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".
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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:

1. 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.
2. Ensure that the stop gives your trade enough room to breathe and reflects your timeframe and typical volatility of each pair. See next section.
3. 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
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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.

Access Part I here: https://www.reddit.com/Forex/comments/h0iwbu/part_i_my_10_minuteday_trading_strategy/
Welcome to Part II of this ongoing series. How many parts will there be? No idea. At least 4-5, I guess. I'd rather have this broken down into digestible chunks than just fire hose you with information.
Part I was really just a primer. If I'm using the whole baking a cake analogy, then in Part I we covered what kind of cake we're baking. I will not cover in this post where we look for entries and exits, that's coming next. Part II is going to cover what ingredients we need and why we need those ingredients in greater detail.
What Kind Of Strategy Is This Again?It's my 10 minutes per day, trading strategy. I think the beauty of this strategy is that it allows you to take a good number of trader per week without having to commit an inordinate amount of time to the screens. This is both a mean reversion and trend-continuation based strategy. It is dead simple to learn and apply. I'd expect a 10 year old to be able to make money with this.
The List Of Ingredients & Why We Use These Particular Ingredients
*I will have an image at the end of the post showing a textbook long and short setup*
Bollinger Bands: Bollinger Bands (BB) have a base line (standard is the 20SMA, which is also what we will use for this strategy) and two other trend lines (known as the upper Bollinger band [UBB] and lower Bollinger band [LBB]) plotted 2 standard deviations away from the 20SMA. The idea behind BB is deviously simple - the vast majority of price action, approx. 90%, takes place in between the two bands. In other words, when price trades off the UBB or LBB, you could consider prices to be overbought/oversold. However, just because something is OVERbought does NOT mean its run is OVER. Therefore we need additional tools to make sure we are using the BB as effectively as possible. TLDR: BB help contextualize where to look for our technical setups using this strategy. Finding the candle/bar pattern is not enough. We need to make sure the setup is in the 'right' part of the chart. We accomplish that using the BB.
Stochastic Oscillator: The Stochastic Oscillator (Stochs) is a secondary momentum indicator. Because it is an oscillator that means the signals it generates are range-bound between 0 and 100. There are tons of momentum indicators out there. Theoretically you could swap out the Stochs for RSI or MACD. My hunch is that you won't see a measurable statistical difference in performance if you do. So why Stochs? Because I like the fact you have the %K and %D lines (you can think of them as moving averages) and the fact that the %K and %D lines crossover is a helpful visual aid. Like any other momentum indicator, the Stochs will generate overbought and oversold signals. We use the Stochs to help back up what the BB are telling us. If price is trading at, or even broken out of, the UBB and Stochs are also veeeery overbought that can be potentially useful information. It doesn't mean we have a trade necessarily, but it is a helpful piece of data.
Fibonacci Retracement & Extension Tool: This tool is OPTIONAL. The only reason I use this tool for this strategy is to integrate a mechanistic means of entry and exit. In other words, we can use fibonacci levels to place limit orders for entry and profit taking, and a stop order to get us out for our pre-defined risk allocation to each particular trade. If you DON'T want to use the fibs, that is perfectly okay. It just means you will add a more discretionary layer to this strategy
Candlestick/Bar Patterns: There isn't a whole lot to say here. We look for ONE formation over, and over, and over again. An indecision bar (small body, doesn't close on its highs or lows) followed by the setup bar which is an outside bar or an engulfing bar. It doesn't particularly matter if the setup bar is an engulfing bar or outside bar. What matters is that for a long trade the setup bar makes a HIGHER HIGH and has a HIGHER CLOSE relative to the indecision bar. The opposite for a short trade setup. The bar formation is what ultimately serves as the trigger for placing orders to take a trade.
*MOVING ON* Now We Get Into The Setup Itself:There are 3 places where we look for trades using this strategy:

1. Short off the UBB (Here we want to see Stochastics overbought and crossing down. Bearish divergence is even better)
2. Long off the LBB (Here we want to see Stochastics oversold and crossing up. Bullish divergence is even better)
3. Long/Short off the Middle Bollinger Band (Here if you are looking for a short trade off the MBB you ideally want Stochs overbought. Vice versa for a long trade. NOTE: Often when taking trades off the MBB, Stochs WON'T go overbought/oversold. Because this doesn't happen often, I don't let it stop me from taking trades off the MBB.)

