Hello emeraldorc, nice video! I like your style! One thing: like me, you have your in-built laptop microphone, which means that we get treated to a full round of cooling fan whirring every so often. I recommend a head-set! Got one recently but the laptop just refuses to let go of its in-built mic input so I will take it to the shop on Wednesday and get it sorted.
That was just a technical point… I found the video very interesting… Coulling, in her VPA book, says that you can use tick (volume) on any time-frame, but then, like you, she seems to favour shorter time-frames… Is tick (volume) and price analysis best served hot on a five-minute plate or cooler on a monthly one? Salad optional
As you know I trade short term as well, having said that I also trade longer term, this video is more for longer term trading using Volume and tick charts. The website they mention also has good and useful info. Currency and Forex trading using VSA - YouTube
As usual I’m not promoting anything that they are selling but I found the free stuff helpful and useful.
If you look at VSA in phases, it takes into account 4 phases. 1. an accumulation phase; 2 a markup phase; 3 a distribution phase; 4 a mark down phase. When you finish the markdown, the traders that can move the market go back to the accumulation phase and starts are over. It’s continual and consistent in what comes after each phase. It’s like a Fibonacci tool, it doesn’t matter the time frame, to use it you need a trend. Hope that helps my friend
Gp
Haha! Yes indeed, I do use the internal mic, my fan has become noisy lately despite having a quad core processor but I suspect it is the windows media center streaming that is tasking my machine. I plan to invest in what would be a third laptop in 2 years as technology keeps advancing. The external mics tend not to work for me as well…
The volume is clearer on the shorter time frames as the daily upwards tends to show bars with identical volume with a few extremes which I use to catch really major support and resistance or look for falling volume in an uptrend to swing trade for a longer trade. I start my entry on the hour chart as my dominant chart for entry and use the daily as my general directional chart. I use to use the 15 min chart but that chart I find works for intraday scalps and if you feel like risking like the traders of old and over leveraging but I like to play by the rules so the 15 min lost it’s appeal to me unless the 1 hour is in a tight range and I want to catch the breakout in that case the move starts at the 15.
The logic is similar to that of a zoom lens if the daily is not clear zoom into an the hour if that isn’t clear zoom to 15 by then you should have a picture to decide on. The monthly is best to combine the volume with a standard statistical deviation that are not really indicators but volatility measures (Bollinger or linear regression) because if a monthly chart was to widen in deviation would mean a volatile currency pair or tighten would mean a pending catastrophe as the breakout will be severe. So any extreme volume on channel support followed by a tail off would be a definite reversal and are really low risk.
nice video. However, i am heaving problems with sell or buy volume. How do you determine what is actually happening with the market? A first glance, i only see big volume on big candles and i find it hard to extract the the essence.
Hi Emeraldorc. I find your video extremely illuminating. I was always under the impression that volume would not be a significant indicator in FX since you can’t get the full “market depth” though brokers. However, with your analysis you have proven otherwise!
I have a fundamental question - How do you determine whether the volume is “buying” or “selling”? In some cases it seems more obvious, but for instance in the second chart you analysed (gold) - on the 8th of May, you see that as buying volume. if I look at the candles corresponding to the highest volume peaks (see picture attached), they are actually bearish candles.
Could you explain if there is a particular technique or something to look out for?
Hi pipo, thanks for raising that point, it is a really significant point.
There are a few ways to approximately determine the kind of volume, this still remains one of the most difficult analysis to make with volume can eventually be your Achilles heel however if you do get this wrong you will still be right most of the time than you are wrong.
You can zoom into faster time frames to do the analysis this tends to make the picture clearer, for example if you see a red bar in the 1h and assume the volume is selling then go to 15 min and see what is happening there you may see the sentiment changing with some buying other clues could be pivot lows forming.
The other clue is the upper and lower shadows which have spawned those illustrious names like tweezer top candle pattern or evening star, etc. So if you see a bearish move with a long lower shadow (lower tail) then you will assume the sellers are weakening and have been held back.
