GBP/USD

A week ago Tuesday my Father-in-Law passed away after a hard battle. We had the funeral this past Friday. I would like to thank you for the many encouraging comments and emails I received.

I expect to be back this week trading full time and blogging.

-Fetor

I have not posted in some time because my father in-law has been in the hospital for the past 40 days, many of which has been spent in the ICU. Out of those past 40 days my family has been at the hospital for about 30 of them. As a result I have not prepared any videos, etc. for posting. If you follow my blog I just wanted to give you an explanation of where I’ve been. I hope to be back very soon as things seem to be taking a turn for the better. I have been trading some along the way and have spent some time in the chat room during the US session. If you have not tried the chat room I’d encourage you to give it a go. Thanks for your patience.

This is a follow up to my previous post about USD/JPY. We were looking at the outside bar on the daily chart as a signal for trades at the top and bottom of the range. An outside bar serves us well for these types of trades in that it most often creates a single session range since during that session both the bulls and bears had control of the market. We see that price followed through nicely upon the final break so I hope you had alarms set and were watching this develop to catch the run up. USD/JPY tends to be a slower pair so it is nice to practice on as your hourly moves generally are not too dramatic so the degree of risk is lowered.

When price broke higher over 82.46 there were some signs that it was going to struggle a bit, and we would expect that since we know that the market tends to first contain the price in a range (area) before it breaks free. In the image below we had a strong move higher (relative to USD/JPY typical movement) and then you’ll note a few numbers (in red) that I added. Through this process don’t lose sight of your HL/HH price movement. This movement is where the market is setting price and showing us the swing points and critical prices so we know where to cut a losing trade loose so we don’t get caught letting a loser run. If you are unfamiliar with the basic price movement in the market go through my section Charting for Noobs.

1. Here you see an inside bar form after the push higher.

2. Here you see a second inside bar form making that two in a row as price is consolidating upon decreasing demand. These two inside bars are significant when coupled with the next bar.

3. Here we see price drop below the near term range and close on it’s low so there was selling through the whole session. At this point if you were long you would expect some pull back. You may want to exit and wait to see what happens then re-enter or hold through the pull back realizing that your breaking point is the trend line running up from 81.10 through 81.76. The break higher out of the daily outside bar we would expect to cause demand though price may pull back on the hesitation of buyers to initially buy higher. But the overall demand is there keeping buyers in the market on the pullbacks on lower frames.

4. At this point we have an additional move higher and as you can see this candle stands out. We see that the open and low are the same and the high and the close are the same. This action with the higher move would draw in more buyers to start to buy higher. Price pulls back a bit and hesitates off of the initial move higher, but there is no supply below, price creeps up and then news finishes the job 2.5 hours later and we are off to the races.

If you are following this in real time pay attention to these things I point out here and trust that the price action is telling you something about the sentiment of traders and whether the bulls or bears are interested. At the end of the day it’s a probability game, but these things are helpful in assessing the sentiment to help our probability of being right.

Questions or comments? Leave them in the space below.

We have an outside bar on the D1 for USD/JPY that will give us something to work with. I have just posted a D1 chart below (click on the image to enlarge), but if you look at an H1 chart I would imagine that buyers will continue to buy to the top again at 82.45ish where we’ll want to see resistance and sellers in which will give us a good short. A break higher will take us out of that outside bar and will function as a good break out trade. If you don’t normally watch this pair, just set alarms and let the price come to you. Overall if you look at the price action the sentiment is to sell and until the topside of that outside bar is broken I would lean to taking shorts over taking any longs. Your long opportunity comes on the break higher at which point you will watch H1 and M5 to help depending on the aggressiveness of your temperament.

In this post I use the most recent break out on EUR/USD as an example of how to trade using price action, momentum, and to reinforce that you should believe in the features of the market and use them to your advantage.

First of all, this is going to be a long post, so strap in. Secondly, the image we’ll be using is below (I was unable to shoot a video of this). Click on it to enlarge. There are a series of numbers on the charts so you can review it, and so we can walk through each aspect.

What do we know up to the point of the break out?
- Price is on an upward trend so the overall sentiment is to buy. We gather this information from using D1 and H1 charts. H1 is very helpful in that it is a great combination of information and time. REVIEW: How do we best establish price? Time. Time equals value so the more time we have the better we can establish the most influential prices and price ranges. The H1 chart is a good combination of time and information in order to establish these things. That’s why we don’t make longer term speculation off the most recent M5 chart.
- Since price is buy trending we want to make note of the areas where the price is “swinging” upward. If you are unfamiliar with this then you need to read my posts in the Charting For Beginners Section. This will explain in some basic detail the general price movement of the market as well as identifying HLs/HHs and LHs/LLs. The reason we mark where the price is swinging upward is because these become points of interest for buyers where the price is now inexpensive enough to buy again. This entices buyers to come in to the market and continue to buy. When these swing points are broken and as they continue to break, new swing low points will form telling traders the price is too expensive, thus enticing them to sell.
- Leading up to the break out we see selling on the D1 chart bringing the price back down to “inexpensive” areas.
- We also know that leading up to the break out we were facing news at 8:30am EST. We had two pieces of information. The first was a press conference being held by the ECB and the second was US unemployment claims (day before US NFPs and the US unemployment rate). We would estimate that the US unemployment claims would cause some action in itself, but coupled with the press release we would definitely expect something to happen. In this case the news becomes an important factor in the price movement now that the price has come down and is sitting at “inexpensive” prices. Normally, buyers would be waiting, but the fundamental influence becomes such a factor that the potential influences affects the whole day and sets the pace for the next 6-8 hours. If you look back 4 candles on the D1 chart below you’ll see that full day of selling followed by a full day of buying. That was a day of selling triggered by news. Once the selling is set in motion the day very often carries through and you don’t want to be trying to trade reversal bounces in that environment. You are much better off trading continuations and pullbacks with the price trend.

