top all of that I had a terminal Stage 4 case of FOMO on every time the price would move up and then down then back up. Just think about all those extra pips I could have trading both directions as it moves across the chart! I can just sell right when it goes down, then buy right before it goes up again. Its so easy right? Well, turns out it was not as easy as I thought and I lost a fair chunk of change and hit my head against the wall a lot until it clicked. Which is how I came up with a mixed bag of things that I now call "Trade the Trade" which helped support how I wanted to trade so I can still trade intra day price action like a rabid money without throwing away all my bananas.
Why Make This Post? - Core Topic of Discussion I wish to share a concept I came up with that helped me become a reliable trader. Support the weakness of how I like to trade. Also, explaining what I do helps reinforce my understanding of the information I share as I have to put words to it and not just use internalized processes. I came up with a method that helped me get my head straight when trading intra day.
I call it "Trade the Trade" as I am making mini trades inside of a trade setup I make from analysis on a higher timeframe that would take multiple days to unfold or longer. I will share information, principles, techniques I used and learned from others I talked to on the internet (mixed bag of folks from armatures to professionals, and random internet people) that helped me form a trading style that worked for me. Even people who are not good at trading can say something that might make it click in your head so I would absorbed all the information I could get.I will share the details of how I approach the methodology and the tools in my trading belt that I picked up by filtering through many tools, indicators strategies and witchcraft. Hopefully you read something that ends up helping you be a better trader. I learned a lot from people who make community posts so I wanted to give back now that I got my ducks in a row.
General Trading Advice If your struggling finding your own trading style, fixing weakness's in it, getting started, being reliably profitable or have no framework to build yourself higher with, hopefully you can use the below advice to help provide some direction or clarity to moving forward to be a better trader.

KEEP IT SIMPLE. Do not throw a million things on your chart from the get go or over analyzing what the market is doing while trying to learn the basics. Tons of stuff on your chart can actually slow your learning by distracting your focus on all your bells and whistles and not the price action.
PRICE ACTION. Learn how to read price action. Not just the common formations, but larger groups of bars that form the market structure. Those formations carry more weight the higher the time frame they form on. If struggle to understand what is going on or what your looking at, move to a higher time frame.
INDICATORS. If you do use them you should try to understand how every indicator you use calculates its values. Many indicators are lagging indicators, understanding how it calculates the values can help you learn how to identify the market structure before the indicator would trigger a signal . This will help you understand why the signal is a lagged signal. If you understand that you can easily learn to look at the price action right before the signal and learn to watch for that price action on top of it almost trigging a signal so you can get in at a better position and assume less downside risk. I recommend using no more than 1-2 indicators for simplicity, but your free to use as many as you think you think you need or works for your strategy/trading style.
PSYCOLOGY. First, FOMO is real, don't feed the beast. When you trade you should always have an entry and exit. If you miss your entry do not chase it, wait for a new entry. At its core trading is gambling and your looking for an edge against the house (the other market participants). With that in mind, treat as such. Do not risk more than you can afford to lose. If you are afraid to lose it will negatively effect your trade decisions. Finally, be honest with your self and bad trading happens. No one is going to play trade cop and keep you in line, that's your job.
TRADE DECISION MARKING: Before you enter any trade you should have an entry and exit area. As you learn price action you will get better entries and better exits. Use a larger zone and stop loss at the start while learning. Then you can tighten it up as you gain experience. If you do not have a area you wish to exit, or you are entering because "the markets looking like its gonna go up". Do not enter the trade. Have a reason for everything you do, if you cannot logically explain why then you probably should not be doing it.
ROBOTS/ALGOS: Loved by some, hated by many who lost it all to one, and surrounded by scams on the internet. If you make your own, find a legit one that works and paid for it or lost it all on a crappy one, more power to ya. I do not use robots because I do not like having a robot in control of my money. There is too many edge cases for me to be ok with it.However, the best piece of advice about algos was that the guy had a algo/robot for each market condition (trending/ranging) and would make personalized versions of each for currency pairs as each one has its own personality and can make the same type of movement along side another currency pair but the price action can look way different or the move can be lagged or leading. So whenever he does his own analysis and he sees a trend, he turns the trend trading robot on. If the trend stops, and it starts to range he turns the range trading robot on. He uses robots to trade the market types that he is bad at trading. For example, I suck at trend trading because I just suck at sitting on my hands and letting my trade do its thing.

Trade the Trade - The Methodology

Base Principles These are the base principles I use behind "Trade the Trade". Its called that because you are technically trading inside your larger high time frame trade as it hopefully goes as you have analyzed with the trade setup. It allows you to scratch that intraday trading itch, while not being blind to the bigger market at play. It can help make sense of why the price respects, rejects or flat out ignores support/resistance/pivots.

Trade Setup: Find a trade setup using high level time frames (daily, 4hr, or 1hr time frames). The trade setup will be used as a base for starting to figure out a bias for the markets direction for that day.
Indicator Data: Check any indicators you use (I use Stochastic RSI and Relative Vigor Index) for any useful information on higher timeframes.
Support Resistance: See if any support/resistance/pivot points are in currently being tested/resisted by the price. Also check for any that are within reach so they might become in play through out the day throughout the day (which can influence your bias at least until the price reaches it if it was already moving that direction from previous days/weeks price action).
Currency Strength/Weakness: I use the TradeVision currency strength/weakness dashboard to see if the strength/weakness supports the narrative of my trade and as an early indicator when to keep a closer eye for signs of the price reversing.Without the tool, the same concept can be someone accomplished with fundamentals and checking for higher level trends and checking cross currency pairs for trends as well to indicate strength/weakness, ranging (and where it is in that range) or try to get some general bias from a higher level chart that may help you out. However, it wont help you intra day unless your monitoring the currency's index or a bunch of charts related to the currency.
Watch For Trading Opportunities: Personally I make a mental short list and alerts on TradingView of currency pairs that are close to key levels and so I get a notification if it reaches there so I can check it out. I am not against trading both directions, I just try to trade my bias before the market tries to commit to a direction. Then if I get out of that trade I will scalp against the trend of the day and hold trades longer that are with it.Then when you see a opportunity assume the directional bias you made up earlier (unless the market solidly confirms with price action the direction while waiting for an entry) by trying to look for additional confirmation via indicators, price action on support/resistances etc on the low level time frame or higher level ones like hourly/4hr as the day goes on when the price reaches key areas or makes new market structures to get a good spot to enter a trade in the direction of your bias.Then enter your trade and use the market structures to determine how much of a stop you need. Once your in the trade just monitor it and watch the price action/indicators/tools you use to see if its at risk of going against you. If you really believe the market wont reach your TP and looks like its going to turn against you, then close the trade. Don't just hold on to it for principle and let it draw down on principle or the hope it does not hit your stop loss.
Trade Duration Hold your trades as long or little as you want that fits your personality and trading style/trade analysis. Personally I do not hold trades past the end of the day (I do in some cases when a strong trend folds) and I do not hold trades over the weekends. My TP targets are always places I think it can reach within the day. Typically I try to be flat before I sleep and trade intra day price movements only. Just depends on the higher level outlook, I have to get in at really good prices for me to want to hold a trade and it has to be going strong. Then I will set a slightly aggressive stop on it before I leave. I do know several people that swing trade and hold trades for a long period of time. That is just not a trading style that works for me.

Enhance Your Success Rate Below is information I picked up over the years that helped me enhance my success rate with not only guessing intra day market bias (even if it has not broken into the trend for the day yet (aka pre London open when the end of Asia likes to act funny sometimes), but also with trading price action intra day.
People always say "When you enter a trade have an entry and exits. I am of the belief that most people do not have problem with the entry, its the exit. They either hold too long, or don't hold long enough. With the below tools, drawings, or instruments, hopefully you can increase your individual probability of a successful trade.
**P.S.*\* Your mileage will vary depending on your ability to correctly draw, implement and interpret the below items. They take time and practice to implement with a high degree of proficiency. If you have any questions about how to do that with anything listed, comment below and I will reply as I can. I don't want to answer the same question a million times in a pm.
Tools and Methods Used This is just a high level overview of what I use. Each one of the actions I could go way more in-depth on but I would be here for a week typing something up of I did that. So take the information as a base level understanding of how I use the method or tool. There is always nuance and edge cases that you learn from experience.

