Understanding Price Action by Chris Capre

Ha - seems we are playing tag now…just found that earlier and responded as I thought I was hallucinating this morning when I woke up and noticed the article.

Good to know I am not seeing things from not having my breakfast yet :-ooo

Kind Regards,
Chris Capre

How did you end up doing today Perry as the market offered some great opportunities on Silver, EJ, EU and a few others?

Kind Regards,
Chris Capre

Thanks for asking. Well I missed some opportunities and normally I don’t trade days like today with high volatility. I learned so many lessons in the past.My trading psychology not yet developed to trade during these times. So I would like to stay away from these kind of market situations. But I hope you got some nice pips. Happy pipping.

Hello Traders,

While a majority of the pairs have remained range bound, I have been focusing on Gold as of late, which is forming a pre-breakout squeeze on the 4hr chart.

Looking at the chart below, the pair has definitely come up against a clear resistance level in $1695 which has rejected the market several times since the 17th of this month.


You will also notice the 20ema carry and pin bar rejections on both sides. And now the squeeze is forming, suggesting a breakout is imminent.

I favor the upside, but am open to a failure of this and shorting as well towards $1684, but we should have our answer either today or tomorrow imo.

I’ll also have a few more posts of how I traded yesterday on the EJ and EU and banked about 100 pips during a range bound environment so stay tuned.

Kind Regards,
Chris Capre

Can you explain a little about your pair of XAU/USD. I looked up XAU and it said it was Phil gold and silver sector. How is it you playing against USD? Thank you for posting. This is interesting. I do see the squeeze yoyu were talking about. Good luck.

Hello Sono,

I am not sure what you mean about the 'phil gold and silver sector.

The XAU is the symbol for Gold when trading it vs. the USD. Most brokers (outside the US) have this available via a CFD, particularly on MT4 and other platforms.

In terms of how I am playing it, I’ll look for a breakout pullback setup if it manifests. Otherwise, i’ll watch intraday price action for a price action reversal signal to fade it back towards $1684.

Hope this helps and glad you are enjoying this thread.

Kind Regards,
Chris Capre

Hello Traders,

Gold just showed its hand, and is now testing a critical $1683 support as mentioned. If this breaks down, then we should see a further unwinding to 75 and 67 where I would consider getting long on the latter.

Note the bearish outside bar on the 5m chart which started a new counter-trend impulsive price action move, which then led to a series of bearish impulsive moves, followed by corrective moves.


Pretty clean price action on the 5m.

Kind Regards,
Chris Capre

Hey Traders,

Although I’m not totally convinced the GBPJPY has formed a short term bottom, it is showing some signs of it near term with a few pin bars and a HL (higher low) off the recent 139.50 area. First hurdle is 141, but after that, all clear for about a 100pips.

A failure below 139.24 opens up 137.90.

Chart below:


Kind Regards,
Chris Capre

Hi Chris, I can’t remember where you said this, but you mentioned somewhere the probability of an impulsive move being followed by a corrective move was 60%, is this correct? as I’m having trouble finding where you mentioned it :confused:

Thanks for the levels. I love to trade yen pairs.

Nice to hear that you took 100 pips on EU pairs. Unfortunately I couldn’t identify the direction properly. So I didn’t try any trade.

Hello Stinsfire,

Yes, good memory on your part. The general rule in regards to the impulsive and corrective price action model, is that the market once formed a clear impulsive direction, which is then followed by a corrective move, generally 75% of the time, will follow that up with another impulsive move, in the same direction as the original impulsive.

This is because if you look at the order flow of an impulsive move and trend, it clearly communicates who’s in control, and what direction they are pushing. A counter-trend corrective move shows a lack of order flow from the opposing side, and an inability to take over direction.

When institutions see this, and realize the trend is still in play and they still have control, they will keep pushing until they realize they no longer have control.

There is more to this overall model, which you can find the details about how to read impulsive and corrective price action, along with where/when to look for a reversal of this model, and other transitions in trends here;
Impulsive and Corrective Price Action

I hope this helps give you more details about how the model works, what to look for, and how to use it for your trading.

But good question.

Kind Regards,
Chris Capre

This is very good on you perry.

