Ok my friends so I have gotten some great advice from you guys here. I am still learning how to trade and am quite confused…
My question is “am I just confusing myself by switching charts?”
For example I might see what looks like a rising trend on a 15 minute chart with resistance 40 pips from right now and I buy in and set a limit of 25 pips only to have the trade go against me. When I check the hourly chart or daily chart its obvious that the currency has been falling for days. But then I tried to use a “Top Down” type method and found that my rising pair retraced right after i bought in…
So am i confusing myself with the whole top down switching charts deal or is it just I am still too new to understand whats going on? Should I stick to just one time frame for all my charts?
Thanks
I feel the same confusion you do, Id see a trend, then buy or sell, set a reasonable SL and TP and it seem to go against me, yet when I check the hourly or daily charts, its been following the same trend for a while.
I’ve only been learning FX recently, and on a Demo account, so would be nice what advice people could give on this 
Thanks
Dan
Everyone will give you different advice, so take each one with a pinch of salt, carry on demo trading and you’ll work out what works for you. Personally, I look at daily, 4hr and 1hr charts in that order. I’m also fairly new to FX to still fine tuning things and of course learning new tricks and techniques. Good luck.
My question would be, what are you trying to achieve on the trade? Is it a day trade or a long term trade that could run for weeks?
When you enter what is your target profit?
Now if you answer these questions as I expect, day trade with small TP eg 50 pips or less, then what relevance does the daily trend have for you. On the two pairs I analyse EURUSD & GBPUSD their Avg Daily range is approx. 145 pips. If you are trading for small pips then no need to look at the bigger trend because the price can fluctuate 145pips in a day and not affect the overall trend bias.
For example, last night on the EURUSD (Aussie time 5pm) which correlates to 8am London open, I went short at 1.4807 with TP of 50pips, it hit just but clearly against the long term up trend, later at 11am I entered long at 1.4812 and hit the TP 50pips. Obviously this doesn’t happen all the time and just to clarify the trade at 9am, was a 25 pip loss, short, but there is no need for my system to know what the longer term trend is.
I think you are trying to justify why your trade lost, it will happen and plenty of times, move to the next one. Understand your time frame and trade it as you see it.
Hmmm… I’ll stick my head above the parapit again and no doubt get it shot off! LOL. Thing is there is no right or wrong TF to trade, its all a matter of personal preference/ style of trading and maybe how many times you get bit on the lower TF’s until you at least take a look at the longer ones? At the very least its worth bringing up a day chart and look to see where PA is heading in the longer term and the key areas of S/R. You might then either wish to trade off this TF, adjusting your lot size and SL accordingly or drop down to a lower TF buying or selling the pull backs against the daily trend or S/R levels on the daily as well as your preferred lower TF especially if they coincide? Whatever your preferred TF, its always worth looking up and down a TF to see where and what PA is doing on those TF’s before diving blindly into a trade.
Trading with trend on shorter timeframes from longer timeframe correlation is only part of the equation, you need to understand what the price is doing, you need to take into account consolidation areas which means that’s where a lot of trading is going on, and is the market really trending? A mistake I used to do as a newbie was to look at a chart without really considering if there is 100 PIP or 300 PIP from top to bottom, and it seems to be a common mistake from the charts I come across.
Remember also that most of the time, the market is ranging, i.e. it always aims to settle at a certain price, so if you are trading at a certain price, the highest probability what might happen is that price will be revisited.
Place an entry order where you are currently placing your stops.
First up you need to figure out what sort of trader you are/want to be. Scalper? Day trader? Swing? Long term perhaps? Once you’ve figured this out you’ll have a much better time figuring out what charts to use.
Obviously the Monthly and Weekly charts are not going to effect you as much as say a 15 min chart would if you’re a Day trader and the opposite for if you are a long term trader. This is why you need to figure out what sort of a trader you are.
Lets say for example you are a, I don’t know, a Swing trader. You’d probably be looking at the Daily, 4 Hour and Hour for example, or maybe the 4 Hour, Hour and 15min/30min. You have several time frames so you can use the longest time frame to determine a trade/the current direction of the trade, next one down you use for pin pointing entries, exits etc. the last one you use for fine tuning.
(keep in mind this is what I do, not what everyone does)
I’d recommend sticking with the multiple time frames, using just one is going to limit you far too much.
It’s going to take you a while to figure out what’s going with charts and trend direction, you just need to figure out what sort of trader you are and what time frames work best for you.
Thanks,
Kenjii.