The actual setup is very simple and straightforward. We look for our candle/bar formation in conjunction with points 1 through 3 from the above.
There will be other nuances I will cover in terms of how to make the strategy more effective in Part 3. For example, I will go into much more detail about how the shape of the BB can tell us a lot about whether a currency pair is likely to reverse or not. I will also cover how to gauge the strength of the setup candle and a few other tips and tricks.
Technical Nuances: You can overlay a lot of other traditional technical analysis on top of the above. For example you can look for short trades off the UBB in conjunction with a prior broken support level that you now expect to be working overhead resistance. If you want to go further and deeper, of course you can. Note: the above is about as far as I went when overlaying other kinds of analysis onto this strategy. I like to keep it simple, stupid.
TEXTBOOK LONG TRADE OFF LBB:
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https://preview.redd.it/e06otysgsh451.png?width=2820&format=png&auto=webp&s=101b3eed1b42512d639644bcc096d1026e558f17
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TEXTBOOK SHORT TRADE OFF UBB:
https://preview.redd.it/yfg02yjhsh451.png?width=2820&format=png&auto=webp&s=18b427995f3dcecb22e1ae7f15cd5b3cd53c18e4
TRADE OFF MBB:
https://preview.redd.it/8kvzknaish451.png?width=2820&format=png&auto=webp&s=2f1e6113475193e8b812bface880a77e82ad7eeb
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And that's a wrap for Part II.