Fundamentals
- I keep a general high level Macro outlook for currencies. I dont get too deep into Fundamentals and just keep an eye out for news. If I am already in a trade I will hold it if its far enough away from my entry. However, I wont enter right before/during news as it can invalidate your setup.
Price Action
- I started with the basics of learning the standard price action formations/patterns and candles. You can find tons of free info on that online, google is your friend. Then I stared at charts and said "why did the price do that or do this etc" then after a while I started to understand what's happening without having to think about it and I can see the market structure without having to look as closely as I did in the past.
- After many many hours of staring at 5 min charts for 15 hours a day 5 days a week I learned how to look at 5 min charts and be like "Oh that's a hammer on the 15 min etc. If you keep track of time you can do the same for hourly candles as well and you will start to see market structure naturally. However I typically trade in a two chart panel window so I have a 15 min and 5 min chart up when trading intra day so I dont have to think too hard about it.
Support/Resistance Lines
- Draw support resistance lines on Daily/4hr timeframes. I prefer to use body of the candle instead of the wick for support/resistance.
- You can find support/resistance liquidity levels through out the day as well and trade those if the price retraces back through levels its already been through that same day.
- It would be a bit length to explain exactly the best place to draw them. If your unsure there is plenty of free resources on the internet. Just try to use your head and look for price levels where the price was "Supported" or it "Resisted" that price level then slap a line on it. Draw as few or as many lines as you feel helps you and your style. I tend to lean on the side of fewer. I typically do about 6 lines main support/resistances (3 of each).
Fibonacci Extensions
- Draw two Fibonacci Extensions. One on the daily timeframe, and then one on the 4hr time frame. Then you can trade the Fibonacci levels and use them for TP targets or entry zones if price action respects the level. Also you can use it along with support/resistance and pivots if they happen to line up or are very close.
- I cannot really figure out how to put it into words how to draw a Fib if you dont know how. I will have to make a picture to demonstrate it. If your interested post below and I will draw one up and post a link. Probably the easiest way to understand. Just keep in mind the Fib you draw on the 4hr time frame will be inside the daily timeframe one.
Currency Strength/Weakness
- The TradeVision2020 dashboard that I use just helps me keep a tab on the current market post plus any swing strength/momentum a currency might have on higher time frames. Helps me look for shifts in the market or confirmation that the bias it already has in momentum is continuing. I have found that often currencies when they get really/weak or strong might continue for several days or even longer like a full week or more. We recently had what felt like 1 week or so of flat out Yen weakness which was making some things wonky. All it does is allow me to look at the dashboard instead of a million other charts.
Indicators
- I use two that work well for my intra day style. The Stochastic RSI is just like a RSI but its faster. The second is the Relative Vigor Index which I use to detect swings in momentum and divergences in bullish/bearish momentum. I have used many others in the past, but as I have grown and got better as a trader I have found making my analysis simpler has improved my trading.I dont like the whole idea of have 43 different indicators on 32 different time frames light up a dashboard to be green for me to enter a trade. With how I do it now, I have a clear understanding of what I expect to happen and why. That way when it does happen I understand the move and dont get freaked out if the market moves funny after I am in the trade.

Conclusion
I use the above tools/indicators/resources/philosophy's to trade intra day price action that sometimes ends up as noise in the grand scheme of the markets movement.use that method until the price action for the day proves the bias assumption wrong. Also you can couple that with things like Stoch RSI + Relative Vigor Index to find divergences which can increase the probability of your targeted guesses.

Trade Example from Yesterday This is an example of a trade I took today and why I took it. I used the following core areas to make my trade decision.

Fundamental Bias: I already had a bullish fundamental outlook on EUUSD with expecting the markets to price in future similes due a higher an higher chance of Biden winning on paper as the election closed in and a "Blue wave" coming which would lead to a weaker dollar. Also, the Euro Zone is getting hammered with COVID pretty hard plus Brexit drama so I had a strong Euro bias.NOTE: As frame of reference, all the other pairs I trade I traded as if they were ranging and trade a range. Markets are messed up right now.
Currency Strength/Weakness: I use a tool that gives me a currency strength/weakness dashboard called TradeVision2020. Helps me track individual currency strength/weakness intra day. Took me about a month to get used to it, but helps me keep track of intra day strength/weakness that can add a bias to trade direction as the day unfolds. Like "Will this run have a 2nd or 3rd push higher" or "I should look to TP at the first sign of weakness in the push" type bias data. You still got to use your brain and figure out the best decision. It wont make choices for you, its only a guide.NOTE: I am not trying to adverse the tool (if providing the code is against sub rules let me know), its just a tool I use every day that helps me with directional bias calls. I am sharing the coupon code that was given to me when I found out about the tool in the TradingView forex chatroom and the guy gave me the code to use when I signed up. I dont want someone to read the name and want to try it out then overpay for no reason. The coupon will give you 40% off. Coupon Code: 3F7A0T5T
Higher Timeframe Analysis: Detected some early signs of Bearish Divergence on the 1hr chart using a on a higher time frame using a Stochastic RSI. Then I saw more confirmation on 5 min charts using Relative Vigor Index to help time my entry mid session.
Pivot Points: I treat pivot points like support/resistance and trade them as such using price action to give me some idea how its being treated by the market. Pretty straight forward.

It may seem like a lot of stuff to process on the fly while trying to figure out live price action but, for the fundamental bias for a pair should already baked in your mindset for any currency pair you trade. For the currency strength/weakness I stare at the dashboard 12-15 hours a day so I am always trying to keep a pulse on what's going or shifts so that's not really a factor when I want to enter as I would not look to enter if I felt the market was shifting against me. Then the higher timeframe analysis had already happened when I woke up, so it was a game of "Stare at the 5 min chart until the price does something interesting"
Trade Example: Today , I went long EUUSD long bias when I first looked at the chart after waking up around 9-10pm Eastern. Fortunately, the first large drop had already happened so I had a easy baseline price movement to work with. I then used tool for currency strength/weakness monitoring, Pivot Points, and bearish divergence detected using Stochastic RSI and Relative Vigor Index.
I first noticed Bearish Divergence on the 1hr time frame using the Stochastic RSI and got confirmation intra day on the 5 min time frame with the Relative Vigor Index. I ended up buying the second mini dip around midnight Eastern because it was already dancing along the pivot point that the price had been dancing along since the big drop below the pivot point and dipped below it and then shortly closed back above it. I put a stop loss below the first large dip. With a TP goal of the middle point pivot line
Then I waited for confirmation or invalidation of my trade. I ended up getting confirmation with Bearish Divergence from the second large dip so I tightened up my stop to below that smaller drip and waited for the London open. Not only was it not a lower low, I could see the divergence with the Relative Vigor Index.
It then ran into London and kept going with tons of momentum. Blew past my TP target so I let it run to see where the momentum stopped. Ended up TP'ing at the Pivot Point support/resistance above the middle pivot line.
Random Note: The Asian session has its own unique price action characteristics that happen regularly enough that you can easily trade them when they happen with high degrees of success. It takes time to learn them all and confidently trade them as its happening. If you trade Asia you should learn to recognize them as they can fake you out if you do not understand what's going on.

TL;DR At the end of the day there is no magic solution that just works. You have to find out what works for you and then what people say works for them. Test it out and see if it works for you or if you can adapt it to work for you. If it does not work or your just not interested then ignore it.
At the end of the day, you have to use your brain to make correct trading decisions. Blindly following indicators may work sometimes in certain market conditions, but trading with information you don't understand can burn you just as easily as help you. Its like playing with fire. So, get out there and grind it out. It will either click or it wont. Not everyone has the mindset or is capable of changing to be a successful trader. Trading is gambling, you do all this work to get a edge on the house. Trading without the edge or an edge you understand how to use will only leave your broker happy in the end.

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If you have been in the forex market even for a little while, you have no doubt heard people say ‘trade with the trend.’ The sentiment is not just some anecdote we throw out there. There is a lot of truth in the statement, especially as it pertains to forex prediction.
In the forex forecast, identification of trends is one of the critical skills one needs to have to be successful. Patterns are not all the same; they vary. Some of them are short, intermediate, or long term. Identifying trends is highly profitable because it is how we do forex forecast.
When we come to a general trading strategy, we always encourage traders to trade with the trend. If the pattern is going up, you should proceed with caution and be attentive to the moves you make. A trend applies to more than just the general movement of the currency pairs.

FOREX Strategies

What are FOREX Strategies?
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You may have noticed that most of people confuse the terminology and refer to FOREX Strategies in the wrong way. There are methodologies, systems, strategies, and techniques. The most effective methodology is Price Language (Trend Tracking). Combined with a correct reading of mass psychology presented by the charts.
We know that in the Stock Markets there are thousands of strategies. FOREX, like the rest of the markets, presents you with the opportunity to apply similar strategies to win consistently. Taking advantage of repetitive psychological patterns.
First, the Price Language methodology has created great fortunes in FOREX, and the next fortune may be yours. But this methodology must be implemented within a framework of advanced concepts of Markets. Without forgetting the basics. And working hard day by day.
Second, a strategy is a set of parameters and techniques that together give you the advantage to act in any situation. Thus for example in war, generals have attack strategies and counterattack strategies.
FOREX strategies alike are entry strategies and exit strategies. All beginners should know these FOREX strategies for beginners. That way you will get a general idea of the game and understand that trading is a war against the Market and its Specialists. Only applying FOREX strategies revealed by the same Specialists and using their own techniques,
... you can survive in this war.
Do not fall into the trap of the many "systems" and "methods" that are offered on the internet about operating in the FOREX Market. They just don't work in the long run. They are strategies based on indicators for the most part. Using rigid parameters. That if they can work and give profitability during a certain period of time, they will always reach a breaking point when the market changes its dynamics.
Instead, take advantage of your precious time and learn the Language of Price or Price Action.
The Language methodology will allow you to adapt to each new phase of the Market. If you combine this knowledge with the appropriate psychological concepts, you can live comfortably from speculation in FOREX.

