How To Draw Support and Resistance Levels Like A Professional - 3

Example 6: USDCAD DAILY CHART The USDCAD daily chart below shows us a good example of the “value” concept that I discussed in the last example. Note how price formed that area of consolidation or “value” marked on the chart below, and then later price retraced back up to it and found resistance exactly at the center of the value near 0.9883 on October 3rd. Then, after price finally broke back above that value level it formed a price action setup after it retraced back down to it, as we can see an inside pin bar combo setup formed showing rejection of that same level.
So, here’s a very simple strategy for you; wait for a key level to break, then wait for price to retrace back to it and look for a price action setup entry trigger to form near the breakout level in the direction of the initial breakout.
 

Example 7: EURJPY DAILY CHART
We can see in the EURJPY chart below that it’s been in an uptrend since about the end of July. This uptrend has had some pretty large counter-trend retraces, which of course we need to mark with levels. We can see in the chart below the support levels and zones left behind by the different points in the market were the retrace ended and the uptrend resumed. Also, in a trending market like this, we can watch the previous swing points for price action signals as the market retraces back to them. For example, in an uptrend we can look for price action entries at the previous resistance / swing points in the market which turn into support after price breaks up past them. We can see a clear example of this in the chart below with the recent pin bar trading strategy that formed at the shorter-term support through 102.50 area, note that this level was previous resistance.
 

Example 8: XAUUSD DAILY CHART
In the Gold chart below, you can see I’ve gone back about 8 months in drawing in my long-term levels. This is about the farthest back I typically go when drawing in my levels on the daily charts. Again, longer-term “key levels” are those levels that clearly caused a significant change of direction in price and / or held strong on multiple tests across time. Shorter-term levels are those that caused less significant price direction changes and may be “newer” levels. You don’t have to get carried away drawing in too many of the shorter-term levels though, just use common sense and decide which are the most obvious and draw those in. If you put too many support and resistance levels on your charts you’ll end up with a messy chart that just confuses you and might even cause you not to trade because you think there are too many levels for the market to have to move through.
This brings me to a very important point you should remember: In an up-trending market, resistance levels will often break, and in a down-trending market support levels will often break. I say that because I get a lot of emails from traders telling me they can’t get a proper 1:2 or more risk reward ratio because there are too many support or resistance levels in the way. Well, you have to look at the market context that your trade setup has formed in and use some common sense and discretion…not every little level you find is significant.
 

Example 9: DJ30 DAILY CHART
In the Dow Jones futures chart below, we can see the current picture of key levels that are relevant for this market. Of special note, we can see how consistently these key levels hold as price retraces back to them. Knowing that price often bounces or repels from key levels is a very valuable piece of information. Indeed, a big portion of my trading theory revolves around waiting patiently for an obvious price action setup to form at a key chart level as the market retraces back to it. If you observe this chart for a few minutes, you’ll begin to see how accurate these levels are in rejecting, it really is uncanny.
 
Example 10: WTI DAILY CHART
In the example below, we are looking at the current Crude Oil chart. This chart shows us a very important lesson. Note the pin bar marked on the chart below, it was an obvious pin bar that showed forceful rejection of a key resistance level, and then the market chopped around about 6 days before finally moving lower. The most obvious stop loss placement on that pin bar would have been just above its high which was also the key resistance through $93.65 area. If you enter an obvious price action setup like that and you’ve placed your stop loss at a logical spot in-line with the existing market structure, there’s no reason to panic if the market moves against you and almost stops you out. This exact scenario was very likely in this Crude oil pin bar setup, and I know some traders who panicked when price moved against them. Had they just stayed in the market, their initial stops just above the key resistance would not have been hit and they would have made a killing. Lesson: trust your stops if you’ve placed them beyond a key support or resistance level or in another logical place.
Conclusion:
I hope you now have a better idea of how I draw support and resistance levels on my charts and why I draw them where I do. I suggest you try drawing the relevant levels on your charts now according to what you’ve learned in today’s lesson.
Determining where to draw your support and resistance levels is really not as difficult as many traders make it out to be. When in doubt, slow down and take a step back, ask yourself if a level your about to put on your chart makes sense and why. If it makes logical sense you should be able to easily explain why to someone who has no trading experience. For example, you might say “This level is important because it clearly caused price to make a significant change of direction recently”. If you just take a logical approach to drawing in your support and resistance levels you will save yourself a lot of time and frustration in the end. Don’t be one of those traders with so many lines on their charts you can’t figure out what’s happening. If you would like more help with drawing support and resistance levels and how to use them in combination with price action strategies

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How To Draw Support and Resistance Levels Like A Professional -2

Example 2: GBPUSD DAILY CHART
Here’s a good exercise for you to work on: When marking support and resistance levels on your charts, mark the longer-term “key” levels first and then draw the shorter-term levels. This will work to give you a framework for the current market conditions and gives your analysis some routine as well.
One of the things I often write about is support or resistance “zones”, as often a support or resistance is not really an exact level but more of a zone. In the example below, we can see a very good example of a resistance zone that occurs between about 1.6270 and 1.6310.
“Key” support or resistance levels are generally levels that price rejected forcefully and that gave rise to a significant move up or down, or they can be levels that have contained or supported price many times. Whereas, shorter-term levels give rise to smaller movements and tend to break easier. We can see good examples of both in the GBPUSD daily chart below:
 