Due to popular demand I've decided to bring this series back for a week 2 and I'll continue to release 3-5 trading ideas every Saturday. How do you guys feel about the name of this series? Would you like me to change the name to something like "Setup Saturdays" or are you guys cool with the current naming scheme?
So this week I wanted to be a lot more in depth in my analysis and setups since I didn't think I was super clear last week with my reasoning on some the setups. I want these posts to be as beginner friendly as possible because there's a lot more beginners in this Subreddit than I had realized. I want you to use this as an educational tool and not as a signal service as a result I'm going to give you possible trade setups and I want you to be the judge of whether you should enter once/if price gets to that point since I feel like that will benefit beginners in the long run. I got a couple questions about top down time frame analysis so that'll be a focus of today's post. Scroll down to NZDJPY if you really want an in-depth look at how I perform top down time frame analysis.
I'll include a picture of a chart and my TradingView chart so if you want to zoom in and out of the chart you'll have that ability to do so.
Quick Disclaimer: Some of the charts pricing might be off by a bit since I started working on this during the New York session on Friday. If any of the charts are impacted in a way that alters the setup I'll be sure to update the charts before I post this on Saturday. Just gotta hope that hope that Powell doesn't break the market or else I might have to redo this entire post.
AUDUSD:
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AUDUSD Daily
TradingView Link For Daily: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/AUDUSD/Wb5K2bS8-AUDUSD-Daily-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Which way is the trend pointing? It looks like it's pointing up which we can see with the green trend line but how about we zoom in to the 4 hour char to see if that's actually the case.
Tip: When drawing a trend line, especially on the daily and higher time frames, remember to hit as many wicks as possible since they are relevant and not just some anomaly you can ignore.
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AUDUSD 4 Hour
TradingView Link For 4 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/AUDUSD/aah8294z-AUDUSD-4-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: When we got close to where we are with price and we draw a Fibonacci Retracement from the point where price took off to the point where price peaked we can see that price came down to .5 Fibonacci level where it then started going up again. Coincidence? Possibly. As a result I believe that price could continue higher and it would be justified if it did. However, if we look at the trend lines we can see that price appears to have broke put of of our major trend line (Green) which means that price could fall to the downside if it's actually a breakout. Price then appears like it would then adhere to the new minor trend line (Red). There's also the possibility that this was just a fake breakout and price could go up and adhere to green trend line. I'm going to have a selling bias on this trade since price looks like it double topped at the highs of this year and it looks like we could see price fall. I'm leaning towards the drop of price due to the symmetrical triangle pattern created by the major and minor trend line and looks like price is going to get pushed down which we should get an idea of soon.
Tip: Every time price makes a large move and falls/rises after making a peak/valley always pull out the Fibonacci retracement tool to see if price will bounce from the .382, .5, or .618 levels as they are the most significant levels. This can tell you if you're going to likely get a trend continuation.
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AUDUSD 1 Hour
TradingView Link For 1 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/AUDUSD/IHgrnfYs-AUDUSD-1-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: I drew out multiple different scenarios which I think can play out since like I said before we're not trying to predict a single movement but we're preparing to be reactive to an ideal condition which may be thrown at us. Remember that major trend line we drew in on the daily chart well it's going to play a large role here. This trend line has been in the making since March so we're not just going to brush it off. The trend line appears to have been broken and we seem to be sticking that minor trend line after the break of the symmetrical triangle pattern. After the break of the symmetrical triangle pattern price usually gets pushed heavily to one side and it looks like price is wanting to get pushed to the downside. As a result, I'm going to really keep on eyes on scenario the blue arrows display since I think it's the most probable. Looking at the scenario there are going to be two potentially good entry points for a sell. The first being when price goes up to retest the green trend line which would also serve as a bounce from our red trend line. Once we get that bounce we could enter in for a sell with a take profit hopefully somewhere around the .66 area. Another good entry would be when price breaks the zone of support of .68 and after it retests it. Wait for a confirmation candlestick pattern showing price will fall when retesting (i.e. railroad track, bullish engulfment candle, evening star, shooting star, etc.). Look for these candlestick patterns on the 15 minute chart. Once you got the confirmation take the sell and ride price down to the .66 zone. The other scenario that could occur is we could see price go back into the green trend line by breaking the red trend line (Orange Arrows). If this occurs we want to catch the retest bounce of the red trend line and ride price up to the high of the year which is at .702. At that point price could break the resistance at which point we could catch the retest of the zone and ride price up. Or it could go up to .702 create a triple top and fall. If you get a candlestick confirmation saying it'll fall then take a sell at the high of the year.