Forex Trading Strategies Reddit - Basic FOREX Strategies

You have two basic FOREX strategies, one entry, and one exit. Both follow a general strategy that helps you capitalize on the collective behaviors of the Market. That is, of the total of participating speculators.
This behavior causes the formation of cycles that repeat over and over again. Driven by the basic emotions (uncertainty, greed, and panic) of the speculators involved that can be taken advantage of with the aforementioned FOREX strategies. Specialists identify these emotions in the order flow and capitalize on these events every hour, every day, and every month.
Basic FOREX Strategies - The Price Cycle
These repetitive cycles consist of 4 phases:

Accumulation
Upward trend
Distribution
Downward trend

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The two trends can be easily identified by their notorious breakdown. And the two areas of uncertainty (accumulation and distribution), due to their notorious range trajectories.
This general behavior determines the core of our FOREX strategies.
You buy when the price of a pair has broken and has come out of one of its congestion formations (accumulation or distribution). You implement one of the Forex strategies, in this case, the entry one.
The multi-time technique will help you find the point of least risk when entering your initial buy or sell order. In the same way and using the same strategy but this time to close your position, the multiple timing technique will also show you how to close your operation obtaining the highest possible profit.
The most consistent way to extract profits in the market is by trading the start of trends within a cycle . Once confirmed by their respective breaks from the areas of uncertainty. This is the mother of all FOREX strategies . And in a market that operates 24 hours, we have more frequent cycles and therefore more opportunities.

Forex Trading Strategies Reddit - Advanced Forex Strategies

There are many advanced FOREX strategies that are generally used by professional speculators working for large financial firms.
Among these firms are banks, Investment Fund managers and Hedge Fund managers. The latter is an investment modality similar to Investment Funds, with the difference that Hedge Funds use more complex investment strategies. Its operations are more oriented to aggressive speculations in the short and medium-term.
Among the most common strategies is hedging (hedging), carry trade, automated systems based on quantum mathematics. And a large number of combinations between the different option strategies.

The Carry Trade

The central idea of Carry Trade is to buy a pair in which the base currency has a considerably higher interest rate than the quoted currency. To earn the difference in rates regardless of whether the price of the pair rises or falls.
Suppose we buy a $ 100,000 lot of AUDJPY, which according to the rates on the chart would turn out to be the ideal instrument in this example to use the Forex carry trade strategy.
As our capital is in US dollars we have to assume for our example, the following quotes necessary to perform the place calculations:
AUD / JPY = 80.00 USD / JPY = 85.00
What happens internally in your broker is this.

By placing as collateral $ 1,000 of your $ 50,000 of capital (assumed for this example), deposited in your account, you have access to $ 100,000 virtual (this is what is known as leverage); that is, you put in $ 1,000 and your broker lends you 99,000.
With those $ 100,000 virtual dollars, your broker borrows on your behalf ¥ 8,500,000 Japanese yen (85 × 100,000) at 0.1% annual interest from a Japanese bank.
With those ¥ 8,500,000 Japanese yen, your broker buys A $ 106,250 Australian dollars (8,500,000 / 80) and deposits it in an Australian bank where it receives 4.5% annual interest on your behalf.
One year later (and regardless of the profit or loss generated by the pair's movement), your profit will be the difference between the AUD rate and the JPY rate, that is:

Profit = (AUD rate) - (JPY rate) - (costs of the 2 currency exchanges) Profit = (4.5%) - (0.1%) - (0.1% to 1%)
The great advantage of carry trade FOREX strategies is that this percentage profit is applied to the $ 100,000 of the standard lot; the broker transfers all of the profit to you, even if you only contributed $ 1,000. On the other hand, if you carry out the inverse of this operation, this benefit of the Forex carry trade becomes a cost (swap), and you assume it completely.
Remember that FOREX carry trade strategies are recommended for pairs with considerable interest rate differences, such as the one we have just seen in our example.
These FOREX strategies should also not be used in isolation. The idea is that through technical analysis you identify when would be the ideal time to enter the market using your carry trade Forex strategy and multiply your profits considerably.

What FOREX Strategies Do Hedge Funds Use?

The FOREX strategies used by large fund managers do not constitute an advantage in terms of percentage results for them, nor do they constitute a competitive disadvantage for you.
The vast majority of them fail because of their big egos. In fact, there was a firm made up of great financial geniuses, including 2 winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics, who developed a strategy based on quantum mathematical calculations.
With an initial base capital of about 3 billion dollars, and after 3 successful years obtaining annual returns of over 40%, the firm Long-Term Capital Management, begins its fourth year with losses. To counteract these losses the geniuses decide to multiply the initial capital several times, while the losses continued.
The year closed with the bankruptcy of the fund, and with a total accumulated loss of 1 trillion dollars, due to the great leverage used. And all for not admitting that the FOREX Strategies of Long Term Capital Management were not in line with the dynamics of the Market.
There are an overwhelming number of opportunities in the stock markets to make money interpreting the Language of Price.
You don't need to use complex "advanced" strategies that have been created to handle hundreds or billions of dollars.
The reasons for using these FOREX strategies are very different from what a "retail trader" pursues with his small speculation business.
As you can see, you should not worry about wanting to integrate any of these advanced strategies into your arsenal. They are only beneficial for managing hundreds or billions of dollars, where the return parameters are very different when you handle small amounts of capital.
Do not worry about collecting hundreds of free FOREX strategies that circulate on the internet, that great accumulation of mediocre information will only serve to confuse you and waste your valuable time.
Spend that time learning Price Action,
… And you will always be one step behind the Specialists, identifying each new Market condition, and anticipating the vast majority of reversals of all prices.
Ironically, the most successful fund managers indicate that their most profitable trades are those based on the basic trend-following strategies of the Price Language. The same ones that you will learn in this Free Course.
Dedicate yourself to perfecting them and believe me you won't need anything else. As long as you have good risk management, taking into consideration the following points ...

Styles of Investments in FOREX

The Investment FOREX long term is not recommended for small investors like you and me. If we take into account the term investing literally as large investors do who buy a financial product today to sell it years later.
We both have a better niche in the short and medium-term.
You may have noticed that the big multi-year trends in the Forex Market do exist. But minor swings within a big trend are usually very wide.
These minor movements allow us to easily double and triple the annual return of the big general trend, motivating most traders to speculate in the short and medium-term.
These minor oscillations or trends that occur within the large multi-year trends owe their occurrence mainly to two reasons.
First, the FOREX Market presents 3 sessions a day each in different cities of the world with different time zones (Asia, Europe, and America). This causes more frequent trend changes than in the rest of the stock markets.
Second, the purpose for which it was created also plays a role. The modern Foreign Exchange Market, since its inception in 1972, was conceived by the global financial system as a tool for speculation. To obtain benefits in the short and medium-term (from several days to 1 year).
These two points are basically the reasons why we observe the immense speed with which the FOREX market changes trends.
For example, for those who live in America, in the early morning (Europe) the EURUSD pair may be on the rise, in the morning or afternoon (America) it may be down, and then finally at night (Asia) it may return to the rise.

Define your Own Style for your FOREX Investments

One of the first decisions you will have to make is to choose your style as a trader or investor.
There are 4 types of well-defined styles.
Most professional traders tend to have multiple styles, although they always identify with one primary style for their FOREX investments. Study the characteristics of the 4 main styles to make your investments in FOREX :
1. Long Term: recommended for anyone who is going to enter the market for the first time and who can dedicate a minimum of one hour per month to their investments in Forex. The period of an open position ranges from 1 year to 5 years.
2. Medium Term: recommended for anyone who is going to enter the market for the first time and who can dedicate a minimum of one hour per week to their investments in Forex. The period of an open position ranges from 1 month to 1 year.
3. Short Term: recommended for anyone who is going to enter the market for the first time, or who already has a certain time operating in the long and medium-term, showing constant profits, and who can dedicate a minimum of one hour per day to your investments in FOREX. The period of an open position ranges from 1 day to 1 month.
4. Intraday : recommended only for people with a fairly solid earnings record in the short term, and with a capital greater than $ 50,000. As we have noted, this option constitutes a full-time job.
People who start investing in FOREX , should start executing short-term (weeks) and medium-term (months) transactions only, and not pay attention to intraday oscillations (day trading).
If you are interested in being an intraday speculator, I recommend that you first exhaust at least a year doing operations in the short and medium-term to assimilate the correct strategies and to develop the necessary mentality to carry out this work.
The second option would be to participate in some kind of intensive training.
I remind you that self-educating is almost impossible in speculation. You are likely to accumulate a lot of knowledge by reading books and attending courses. But you will probably never learn to make money with all the incomplete "systems" circulating on the internet.

