seen too many guys buying the first green candle after a dump and then wondering why they got rekt. the move from 87k back to 84k is a perfect example. most ppl think it is a dip but without a structure shift it is just catching a falling knife. the lqidity is often deeper than u think.
the laise for a pro entry is to wait for a sweep of the obvious support followed by a strong displacement. i’ve been using a daily volatility checklist from tyriantrade.com to stop myself from impulsive clicking and wait for actual confirmation. it laegit helps to have a set of rules so u dont just gamble on a gut feeling.
do u guys wait for the mss (market structure shift) or u just buy the level? i’m curious to see how u guys handle these spikes without losing ur mind.
The way I learned (and try to abide by) is to simply note and mark the market change of structure, wait for a retracement, and enter when the retracement ends.
This is easy to describe on the D1 time-frame but harder on intra-day.
So, when we see successively lower swing highs and swing lows, note a swing high which breaks above the last swing high’s high. Then look for a swing low with a higher low than the previous swing low, and set a buy order at this bar’s high.
The simple plan can be modified to make it more cautious - e.g. swing highs and lows must be separated by at least 1 bar, or 2 bars or 3 bars: ignore breaches of the last high until there is a Close above this level: etc. etc.
No indicators are needed, every bar counts if you’re on the right time-frame, no subjective judgements are involved.
I think part of it is that noise on the lower timeframe creates more fake swing highs/lows, so the rule about requiring a close above the previous level that you mentioned at the end actually matters a lot more on H1/H4 than on D1, D1 tends to filter out a lot of that noise on its own. Personally I confirm the MSS on D1 first, then use the same logic on H4 to narrow down the entry, rather than trying to apply the whole rule set on a single timeframe
Using two time-frames in this way is classic trading strategy, so widely adopted that it’s maybe the norm. People often forget it’s a modern approach, only available to the private retail trader when Windows 3, the internet and home PC’s became our standard tools in the mid-90’s.
My only reservation - where is the evidence that trading is more successful using two time-frames over using one?
To be honest I haven’t found any statistical research showing that two timeframes work better than one. To me it’s more of a sensible process than a proven edge, mainly because it forces me to define the bias on the higher timeframe first, so I don’t accidentally trade against the main trend when I’m only looking at a small one