NZDUSD:
If there's something I really like in Forex it's definitely got to be harmonic patterns due to their high accuracy. NZDUSD just recently completed one of them and this is a really good indicator of what price is going to do.
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NZDUSD Daily
TradingView Chart For Daily: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDUSD/zQpHzUcK-NZDUSD-Daily-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Yes, we have trend line that says that price is going up however I make exceptions for Harmonic patterns since they are accurate about 80%-90% of the time. The pattern you see above is know as a Bearish Bat Pattern. Like the name says it's an indicator that price is going to go Bearish so although the trend line is going up I'm going to have a bearish bias on this trade.
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NZDUSD 4 Hour
TradingView Chart For 4 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDUSD/C29kpCyO-NZDUSD-4-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Not really much to add here just tossed on a Fibonacci retracement tool from where price took off to the peak just to check for any potential support from any of the major levels which we don't appear to have. We'll go a lot more in-depth on this pair on the 1 hour chart since that's where things get interesting.
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NZDUSD 1 Hour
TradingView Link For 1 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDUSD/dKJatcM7-NZDUSD-1-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Looking at price we can see that since June 11th price has been trading in a boxed consolidation range. Again I drew out the possibilities I believe could be ideal for us. Remember that I said Harmonics work 80%-90%. Well that means that they fail 10%-20% of the time which is definitely not something we can neglect. We can see that there's a descending triangle which price is reaching the end of. This means that price is getting ready to move to one direction since big moves always come after consolidation. If it moves to upside wait for price to close above the the spot marked D then you can enter for a buy and ride price up to the .67525 zone where price could break to upside or bounce back down (Orange Arrow). Remember to wait for it to actually close above point D since it could create a triple top and drive price back down. It's the same procedure as AUDUSD here if it makes this move where if it breaks it then catch the retest and if it looks like it's wanting to fall down wait for a confirmation pattern. If it breaks the box to the downside and breaks the support zone then take a sell and ride price down to the trend line at which point you should close the trade as there's a chance price could move against you and it's best to secure profits while you can. Once at the trend line it could bounce and if it does you should be able to ride price up to that .67525 zone (Green Arrow). If price breaks the trend line then wait for the retest and you should be able to ride price down pretty far (Red Arrows). I think you should be able to ride it down to .5918 zone but you'll have to keep your on it.
EURNZD:
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EURNZD Daily
TradingView Link For Daily: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/EURNZD/jzgmGcRe-EURNZD-Daily-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Well we got a pretty clear descending channel and price looks like it's at the top part of the channel currently so we're going to want to look for some optimal selling conditions due to the down trend.
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EURNZD 4 Hour
TradingView Link For 4 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/EURNZD/YzOpvcH7-EURNZD-4-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Looking at the 4 hour chart we can see that there appears to be a symmetrical triangle coming to it's end meaning price is getting ready to get pushed to a side. I believe it'll break the triangle and fall to the downside so once you see it break it would be a good idea to take a sell and ride price down to that support zone at 1.7187. Price could also briefly break to the upside then bounce off the top of the channel and it does take a trade from the bounce and ride price down to the same support zone. At that point, I'll leave it up to you to determine how you think price will go and what you should be looking for. Consider it to be a little quiz if you want to think of it like that. You've got my charts so use them as a reference since I've already marked some crucial support/resistance zones which we should keep our on for the next couple weeks.
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EURNZD 1 Hour