Mistakes to Avoid When Looking for Your Style

Many people who are new to FOREX investments make the mistake of combining these styles, which is a key to failure.
I recommend that if you are not getting the results you expected by adopting one of these styles, do not try to change it. The problem sure is not in the style, but in your strategies or in your psychology.
A successful investor is able to make a profit in any longer trading time than he is used to. I explain. If you are already a profitable operator in the short term, it is very likely that you will also be profitable in the medium and long term,
… As long as you can interpret the Language of Price or Price Action.
In the opposite case, the same would not happen. If you were a medium-term trader, you would need time to adjust to the intraday. The reality is that long, medium and short term traders have very similar personalities. The intraday trader is completely different.

The Myth of the Intraday in Investments in FOREX

If you are already successful in the short, medium and long term, you will notice that the sacrifice and the hours necessary in front of the computer to operate intraday is much greater. The intraday style will be useful to increase your account if it is less than USD $ 100,000 in a very short time in exchange for 8 to 12 hours a day of hard work but ...
You must first develop the necessary skills to operate the intraday.
The ideal is to combine all the styles to get more out of the Market and carry out more effective transactions and have a diversification in your investments in FOREX.
There are intraday traders that are very successful, but the reality is that there are very few in the world that make a profit year after year. If you want to become an intraday, you just have to prepare yourself properly through intensive training.
Otherwise, I recommend that you don't even think about educating yourself to adopt the intraday style. It is not necessary to go against a probability of failure greater than 99%. Unless
... your ego is greater than your common sense.
The main reason why this style of investments in FOREX is not recommended for the vast majority of us "retail investors" (the official term "retail traders"), is the high operational cost.
The real commissions in this market range between $ 2.0 and $ 2.50 for each lot of 100,000 virtual units. This means that a complete operation (opening and closing) is approximately $ 5.00, for each standard lot traded ($ 100,000 virtual).
Another fundamental reason is the advent of robotic traders (HFT = High-Frequency Trading), which tend to manipulate the market in the shorter intraday swings. Please do not confuse HFTs with automated systems that we find daily on the internet, and that can be purchased for a few hundred dollars and often for free on FOREX forums / groups.
These HFTs to which I refer, they are effective. They cost millions of dollars and have been developed by the large Wall Street financial firms to manage their investments in FOREX.
The reality of the intraday trader is that you execute orders for large lots at the same time, to profit from the smallest movements in the market. It is an activity based on reflexes. The slightest oversight or distraction can turn into a catastrophe for your FOREX investments.
I recommend that you start investing in FOREX using slow time periods such as H4 or Daily. For some reason, all Goldman Sachs intraday FOREX investments are made with algorithms.

Finally…

To choose your style as a trader and manage your investments in FOREX, first determine what your degree of experience is, analyze the points mentioned below and the rest you will discover when you execute your first operations.
The points that will affect your decision are:

Capital
Time available each day
Level of Experience
Personality

Discovering your style is a search process. For some it will be a long way to find the right time frame that matches their personality. Don't be put off by the falls. After all, those who continue the path despite the falls are the ones who reach the destination.
And I hope you are one of those who get up over and over again. The next lesson will boost your confidence when you discover the main reason that moves currencies ...

Fundamental Analysis in Forex Trading Reddit

The fundamental analysis in Forex is used mostly by long-term investors. Players as we saw in the styles of operators, start a negotiation today, to close it years later.
I always emphasize the importance that the mass media give to this type of analysis to distract the great mass of participants.
It is all part of a great mass psychological manipulation. For centuries the ignorance of the masses has been organized before the great movements begin.
The important news are the macroeconomic reports published by the Central Banks and other government agencies destined for this work. All reports are made up. 99% of them are corrected months later.
These events are tools to justify fundamental analysis and price cleaning movements. Any silly headline does the job. With this, it is possible to absorb most of the existing liquidity, before the new trend phase is projected.

Reaction!

Except in rare situations, the result of an economic report of the fundamental analysis is generally already assimilated in the graph. In most cases, there are financial institutions that already have access to this information and are organizing and carrying out their operations in advance.
The phrase buy the rumor and sell the news is a very old adage on Wall Street. And its meaning contains what we have just explained. For the investor who can interpret the Language of Price, fundamental analysis is of little importance. Well, in general, their disclosure does not indicate that you have to take any action in your open trades , as long as your entry strategy provides you with a good support cushion.
This reality of fundamental analysis causes a lot of confusion for investors who lack in-depth knowledge of the forex market.

Macroeconomic Data

The data published in these events is irrelevant. Both for speculators and for the people in general. They are false. They lack reliability.
The price can go up or down with the same result of the data. The main ones are:
- Interest Rates - GDP (gross domestic product) - CPI (inflation) - ISM (manufacturing index) - NFP (payroll) - Double Deficits (deficit = fiscal + balance of payments)
If you are initiated, I recommend you avoid operating near these events. It is only a matter of having the time pending. Use the economic calendar for Fundamental Analysis of Forex Factory.
There is a probabilistic advantage in operating these fundamental analysis events. But it takes preparation, experience, and practice. They represent a way of diversifying in the general operation of a speculator.

The Uncertainty of Fundamental Analysis

On many occasions after the disclosure of an economic report, the price movement of the currency pair that is going to be affected tends to move in the opposite direction to the logic of the report.
I show you an example of a fundamental analysis report. Imagine that the EUR / USD pair is trading at 1.2500, and the FED (US Federal Reserve) issues a statement announcing that it has just raised inter-bank interest rates from 0.25 points to 0.75 points. Very positive news for the US dollar that logically implies an appreciation of the currency and consequently an instantaneous collapse of the EUR / USD pair (up the dollar and down the euro)
However, minutes after the release of said fundamental analysis report, the pair after effectively collapsing to 1.2400, returns and returns to its levels prior to the report (1.2500). This situation is very common , but it is not so easy to identify it when it is occurring, but after the damage is done.
Traps like these devour the accounts of beginners who approach the market with little experience, with weak strategies, and especially with very little experience.
That is why I reiterate that you forget the fundamental analysis for now. Just keep in mind when operating, that there is no publication scheduled nearby. Just check the economic calendar for the day and forget about the numbers. Let the economists mess around with the data.

FOREX Market Correlation

The Forex market correlation exists between pairs with similar "base" currencies and not always under the same circumstances. The correlation in the Forex market that is most followed and that has the greatest impact on fundamental analysis is that of the US dollar (USD).
The USD is the most traded monetary unit with a volume greater than 80% with respect to the rest of the currencies. This fact determines why their correlation is the most important, the most followed, and perhaps the only one worth following in the fundamental macro analysis.
The 7 major pairs are usually in sync . These 7 pairs all include the USD and present a fundamental analysis correlation almost 75% of the time. Influencing the rest of the currency pairs.

Advantages of the FOREX Market Correlation

In the fundamental analysis the most basic FOREX correlation is the following. When the USD appreciates, the USD / CAD, USD / CHF, and USD / JPY pairs tend to go up in price. This indicates that the Canadian dollar (CAD), the Swiss franc (CHF), and the Japanese yen (JPY) are losing value against the USD.
We must bear in mind that this correlation does not occur 100% of the time. In fact, the JPY generally tends to move in the opposite direction , since in recent decades this currency has been used as a source of financing to invest in other financial instruments.
On the other side is the FOREX market correlation that generates a movement almost in unison in the other 4 major pairs EUR / USD, GBP / USD, AUD / USD, and NZD / USD. These tend to fall in price, homologous the appreciation of the USD. But not always.
In this case the fundamental analysis correlation works most of the time, between 65 and 85% of the time. Small differences are noted in the extent that each of these pairs experiences.
There is also a correlation in the secondary FOREX market, where the pairs of all currencies that do not include the USD participate, but I recommend you not to waste time on them for now. There are more important things about the Language of Price to know first.

FOREX Commodity Correlation

In this part I will explain to you in a basic way the Correlation Commodities - FOREX of the fundamental analysis.
There are three currencies that have a direct correlation with commodities. They are usually called: "COMDOLLS" which is short for "Commodities Dollars" (Commodities Dollars), since all three obey the dollar denomination. These are:
- The New Zealand Dollar (NZD) - The Australian Dollar (AUD) - The Canadian Dollar (CAD)
These three currencies make up the group of the 8 largest together with the euro, the pound, the yen, the franc and the US dollar. Together, they merge to produce the major pairs traded in the FOREX Foreign Exchange Market.
The FOREX Commodity Correlation has an affinity in most cases greater than 75%. And each of them has its different raw material of correlation. You will notice that the NZD and the AUD are two currencies that act practically in unison. Both present minimal discrepancies in their fluctuations in the short, medium and long term.
This is mainly because their economies are very similar and their economic and fiscal policies are too. Their main production items also show great similarities, despite the fact that the Australian economy is much larger than the New Zealand economy.
The raw materials that follow the movement of the AUD are mainly gold and copper. If you put the history of these three quotes during the last decade of the year 2,000 together on the same chart, you will notice a very similar upward movement between the three quotes. Pure correlation of fundamental analysis.
This strong correlation with commodities in the metals area for the AUD has provided Australia with an economic advantage enviable over the other major powers that have seen their currencies devalue sharply against the AUD. At the same time, they experience a constant decrease in the purchasing power of their citizens.
The NZD maintains a correlation with raw materials related to agriculture and livestock, mainly including milk and its derivatives. It is one of the countries that dominates the world export of these economic items, and also has important exports of metals , although in smaller quantities than Australia.
Finally, you have a correlation with raw materials in the energy area. For historical reasons the CAD, which is not the largest oil producer in the world, but an important supplier to the largest consumer that is the US, has seen its currency oscillate in line with oil prices.
To make long-term investments in the Foreign Exchange Market, it is necessary to take into consideration at least one Commodity Correlation - FOREX in your fundamental analysis.

