Forex Positive: increasing your trading success

Technical analysis trading comes in many different varieties and favours. There are trend lines, elliott waves, breakouts, pattern formations and so forth. Today i introduce another concept in technical trading. It is called trading in the box. Using price action, i have drawn 2 boxes. NZDJPY was trading in box 1. And now it has jump up and is trading in box 2. So the key to trading NZDJPY is to trade within box 2. Buy near the bottom of the box, and sell close to top end of the box. Rinse and repeat. Until NZDJPY decides to move out of the box, into another new box.


How are boxes determined? in the vertical scale?
Supposing that s/r lines are the boundaries horizontally…

The boxes are determine both in vertical and horizontal scale.
Horizontal scales are determined by the S/R lines.
Vertical scales are determine by time, when the price breaks above or below.

Another way to explain. The top and bottom lines of the box are S/R lines.
The left and right lines of the box are the time period when price breaks above or below S/R.

Instead of just drawing the plain S/R alone, drawing a box provides a more visually appealing approach. The box catches more attention on the charts. :slight_smile:

So how is the “box” phenomenon different from simply following S/R lines? Unless its meant to make things easy to “look” at, visually speaking.

The box is not different, it is complementary. The box includes the element of time, when we include the left and right sides of the box. It shows how long the currency pair stays within the box, i.e. 3 days, 5 weeks, 10 hours. And yes, it certainly make things easier to look at. :slight_smile:

Bat harmonic patterns are generally reliable, with a success rate of about 60-70%. With one forming on the EURUSD on the 4hr chart, look to short at the 88.6% FIB retracement.

SHORT EURUSD 1.3760-70
SL above 1.3800
TP 100pips

For this AUDUSD, it could be potentially forming a bearish bat pattern. The price action right now is inconclusive as to whether the bearish bat pattern may form or not. Therefore, I am taking of the opinion that it could form. The key here is to find a price level where point C reverses upwards point D. This trade is thus trading the CD leg. A successful trader makes their money by taking calculated odds in their favor. If this trade works, then we would have caught the bottom of the CD leg. And we would have capture all the profits from the entire CD leg, in this case, this CD leg is worth +1400pips! Even better, this is a positive carry trade from holding a long AUD position. This trade looks too great to miss out.

LONG AUDUSD 0.9040-50 (if choose 78.6% as retracement)
SL 30-40pips
TP final 1.0400

LONG AUDUSD 0.8950-60 (if choose 88.6% retracement)
SL 40-50pips
TP final 1.0400

From this weekly chart, one shall witness the ardent power of support and resistance levels. The fundamental basic structure of support and resistance is memory levels. It is the ability of humans to remember events from many years ago. Let me illustrate. How many of you remember where is your primary school? Raise your hands if you know the answer. How about your best friends in primary school? Raise your hands. And how many years ago was that? You get what I mean.

In this weekly chart, I have gone back to July 2007. So therefore this resistance level has been hanging patiently around for 6.5 years ago. Would USDCAD turns ultra-bullish and smash its way above this titanium resistance? It might, but most probably not on the first try. My strategy is then to short USDCAD, believing the resistance level would hold for one more time.

SHORT USDCAD 1.0650-60
SL above 1.0700
TP 1.0400

Good information…thanks!!

Thanks. More excellent information to come. :smiley:

If you prefer to ride the bull train, it is not wise to chase the train after it leaves the station. Waiting for pullbacks are a much safer way to board the train. There have been 5 multiple attempts in the past to breach 1.6260-1.6300. The breakthrough came last week. In this situation, the pullback most likely would occur at 1.6260-1.6300. Many buy orders would then now be placed at 1.6260-1.6300. We would attempt to place our long positions here, as there would be many institutional buy orders clustering here.

LONG GBPUSD 1.6260-1.6300
SL 40pips
TP final 1.7000

AUDNZD

Planning to long at psychological round number support of 1.1000

SL 1.0950

The highest price established for NZDJPY in 2013 is set at 86.40-50. There would be in high likelihood another re-test of this significant price resistance. The first attempt to challenge this high should hold.

SHORT NZDJPY 86.40-50
SL 40-50pips
TP 84.00

Bullish cypher harmonic pattern detected. Do be aware of the big spreads for this pair, especially during illiquid hours. Enter long at 78.6% retracement.

LONG GBPNZD 1.9400-10
SL 50pips
TP 1.9600

Elliott Wave analysis works in all timeframes. From my personal experience, it becomes easier to spot the waves when using larger time frames. For today’s school of trading, my focus shall be on the weekly chart. In the USDJPY weekly chart here, we see that wave 5 is currently in progress.