Example 3: AUDUSD DAILY CHART
In this example we are looking at the AUDUSD daily chart and we can see currently the market is in a large trading range between about 1.0612 and 1.0175. We classify 1.0612 as “key resistance” since it has caused significant turning points in the market and held on the last two tests. Similarly, 1.0175 is “key support” because it has led to significant turning points in the market and held on about the last 4 tests. The shorter-term level through 1.0410 is clearly significant, but again it’s not “quite” as significant as the two levels just mentioned. As you can see, some of drawing in your levels and deciding which is more important than the other can be left up to your own interpretation, but at the same time you should have a logical line of reasoning such as “this level has held price more times”, or “that level created a larger move”, etc.
 

Example 4: USDJPY DAILY CHART
In the USDJPY example below, we are looking at all “key levels” because I did not see any that I considered to be short-term levels. The reason being, every level I’ve drawn in has created a significant turning point. The USDJPY most recently has been breaking higher, and if the resistance near 80.37 gives way we will likely see another leg higher.
Of special note in this chart are the bar tails or wicks. Note how some of the levels are not drawn exactly at the bar highs or lows but rather through the middle portion of the tail. This is important, and it’s one of the myths I mentioned at the start of this lesson; you don’t always have to draw your S/R levels exactly at a bar high or low. In fact, it’s more important to have a lot of tails touching a level than it is to have a level exactly at two or three bar highs or lows. An example of this is the level at 78.79 in the chart below; note how I drew it through as many bar tails (or wicks) that I could, rather than moving it further up and just hitting the exact highs of a couple bars. Drawing your levels in this manner gives you a better reference point to look for signals from since you are getting closer to the mean or average turning point price in the market, so it’s basically a higher-probability level than a level that’s further out but exactly at a bar high or low. That’s not to say you will never draw S/R levels at exact highs or lows, because you will, a lot, but it just means you don’t always have to draw them that way and won’t always want to.
 


Example 5: NZDUSD DAILY CHART
In the NZDUSD chart below we want to take note of what I refer to as a “value area”. Now, what I mean by “value area” is basically just an area where it’s obvious that price “likes” to be. This is essentially just another word for consolidation, since an area of consolidation on a chart is essentially where a market has found “fair value”. These value areas typically act as support or resistance zones, and this means when price retraces back to them you can watch for price action trading strategies forming at them. You will also sometimes have existing support or resistance levels that basically run right through the center of a value area, showing about the middle of the value area, and we can see this clearly by the blue line in the chart below. In this specific NZDUSD example that blue value line would be a good support to watch for buy signals if price rotates lower soon.

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How To Draw Support and Resistance Levels Like A Professional

In my daily Forex commentary each day, I draw in the key levels of support and resistance that I feel are the most significant in the current market environment. It’s something that I’ve done for so long it really only takes me a few minutes to do now, it really is a very logical and simple task for me and it can be for you too.
Many traders make the process of drawing support and resistance levels a lot more difficult than it needs to be. After you have a general idea of how I draw my support and resistance levels, you should have no problem using that knowledge as a guideline to draw the levels yourself. We get tons of emails each week from traders asking how to properly draw support and resistance levels on their charts. Also, we get emails with chart attachments from traders who are clearly drawing far too many levels on the charts, thus complicating the process of price action trading and confusing themselves as well.
Today’s lesson is going to be a tutorial of how I draw my levels in the market. Basically, I’m going to take you guys on a ride through my brain (scary I know) as I decide where to draw support and resistance levels on some real-time daily charts. You can use this lesson as a reference until you feel comfortable enough drawing the levels on your own. Also, it will help you to make your own commentary each day of your favorite markets; writing down your analysis rather than keeping it all in your head is a good way to stay on track and make sure you have a clear plan for the week and day ahead. To get started, let’s clear up a few common myths about drawing support and resistance levels…


Common myths about drawing support and resistance levels:

Myth 1: 
                You should draw every level you can find on your charts – Many traders fall into this trap, they end up taking an hour to draw on every little level they can find. What they end up with is a really messy chart that basically does more harm than good. You need to learn to draw only the significant levels on your charts, then you’ll have a useful framework to work from.

Myth 2: 
                     Your S/R (support and resistance) levels should always be drawn across the exact highs or lows of price bars – This is perhaps the biggest myth that traders have about drawing levels on their charts. Often times, support and resistance are more “zones” than exact “levels”, sometimes you will have a key level that is indeed an exact level, but more often than not we are going to be drawing our support and resistance lines midway through bar tails or even through the body of a bar sometimes. Point being, you don’t always have to draw the level exactly through the high or low of the bar. Note: if you are totally new and confused by some of the lingo here, please take some time to go over this candlestick tutorial before moving on.
Myth 3: 
                   You should go back really far in time with your levels – Unless you are a long-term buy-and-hold investor right now, you don’t need to go back more than about 8 months when drawing your levels. we really only focus on the last 3 to 6 months when drawing in the daily levels, and that goes for my own personal trading too. I am not sitting there trying to draw in levels from the last 5 years like some traders…you are wasting your time if you’re doing this.
OK! Now that we’ve cleared up those common myths about drawing S/R levels on your charts, let’s move on to some “meat”:

How I draw support and resistance levels on my charts:
Below are examples of how I would draw the relevant support and resistance levels on some of the major Forex pairs, Gold, Crude Oil and Dow Futures as they stand at the time of this writing. Above each chart is a brief explanation of why I drew the levels where I did.
Example 1: EURUSD DAILY CHART
Here we are looking at the current euro / dollar daily chart. You’ll note the red lines highlight the longer-term or “key” levels and the blue lines highlight the shorter-term or “near-term” levels. This is how all the examples will be in this lesson and hopefully it will make it easier for you to differentiate between what I often refer to as “key” levels from shorter-term levels that aren’t quite as significant.
In this example, you can see this market is clearly in a trading range right now between about 1.3140-70 resistance and 1.2830 support. Those are what I would call the “key levels” on this current daily EURUSD chart. Within the range, we have some shorter-term levels that are still significant albeit less so than the key levels just discussed. Of special note are the two shorter-term resistance levels marked on the chart below. You will see that the one near 1.3070 is hitting a bar high from October 5^th, but also it’s going through the bodies and middle of the tails of the bars from October 17^th – 23^rd. This brings up a good point…a support or resistance level can be significant even if it isn’t exactly touching bar highs and lows. This is also seen at the key resistance of the range, note how the line through 1.3140 is not touching the exact highs on September 14^th and 17^th at 1.3171…this brings up the point that sometimes support or resistance is more of a “zone” than a strict / exact level. In this case the resistance of the current range is really a small zone of resistance from 1.3140 to about 1.3171 (more on support / resistance “zones” soon).
Also of note, there was an inside bar on October 18^th, and after the market broke down from that inside bar it tried to rotate back up to about where it broke down at, and this breakdown level acted as resistance and held the market off from advancing further, and then as we can see the market has since fallen away from that level. These are some of the more subtle things you need to learn about when drawing in your levels…especially shorter-term levels; that inside bar breakdown point held as a resistance, and often inside bar breakout points will act as support or resistance, even if it’s just for the short-term.

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Price Action Trading Patterns: Pin Bars, Fakey’s, Inside Bars

In this Forex trading lesson, I am going to share with you three of my favorite price action trading strategies; pin bars, inside bars and fakeys. These trading setups are simple yet very powerful, and if you learn to trade them with discipline and patience you will have a very potent Forex trading edge.

Whilst these three setups are my ‘core’ setups, there are many other versions and variations of them that we focus on in our members’ community and advanced price action trading course. However, you can learn some good basics in this article to lay the foundation for future learning. So, without further delay, let’s get this party started…

Pin Bar Setup:
The pin bar is a staple of the way I trade the Forex market. It has a very high accuracy rate in trending markets and especially when occurring at a confluent level. Pin bars occurring at important support and resistance levels are generally very accurate setups. Pin bars can be taken counter trend as well, as long as they are very well defined and protrude significantly from the surrounding price bars, indicating a strong rejection has occurred, and preferably only on the daily chart time frame. See the illustration to the right for an example of a bearish pin bar (1st bar) and a bullish pin bar (2nd bar) —>
In the following chart example we will take a look at pin bars occurring within the context of a trending market; my favorite way to trade them. Also, note that this uptrend began on the back of two bullish pin bars that brought an end to the existing downtrend.
Fakey Setup:
The fakey trading strategy is another bread and butter price action setup. It indicates rejection of an important level within the market. Often times the market will appear to be headed one direction and then reverse, sucking all the amateurs in as the professionals push price back in the opposite direction. The fakey setup can set off some pretty big moves in the Forex market.
As we can see in the illustration to the right, the fakey pattern essentially consists of an inside bar–> setup followed by a false break of that inside bar and then a close back within its range. The fakey entry is triggered as price moves back up past the high of the inside bar (or the low in the case of a bearish fakey).
In the chart below we can see the market was recently moving higher before the fakey formed. Note the fakey was formed on the false-break of an inside bar setup that occurred as all the amateurs tried to pick the market top, the pros then stepped in and flushed out all the amateurs in a flurry of buying…



Inside Bar Setup:
The inside bar is a great trend continuation signal, but it can also be used as a turning point signal. However, the first way to learn how to trade the inside bar strategy is as a continuation signal, so that is what we will focus on here. As we can see in the illustration to the right, an inside bar is completely contained within the range of–>  the previous bar
It shows a brief consolidation and then a break out in the dominant trend direction. Inside bars are best played on daily and weekly charts. They allow for very small risks and yet very large rewards. The inside bar strategy combined with a very strongly trending market is one of my favorite price action setups.
In the example below, we are looking at a current (as of this writing) EURUSD inside bar trade setup that has come off to the downside with the existing bearish market momentum. We can see a nice inside bar setup formed just after the market broke down below a key support level, the setup has since come off significantly lower and is still falling towards the next support at 1.2625, as of this writing.
As you can see from the three examples above, Forex trading does not have to be complicated or involve plastering messy and confusing indicators all over your charts. Once you master a few solid price action setups like the ones above , you will be well on your way to becoming a more confident and profitable trader, just remember, mastering these setups will require patience, dedication and discipline.