TradingView Link For 1 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/EURNZD/ICWvgEsg-EURNZD-1-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: There's nothing that special on the one hour chart that I have to point out since I think we pretty much got all the big stuff out of the way on our analysis of the 4 hour chart. Be sure to get a good sell in there since there are two potentially good setups which I've outlined for you. Also be sure to be careful and wait for the bounce of the channel if price goes that way since there's a chance price could break the channel and I don't want you to take a loss because you were impatient.
NZDJPY:
This pair is going to be really fun since we're going to be looking through a lot of time frames so if you really want to learn about a top down approach to analyzing time frames and trends then pay very close attention to how I break down this trade.
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NZDJPY Monthly
TradingView Link For Monthly: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDJPY/jZh4F2Jv-NZDJPY-Monthly-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Yes, we're actually going to be looking at the monthly chart. I bet you guys don't do that very often. Looking at it we can see that price has been following a clear down trend line since late 2014. If you look at the wick of this month's candle you can see that it appears to have touched the trend line meaning we could see a good opportunity to catch a sell since it had just recently bounced off. Let's take a look at lower time frames to see if this continues to be true.
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NZDJPY Weekly
TradingView Link For Weekly: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDJPY/dpvI29BB-NZDJPY-Weekly-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: When zooming into the weekly we can see that using the wicks of the candles we can actually draw a channel for the low portion that runs pretty much in parallel to the trend line we drew on the monthly chart. We can see that price clearly bounced from the trend line and I think this gives us good reason to believe in the coming weeks we could see the price drop. Also looking at the Bollinger Bands we can see that price also bounced from the top band which also supports a drop of price. Let's go into the daily to see if we can get a better idea.
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NZDJPY Daily
TradingView Link For Daily: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDJPY/NbWLURkU-NZDJPY-Daily-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Looking at the daily time frame we can see that price is currently consolidated and remember big moves always come after consolidation. If you look closely however you can see that price looks like it's about to break the 200 day EMA (Orange line). If it breaks the EMA we could see price drop pretty far at an accelerated rate. Besides those couple observations there's not much else going on with the daily chart.
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NZDJPY 4 Hour
TradingView Link For 4 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDJPY/d1kaogH5-NZDJPY-4-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Would you look at that, it looks like we got a descending triangle on the 4 hour chart which looks like it's coming to an end. Looking at price it looks like it's wanting to push to the downside. Once you get a break below the lows of the day of June 11th I think it would be a safe bet to take a sell trade and ride it down for 66.825 for this week. If it breaks the 66.825 support zone then I'll definitely take a sell and try to ride price down to the bottom of the channel which we drew on the weekly chart. There's also the possibility that price could take support at any of these support zones and then head back up to test the top of the channel. At which point I'll be looking to get into a sell at the top of the channel but I won't ride price up to the channel since at this current point in time I feel like there's a large amount of risk in that.
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NZDJPY 1 Hour
TradingView Link For 1 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDJPY/83b47mFS-NZDJPY-1-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Not much more to add here since I think by this point we got the entire story so I'm not going to say much more about the 1 hour chart since I think the analysis for the 4 hour chart also sums this up pretty well.
Well that was a lot of information to go through and I hope you found some value in this since it took me quite a few hours to put this together for you guys. Truth be told, I spent most of Friday working on this so I hope at least one person finds some value in which case I'll consider it a win.
So you guys tired of me yet or do you want me to continue this series for a week 3? It takes a lot of time and effort to put this together so I'll only do it if people want it or else I'll pretty much feel like I wasted my time. I might put together a little lesson on how to use the COT in order to catch some big reversal moves in the market since the COT pretty much tells you what the hedge funds are doing and you also want to trade with the hedge funds and institutions. It'll probably take a couple weeks since I'll have to compile some data together and wait for a setup before putting that out but I'll be working on it. Are there any other things you may want explained? Let me know and I'll try to find setups which contain the topic you may want more details on. I hope you have a great trading week!