Here are some simple guidelines to trading Elliott Waves successfully. These guidelines works equally well in bullish uptrend waves and bearish downtrend waves. For the purpose of this exercise, since we are talking about USDJPY, our reference is the bullish uptrend wave.

[ul]
[li]Elliott waves come in 5 waves. 3 bullish uptrend waves, plus 2 bearish (or corrective) downtrend waves.[/li][li]Wave 1, wave 3 and wave 5 are bullish uptrend waves.[/li][li]Wave 2 and wave 4 are corrective bearish downtrend waves.[/li][li]Wave 3 must not be the shortest wave.[/li][li]Bottom of wave 4 should not be lower than the peak of wave 1.[/li][li]For corrective waves 2 and 4, one should be a simple corrective wave and the other a complex corrective wave.[/li][li]Simple corrective wave means a simple ABC wave retracement. (See wave 2 below)[/li][li]Complex corrective waves means something more complicated, including triangle patterns. (See wave 4 below)[/li][/ul]

Base on the above guidelines, we can conclude that USDJPY in the weekly chart is a valid Elliott Wave. Furthermore, I have calculated the time of each wave. Wave 1 started in 30 Jan 2012. And the current wave, wave 5, shall proceed into the year 2014.

to be continued…

From the first post, i spoke about the length of time taken by each wave. The table is re-shown here.

We notice something familiar going on. Both the corrective waves 2 and 4, they have taken about the same number of weeks to form. Wave 2 took 26 weeks and wave 4 took 25 weeks. Since USDJPY is in wave 5 now, how much time is necessary to complete wave 5? Ideally, wave 5 should take less time than week 3. Week 3 took about 34 weeks. So wave 5 may be completed in less than 34 weeks. Projecting 34 weeks forward, wave 5 ends around 30th June 2014.

Now we got the maximum allotted time sorted out, lets turn to price. At what price would wave 5 terminate at? This is a trickier question. There is no way to know with 100% certainty to this question. At best, successfully traders make educated guesses. Remember that trading is a probability game, not a certainty game. To determine with some degree of accuracy where wave 5 might peak, we shall use fibonacci extensions. Lets see the chart with the fibonacci extensions drawn in.

Remember the guidelines of Elliott Wave principles in the first post, wave 3 must not be the shortest wave. So wave 5 must be shorter than wave 3. There are 4 possible price projection targets for wave 5.

113% = 108.00
127% = 111.00
141% = 115.00
161.8% = 120.00

If you are already have long positions in USDJPY, i would highly recommend to close out some of your positions at these 4 prices.

2013 is a good year for GBPUSD. A new BOE governor, Mark Carney, help to steer the ship in the right direction. The economy turn from doldrums to recovery mode. Most major UK economic indicators, including the PMIs, are on the way up. The growing UK economy has much more legs to run, as boom economies run for several years. 2013 was the first year, so likely barring something catastrophic, we shall see another 2-3 years of economic strength until 2015-16.

I think GBPUSD is ready to challenge 1.7000 in 2014. My plan is to buy big dips, on 1 condition. I need GBPUSD to stay within the rising channel. As long as it stays in the channel, the uptrend to test 1.7000 is highly possible.

LONG GBPUSD 1.6320-30 (38.2% FIB)
SL below 1.6200
TP1 1.6600
TP2 1.7000

LONG GBPUSD 1.6230-40 (if 38.2% fails to hold, long again at 50 FIB)
SL below 1.6200
TP1 1.6600
TP2 1.7000

This is a promising trade. Multiple technical indicators are lining up nicely. Although there are no 100% certainties in trading, it is good to see all the ducks in the same row.

On the harmonic front, there is a bullish cypher pattern developing. The possible reversal point at 78.6% is around 94.20-30.

On classical technical analysis, the currency is in a strong steady uptrend channel since June 2013. With multiple points touching the upper and lower band of the rising channel. The trend line support is also around 94.00.

Based on the available information, this is my trading plan.

LONG CADJPY 94.00-30
SL 93.50
TP every 100pips

For the time being, USDJPY is temporary stalling at the 61.8% FIB retracement.

I seldom trade on breakouts. As I prefer for the breakout to happen, and then buy at the pullback to breakout area. However, due to the momentum of USDJPY, I feel a breakout above 105.50 is impending and there may not be a pullback. Hence I would make an exception to the rule.

[U][B]Trading FOMC statement 140129 WED 1900GMT[/B][/U]

The FED should be announcing another round of $10B taper of QE. This is a bullish USD move. Large volatility is expected. Remember to manage your position size accordingly.

2 ways to play this move.

A) Short AUDUSD 3 mins before 1900GMT

SL 50pips

TP trailing stop

B) Long USDJPY 3 mins before 1900GMT

SL 50pips

TP trailing stop