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The ‘False Break’ Trading Strategy-2

3. Fakey’s (inside bar false-breaks)
The Fakey setup is one of my all-time favorite price action setups and learning to trade it will do a lot for helping you to understand market dynamics. Essentially, the Fakey is a price action pattern that requires there to be a false-break of an inside bar setup. So, once you have an inside bar setup, you can watch for a false-break of the inside bar and the mother bar. Now, I am not going to get into all the different versions of the fakey trading strategy today or the different ways to trade it, but you can learn everything about my proprietary forex fakey trading strategy in my professional Forex trading course.
Here’s an image of two Fakey setups, note that one has a pin bar as the false-break and other does not, these are just two of the variations of the Fakey setup:

False-breaks can create long-term trend changes

As price action traders, we can use the price action of a market to anticipate false-breaks and look for them at key levels as they will often set off significant changes in price direction or even a change in trend from these key levels.
We need to pay attention to the ‘tails’ of candles that occur at or near key levels in the market. Ask yourself how prices reacted during each daily session…where did they close? The close is the most important level of the day, and often if a market fails to close beyond a key market level, it can signal a significant false-break. Often, prices will probe a level or attempt to break out, but by the close of the daily bar price has rejected that level and ‘tailed out’, showing a false-break or false-test of the level. A failure of the market to close beyond a key market level can lead to a large retracement or a change of trend. Thus, the close of a price bar is the most important level to watch, and the daily chart close is what I consider to be the most important.
Here’s an example of a false-break in the EURUSD daily chart that led to a top in the market and started a long-term downtrend:
History Teaches Us A Lesson
It’s worth noting that on the week famous trader George Soros shorted the British pound and ‘broke’ the Bank of England ( September 16, 1992) -  the chart had shown a massive false-break signal. The chart below shows the price breaking upwards to new highs and then crashing back down. To those who follow me regularly you will note that this was actually a classic fakey setup, and is clear evidence that this price action strategy has worked for decades.

Final word on false-breaks…

As traders, if we don’t learn to anticipate and identify deceptions or ‘false-breaks’ in the market, we will lose money to traders who do. If we pay attention to the price action at key levels on the daily chart time frame, the ‘writing’ is usually on the wall in regards to false-breaks.
If I had to leave you with one crucial piece of advice for your Forex trading career, it would be to drop everything right now and start studying false-breaks and contrarian trading approaches. By doing so, you will be ahead of 95% of traders who are stuck in a cycle of trading off mainstream misconceptions and ineffective trading methods. As a contrarian, I want to be trading when most other retail traders are committed to the wrong side of the market, and this is difficult to do if you don’t understand false-breaks and fakey patterns. Trading false-breaks and my proprietary ‘fakey setup’ , and I expand on these topics in great detail in it. I teach my students a plethora of different price patterns to look out for when trading false-breaks and fakey setups. This ‘contrarian’ style of trading is something I strongly believe in, and it has proven itself time and time again. If you were to learn only one single trading strategy to apply in your Forex trading, false-breaks would be on top of the list.

Success in Forex = Learning + Practicing + Update Knowledge

The ‘False Break’ Trading Strategy

 
 

When was the last time you entered a trade and it immediately moved against you even though you felt confident the market was going to move in your favor? When was the last time you traded a breakout and got stopped out? I’m willing to bet you’ve experienced one or both of these things recently in your own trading, and I’m also willing to bet that me or one of my students probably took the opposite side of one of these trades that seemed to ‘fake you out’ of your position…
You see, false-breaks happen all the time in the markets; they are a result of the ‘herd mentality’ that causes people to buy the top of a move or sell the bottom. As price action traders, we are in a unique position to take advantage of false-breaks and of the weak ‘herd mentality’ that so many amateur traders possess.
I have made most of my money as a trader by using contrarian trading approaches like false-breaks and my proprietary fakey trading strategy. It is the power of contrarian trading and using false-break patterns and fakey setups that allows myself and other savvy price action traders to profit from other traders’ misfortunes. This may sound a little harsh, but it’s the reality of trading that the majority of traders lose money, informed and skilled traders make money, and the ‘pigs get slaughtered’, as the saying goes. I hope there are light bulbs going off in your head now, because this article is all about contrarian thinking, false-breaks, and how to take advantage of the ‘herd mentality’ that causes so many traders to enter right when the market is about to change direction…

So what exactly is a false-break?