Let’s now take a look at the image below.

Upon the news release we are not trading. If you were watching the M5 chart you saw the price spike up quickly only to whipsaw back the other direction. When that happened price flew through the lows and swing points. The fundamentals are too strong. But we still don’t want to trade that action. It’s just too risky. So we put into action what we know about the market, and the first and foremost feature is that the market seeks to control price and regulate the action in order to establish points of entry. Most of the time this means that we get the pull back and test of highs/lows that we need in order to enter. But when price is moving too fast we just have to wait until we find that point to continue on and that is what we had to look for in this situation today.

Let’s follow the red numbers listed on your chart:

1. Price moves lower and breaks through swings on higher frames. We see continual lower closes on the M5 coupled with no pullbacks. So when you look at the highs of each candle the proceeding candle price (its high) does not pullback beyond the high of the preceding candle. Thus you have lower highs and lower closes (we are not AS concerned about lows on M5, just lower highs and lower closes). Notice how the highs will turn right at the price of the previous high and then continue the selling. The point is, we can’t trade this if we are not already in the market and you should not trade this type of action. You HAVE TO control your emotions during these times and wait. If you need to walk away for 10 – 20 minutes then do so. There is no getting around the issue of discipline. You MUST discipline yourself and refrain from entering.

2. At this point we see the price pull back. This is not buying in this case! This is sellers leaving the market and taking profit.

3. Sellers re-engage at this point. They already have a selling mindset. They are not considering buying AT ALL. They are only considering selling, they are just waiting for the profit taking to stop so they can come back in and take advantage of the pressure. When the market starts a direction like this, MOST OFTEN sellers will continue to sell into support and buyers will continue to buy into resistance. At this point the M5 chart gives them a reason to enter back in at this point. This is just price action being read off candle formations and closes….nothing more.

4. When Price hits 4 something happens! We see the features of the market start to take form. Up to this point the price movement is chaos in that it is just free falling and it is highly unpredictable, but now the market starts to fall back into line with price containment and manipulation. Now we have a chance for an entry somewhere. But the one thing we don’t want to do is buy!…at least not in the near future unless something dramatic happens. Note that price stalls at 4 (the previous swing low) and we see the next candle shoot up. Look at the features of the candle and it’s context. The candle’s open and low are almost identical and it’s high and its close are almost identical. That is a reversal candle at the low, but we are in a range and we don’t want to trade a reversal of any sort considering the environment we are in. So, what we’ll do is log that in our mind and if we see some further information that says price is going to die here we can save our sell orders for a potential entry when the price moves back higher. That way you don’t enter your sell position too quickly and have to sit through maybe 20-40 pips of draw before it comes back to you and moves lower. If this doesn’t make sense then just leave a comment below about this.

5. We see a price containment range form. At this point we do not want to buy a break higher or sell a break lower out of this range. We want more information first.

6. This candle shoots right down. It’s high and open are just about identical meaning there were only sellers here and nothing to move the price higher. But we are calm and cool at this point because we are just reading what the market is giving us. We see the price break just below the range and then close on the line. But we are still not going to enter because we know that the main feature of the market is first price containment. But this candle is a good sign for further selling to come.

7. Candle 7 breaks lower, but we still are not trading yet. Why? Because we know that the main feature of the market is first price containment. Look at the close of this candle. Yes it breaks low, but now you have a bull candle, nice and small, tucked away right at the bottom of that previous strong bear candle. This is another reversal signal. Pretend you don’t know the next two candles after this one so you can think about this as if it were happening in real time because that is how you have to do this in real life. So take the last 4 candles in context and we have one of two scenarios. We are going to stay out and let the price drift up and look for a better sell or we are going to trade the failed reversal. Price is trying to reverse at this point, and if the reversal fails we will most likely see more selling. We have our opportunity now! Now what we want to do is trade the break low of the failed reversal. Easy as pie.