Forex Technical Analysis Reddit

The technical analysis is the methodology that interprets the movements of the price. Specialists look for liquidity to fund their business. The repetition of the strategies used by the specialists in their work generate repetitive patterns.
If you were an analyst, you would develop the visual ability to identify such patterns on a graph. If you were a programmer you would quantify them mathematically using complex formulas.
And if you could learn to interpret the Language of Price, you would have the ability to anticipate 90% of all movements that occur on a chart. And in this business, anticipating is what will make you money.
Market prices are reflected and framed on a horizontal time axis and a vertical price axis. Prices go up or down according to the aggressiveness of the participating operators. In an efficient or balanced market these oscillations should be imperceptible.
But in reality this is not the case, since the Market works thanks to the digital printing of hundreds of billions of units of paper money systematically distributed by the Central Banks through the banking system. These resources serve as a tool to manipulate 100% of the movements that occur in the FOREX Market.
Are you looking for Technical Indicators? All technical indicators were created from the 70's. How do you think that for more than 200 years the speculators of the past accumulated great wealth?
With the Language of Price. The best timing is given by the price itself. Indicator-generated entry signals usually occur at the wrong time.
The basis of technical analysis is human psychology. Unfortunately, human beings are not perfect and are loaded with emotions that dominate their behavior in similar situations, creating repetitive and highly predictable behavior when it occurs in masses.
The study of technical analysis through indicators and subjective training, originates and shapes the collective thinking on which all the traps that specialists execute every day to maintain their business are designed. If the majority won, the Market would cease to exist.
Although you already know that the patterns are not generated by the masses , but the repetitive behavior of the Specialists in the face of the action response of the masses. It is very easy for speculaists, because they can see everyone's orders in their books.
And they also exert a great influence on the decisions of the masses through the mass media. It is what I call the war between the Egg and the Stone , if you hit me you win and if I hit you also you win.

The Deception of Modern Technical Analysis

Through the centuries thousands of people have been able to extract great benefits from the financial markets by applying the basic strategies of technical analysis and the psychology of the Price Language.
More than 200 years ago when the markets began to operate officially, fundamental analysis predominated, which was only used by large financial institutions. As this analysis tool began to become popular, these institutions began to apply the strategies of technical analysis.
In recent decades and with the massification of internet technology, technical analysis has begun to be handled by anyone who has a computer with internet access. The same financial institutions, which have been present for more than a century and as a result of this overcrowding , establish a strategy to confuse and misinform about the true strategies of technical analysis.
This has been accomplished in the following manner. Currently there are hundreds, if not thousands of technical indicators that have been developed by so-called "gurus" of technical analysis and that sell their magic indicators packed in a "system" or "method" that usually cost thousands of dollars, or simply with the publication of a book with which they generate large profits. Double benefit.
The aim is to confuse the initiates in speculation and create the collective mentality that will originate the same behaviors over and over again. About 95% of these new entrants completely lose all the capital they invest in their early stages as investors.
Leaving them with a negative experience and creating the idea and the image that financial markets are an exclusive area for geniuses with high academic levels and that only they can produce returns in the markets year after year.
The initiate, having lost all his original capital, turns to these “gurus” for help and teachings. You spend more capital on the products they offer you and the cycle repeats itself . Obviously, the vast majority do not relapse and completely forget to re-engage in the stock markets.
I hope you have not been a victim of this drama.
Now I will show you the simplicity of a FOREX technical analysis , without the need to resort to any indicator as a tool to determine an effective entry or exit strategy when planning your operations.

The Price Cycle

Previously you studied in the FOREX strategies lesson, that the typical price cycle when it is reflected in a graph, presents four very specific phases and very easy to identify if you perform a technical analysis with common sense . These are:

Accumulation
Bullish trend
Distribution
Bearish trend

Remember also that the most effective way to constantly extract profits in the markets is by taking advantage of phases 2 and 4 (the trends). Combined with a correct reading of the collective behavior of the masses of speculators interpreting the Language of Price.
You will be surprised by the simplicity with which thousands of people around the world and over the centuries have accumulated large sums of money by drawing a few simple lines and applying responsible risk management with their capital.

How to Identify Trends?

Being able to determine the trend phases within the price cycle is the essence of technical analysis since it is these two phases that provide you with the probabilistic advantage you need to operate in the markets and obtain constant returns.
In the most plain and simple language, in the world of technical analysis, there are only two types of formations: trends and ranges.
The trends, in turn, can be bullish if they go up, or bearish if they go down. The ranges, on the other hand, can be accumulation if they are at the beginning of the cycle, or distribution if they are in the high part of the cycle. As I had indicated in the topic of FOREX strategies when describing the price cycle.
This sounds more like a play on words, but I will show you the practical definition to simplify your life and then you will apply these definitions on the graph so that everything makes more sense to you.

Bullish trend: a succession of major highs and major lows
Bearish trend: a succession of minor highs and minor lows
Floor Range: equal highs and varied lows
Ceiling Range: equal minimums and varied maximums

https://preview.redd.it/vvmsshf0guv51.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=c321679a7dcc03f7184778be86379ef442fddf91
Some key points from the graph:

The start of this big uptrend was detected when the last high (thick green line) of the previous downtrend was broken to the upside, ending the succession of lower highs, while exiting the lateral floor formation.
The succession of major lows in the uptrend (thin blue lines)
The succession of major highs in the uptrend (thin green lines)
The end of the uptrend was detected when the last low (thick blue line) of the uptrend was broken to the downside, ending the succession of higher lows, while exiting the lateral ceiling formation.

A tool that will help you sharpen your technical eye and identify trends on the chart is the Currency Scanner. This application is very effective and will provide you with a much-needed boost in your operations to identify reliable trends. At first, we are not sure how reliable a trend is. You will receive great help to find opportunities with the Currency Scanner .

The Common Sense, The Less Common of Senses

The central idea of technical analysis consists in determining the price situation of a market, that is, in which phase of the pattern of its cycle it is currently conjugated with the collective thinking of the masses and the possible traps that the market would have prepared to remove. the capital at stake by the public.
To carry out a precise technical analysis, you will use the support and resistance lines, which can be static (horizontal) or dynamic (projecting an angle with respect to the horizontal axis).
Your common sense prevails here.
If you show a 10-year-old a chart, they will be able to tell you if the price is going up or down. You will most likely have no idea how to draw the lines, but you will be able to establish the general trend. Simply using your common sense.
By introducing indicators and other gadgets , the simplicity and effectiveness of the technical analysis created by your common sense evaporates.
The following graph conceptually shows you all the possible situations in which you could draw these lines to carry out your technical analysis of the place. You can clearly observe a downtrend delimited by its dynamic trend line and an uptrend on the right side with its respective dynamic delimitation.
https://preview.redd.it/5iehg0r6guv51.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=84c265a5d35da7ea970792c4bf40fe20b33bd8bd

Forex Charts Analysis

I want to remind you that the formations or patterns that develop on the charts (triangles, wedges, pennants, boxes, etc.) only work to execute trades that have initially been confirmed by the static support and resistance lines and to read the collective thinking of the masses.
Chart formations work, but you must know the Language of Price to determine when the Specialists will exploit a chartist figure, or when they will allow it to run. In fact, you will learn with the Language that you can operate a chart figure in any direction.
Much of the "mentalization" that the masses receive is to believe that the figures are made to be respected. Which is an inefficient way of working. Simply because you could wait days or months for a perfect chart figure to occur in order to perform a reliable trade. When in fact there are dozens every day.