I thought you’d never ask! Joking, I know you are probably thinking that right now, so here you go…
A false-break can be defined as a ‘deception’ by the market; a test of a level that results in a break of that level but the market then retracts and does not sustain itself above or below that level. In other words, the market does not close outside of the level being tested; rather it leaves behind a false-break of it. These false-breaks are huge pieces of evidence for impending market direction, and we need to learn to use them to our advantage instead of becoming their victim.
Here is a visual example of a false-break of a key market level:
Essentially, a false-break can be thought of as a contrarian move that ‘sucks’ the over-committed side of the market out. The concept is to wait for the price movement to clearly show that a market has committed to one side of a trade and that they would be ‘forced’ to liquidate their position(s) on a strong reversal in the other direction. Typically, we see these scenarios unfold as a trending market becomes extended and all the amateurs jump in right before the counter-trend retrace, or at key support and resistance levels or at consolidation breakout scenarios.
The herd mentality causes traders to enter the market typically only when it ‘feels’ safe. However, this is the deception; trading off feeling and emotion is exactly why most traders lose money in the markets. Many traders become deceived because the market looks very strong or very weak, so they think it’s a no-brainer to just jump in with that momentum. However, the truth of the matter is that markets ebb and flow and they never move in a straight line for very long. This is known as “reversion to the mean” and it’s something I expand on significantly in my advanced Forex trading course.
We really have to use logic and counter-intuitive or ‘contrarian’ thinking to profit off of the weak-minded herd mentality that dominates most traders’ minds. This is why it’s very important to remain disciplined in the area of trading false-breaks, rejections and failures, and why I love trading them so much.

Types of False Breaks

1. Classic Bull and Bear traps at key market levels
A bull or bar trap is typically a 1 to 4 bar pattern that is defined by a false-break of a key market level. These false-breaks occur after large directional moves and as a market approaches a key level. Most traders tend to think a level will break just because a market has approached it aggressively, they then buy or sell the breakout and then many times the market will ‘fake them out’ and form a bull or bear trap.
A bull trap forms after a move higher, the amateurs who were on the sidelines watching a recent strong move unfold cannot take the temptation anymore, and they jump in just above or at a key resistance level since they feel confident the market now has the momentum to break above it. The market then breaks slightly above the level and fills all breakout orders, and then falls lower as the big boys come in and push the market lower, leaving the amateurs ‘trapped’ in a losing long position.


2. False-break of consolidation
False breaks of consolidation or trading ranges are very common. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking a trading range is going to breakout, only to see it reverse back into the body of the range. The best way to avoid this trap is to simply wait until there is a clear close outside of the trading range on the daily chart, and then you can begin to look for price action trading signals in the direction of the breakout.

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Set and Forget Forex Trading 2

Less is more in Forex: ‘Set it and Forget it’

So how does the aspiring trader achieve consistent profitability trading the Forex market if we are genetically primed to over-complicate it? The very first step in this process is just accepting the fact that you cannot control the uncontrollable Forex market and checking your ego at the door. The Forex market does not care what you have done in your life before; it has no emotion and is not a living entity. It is an arena where human beings act out their beliefs about the exchange rate of a certain currency pair. These beliefs are a result of emotions, and human emotion is very predictable when it comes to money. The point here is that the people mentioned in the previous section who are doing extensive amounts of research and trying to find the “holy grail” trading system are the ones who are trying to control the market and thus trading based off emotion. These people are providing the predictability for the professionals to take advantage of.
The paradox here is that professional traders may actually do less technical and fundamental “homework” than amateur / struggling traders; pro traders have mastered their trading strategy and they simply stick to their daily trading routine and see if their edge is there. If there edge is not present, then they just walk away for a while because they know that the Forex market is a continuous stream of self-generating opportunities, thus they do not feel pressured or anxious to trade. If their edge does show up then they set their orders and walk away, accepting the fact that any further action will probably work against them because it will be a vain attempt to control the uncontrollable and would not be an objective action.
The logic of set and forget forex trading is this; if your trading edge is present then you execute your edge and do not involve yourself further in the process unless you have a valid price action-based reason to do so. Traders that decide to mess with or tweak their trade once they enter it almost always kick start an emotional roller coaster that leads to over-trading, increasing position size, moving their stop loss further from their entry, or moving their profit target further out for no logical reason. These actions almost always cause the trader to lose money because they were not objectively thought out, but were instead influenced by an emotional reaction that was caused by trying to control the uncontrollable.
In the chart below, we see an example of how many traders get into trouble by being too involved with their trades. As the market retraced back toward the entry point of the pin bar sell signal, emotional traders would have probably exited for a very small profit or near breakeven because they felt “scared” or “nervous” that they might lose money on the trade.
In the chart below, we can see that just as the market got to about the low of the pin bar sell signal where most traders would have entered, it stalled and then fell significantly lower back in-line with the downtrend. Disciplined traders who do not “meddle” in their trades for no reason would probably have still been short and would have clearly made a very nice gain. Note how a traders could have waited for an opposing obvious price action buy signal to exit the trade…this is exiting on logic and price action rather than emotions like fear or greed.

Make Money and Save Time by Doing…Less?