8. The red line just below is my entry short as I can best display it in real time. I had to wait one more candle, but at that point there it’s all sellers. I picked up about 18 pips on the trade before I exited. Why not hold for more? Because we are trading M5 in a larger context and I don’t know where the bottom is and there is A LOT of room above me. If my entry was much higher at the swing or higher than that, then yes I would hold the trade in the context of the higher frame, but the low frame entry merits a different approach. This is what intraday trading is like and it’s the only way to protect your capital and make wise decisions. But in addition to these 18 pips I had a previous +10 trade and +25 trade about an hour before the news, and since I was not in the primary selling today when you string these trades together I would call 53 pips a good day.

9. and 10. I just put on the D1 chart to show areas of support on the higher frame that could be used for targets as the market starts laying out price boundaries of the next few hours.

Hope this was helpful to you. If you have questions or comments then leave then in the space below.

I combined two screen shots into one image. One of M5 and one of H1 for EUR/USD. I wanted to point out how price seeks containment first over breaking out of price barriers. If you look at the last 4 candles on the H1 chart you see that clearly the demand above is not there at present. Things could turn around, but over these past four hours we’ve had 3 shooting stars (longer tails to the top side), and the last candle closed almost with the low. Overall the pressure is there, but when the price came down on the M5 chart to the area where the market is setting the support (inexpensive price) sellers gave up there and price marched back up quickly. Over all the pressure is there and price is starting to come back down, but this is the exact reason why it is better to be patient in these areas than trade breakouts because the market tends to control price by containing it. As the price breaks lower sellers will continue to fight themselves as some will exit and get out. This causes a buy order to be triggered. On the M5 chart the last candle shown (the long one) is not a result of buyers that is a result of sellers leaving the market (of course a buy order is needed to complete their sell), but that is not new buyers scalping the market. The selling pressure is there, but sellers and buyers fight themselves at extremes. So, in this case your sellers keep selling, but they are pulling out because they understand the feature of the market that it tends to contain the price and control it around critical levels. Now what will happen is that if your sellers keep selling lower and stop pulling out then you’ll get new sellers coming in and the buy orders will cease and price will fall. This happens in the reverse for buying at points of resistance. This is how supply and demand controls the market. As the price falls the supply opens up, but as sellers exit and close the supply it creates momentary demand which brings the price back up in what we see as a “pull back”. And of course the reverse happens on the buy side when there is buying pressure at resistance. Hope this helps some in thinking about what is happening around areas where price is expensive or inexpensive, and hopefully it will help you better read the price action so you don’t get caught entering too early on breakouts.

Click on image for expanded view:

US GDP just came out and while it missed the forecast it was better than the previous posting. If sellers break through lows I’d aggressively sell these areas as sellers establish they will sell lower. We could be in for a full day of selling to close out the week. Pay attention to swing points on H1 and your previous lows on D1 around 1.3640 and 1.3575. If it stays in the range and you are taking a position I’d be sure to get out at the extremes until it moves higher or lower out of 1.3700 to 1.3780.

View the previous post for charting information on EUR/USD

Below is a link to a screen shot of my H1 EUR/USD chart with some direction on how to trade the current price. On the daily chart we are at critical extremes for buyers as price is being evaluated as too expensive. On a buy higher than 1.3780 I would be very cautious to trade any breakouts as buyers are going to be hesitant to follow through UNLESS we get some news that is off the mark in a big way. For right now we should have a selling mind set, but only when the trends break down and come out of the current range. As long as the price is closing higher buyers will continue to buy into resistance until those trend lines start to fail and especially swing points start to fail. This is a very important feature of trend lines as the tell us where price is breaking down and as long as trend lines are pushing price, buyers will continue to buy into resistance and sellers will continue to sell into support (depending on trend) until there is nothing left. That’s what sentiment is, and what it causes, so it’s good to keep in mind that looking for reversals against a trending price is more often much riskier as the sentiment keeps the buyers/sellers in play until the trend lines break down.

Any questions or comments leave them in the space below

Screen Shot of H1 (click image to enlarge):

This is a wrap of today with analysis for tomorrow and possible trade opportunities. I run through following the price action and how to interpret it in order to make informed choices. If you have questions or comments leave them in the space below.

Happy New year as we get back into trading now that the major holiday season is over. 2011 should be an interesting year. There are pips to be made!

Below is a link to a screen shot(SS) I took of the EUR/USD Daily chart. It looks as though we have a large frame Head and Shoulders pattern forming which should decrease demand for euros from a technical standpoint and the supply should open up pushing the Euro back to at least 1.2000. You’ll see in the SS the orange line outlines the forming H&S. The red line is the neck. Right now we have to use H1 (and lower) to help determine possible levels where long term sellers will be waiting to enter. There is a definite short trade in the yellow highlighted zone and below 1.3000. The question marks represent the most obvious price turning points at levels of D1 resistance. The upper gray line should also serve as a point of price setting if buyers continue to buy through resistance levels. Disregard the dotted red and blue lines. This is an excellent opportunity to catch a long term trade that could yield a 1000 pips or more over the next several months. Keep your eye out and I will try to update this as things develop.

Cut and paste the link into your browser.

EUR/USD Daily Chart

http://screencast.com/t/lOIm7sGUSfX