Japanese Candles

Of all the tools you have to carry out technical analysis, perhaps the best known and most popular is the Japanese technique of candles (candlesticks).
Candles are mainly used to identify reversal points on the chart without resorting to confirmation of horizontal trend lines and only using a previous bar or candle breaks.
Its correct use is subject to a multi-time analysis (multiple temporalities) and a general evaluation of the context proposed by the market in general at the time of each scenario.
Later I will show you all the important details to take into account so that you use Japanese candles in a simple and very effective way.
Do not forget ... Trading in your beginnings based on formations (chartism) and candlestick patterns conjugated with hundreds of tools and technical indicators, constitutes the perfect path to your failure. Before using any strategy or technique I recommend you focus on learning the Price Language, which includes 3 basic things:

The Price: structure and dynamics
Market sentiment: relative strength, external shocks, etc.
Psychology: flexible mindset and risk acceptance

After you acquire this solid foundation, I guarantee that you will be able to trade any trading system that exists, any strategy, technique or chart figure in a profitable and consistent manner.
Specialists make money every day at the expense of the collective behavior caused by the use of these strategies and techniques. With which you will only manage to lose your capital and your time by putting the cart in front of the horse.
People who do the opposite, at best become,
... Philosophers of Speculation, or indocile Robot Assistants or Expert Advisors.
To make money in any market condition, range or trend, you must use the technical analysis based on the Price Language and combine it with a correct psychological reading of the price. This knowledge can only be acquired through proper education and lots of supervised practice. Like any other career in life.
I hope you've found this guide helpful!

So yesterday I created the first part to the 'post' Today I'll continue it.
All markets, equities, cars, widgets, groceries, bonds and even forex are driven by volume. Without volume there is no movement as it's the market maker to entice the trader to aggressively buy or sell based upon their sentiments of direction.
So let's first put into perspective market sentiment and what it is for this posts purpose.
Sentiment is the psychological pressure of trader expectations in movement. It's visible through intermarket analysis and even some indexes when the indexes are properly cross referenced. But sentiment is visible even when candles stop their climb or when buying pressure supports the prices on an attempt to move lower. What comes after sentiment builds it's pressure is the path of least resistance and that's really what the markets are doing. Following the path of least resistance with volume as the rivers boundaries.
Volume in foreign exchange is real.
Retail traders think that because the market is decentralized that volume isn't available. Well, the broker you connect to, and the prime broker or bank that they connect to, they source their pricing with risk management modules by analyzing aggregated volume. Aggregation is a grouping of FX liquidity streams (that all include volume levels) into one hub of liquidity housed inside a limit order book. Volume is not made available to you though. It's the playground of the banks and if you're going to have access to a tool that allows the masses to dilute their returns do you think they would let you have it freely? Nope! They would though lobby for laws (Dodd-Frank, FIFO etc etc come to mind here) they all make it more difficult for you to trade!!!! Opacity!!! But volume is very real, it only needs proper aggregation!
So how do we find valuable opportunities when studying the charts? First off, if you study the charts alone you're doing yourself a great disservice! EURUSD in any time frame is just a representation of a relationship between two currencies. You need to study the value of the underlying currencies!
What that provides you is precision entries. Let's call the entry on Candle 12 (an arbitrary number). On candle 12 you see USDCHF spike higher, that would indicate that EURUSD is going to drop 96% of the time! Oh a little insight! So you take a position short EURUSD on candle 12 in expectation that the relationship between the two currencies is going to go lower because of the strength in the Dollar.
But remember, exchange rate fluctuation is the path of least resistance. So at the point where you have found your entry short in EURUSD, there is the opposite consideration. What if I am wrong? What it if goes the other way? At what price would it show me the opposite direction and how long do I have to wait to confirm a reversal? Candle 12 is magical. It tells you what you need. You see, in ALL instances, extremes high or lows of charts are seen by changes in what's called bid/ask bounce. When bid ask bounce is breached it's giving you sentiment, volume and price all shifting directions. If candle 12 is the candle short, then the high immediately prior to candle 12 is your reversal point!
I guarantee you this is the intersection of buyers and sellers, and when one defeats the other the market changes direction. This is true for all of the entries here, if price reversed before it reached a profitable exit then the reverse would in fact be at the opposite extreme prior to the entry candle.
So we go back and visit the adage buy low/sell high but what happens in between? Proper analysis is an active participation. And just as your analysis says you should buy or sell, your analysis should also tell you how the market is reacting in the middle. If there's no change or breach in bid/ask bounce the trend is still moving.
In the attached chart. When an entry signal is confirmed, the immediate high or low prior to that entry becomes the exact reversal point. (I have circled them in yellow) In most of the opportunities shown that stop loss is a mere 2.2 pips away from the entry price and there are no reversals that were required and all signals were profitably identified. No I did not trade them, this is live analysis that runs continually. Of all the signals there is ONE blue X in the center region of the chart that almost gave a sell signal but price pressures remained in tact and thus bullish. The analysis identifies over 100 pips in movement within a range of 35 pips overall. And none of it with lagging analysis.
With proper analysis, you can maximize your returns by comprehensively understanding all market conditions. You'll minimize your losing trades to negligible frequencies, your gains will be maximized and you'll see precisely how the market moves, turns, breathes and follows the path of least resistance.
Now my purpose here is to develop market transparency for the little guy. Sure my posts attract trolls because the trolls have been burned by their own trading ignorance. So they attack those that strive for and deliver something better, in fact most of them don't know how to trade to save their life and that's their anger. I could show you a few of them who have had accounts with companies I advise or am principal of - but there are privacy rights to respect. Do I do this free? On here of course. Is it a business? I've spent over a million dollars in just research, but when I experienced how expensive it was to obtain true transparency I knew there were benefits to providing this information to retail traders.
https://preview.redd.it/367rn2d6p3s51.jpg?width=1345&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e99e1604a078b6aa0916f32be91ce16bc5196320

https://eu.excentral.com/blog-article/?articleId=33383
Reading charts isn’t as hard as it might seem, so you should face your fears and learn how to successfully use this great technical analysis tool in your day-by-day trading. To ease up your work we’ll start with Candlestick Charts. The reason this chart type might be simpler to understand is the fact that each candle shows what the overall trend of the asset was, within a certain amount of time.
As you might’ve noticed, with eXcentral you have the choice between 9 time-frames, from 1 minute (1/1m) to 1 month (Mo/1M). All you need to do is decide what time-frame you want to choose between short term (1 minute, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours), medium-short term (1 day), medium term (1 week) or medium-long term (1 Month). Once you decide, you will visualise the trend of the asset within that certain period, as one candle.
Obviously, and you should know this by now, each green candle represents an increase in the value of the security you’re visualising, while each red candle represents a decrease in its value. You will notice that certain candles have some longer lines below or above them. We call those frail lines tails, and they’re a lot more powerful than they might seem.

Create Strategies Using Charts

The longer the candle’s tails, the higher the asset’s volatility, during your chosen period of time. For this reason, your chart will show 4 different values:

O – the opening value of the candle within your chosen time-frame
H – the highest value your asset reached within that candle’s time-frame
L – the lowest value the asset reached within the reference time frame
C – the closing value for the asset on that specific period

While Open and Close are values where the price managed to stabilise or maintain for more than a fraction of a second, the High and Low are in fact values the price of the asset reached even for a very short period of time, nonetheless, over that predefined period.
Knowing these valuable pieces of information, and how to interpret charts over various periods of time, gives you the possibility to create Trading Plans, for longer or shorter periods of time, based on the time-frame for which you create your expectations on.
Find out which are the 7 Steps For A Healthy Trading Experience by reading on…
Now that you understand these simple facts about charts, you can apply what you learned. Make sure you choose an asset you understand, and try to figure out what trend it follows. If you’re still having a hard time identifying the trend that your chart is displaying, make sure to change between different time-frames, as for certain periods charts can remain pretty flat, without showing any up or down-trends.
IF you need more information just make sure to check our other blogs posts, and subscribe for Michalis’ Webinar series. He explains everything from taking your first steps in Forex, all the way to advanced trading strategies, getting in the right trading mindset and Risk Handling Techniques.
https://eu.excentral.com/blog-article/?articleId=33383

The need for a trading strategy in Forex market

https://preview.redd.it/r6u8stdmeaw51.jpg?width=1320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1b0292502d6e68f5c220af5a5851aeb8061b395b
Almost all trading manuals talk about the need to have your own trading strategy. First of all, the process of creating your trading scheme allows you to perfectly understand trading and exclude from it any eventuality that hides additional risk.

Profitable forex strategy: it is a type of instruction for the trader, which helps to follow a clearly verified algorithm and safeguard his deposit from emotional errors and consequences of the unpredictability of the Forex currency market.

Thanks to her, you will always know the answer to the question: how to act in certain market conditions. You have the conditions of opening a transaction, the conditions of its closing, likewise, you do not guess if it is time or not. You do what the trading strategy tells you. This does not mean that it cannot be changed. A healthy trading scheme in the forex market must be constantly adjusted, it must comply with the realities of current market trends, but there must be no unfounded arguments in it.
>>> Forex Signals With Unbeatable Performance: Verified Forex Results And 5° Rated On Investing.com |Free Forex Signals Trial: CLICK HERE TO JOIN FOR FREE

Profitable Forex Strategy Reddit

Types of trading strategies
The forms of a trading strategy can combine a variety of methods. However, several of the most commonly used options can be highlighted.