It is a well-studied fact that traders who trade off higher time frames such as 4 hour, daily, and weekly charts and hold their positions for multiple days, make more money in the long run that traders who “day trade” off intra-day charts. The reason many people are attracted to day trading is because they feel more in control of the market by looking at smaller time frames and jumping in and out of positions frequently. Unfortunately for them, they have not figured out that they have the same amount of control as the swing trader who holds positions for a week or more and only looks at the market for twenty minutes a day or even less. That is to say, neither trader has any control over the market, but day-trading and scalping gives traders the illusion of more control. The only thing we really have control over in trading, is ourselves.
The ironic fact about Forex trading is that spending less time analyzing data and finding the “perfect trading system” will actually cause you to make more money faster because you will be more relaxed, less emotional, and thus less likely to over-trade or over-leverage your trading account. Many people are attracted to speculative trading because they want a way to make money that is “less difficult” than their current job, but they soon forget about that and start spending countless hours digging themselves into a huge psychological trap that most of them never dig out of. All you basically need to do to consistently make money in Forex is master an effecting trading method, develop a written out trading plan based on this method and have a solid risk management strategy, you can then check the market one to three times a day for ten to twenty minutes each time. If your edge (price action strategies) is showing up than you set up your entry, stop loss, and target and walk away until the next scheduled time to check your trades.
Trading in this manner actually elicits a snowball of positive habits that work to further perpetuate your trading success. This entire article can be summarized by the following two sentenes: People who spend more time analyzing market data and trying to perfect their trading system inevitably induce a cycle of emotional mistakes that work to increase their trading failures and eventually result in lost money and lost time. People who realize that the market is uncontrollable and build their trading plan around this fact will inevitably arrive at a “set and forget” type mentality that induces an emotional state that is conducive to on-going market success and consistent profitability. The trading method used is not as important as the psychological or risk management aspects of trading, but generally speaking, a method that offers a simple high-probability edge such as the price action trading method, is the best method to use to maintain your “set and forget” mindset.

Success in Forex = Learning + Practicing + Update Knowledge

Forex Trading Stratedies, Set and Forget Forex Trading

 ‘Set and Forget Forex Trading’ is as simple as its name implies; you simply “set” the trade up and then “forget” about it for a period of time. This has two major benefits: it makes it far easier to stay emotionally disciplined and it also allows you to go about your life as you normally would, because you will not be spending hours in front of your computer over-analyzing the markets…

Often, aspiring Forex traders become lost in a web of confusion with the amount of data that the various financial media outlets plaster all over the internet and television. It is extremely easy to experience “analysis paralysis” while trying to trade forex or any market for that matter. There are so many competing ideas and trading methods along with more fundamental data coming out every day than you could ever hope to digest, it can be overwhelming to even try and make sense of it all and develop a forex trading plan based off this amount of information. One of the biggest psychological mistakes that almost every aspiring trader makes on their journey to success is firmly believing that the amount of economic data analyzed and (or) having a technically complicated or expensive trading method will help them profit in the market. In reality, as most professional traders will attest to, these factors usually have the opposite effect on trading profits, at least after certain point. This essentially means that once you do a certain amount of analyzing market data, any further time spent analyzing this data is likely to have a negative effect on your trading; it causes you to lose money.

Why it’s Counter Productive to Analyze too Much Market Data

It may seem confusing or counter intuitive to the aspiring Forex trader when they first hear the fact that analyzing too much market data can actually cause you to lose money faster than you other wise would. The believe that “more  is better”, is a psychological trap that often keeps aspiring traders from consistently profiting in the Forex market and is the reason why many of them blow out their trading accounts and eventually give up all together.
The main reason why this occurs is because human beings have an innate need to feel in control of their life and of their surroundings, it is an evolutionary trait that has allowed our species to perpetuate its existence and ultimately arrive at our current modern day level of civilization. Unfortunately, for the aspiring Forex trader, this genetic trait of all human beings works against those trying to succeed at Forex trading. In fact, most of our normal feelings of wanting to work harder than the next guy or spend extra time studying and researching for our jobs or for school are feelings that are really not beneficial to success in the Forex market.
The problem with trying to apply the idea of “hard work” to Forex trading, is that beyond a certain level of technical chart reading ability and awareness, there really is no beneficial aspect to spending more time on tweaking a trading system or analyzing more economic reports. The bottom line here is that there are literally millions of variables involved in trading the Forex market; each person trading the market is a variable and every one of their thoughts about the market is a variable because these are all things that can cause price to move. So, unless you are somehow able to keep track of every trader in the market and all of their thoughts, in addition to the hundreds of news and economic reports that come out each day, you essentially have no control over price movement. Trying to analyze numerous pieces of economic data each day or trying to come up with an overly complicated trading method is essentially just a futile attempt to control something that simply cannot be controlled; the market.
Thus, the underlying cause of Forex trading failure begins with the idea that traders feel a psychological need to control their surroundings and when this emotional state meets the uncontrollable world of Forex trading it almost always has negative consequences. This problem works to snow-ball itself as well because once a trader loses a few trades he or she begins to get angry and wants to “get back” at the market. The way they do this is by reading another trading book or buying a different trading system that seems more “likely to work” or by analyzing the inner workings of every economic report they can find and trying to predict how it will affect the market’s price movement. Once this process has begun it is very difficult to stop because it makes logical sense to us that if we put more time in and do more work we will eventually figure out how to make more money faster in the Forex market. The difficult truth to all of this is that, as stated earlier, after you reach a certain degree of technical and fundamental understanding, any further research or system “tweaking” beyond that point will actually work against you and the rate at which you study more and do more research is probably about the rate at which you will lose your money in the market.

