Thanks for this post, I do have a question though. The phases could also be described as accumulation, mark up, reaccumilation, mark up, distribution, mark down, re distribution, mark down, accumulation and so on.
So let’s say I’m looking to buy a pair, how would I differentiate accumulation from re distribution?
https://www.tradingview.com/x/3UA9s6bi/
Looking to buy the EUR once it hits the 1.27 Fibonacci of the initial leg on structural support. Target back 0.7843 support. 15 min intraday play. Time to get out of the house, may be the last sunshine we get before the cloud, so got to enjoy it.
Good morning all, hope you all had a good night sleep. I did and all the emotions from yesterday are gone. Which was good because the charts looked very different from when I went to bed 
So, slowly getting through the thread. Thanks for the videos. I’m dyslexic so reading is like having someone playing a pin-ball machine with the words inside my head. So the vids are worth their weight in XAUUSD to me.
So given that the same PA forms all charts, I’m going to start experimenting with larger tick volumes like 1000, 2000 and 5000 tick charts. Being tick charts I won’t see volume in the traditional sense of a histogram. But I will see an increase or decrease in candle formations during a time period. Is it safe to presume that volume spread can be interpreted with the same meaning.
I think this is one of those trades where if you go short and it works, you’re a hero and think emdoc is a genius and I’m not. :30: If it goes the other way emdoc is still a genius and I’m not. 
Back to this particular pair, I think no question looking from right to left the pair is in a down trend,
Price is near the mean, MFI is negative and volume is flat. If pair is condensing, next breakout is to the uptrend, if it’s distributing, then next move is to the down trend.
You’re not sure, so your question is what do I do? In my humble opion you’re right; the pair could go either way. So if it were me, I would draw 2 lines, one at the little condensing at the top of your circle and another one at the bottom of your arrow. If in between the spread is 50 pips (5 digits) or 5 pips (4 digits) or more, I would wait to see if it bounces of top if it does go short to the bottom line and see what happens, at the same time I would go long if price passes through the upper line. If you’re not comfortable taking a trade between the lines, then wait for price to go through upper or lower.
I’m not sure if I’m a help or not, but that’s what I would do.
Gp
hi guys. i have a question that actually might sound stupid but hopefully someone can clear thing up for me. i heard a while ago that forex volume is only the volume of you broker. so every single broker would have completely different volume spikes etc. you basicly only see a small fraction of all the combined and real volume. on the other hand on stocks you would have the correct volume because there is an official exchange for whatever stock you are looking at.
is this correct? if so it would make colume trading useless on forex. can somebody explain this to me?
thanks
Accumulation happens after Markdown; Distribution happens afterMarkup. The phases are continuous and is the same for all pairs, time frames and tick charts. Take a look at image below, on right where it says text, it should say Distribution
Great question. No you try never to trade your emotions. However having an emotional attachment is different than trading your emotions. Trading your emotions: “Oh god, it’s just got to turn around” or "throwing, punching, kicking, screaming at your screen or anything or anybody else. Emotional attachement, “my favorite pair is gpbusd because I feel the heart beat of the pair, and if I’m wrong I have a stop loss to protect my capital.” or “I just love eurusd when everything else fails me, I can always count on that pair.”
Emotional trading is just that, having an emotional attachment to a pair is okay as long as it’s adding to your analysis, and not the sole reason for your analysis
Genius!!! That’s not playing fair :).
Genius I am not certainly. Hard worker on my trades? Yes! You making me blush guys…
I am looking a lot at structure of each pair and fibonacci levels and employing a lot more structure primarily so I can start making use of limit orders and free up my time and still intraday trade without being glued to the screen. So volume now I only need to glance it and analyse against structure. This has worked well on all time frames. It is part of building a strategy that works in all time frames and markets.
https://www.tradingview.com/x/Pa24zKpY/
I put this together on that pair, it is only an idea I could be totally wrong. Watch the support area for potential targets ideally I am looking for a reversal area, 0.7679 is the likely structure support but potential to extend to 0.7618. Fundamentally I think the USD will bounce back against some of these weaker pairs, either way this week was going to have some kind of a rally.
I am not trading this pair just thought I’ll take a look for Rookie and see what I will do.
Not true.
The tick volume merely counts number of price quotes or time price changes so will be the same from broker to broker, even if it did it would matter not simply because you are in a sandbox.
Some brokers do offer other types of volume including transaction, etc.
Good question though.
I’m familiar with the question. What I need help is the following: on your chart, the mark up went up for around 8 candles then consolidated for around 5 candles (the area with the two red candles.) In hindsight we know that this was re-accumulation and that the move continued up.
But in the real life scenario, why wouldn’t I have thought those five candles were distribution and sold then ended up losing the trade.
In fact, that actual picture you showed me, you said the area written as text “should say distribution.” I went back to see what happened afterwards. If it was distribution like you suggested to me, price would have fallen. But price did not fall at all, it moved up more than a 100 pips since then. This was not distribution it was re-accumulation. So how do we differentiate between re-accumulation and distribution? That is my question.
The picture was meant to show you the order of the 4 phases. VSA is no different than any other strategy, each phase has to be confirmed with other indicators, candle patterns, support, resistance and/or price action.