Trading strategy based on various complementary technical indicators
Trading strategy using Bollinger Bands
Moving Average Strategy
Technical figures and patterns
Trading with Fibonacci levels
Candlestick trading strategy
Trend trading strategy
Flat trading strategy
Scalping
Fundamental analysis as the basis of the strategy

Three most profitable Forex strategies

Important! These strategies are the basis for building your own trading system. Indicator settings and recommended pending order levels are for consultation only. If you do not get a satisfactory outcome in the test result or in a live account, that does not mean that the problem is the strategy. It is enough to choose individual parameters of indicators under a separate asset and under the current market situation.

1. “Bali” scalping strategy

This strategy is one of the most popular, at least its description can be found on many websites. However, the recommendations will be different. According to the author's idea, "Bali" refers to scalping tactics, as it facilitates a fairly short stop loss (SL) and take profit (TP). However, the recommended time frame is high, because the signals appear not very often. The authors recommend using the H1 interval and the EUR / USD currency pair.
Indicators used:

Linear Weighted Moving Average. Period 48 (red line).

https://preview.redd.it/9mhs67mxeaw51.jpg?width=461&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=913d428edd4cab0a3237e7039829a76dd587f1f5
The weighted linear moving average here acts as an additional filter. Due to the fact that LWMA gives more weight to the values of the last periods, the indicator in the long periods practically excludes delays. In some cases, LWMA can give a signal beforehand, but in this strategy only the moving position relative to price is important. Bearish LWMA is a buy signal, sell bullish.

Trend Envelopes_v2. Period 2 (orange and blue lines).

https://preview.redd.it/8bap0s41faw51.jpg?width=627&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a6236ad06765280bbfd655fa1fb4153b28aaaf56
The indicator is also based on the moving average, but the formula is slightly different for the calculation. Its marking is more precise (the impact of price noise has been eliminated). It allows you to identify the twists of the trend compared to the usual mobile with a slight anticipation. Trend Envelopes has an interesting property: the color of the line and its new location changes when the price penetrates its old trend line, a kind of signal.

DSS of momentum. The configuration in the screenshot below.

https://preview.redd.it/9ch27cj4faw51.jpg?width=630&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=00558bbd90378009bef33b7c96c77f884b912667
The indicator is placed in a separate window below the chart. This is an oscillator whose task is to determine the pivot points of the trend. And it does so much faster than standard oscillators. It has two lines: the signal is dotted, the additional line is solid, but the receiver has 2 kinds of colors (orange and green).

Important! Note that the indicators for the “Bali” strategy are chosen in such a way as to ultimately give an early signal. This gives the trader time to confirm the signal and check the fundamentals.

MA is one of the basics on MT4, the other two indicators can be found in the archive for free here. To add them to the platform, click on MT4: "File / Open data directory". In the folder that opens, follow the following path: MQL4 / Indicators. Copy the flags to the folder and restart the platform.
Also Read: Make Money With Trading
Conditions to open a long position:

Price penetrates the orange Trend Envelopes line from the bottom up. At the same time in the same candle there is a change of the orange line that falls to a growing celestial.
The candle is above LWMA. Once the above condition has been met, we wait for the candle to appear above the moving one. It is important that it closes above the LWMA red line. It is mandatory to have a Skyline Trend Envelopes on a signal candle.
The additional DSS of momentum line on the signal candle is green and is above the dotted line of the signal (that is, it crosses or crosses it).

We open a trade at the close of the signal candle. The recommended stop level is 20-25 points in 4-digit quotes, take profit at 40-50 points.
https://preview.redd.it/t48d55s8faw51.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1e93863745e74dec536178539817225767cbeb1c
The arrow indicates a signal candle where a Trend Envelopes color change occurred. Note (purple ovals) that the blue line is below the orange line and goes upwards (in other cases the signal should be ignored). In the signal candle, the green DSS of momentum line is above the dotted line.
Conditions to open a short position:

Price penetrates the Trend Envelopes sky line from top to bottom. At the same time in the same candle there is a change from the increasing celestial line to the falling orange.
The candle is below LWMA. Once the above condition has been met, we wait for the candle to appear below the mobile. It is important that it closes below the LWMA red line. It is mandatory to have an orange Trend Envelopes line on a signal candle.
The additional DSS of momentum line on the signal candle is orange and is below the dotted line of the signal (i.e. crosses or crosses it).

https://preview.redd.it/6uixkl1dfaw51.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dd53442c633e80c1e55da72cd5ffe9cda2e85b8a
Some examples where a transaction cannot be opened:

In the screenshot below the signal candle closed at the moving level (red line), it was practically below it.

https://preview.redd.it/2o1wpocgfaw51.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=58d3286bf2884b5f0dfdaa0a62b68d2d50cdabf8

In the screenshot below the signal candle is DSS below its signal line. Also, the celestial line is horizontal and not ascending.

https://preview.redd.it/1nfi1etjfaw51.jpg?width=801&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ff9fcbc10a485c5102ef7a135de47332827caf54
The signals are relatively rare, a signal can be expected for several days. In half the cases, it is better to control the transaction and close in advance, without waiting for profit taking. We do not operate at the time of flat. Try this strategy directly in the browser and see the result.
>>> Forex Signals With Unbeatable Performance: Verified Forex Results And 5° Rated On Investing.com |Free Forex Signals Trial: CLICK HERE TO JOIN FOR FREE

2. “Va-Bank” candle strategy

This profitable Forex strategy is weekly and can be used on different currency pairs. It is based on the spring principle of price movement, what went up quickly, sooner or later must fall. To trade you will only need a schedule on any platform and W1 time frame (although the daily interval can be used).

You should estimate the size of the candle bodies of different currency pairs ( AUDCAD , AUDJPY , AUDUSD , EURGBP , EURJPY , GBPUSD , CHFJPY , NZDCHF , EURAUD , AUDCHF , CADCHF , EURUSD , EURCAD , GBPCHF ) and choose the largest distance from the opening to the close of the candle in the framework of the week. In this to open a transaction at the beginning of the following week.

Conditions to open a long position:

The bearish candle, which signifies last week's movement, has a relatively large body.

Open a long position early next week. Make sure to place a stop loss at 100-140 points and a take profit at 50-70 points. When it is midweek, close the order if it has not yet been closed at take profit or stop loss. After that, wait again for the beginning of the week and repeat the procedure, in any case do not open operations at the end of the current week.
https://preview.redd.it/vuihnqspfaw51.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7641e9d7701911cc255c4f0c8a53e1660c35c9fe
On this chart it is clearly seen that after each large bearish candle there is necessarily a bullish candle (although smaller). The only question is what period to take where it makes sense to compare the relative length of the candles. Here everything is individual for each currency pair. Note that a rising candle was observed followed by a few small bearish candles. But when it comes to minimizing risks, it is best not to open a long response position, as the relatively small decline from the previous week may continue.
Conditions to open a short position:

The bullish candle, which signifies last week's movement, has a relatively large body.

We open a short position early next week.
https://preview.redd.it/tv4zmf5ufaw51.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=61cd1dcfc4aebfa6f80343b6c51f7a6e46358602
The red arrows point to the candles that had a large body around the previous bullish candles. Almost all signals turned out to be profitable, except for the transactions indicated by a blue arrow. The shortcomings of the strategy are rare signs, albeit with a high probability of profit. The best thing is that it can be used in several pairs at the same time.
This strategy has an interesting modification based on similar logic. Investors with little capital opt for intraday strategies, as their money is insufficient to exert radical pressure on the market. Therefore, if there is a strong move on the weekly chart, this may indicate a cluster of large strong traders. In other words, if there are three weekly candles in one direction, it is most likely the fourth. Here you also have to take into account the psychological factor, 4 candles is equal to one month, and those who "push" the market in one direction, within a month will begin to set profits.
Strategy principle:

A "three candles" pattern (ascending and descending) formed on the weekly chart.
It is preferable that each subsequent candle was larger than the previous one. Doji is not taken into account (disembodied candles).
Stop is placed at the closing level of the first candle of the constructed formation. Take profit at 50-100% of the last candle, but it is often better to manually close the trade.

An example of this type of formation in the screenshot below.
https://preview.redd.it/iu7cwa7xfaw51.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9195d24b72d2bda5394614380e9e5bc167f108a5
Of the 5 patterns, 4 were effective. Lack of strategy, the pattern can be expected 2-3 months. But when launching a multi-currency strategy this expectation is justified. Consider swaps!
>>> Forex Signals With Unbeatable Performance: Verified Forex Results And 5° Rated On Investing.com |Free Forex Signals Trial: CLICK HERE TO JOIN FOR FREE

3. Parabolic Profit Based on Moving Average

This strategy is universal and is usually given as an example for novice traders. It uses classic EMA (Exponential Moving Average) indicators for MT4 and Parabolic SAR, which acts as a confirmatory indicator.
The strategy is trend. Most sources suggest using it in "minutes", but price noise reduces its efficiency. It is better to use M15-M30 intervals. Currency pairs - Any, but you may need to adjust the indicator settings.
Indicators used:

EMA with periods 5, 25 and 50. EMA (5) in red, EMA (25) and EMA (50) in yellow. Apply to Close (closing price).

https://preview.redd.it/ly7ju8o3gaw51.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=61dee5b0d994d09a375e01e2b9afe188dd2ee0ed

Parabolic SAR, parameters remain unchanged (color correct at your discretion).

https://preview.redd.it/sonpv1m8gaw51.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=823e9ce5d279d3a98ef072694766a112a3ece775
Conditions to open a long position:

Red EMA (5) crosses the yellows from bottom to top.
Parabolic SAR is located under the sails.

