Have you tried entering with a stop entry past the signal bar? I think a few people on here managed to miss this becuase their long entry wasnt hit.
My thoughts on trading price action during big news events is that the odds of losing are well stacked against you. There is the possibility that the news simply steamrolls your signal. There is a chance the market doesnāt know what to do about the news so it makes big swings and stops you out. There is the third possibility that price gets close to your SL, and because of the unusually high spread you are stopped out.
Price action trading is really built around having fairly small stoplosses. If you think about the stop loss in terms of the overall price of the currency basket, most of the time a SL is 0.25% to 0.5% of the overall price. This is extremely small, which means any type of condition that causes large spread or large swings in price will kill your position. Compare that stop loss distance to what a stock trader normally allows for(5-10% of the total stock price) and you can see how much smaller room for error short term price action trading allows for. 5-10% for the EURUSD would be around 700-1400 pips.
Hey Pipwhip
This is the strategy that I am 100% going back to which worked much better for me. I know others prefer the retracement entry but itās finding what works best for you and I know I was personally doing much better when I stuck to entering on the break of a signal. In fact I would find it hard to name one winning trade I have taken on retracement.
Thanks Aaron
I tend to avoid taking trades 4hrs before a big news announcement unless I am trading the news spike itself of course. As this was about 8 hours before the news release I figured I would be ok but your right I should have taken this into consideration and will do in the future. I may have to go back to using Benedicts life savings on the horses at this rate!!!
Yep, this is exactly what I mean by āgetting raped by the incoming train.ā
When you say āgreater stop lossā, you mean āgreater lossā, donāt you, BA? 
This may be a good option for you. Remember everything mentioned here from retracements to using EMA and trend lines are all optional. The only thing required for price action trading is at least 1 method to find S/R levels and 1 type of candlestick setup, everything else is an addon. Treat it like a buffet, and when your appetite for different price action techniques and methods grows, add something onto your plate to try out. If you donāt like the taste of it, take it off of your plate.
I do want to add in a thought on retracements during rate decisions and other big news events. Retracements rely on the natural shifting of supply and demand that occurs when a false break signal occurs. Because S/D doesnāt immediately shift you can see price bobble up and down inside the body of the price action setup before taking off. This creates perfect opportunities to get in your trade at a better price and double or triple your RR. There are cases where retracements donāt work well, and those are cases where the supply and demand is not acting naturally. In the case of price movements during a major news event, you arenāt going to have natural movements in S/D. What are you seeing are huge speculative plays and a very volatile and imbalanced supply and demand. Also many people sit out these news events, so the normal players that would be buying/selling and creating that natural S/D movements, are not in the market. All you have are a bunch of speculators making bets.
The other time you will see retracement entries fail is when the false break candlestick wasnāt really a false break. This is the case for many pinbars that form on Friday. Most of them werenāt false breaks, but the markets packing up and taking weekend profit. Also many times the false break candles that form before news events are in themselves false. Leading up to big news, most of your candles are simply speculative. The way to think of PA trading is that the fundamentals and news sets the future course for currency. It is after the course has already been set that we can use price action to find the best entries to jump in line with the market. If you really look at why price action works, you can see price action trading during course setting events like rate changes are really the poorest times to trade using price action.
There are methods to trade during news events, but they are built around the speculative behavior of these events and are vastly different than PA trading.
Perhaps it was a valid price action candle because it formed early enough, but the news that happened 8 hours later still had the speculative power to overcome the natural supply and demand movements in the market. Even if you have a valid signal, between the time of entering your trade and it reaching your TP area, any major news event can easily change sentiment and the course of the trade. I can agree that signals 4 hours before this type of event really is moot and not to be trusted, you also have to take into account that the sentiment behind a valid signal taken 8 or 24 hours earlier can easily be changed, also making a good quality PA signal really moot and meaningless. For me, if I donāt believe my trade can reach take profit before the news event I wonāt open it. Likewise if my trade is halfway to take profit before the big event, I will either move my SL to BE or just close out the position for partial profit, because at that point any open position is gambling.
HAHAHA Exactly!!! Very well putā¦ I need to get back on track, Iām now just 10 pips from being back at my starting account after being 400 pips in profit. Iām staying positive in that I am lucky to still be in profit and see it as part of my learning processā¦but ouch, I feel like I am cursed with rancid awful bad luck at the moment and its crippling. Weeks of seeing the trades I take sink like a ton of bricks and the ones I pass on, soar like a beautiful bird. I just needed a good grumbleā¦
Funny you said that, Captain. According to my senior who is 100% news trader, PA is totally unreliable. Granted, heās saying that as heās:
- Using very low tf. M1, M5, M15, M30.
- Never really used PA at all. 100% news.
I disagree with him and his method, but as heās proven himself that heās been profitable for years with news trading, I must admit that he indeed knows what heās saying.
Thanks for all of this info Aaron, a very informative read with lotās for me to take on board. Iāve long been suspicious of Friday candles and no longer trade them, at least until I am back in considerable profit.
I really liked what you mentioned in your other post too - For me, if I donāt believe my trade can reach take profit before the news event I wonāt open it. Likewise if my trade is halfway to take profit, I will either move my SL to BE or just close out the position for partial profit, because at that point any open position is gambling
This is something I will also adopt, sounds like a very sensible plan!!!