Accumulation or Distribution is the “Congestion” that is the sideways or range bound movements right before the larger move up or down. Accumulation is the condensing before a Markup (Upward movement). Distribution is the condensing before the a Markdown (Downward movement).
Good morning all! Just took a GBP long position at 1.6058 stops now rolled to break even. This is intraday so looking to take about 1.6094 but we shall see.
Gold is going to the moon it seems, so holding this one. This move came out of an ABCD correction on good volume so it will travel some distance.
https://www.tradingview.com/x/5QTY8XEN/
Gold is not likely to get above 1241.50 so that sould tell you the USD is here to stay and with Turkey about to step into the fray people are going to buying USD to get hold of those nice shiny F15’s. On a whole world instability has not affected Oil nor Gold in fact both saw their lowest prices since last year. That should tell us investors simply understand the US is about to become the safest place on earth… At least for non-US citizens.
Closed out my Gold position in the wake of the FOMC meeting. Gold is always the target of these crazy meetings +1500 pips. Astonishingly after a 500 pip fall in 15 mins, gold is back up to 1214.00. :). Still confident that gold will move higher from this weekly analysis.
Euro looks like it will go higher even on EUR/GBP. How will the ECB spin this one. Draghi speech is not far off.
Same story on the EUR/USD straight out of that 0.786 area.
Also short AUD/NZD, convinced this pair will go south for a while. I short this Early London at 1.1250. So far so good…
So I dialled back into the Weekly chart to see if there are bread crumbs. As you can see the pair was on a weekly support level (these never fail to send a pair), also it was already at the 0.886 termination of the ABCD sell off leg. What is tricky about volume is that you have to come through the higher time frames, those players have more capital so those time frames create large moves.
If you are on 4H then it is possible to misinterpret the volume. Lesson learned in this case. I wasn’t even watching this pair but it has my attention now.
Hello. Here is a Screenshot of what i was talking about.
On the top is Pepperstone on the buttom FxPro. both EUR/USD daily charts. as you all can see there are some similarities but also some difference. The actual volume “numbers” are all different. i think both use New York 5 day close charts. So again my question: would it not make all the volume analysis completely useless for the forex market? We can never know the actual real Volume.
Thanks in advance for some explanations guys.
Okay this was my GU intraday trade, +65 on the 15 min chart. I can’t show you guys volume on trading view. They are doing a deal with FXCM to provide this sometime this year so for now, MT4 and Ctrader will have to do. Volume was falling through out the London on the 15m and we were at the end Gartley pattern 1.27 retracement so a sell off was due, then we saw that cross forming. It was a straight out sell. 1:4 risk reward not everyday…
If you spot that kind of a move… I had to sell the Euro got out at +38. We had a butterfly pattern forming at time of trade and seems to be retracing off my target dead on for a buy signal. We shall see. In both cases my TP came off. Good f@@king day!
Eventually the move extended into a crab pattern at the Fib 1.27. Great buying opportunity at this point intraday…
This is the only difference there is, some ticks are larger in size, reflects the brokers caliberation of how many ticks each quote is equivalent to. FXPro is my ECN broker relative to XM my MT4 broker, they have a smaller tick size. Can’t explain this but it does not matter because after years of using XM and more recently FXPro, I have become accustomed to the average tick measurement per time frame. That said, I haave become fairly adept that I only need to glance the volume to have a fair idea of what is happening, especially if I am relating to other items like strength, S&R, overall oversold and overbought areas, Fibonacci harmonic levels, etc. Gets easier to use.
Of course I went through the pain of reading every tick over 72 hours plus, I spent 72 hours minus sleeping hours, checking every hour recording the H L O price of each session and recording the tick volume associated with it. Pipme and GP00 will remember this well, even did a youtube video on it, well worth it, trained my eyes to see difference. Now I trade profitabily with ease on 4H plus time frames taking my insight from H1 when it comes to volume.
Now I am doing a lot of intraday because, I will managing a small fund and the requirement is income, so I have been refining Fibonacci levels and adding harmonic patterns which work terribly well on intraday trading. I require another month of stress testing but they certainly aid risk/reward positioning, so if you do want to start trading 100k lots before you actually have a 20k account then this is the way to go and you are not likely to blow out.
My intraday risk is max 15 pips will push 20 pips if there is multiple confluence and I have missed the entry, it use to be 25 pips on the 4H and Daily. Usually I open 2 trades a day one at London Session start, the other NY start, it is rear on the majors you will get a complete sell off through London and NY unless it is major news, usually you will get a London sell off (usually a markdown on low volume), then you will get a NY buy up (usually on rising volume) take a look at that GBP/USD H1, note the low volume through Asia, then into London the retail traders 9am buy up, watch the volume fall off through to the NY at 1pm, by 2pm the selling was so overwhelming as NY wakes up that the price crashed straight through to the NY lunch time. We will get a pause at this point, retail traders will start trying to clawback the days losses, these will get absorbed and eventually yesterday’s lows will be visited.
This song and dance plays out everyday till a major support level goes even then the mark ups and downs are just smaller because, everyone has the same idea, so price rushes to the bottom or top. Sorry for the long post but tried to cram all this in one post. It took me sometime to work this out.
thank you emeraldoc. are there any specific books you can recommend?
Excellent post my friend.