^{(This post is mainly for beginners in Forex that are struggling in support and resistance levels, although you more experienced guys might also learn a thing or two, this also doesn't go over how to use them to enter trades, although I could make a post about it if it is requested})

How to correctly mark support & resistance in most markets

First thing to realise is that s&r levels are not really levels, they are zones, sometimes the price just misses the level and other times it goes just over, but it still reverses/breaks out off the general level. You will rarely find the exact level of where the price will reverse. There is no exact criteria on what makes a level significant levels, but you will eventually get better as you pipe in more experience into the market.
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What even is a support/resistance zone?
Simply put a support or resistance zone is a price the market has had experience with before. In the book "Naked Forex" Alex Nekritin puts perfectly that s/r zones are just market scars. Market scars that the price has visited before and will try to stay away from as best as it can (but sometimes breakouts occur, more on that later).
Do zones expire?
This is very subjective, some say the older the level the less valid it may be, and others vice versa. I personally believe they don't expire and significant zones stay valid unless disapproved by appropriate price action. Your answer may be completely different, everyone's experience with the market is different
What are these "breakouts"?
Breakouts are when the price doesn't respect the level. Most of the time the price respects a level and reverses off it, however that can only happen for some time, (if this happens for a period of time where the price is bouncing off a support and resistance it is known as consolidation). Of course it can't keep trading in a range forever, breakouts have to happen. Breakouts mostly happen within high volatility, either from news or just the time the market is open, however the price can also just wonder through the zone, creating a less volatile breakout. You may also experience the price going over a zone and then returning into it;
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On chart 1 below you can see a bland chart, just load up any trading software and you should see something like this. We can see the price recently has been on a decline on the last four candles.
EURUSD H1 (Chart 1)
To the untrained trader, this looks like guess work to place a good significant level. Wicks flying everywhere, this is where tip #1 comes in.
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Tip #1: Change your candlestick chart into a line graph
EURUSD H1 (Chart 2)
This very simple tool removes all of the wick clutter and just gives a nice line of how the price has been moving (Keep in mind this only shows the close of the time frame and doesn't include wicks). Thus it makes marking s/r lines way way easier. Just off this you can place lines where the price has reversed, don't add too many as that could also be too bad for you (check tip #2)
Another thing to keep in mind is that if a price curves and reverses, this usually shows a stall on the zone and is an important level to manage. (Check Chart 3)
On Chart 3 you can see some levels I've added in that respond to the recent price on the line chart:
EURUSD H1 With S/R (Chart 3)
After you've added your s/r you can switch back to normal candle sticks to further evaluate your zones.
EURUSD H1 With S/R Candlesticks (Chart 4)
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Tip #2: Don't over-add unnecessary levels
This mostly occurs if you don't have patience with the market and want to rush into a trade. Don't try and scavenge for any little s/r zone as they could easily end up failing if they haven't been tested and confirmed. It will also prevent you from finding any valuable trades.
You don't want your chart looking like this, where would you even start looking for an entry?
Jumble of messy lines
Tip #3: Draw major zones on higher time frames
Say you enter your trades mostly on H4, draw your major zones on the D1 chart. As well as this you can draw minor zones in time frames smaller than your usual one, like from H4 to H1.
Just a little tip you could keep in mind.
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Those are just three tips that really help me out when drawing my s&r zones (they might not work out for you but it's worth giving them a shot) and I have tried making this post as beginner friendly as possible, so I really hope you all learned something from this post.
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^{This post was heavily inspired by Naked Forex, you can find a PDF of it here}
Edit: Typos

Chart patterns form a key part of day trading. Candlestick and other charts produce frequent signals that cut through price action “noise”.
The best patterns will be those that can form the backbone of a profitable day trading strategy, whether trading stocks, cryptocurrency of forex pairs.
Every day you have to choose between hundreds of trading opportunities. This is a result of a wide range of factors influencing the market. Day trading patterns enable you to decipher the multitude of options and motivations – from hope of gain and fear of loss, to short-covering, stop-loss triggers, hedging, tax consequences and plenty more.
Candlestick patterns help by painting a clear picture, and flagging up trading signals and signs of future price movements. Whilst it’s said you’ll need to use technical analysis to succeed day trading with candlestick and other patterns, it’s important to note utilizing them to your advantage is more of an art form than a rigid science.
You have to learn the power of chart patterns and the theory that governs them in order to identify the best patterns to supplement your trading style and strategies.

Use In Day Trading

Used correctly trading patterns can add a powerful tool to your arsenal. This is because history has a habit of repeating itself and the financial markets are no exception. This repetition can help you identify opportunities and anticipate potential pitfalls.
RSI, volume, plus support and resistance levels all aide your technical analysis when you’re trading. But crypto chart patterns play a crucial role in identifying breakouts and trend reversals. Mastering the art of reading these patterns will help you make smarter trades and bolster your profits, as highlighted in the highly regarded, ‘stock patterns for day trading’, by Barry Rudd.

Breakouts & Reversals

In the patterns and charts below you’ll see two recurring themes, breakouts and reversals.

• Breakout – A breakout is simply when the price clears a specified critical level on your chart. This level could by any number of things, from a Fibonacci level, to support, resistance or trend lines.
• Reversal – A reversal is simply a change in direction of a price trend. That change could be either positive or negative against the prevailing trend. You may also hear it called a ‘rally’, ‘correction’, or ‘trend reversal’.

Candlestick Charts

Candlestick charts are a technical tool at your disposal. They consolidate data within given time frames into single bars. Not only are the patterns relatively straightforward to interpret, but trading with candle patterns can help you attain that competitive edge over the rest of the market.
They first originated in the 18th century where they were used by Japanese rice traders. Since Steve Nison introduced them to the West with his 1991 book ‘Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques’, their popularity has surged.
Below is a break down of three of the most popular candlestick patterns used for day trading.