I definitely have to disagree with your senior, although Iām grumbling at the moment, price action has been a revelation to me and I can see that it is absolutely possible to profit from it when used correctly. Iāve just been making some silly mistakes lately, and still very much learning the basics.
I must add though that I am very interesting in news trading also because it seems as if it can be very profitable, again when done correctly. I would love to learn more about the techniques used. Whats your take on news trading Aaron? Do you have any techniques for another thread? 
Maybe one day Iāll open my own News trading thread but at the moment I think most would frown on it as I aim to trade the big news spikes.
Haha well I couldnāt disagree with that more, I do think there are methods for trading news, methods for trading fundamental, methods for trading price action and even methods for trading indicators that all work. But no single method works all of the time for all market conditions. Many times these methods can work, but the trader isnāt applying the right trade management to make them profitable. Look back the the AUDCHF trade that I called a month or so back in my Price Action That Matters For Beginners thread. If you would have retracement entered, that trade has now moved on for a 1:10 or 1:15 RR. That was not a guess on my part, it was the confidence I have in the highly accurate nature of price action when applied correctly.
You did make two key observations in your #1 and #2 items. One is that the same reason price action doesnāt work well during Fridays or the news, is also why it doesnāt work well during very low time frames, which is unreliable signals. Your #2 hits it well though, someone who has not traded it couldnāt possibly have enough information to deem it as successful or unsuccessful, other than itās a hunch. I have seen traders here in this thread, and tons of traders ouside of this thread and even babypips post very impressive results with PA trading. Like any approach to the market, the method is what it is, itās up to the trader to apply it in a way that makes it profitable.
I donāt have any methods I use to trade news events as they are happening, such as trading right after the event and for the first 1 or 2 hours until the volatility dies down. For now I sit these out. I have seen some methods that are claimed to work, but until I try them myself I couldnāt say with certainty. I do trade long term fundamentals which is how I am planning on trading gold for the next year or two.
[QUOTE=ākrugman25;577425ā]
I donāt have any methods I use to trade news events as they are happening, such as trading right after the event and for the first 1 or 2 hours until the volatility dies down. For now I sit these out. I have seen some methods that are claimed to work, but until I try them myself I couldnāt say with certainty. I do trade long term fundamentals which is how I am planning on trading gold for the next year or two.[/QUOTE]
Cheers Aaron, sounds like the sensible route to go. I will continue with my news spike experiments and will let you know if they are successful.
I couldnāt have put this more delicately myself!
A bit of an offtopic, but still relevant I think.
At the moment I have two accounts(FXTM & Alpari-UK) + I use RoboForex for my chart analysis (because it has NYclose).
I know what spread is, but still have some problems with it. Mainly that at some times the spread is huge and some times it is normal. Since I am new I havent put much thought into it, but now I think if I can spare some pips with taking a closer look into spreads. So Im thinking that while my account grows I will open accounts with more and more brokers. The logic behind this would be that on some pairs one broker offers better spreads and on other pairs another broker and so on and on.
Using a website like Spreads | Myfxbook ( or any other, havent much searched for them), I can pick which broker currently offers the best spread for my current trade pair and use that broker.
Also I think it is a good idea, that you have your money spread around on differend brokers, just in case. (paranoid much?! :D)
Is that something you guys use or have I gotten something confused?
Thanks
[QUOTE=āPapagoy;577485ā]A bit of an offtopic, but still relevant I think.
At the moment I have two accounts(FXTM & Alpari-UK) + I use RoboForex for my chart analysis (because it has NYclose).
I know what spread is, but still have some problems with it. Mainly that at some times the spread is huge and some times it is normal. Since I am new I havent put much thought into it, but now I think if I can spare some pips with taking a closer look into spreads. So Im thinking that while my account grows I will open accounts with more and more brokers. The logic behind this would be that on some pairs one broker offers better spreads and on other pairs another broker and so on and on.
Using a website like Spreads | Myfxbook ( or any other, havent much searched for them), I can pick which broker currently offers the best spread for my current trade pair and use that broker.
Also I think it is a good idea, that you have your money spread around on differend brokers, just in case. (paranoid much?! :D)
Is that something you guys use or have I gotten something confused?
Thanks[/QUOTE]
Hey Papagoy
I would say that for me this sounds like a good plan, I donāt have enough funds at the moment to split brokers but this is absolutely my aim. If you have a good amount of funds in your account, to me it is safer to split the risk over a number of brokers because in this day and age you just never know what could happen.
Hey Papagoy,
my opinion is that you may want to open an account in a true ECN broker if you really are concerned about spread and want to have another live account. Here is a little hint: MT4 and MT5 are not true ECN platforms. Never were, never are, and (maybe) never will be.
Looks like some brokers claim to have MT4 tradeable ECN accounts. From their websit: āFXOpen is a leading MT4 innovator, being the first to offer true ECN execution via the popular MetaTrader4 platform. FXOpen regulation: ASIC, FSPR, FCAā
But donāt ask me. I am far from experienced in this subject. 
The key here is the word āECN/STPā:
ECN/STP Forex Trading with FXOpen broker
Whenever you read that word STP, DMA and whatever alongside ECN, you should realize that the broker claims that it is really close to true ECN (or ECN-ish the way I think it), but still not a true ECN. The reason is simple, MT4 and MT5 were [B]never[/B] designed to be fully ECN-compatible! Maybe later in MT6, but for now Iām pretty sure about that. 