When in the beginning stages of trading, if you do not know the direction, or it is not clear to you, don’t trade until some clarity emerges. Very good discipline on your part.

Kind Regards,
Chris Capre

I’m constantly confused by your thread, on one hand your post some interesting helpful stuff, then the very next post will be an overblown description of a pullback with an advert and link to your site.

Which is spam.

And spam is against the forum rules.

This is a forex forum, not an advertising forum.

Hello Slip,

I actually had a long conversation about posting links with pipstradamus just yesterday, and here was his quote directly;
Hello Chris,

[I]Link moderation is a difficult process in general. [B]We let some links slide depending on their educational value[/B] to the thread. Now, some links and their destination pages, while educational, may also be overly promotional in nature or just blatant spamming or solicitations, so we let our moderators determine what they feel keeps in line with our policies and what doesn’t.[/I]

So hopefully that clears some confusion around this as its permitted in some cases.

I’ve actually already pm’d him to give him a heads up about it and let him decide. If he feels this is not workable, I’ll be happy to remove it, but there are many other people like me that have posted links, and they’ve been allowed based on their educational value. So obviously, its not a clear black and white rule.

Anyways, hopefully that clears it, but I appreciate your candor.

Kind Regards,
Chris Capre

You see [B]“We let some links slide depending on their educational value”[/B]

I see [B]“while educational, may also be overly promotional in nature or just blatant spamming or solicitations”[/B]

Different viewpoints but I think we both know the truth. Most everything you do on this site ends in some kind of self promotion.

Either way I repoted it as spam so I guess it will be up to a mod call.

Hello Slip,

You are certainly entitled to your viewpoint and I support you in whatever view you wish to take.

As I said, I’ve told Pipstradamus that any link I will post in the thread, I will email him about to give him a heads up to decide, and will fully support any decision he makes. If you’d like, I’d be happy to send you a copy of the message I sent him to verify that I also pm’d him about it.

For me, I want to work with their rules and make sure that I do not violate them. I am not totally certain either what exactly is allowed by them and what is not, as they even admitted its sort of a grey area. And since I have no experience really in finding ones that are workable for them, I’m willing to work with them in whatever whey they see fit to honor them and what they feel is acceptable. Hopefully I can get to this soon so as not to violate their rules.

Anyways, all the best and good luck trading today.

Kind Regards,
Chris Capre

Hello Traders,

As promised (although a little late), I am posting a couple trades I took on the 22nd, which, although it seemed like a choppy day, offered some really good price action setups.

Here they are below, starting with Exhibit A:


This is the EURJPY was has been not as trend directional lately, but still offered some intraday price action trades, with this being one of them.

I was actually using a combination of methods, but you can see shortly after I entered, the market sold back down towards the prior SL (swing lows), where I took profit as there were signals it would stop there and form an intraday double bottom, which it did.

So with a 21 pip stop, I ended up with about 60 pips which is a 3:1 reward to risk play. As to why I took profit there after such a strong bear bar in my favor, my general motto is, ‘when the markets in a range, you have to trade it like a range’. Being that this was in an overall range, the bottom barrier was likely to hold. This plus other price action clues on a lower time frame were communicating reversal - hence the exit.

Exhibit B (EURUSD):


Notice how the entry on this one is where there was a corrective move followed by an impulsive leg down. The area where I entered had already shown sellers were emerging around 3320, and holding that area. This, plus a few other thing suggest a short for the range bottom, which the market never really went in the negative, and then after a final pin bar rejection, sold off impulsively towards the bottom.

Anyways, hopefully that gives you some idea how one can trade markets which appear to be choppy, but really are offering opportunities with low risk and solid reward.

Remember, in trading, try not to only play your AA and AK (suited) hands. Many times QQ, JJ or other hands/trades can be quite profitable over the long run, regardless of whether they win the fashion contest.

Kind Regards,
Chris Capre



No need, I do and will continue to report anything that I view as spam on the forum.

As an analogy if we were on a car forum there is a world of difference between posting a link to a wiki page detailing the 5 series and posting a link to the BMW 5 series sale page.

Hello Slip,

I support you fully to do what you think is best and most energetic.

As to the analogy, there is no wiki pages on the stuff that I write :-ooo

Anyways, all the best and good trading today.

Kind Regards,
Chris Capre