I took a trade today on XAU/USD at 1283.77 I will do the analysis regardless the outcome and post, it appeared like a low risk trade with volume increasing in what appears like buying volume at what was a previous area of buying volume and support in the past. The view on this is a longterm one over a day, the risk for me was a fundamental one i.e. the USD appears to be gaining strength on some strong housing data however manufacturing is still a question mark which has a direct effect on the economy but the risk on the trade is there however this was based on volume and here lies the classic difficult of deciding which volume, if I am wrong I probably will get blasted to that major support but last week was a good week so I don’t mind yielding a few pips in light of the lack of opportunity on a Monday.
You nailed it pretty much these apparent bearish sessions always look like selling they almost always buying. To quote Livermore, you need to know when to buy as an institution so as to not to move the price aggressively and there is no better time than when the news comes in and the selling starts because now you can buy huge lines by capitalizing on the selling wave from small retail speculators and the market makers reducing price in a false move.
It makes sense imagine trying to accumulate a 100m line in the market in one day. That will no doubt send the price to oblivion so you will either buy slowly or go big when the selling is sufficient. So in fact the problem for institutions is not stops or losing it is about getting the best prices and building their position without competitors knowing otherwise you can only imagine that if I knew you where selling I might take the opportunity to accumulate on your selling hence denying you profits. Welcome to institutional trading… Hence they say small retail traders are fair game.
Great video. Thanks for taking the time to share your experience.
It has been my experience that all brokers are not created equal when it comes to volume data. My question is what brokers do you think display the most reliable volume data?
Thanks again for sharing.
Just to fill everyone on my gold trade. I was cleared out at 1279 somewhere so it wasn’t a bad loss. I never do a post mortem but everyones benefit. I believe I started my accumulation a little to early the real support was at 1277 there was a slight overshoot from the initial selling volume that occurred at 1286.08 I should have noted that volume broke that support price and regardless momentum was going to take that price lower to the next support where buying can resume.
So, I should have either followed the move lower and TP’d at 1277 area or waited for that support area and then bought in which case my risk would have been significantly lower and I would have had time to analyze any fundamental risk (It does however appear that Gold is now heading lower) but as greed can have its way with you, I entered early and essentially yielded some pips.
That said I am already looking at my next trade so water under the bridge but that highlights sometimes the judgments you have to make when taking on opportunities but helps to see what can go wrong as well as what can go right.
Quite interesting pip. It could be that the chart may be slightly stretched exaggerating the movement but that said I found that FXCM was the only broker that refused to add volume to their trading station which I found odd. I asked the fella on the phone what’s with that, his words were, “I know what you mean, we only have OBV and to be honest you don’t want to trade with second best”, their MT4 I don’t know but with my 2 brokers that I have used, their tick volume is fine.
The best way to really see if there is any tampering is to pull the chart into spreadsheet via mt4 in which case you will see all the volume figures in digit format this should clear it up. Tick volume should never change or lag it should be real time and should not reset. Hopefully if Jason sees this he can jump in and comment.
We all know broker prices vary so there tick volume would reflect the level activity on their price changes but should mirror all other tick data but I find regardless of platform the data is accurate, remember we only looking to validate price by measuring it against activity and nothing more taking into account hazards like Moving averages, support/resistance areas but that’s it.
Note the safest way to trade this is still to trend follow and simply ensure you are joining a move with enough momentum. Swing trading requires more interpretation and skill. The pay off is bigger but it has more of a chance to go wrong. Hence the saying don’t pick tops and bottoms.
Thanks for your two cents. I currently use IBFX per the rec of a fellow Babypips member who trades VSA. Look forward to hearing others weigh in on the subject.
Love the VSA methodology. Many factors are at play when choosing a broker; however, with VSA, volume is such an integral data point that it needs to be near the top of the list when making the choice.
I hope this doesn’t take the thread in the wrong direction as I look forward to hearing more on methodology.