Shooting Star Candlestick

This is often one of the first you see when you open a chart with candlestick patterns. This bearish reversal candlestick suggests a peak. It is precisely the opposite of a hammer candle. It won’t form until at least three subsequent green candles have materialized. This will indicate an increase in price and demand. Usually, buyers lose their cool and clamber for the price to increasing highs before they realize they’ve overpaid.
The upper shadow is usually twice the size of the body. This tells you the last frantic buyers have entered trading just as those that have turned a profit have off-loaded their positions. Short-sellers then usually force the price down to the close of the candle either near or below the open. This traps the late arrivals who pushed the price high. Panic often kicks in at this point as those late arrivals swiftly exit their positions.
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https://preview.redd.it/gf5dwjhbrdh31.png?width=300&format=png&auto=webp&s=437ff856bfd6ebc95da34528462ba224d964f01f

Doji Candlestick

One of the most popular candlestick patterns for trading forex is the doji candlestick (doji signifies indecision). This reversal pattern is either bearish or bullish depending on the previous candles. It will have nearly, or the same open and closing price with long shadows. It may look like a cross, but it can have an extremely small body. You will often get an indicator as to which way the reversal will head from the previous candles.
If you see previous candles are bullish, you can anticipate the next one near the underneath of the body low will trigger a short/sell signal when the doji lows break. You’ll then see trail stops above the doji highs.
Alternatively, if the previous candles are bearish then the doji will probably form a bullish reversal. Above the candlestick high, long triggers usually form with a trail stop directly under the doji low.
These candlestick patterns could be used for intraday trading with forex, stocks, cryptocurrencies and any number of other assets. But using candlestick patterns for trading interpretations requires experience, so practice on a demo account before you put real money on the line.
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https://preview.redd.it/4yo650lcrdh31.png?width=300&format=png&auto=webp&s=b2aa3cdeef23e44e1e3e3047bbe2604fce0a4768

Hammer Candlestick

This is a bullish reversal candlestick. You can use this candlestick to establish capitulation bottoms. These are then normally followed by a price bump, allowing you to enter a long position.
The hammer candlestick forms at the end of a downtrend and suggests a near-term price bottom. The lower shadow is made by a new low in the downtrend pattern that then closes back near the open. The tail (lower shadow), must be a minimum of twice the size of the actual body.
The tails are those that stopped out as shorts started to cover their positions and those looking for a bargain decided to feast. Volume can also help hammer home the candle. To be certain it is a hammer candle, check where the next candle closes. It must close above the hammer candle low.
Trading with Japanese candlestick patterns has become increasingly popular in recent decades, as a result of the easy to glean and detailed information they provide. This makes them ideal for charts for beginners to get familiar with.
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https://preview.redd.it/7snzz8qdrdh31.png?width=300&format=png&auto=webp&s=f83ff82f0980dd30c33bc6886ae7e7ed3a98b72f

More Popular Day Trading Patterns

Using Price Action

Many strategies using simple price action patterns are mistakenly thought to be too basic to yield significant profits. Yet price action strategies are often straightforward to employ and effective, making them ideal for both beginners and experienced traders.
Put simply, price action is how the price is likely to respond at certain levels of resistance or support. Using price action patterns from pdfs and charts will help you identify both swings and trendlines.
Whether you’re day trading stocks or forex or crypto with price patterns, these easy to follow strategies can be applied across the board.

Zone Strategy

So, how do you start day trading with short-term price patterns? you will likely employ a ‘zone strategy’. One obvious bonus to this system is it creates straightforward charts, free from complex indicators and distractions.
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https://preview.redd.it/7e5x37zerdh31.png?width=300&format=png&auto=webp&s=2098a4c9df4a4556c3024cec1c176ce50c9806c0

Dead Zone

This empty zone tells you that the price action isn’t headed anywhere. There is no clear up or down trend, the market is at a standoff. If you want big profits, avoid the dead zone completely. No indicator will help you makes thousands of pips here.