Success in Forex = Learning + Practicing + Update Knowledge

Pin Bar Forex Trading Strategy – Pin Bar Definition-2

How to Trade a Pin Bar Formation

The pin bar formation is a reversal setup, and we have a few different entry possibilities for it:
“At market entry” – This means you place a “market” order which gets filled immediately after you place it, at the best “market price”. A bullish pin would get a “buy market” order and a bearish pin a “sell market” order.
“On stop entry” – This means you place a stop entry at the level you want to enter the market. The market needs to move up into your buy stop or down into your sell stop to trigger it. It’s important to note that a sell stop order must be under the current market price, including the spread, and a buy stop order must be above the current market price, including the spread.
On a bullish pin bar formation, we will typically buy on a break of the high of the pin bar and set our stop loss 1 pip below the low of the tail of the pin bar. On a bearish pin bar formation, we will typically sell on a break of the low of the pin bar and place a stop loss 1 pip above the tail of the pin bar. There are other stop loss placements for my various setups .
“Limit entry” – This entry must be placed above the current market price for a sell and below the current market price for a buy. The basic idea is that some pin bars will retrace to around 50% of the tail, so we can look to enter there with a limit order. This provides a tight stop loss with our stop loss just above or below the pin bar high or low and a large potential risk reward on the trade as a result.
To effectively trade the pin bar formation you need to first make sure it is well-defined, (see pin bar characteristics listed at the top of this tutorial). Not all pin bar formations are created equal; it pays to only take the pin bar formations that meet the above characteristics.
Next, try to only take take pin bars that are displaying confluence with another factor. Generally, pin bars taken with the dominant daily chart trend are the most accurate. However, there are many profitable pin bars that often occur in range-bound markets or at major market turning points as well. Examples of “factors of confluence” include but are not limited to: strong support and resistance levels, Fibonacci 50% retracement levels, or moving averages.
Pin bar in range-bound market and at important market turning point (trend change):
In the chart example below, we can see a bearish pin bar sell signal that formed at a key level of resistance in the EURUSD. This was a good pin bar because it’s tail was clearly protruding up through the key resistance and from the surrounding price action, indicating that a strong rejection as well as false-break of an important resistance had taken place. Thus, there was a high probability of a move lower after that pin bar. Note the 50% limit sell entry that presented itself as the next bar retraced to about 50% of the pin bar’s length before the market fell significantly lower…
Pin bar in-line with trend with multiple factors of confluence:
In the chart example below, we are looking at a bearish pin bar sell signal that formed in the context of a down-trending market and from a confluent area in the market. The confluence between the 8 / 21 dynamic EMA resistance layer, the horizontal resistance at 1.3200 and the downtrend, gave a lot of “weight” to the pin bar signal. When we get a well-defined pin bar like this, that has formed at a confluent area or level in the market like this, it’s a very high-probability setup…

Other names you might find pin bars described by:

There are several different names used in ‘classic’ Japanese candlestick patterns that refer to what are basically all pin bars, the terminology is just a little different. The following all qualify as pin bars and can be traded as I’ve described above:
• A bearish reversal or top reversal pin bar formation can be called a “long wicked inverted hammer”, “long wicked doji”, “long wicked gravestone”, or “shooting star”.
• A bullish reversal or bottom reversal pin bar formation can be called a “long wicked hammer”, “long wicked doji”, or “long wicked dragonfly”.

In Summary

The pin bar formation is a very valuable tool in your arsenal of Forex price action trading strategies. The best pin bar strategies occur with a confluence of signals such as support and resistance levels, dominant trend confirmation, or other ‘confirming’ factors. Look for well formed pin bar setups that meet all the characteristics listed in this tutorial and don’t take any that you don’t feel particularly confident about.
Pin bars work on all time frames but are especially powerful on the 1 hour, 4hour and daily chart time frames. It is possible to make consistent profits by only trading the pin bar formation. Upon adding this powerful setup as one of your main Forex trading strategies, you will wonder how you ever traded without it.

Success in Forex = Learning + Practicing + Update Knowledge

Pin Bar Forex Trading Strategy – Pin Bar Definition

An Introduction To The Pin Bar Forex Trading Strategy and How to Trade It Effectively… The pin bar formation is a price action reversal pattern that shows that a certain level or price point in the market was rejected. Once familiarized with the pin bar formation, it is apparent from looking at any price chart just how profitable this pattern can be. Let’s go over exactly what a pin bar formation is and how you can take advantage of the pin bar strategy in the context of varying market conditions.
What is a Pin Bar?
The actual pin bar itself is a bar with a long upper or lower “tail”, “wick” or “shadow” and a much smaller “body” or “real body”, you can find pin bars on any stripped-down, “naked” bar chart or candlestick chart. We use candlestick charts because they show the price action the clearest and are the most popular charts amongst professional traders. Many traders prefer the candlestick version over standard bar charts because it is generally regarded as a better visual representation of price action.