Conditions to open a short position:

Red EMA (5) crosses the yellows from top to bottom.
Parabolic SAR is located above the candles.

The transaction can be opened on the same candle where the mobile crossover occurred. Stop loss at the local minimum, take profit at 20-25 points. But with the manual management of transactions you can extract great benefits. For example, close at the time of the transition from EMA (5) to a horizontal position (change of the angle of inclination of the growth to flat).
https://preview.redd.it/4un92jlegaw51.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=406a700c00722349622d031e20d0858e4196d18b
This screen shows that all three signals (two long and one short) were effective. It would be possible to enter the market on the candle by following the signal (in order to accurately verify the direction of the trend), but you would then miss the right time to enter. It is up to you to decide whether it is worth the risk. For one-hour intervals, these parameters hardly work, so be sure to check the performance of the indicators for each period of time in a minimum span of three years.
And now that you know the theory, a few words about how to put these strategies into practice.
Ready? Then let's get started!

From the theory to the practice

Step 1. Open demo account It's free, requires no deposit, takes up to 15 minutes, and no verification required. On the main page of your broker there is for sures a button "Register", click and follow the instructions. An account can also be opened from other menus (for example, from the top menu, from the commercial conditions of the account, etc.).
Step 2. Familiarize yourself with the functionality of the Personal Area. It won't take long. It is at the most user friendly and intuitive. You just need to understand the instruments of the platform and understand how the trades are opened.
Step 3. Launch the trading platform. The Personal Area has the platform incorporated, but it is impossible to add templates. Hence, the "Bali" and "Parabolic Profit" strategies can only be executed on MT4.

Characteristics of an effective Forex strategy Reddit

And finally, let's see what makes a profitable Forex strategy effective. What properties should it have? Perhaps three of the most important characteristics can be pointed out.

The minimum number of lag indicators. The smaller they are, the greater the forecast accuracy.
Easy. Understanding your strategy is more important than your saturation with complex elements, formulas, and schematics.
Uniqueness. Any trading strategy must be "tailored" to your trading style, your character, your circumstances, and so on.

It is very important to develop your own trading strategy, but it is necessary to test a large number of already available and proven strategies. On the Forex blog you will find trading strategies available for download. Before using a live account, test your chosen strategy on the demo account on the MetaTrader trading platform.
Conclusion. To successfully trade the Forex currency market, create your own trading strategy. Learn what's new, learn out-of-the-box trading schemes, and improve your individual action plan in the market. Only in this case, the trading results will satisfy you to the fullest. Success, dear readers!
>>> Forex Signals With Unbeatable Performance: Verified Forex Results And 5° Rated On Investing.com |Free Forex Signals Trial: CLICK HERE TO JOIN FOR FREE
Join the community for more articles on trading and making money on the Forex and Stock market.
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Elliott Waves Series Part 2 - The Broad ConceptYou can find Part 1 here: https://www.reddit.com/Forex/comments/hieuyw/introduction_to_elliott_wave_theory_overview_of/
The primary value that the Wave Principle (from here on out, abbreviated to WP) confers on market analysts is the ability to provide context for market behaviour. Having context is incredibly important. To put it simply, the WP can be thought of as a compass. Whenever you feel lost looking at a chart (ANY chart, ANY market!), the WP will help get you back on track.
Clearing Up Some Misconceptions About Elliott Wave Theory:

R.N. Elliott first discovered the WP in the 1930s using charts of the stock market. Many misinformed people believe that the WP works “best” on stocks and has been adapted for use in other markets. This is simply false. To be clear - Elliott discovered the WP. He did not invent the WP. The WP is based on human social nature and therefore it cannot be invented. It has always existed. What Elliott did was to start codifying rules and guidelines around how human social nature can be charted. Ultimately, Elliott’s objective was to be able to predict future human behaviour using the historical record. The expression of human social nature generates forms and patterns. As these forms and patterns repetitive, they have enormous predictive value.

Another major misconception around the WP is that it requires a lot of discretionary analysis, and more often than not, analysts shoehorn price action to fit the Elliott Wave model. In fact, the WP has very clear rules (these rules are inviolate under any circumstance) and guidelines (these guidelines should be adhered to almost 100% of the time). While there is a discretionary element involved in counting waves, properly trained wave analysts will ultimately arrive at a consensus because following the rules and guidelines narrows the possible wave counts very quickly. Very often Wave analysts will have 2 counts at hand in terms of where they think the market is presently situated. These counts are known as the preferred count and the alternative count. These counts are validated and invalidated using price levels derived from Elliott’s rules and guidelines. The most dissent I expect from two educated Wave analysts is that one analyst’s preferred count could be the other’s alternative count. This dissent quickly resolves itself as the price action develops and validates or invalidates one count or the other. This dissent usually occurs based on wave patterns of one higher degree. It is very rare that I have seen dissent on immediate market movements.

I didn’t know this was a major misconception, but someone brought this up in my first post, “I stated that Elliott Theory has better success when working in consolidations or extreme ranging markets.” This is completely false. The WP doesn’t work better or worse regardless of the market or the market conditions. That would be like saying that breathing air only works occasionally. The WP is NOT a strategy, it is the definitive model for charting human herding behaviour. Human behaviour does not show up only in periods of consolidation or range-bound markets. The markets are themselves driven by human behaviour, therefore the WP is always equally applicable. From a trading perspective, the WP is perfectly suited to capturing trends.

Well, what about news events? What about supply and demand theory? What about fundamentals?! Doesn’t any of this stuff matter?? In short, the answer is no. I have previously stated that I am a macro-based investor. This is certainly true. Much of the research I consume has to do with market fundamentals and global-macro analysis. This research helps me form a view that I can overlay with the WP. From a trading perspective, when it comes to actually pulling triggers and taking positions, my decisions are always guided first and foremost by the WP. Here is a fantastic quotation from Bob Prechter on this topic, “Sometimes the market appears to reflect outside conditions and events, but at other times it is entirely detached from what most people assume are causal conditions. The reason is that the market has a law of its own. It is not propelled by the external causality to which one becomes accustomed in the everyday experiences of life. The path of prices is not a product of news. Nor is the market the cyclically rhythmic machine that some declare it to be. Its movement reflects a repetition of forms that is independent both of presumed causal events and of periodicity.”

The Bottom Line:
Elliott Wave Theory is the best forecasting tool in existence. It has determined that the market’s progression unfolds in waves. Waves can be thought of as patterns that carry the market in a direction. There are a fixed number of the different kinds of patterns these waves can take. If you really boil this down to its essence, successfully applying the WP is as simple as identifying what kind of wave the market is currently in.
I will end this now. The next part will deal with the overriding wave structure that the market is in, the different kinds of waves we will see, and why this wave structure exists in the first place.

How to Identify and Trade with the Trend in Forex - Forex ...

How do I identify trend reversal patterns in forex?

New to Trading? Here's some tips

Former investment bank FX trader: some thoughts

Why it matters

Capital and position sizing

Kelly Criterion

How to use stop losses sensibly

Picking a clear level

Coming up in part II

Coming up in part III

How to Trade the Fisher Transform Indicator

Hi, I'm new into Forex and I have some questions. (sorry for bad grammar but I'm not good in English)

Former investment bank FX trader: Risk management part II

Letting stops breathe

Reasons to change a stop

Entering and exiting winning positions

Entering positions with limit orders

Risk:reward and win ratios

Risk-adjusted returns

Sharpe ratio

VAR

Coming up in part III

Some trading wisdom, tools and information I picked up along the way that helped me be a better trader. Maybe it can help you too.

Trade the Trade - The Methodology

Forex Forecast | Forex Prediction

Forex Trading Strategies Reddit: What you need to know to start Forex trading.

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Finally…

Fundamental Analysis in Forex Trading Reddit

Reaction!

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Profitable Forex Strategy Reddit | 3 Easy Forex Strategies Easy For MT4

The need for a trading strategy in Forex market

Profitable Forex Strategy Reddit

Three most profitable Forex strategies

1. “Bali” scalping strategy

2. “Va-Bank” candle strategy

3. Parabolic Profit Based on Moving Average

From the theory to the practice

Characteristics of an effective Forex strategy Reddit

Elliott Waves Series Part 2 - The Broad Concept

How to identify the trend - YouTube