The Red Zone

This is where things start to get a little interesting. Once you’re in the red zone the end goal is in sight, and that one hundred pip winner within reach. For example, if the price hits the red zone and continues to the upside, you might want to make a buy trade. It could be giving you higher highs and an indication that it will become an uptrend.
This will be likely when the sellers take hold. If the price hits the red zone and continues to the downside, a sell trade may be on the cards. You’d have new lower lows and a suggestion that it will become a downtrend.

The End Zone

This is where the magic happens. With this strategy, you want to consistently get from the red zone to the end zone. Draw rectangles on your charts like the ones found in the example. Then only trade the zones. If you draw the red zones anywhere from 10-20 pips wide, you’ll have room for the price action to do its usual retracement before heading to the downside or upside.

Outside Bar At Resistance Or Support

You’ll see a bullish outside bar if today’s low exceeded yesterdays, but the stock still rallies and closes above yesterday’s high. If the complete opposite price action took place, you’d have yourself the perfect bearish example.
Unfortunately, it isn’t as straightforward as identifying an outside candlestick and then just placing a trade. It’s prudent to find an outside day after a major break of a trend.
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https://preview.redd.it/egb0lp6grdh31.png?width=300&format=png&auto=webp&s=b0170eceea5006464e5832bc3a9083c72ee677ad

Spring At Support

The spring is when the stock tests the low of a range, but then swiftly comes back into trading zone and sets off a new trend. One common mistake traders make is waiting for the last swing low to be reached. However, as you’ve probably realized already, trading setups don’t usually meet your precise requirements so don’t stress about a few pennies.
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https://preview.redd.it/q82lap2hrdh31.png?width=300&format=png&auto=webp&s=9e40f0bc25c2df06a1d93edb68b293c858a32592

Little To No Price Retracement

Put simply, less retracement is proof the primary trend is robust and probably going to continue. Forget about coughing up on the numerous Fibonacci retracement levels. The main thing to remember is that you want the retracement to be less than 38.2%. This means even when today’s asset tests the previous swing, you’ll have a greater chance that the breakout will either hold or continue towards the direction of the primary trend.
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https://preview.redd.it/ey997b2irdh31.png?width=300&format=png&auto=webp&s=c938aac51e3b3bbf1f45a11c46f4ae3dfd1b6dd4
Trading with price patterns to hand enables you to try any of these strategies. Find the one that fits in with your individual trading style. Remember, you’ll often find the best trading chart patterns aren’t overly complex, instead they paint a clear picture using minimal indicators, reducing the likelihood of mistakes and distraction.

Consider Time Frames

When you start trading with your short term price patterns pdf to hand, it’s essential you also consider time frames in your calculations. In your market, you’ll find a number of time frames simultaneously co-existing. This means you can find conflicting trends within the particular asset your trading. Your stock could be in a primary downtrend whilst also being in an intermediate short-term uptrend.
Many traders make the mistake of focusing on a specific time frame and ignoring the underlying influential primary trend. Usually, the longer the time frame the more reliable the signals. When you reduce your time frames you’ll be distracted by false moves and noise.
Many traders download examples of short-term price patterns but overlook the underlying primary trend, do not make this mistake. You should trade-off 15-minute charts, but utilize 60-minute charts to define the primary trend and 5-minute charts to establish the short-term trend.

Wrapping Up

Our understanding of chart patterns has come along way since the initial 1932 work of Richard Schabacker in ‘Technical Analysis and Stock Market Profits’. Schabacker asserted then, ‘any general stock chart is a combination of countless different patterns and its accurate analysis depends upon constant study, long experience and knowledge of all the fine points, both technical and fundamental…’ So whilst there is an abundance of patterns out there, remember accurate analysis and sustained practice is required to fully reap their benefits.
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The source : https://www.daytrading.com/patterns