Characteristics of the Pin Bar Formation

• The pin bar should have a long upper or lower tail…the tail is also sometimes called the “wick” or the “shadow”…they all mean the same thing. It’s the “pointy” part of the pin bar that literally looks like a “tail” and that shows rejection or false break of a level.
• The area between the open and close of the pin bar is called the “body” or “real body”. It is typically colored white or another light color when the close was higher than the open and black or another dark color when the close was lower than the open.
• The open and close of the pin bar should be very close together or equal (same price), the closer the better.
• The open and close of the pin bar are near one end of the bar, the closer to the end the better.
• The shadow or tail of the pin bar sticks out (protrudes) from the surrounding price bars, the longer the tail of the pin bar the better.
• A general “rule of thumb” is that you want to see the pin bar tail be two/thirds the total pin bar length or more and the rest of the pin bar should be one/third the total pin bar length or less.
• The end opposite the tail is sometimes referred to as the “nose”
Bullish Reversal Pin Bar Formation
In a bullish pin bar reversal setup, the pin bar’s tail points down because it shows rejection of lower prices or a level of support. This setup very often leads to a rise in price.
Bearish Reversal Pin Bar Formation
In a bearish pin bar reversal setup, the pin bar’s tail points up because it shows rejection of higher prices or a level of resistance. This setup very often leads to a drop in price.
Examples of the Pin Bar Formation in Action
Here is a daily chart of CAD/JPY, we can see numerous pin bar formations that were very well defined and worked out very nicely. Note how all the pin bar’s tails clearly protruded from the surrounding price action, showing a defined “rejection” of lower prices. All of the pin bars below have something in common that we just discussed, can you guess what it is?
If you said that all the pin bars in the above chart are “bullish pin bar setups”, then you answered the question right. Good job!
In the following daily USD/JPY chart we can see an ideal pin bar formation that resulted in a serious move and trend reversal. Sometimes pin bars like this form at significant market turning points and change the trend very quickly, like we see below. The example in the chart below is also sometimes called a “V bottom reversal”, because the reversal is so sharp it literally looks a V…
Here is an example of a trending market that formed numerous profitable pin bar setups. The following daily chart of GBP/JPY shows that pin bars taken with the dominant trend can be very accurate. Note the two pin bars on the far left of the chart that marked the start of the uptrend and then as the trend progressed we had numerous high-probability opportunities to buy into it from the bullish pin bars shown below that were in-line with the uptrend.

Success in Forex = Learning + Practicing + Update Knowledge

Forex Strategies - Why Trading The Daily Charts Will Improve Your Trading Results-2

How focusing on the daily charts can FIX the above trading problems:

• Over-trading - Daily charts help inhibit over trading because you get fewer signals but they are more accurate. Most traders over-trade from focusing on lower time frames. Thus, by moving your focus to the more reliable daily chart, you will have a natural guard against over-trading, that is assuming you are disciplined enough to only trade obvious signals on the daily chart that you have mastered previously by mastering one Forex trading strategy at a time.
Note how the daily chart gives you less data to look at each day but it’s much more pertinent. The 30 minute chart gives you 48 times more data to look at since there are two 30 minute bars per hour in a 24 hour day. You are much better off learning to trade the daily charts so that you can see what all the market movement resulted in each day, rather than trying to analyze and make sense out of each little tick of the lower time frames….
• Fear of placing trades - Patience is very important in Forex trading and discipline as well, waiting for the best signals on the daily charts influences you to develop these positive trading habits. When you become a patient and disciplined Forex trader, you will naturally foster a confident trading mindset and this will work to eliminate the fear of trading that you may have experienced recently. The key to waiting for the best signals is of course knowing exactly what signals you are looking for.

• Over-analyzing – Daily charts provide for set and forget Forex trading and this allows you to spend less time staring at your charts and less time analyzing the market and all its variables. This is a good thing, more is usually not better when it comes to Forex trading, in fact, after you learn to trade effectively, you are better off spending as little time as possible analyzing the market and looking for trades. 30 minutes a day is all you need if you are focusing on the daily charts, this is of course after you have mastered an effective trading strategy like price action.
• Addiction to trading – Once you accept that all trading signals are stronger and more significant on the daily charts than any time frame below, you will be less likely to get addicted to staring at your charts and analyzing the market. People become addicted to lower time frames and watching the price movement, this is counter-productive and simply a huge waste of time. You want to trade like a sniper and not a machine gunner; the daily charts give you this ability.

• Trading inconsistently - All trading signals are stronger and clearer on daily charts than on time frames below, thus it makes your trading more effective and consistent over the long-term due to the increased reliability of the signals. Remember, trading success is defined by consistency, and if you want to have a steadily increasing equity curve you will need to slow-down your trading activity and learn to analyze the market from the more pertinent perspective that the daily charts provide.

The “real” Forex market close:

Trading daily charts that close at 5pm New York time is important because this marks the end of the current Forex trading day and the start of the new trading day as New Zealand trading opens. Closing prices are the most important price in the market because they show the settlement between the bulls and the bears, and because the New York trading session is the second biggest behind London in Forex trading volume, it’s very important to see this closing settlement at the New York close instead of at some other more arbitrary time.

In closing:

Finally, I don’t expect you to take my word for any of this, instead, go look at the daily charts for yourself, draw in the horizontal support and resistance levels and learn to spot the price action strategies that I teach. I feel very passionate about focusing on the daily charts, but I challenge you to prove to yourself why it is the best time frame to trade. One of the main reasons why most traders fail to make money is because they are stuck in a cycle of over-analyzing and over-trading on lower time frame charts. If you want to fast-forward your learning curve and learn to trade effectively as quickly as possible, check out my price action trading course here and learn more about daily chart trading with simple yet effective price action strategies.


Success in Forex = Learning + Practicing + Update Knowledge