Price Action trading

Hi all, hoping everyone is well.

So Price action trading is basically using pin bars, inside bars, support and resistance lines, fakey bars, trend lines and no indicators with confluence?
Trading away from support or resistance lines.
Confluence.

Am I missing something, it sounds too easy?

Can this type of trading be conducted on timeframes lower than the 1hour?

Are there any books on this topic?

What threads can people recomend, there seems to be some similar threads going around?

Thanks
Tom

(PS. yes I am aware of Nial Fullers website and aware of james16)

Read up on Steve Nison’s candlesticks as well. Overall there aren’t too many books on the topic as they are all pretty much the same thing talked about in a slightly different light.

And while the ideas are simple, it’s easy to see success in examples and in hindsight. In practice it’s more difficult. The fundamentals of money management still apply. Finding appropriate entries and exits are paramount.

Thanks for the reply.

I’m looking through the charts and hoping to find some suitable trades.
(demo accounts for now)

The tail should be two to two and a half times the length of the body or longer?

Thanks

I think perhaps you’ve discovered the easy part in identifying some of the components.
The real challenge is ahead of you.

You’ve now got to attempt to juggle, sift & slot the component parts into a method that ensures you keep more of your trading capital than you give back, & that my friend is far from easy.

Can’t really disagree with you on that point.

And that’s where it usually starts to get confusing & frustrating for most people new to this adventure.
Gingerly feeling their way down lots of blind alleys, tripping up over unwelcome distractions & bouncing off incredibly hard, tall brick walls.

By your comments, you give the impression you might have encountered one or two of those hurdles along the way yourself.
Mind revealing how or if you’ve managed to put any of them behind you?

To be honest I didn’t really encounter them in the first place.
I was extremely fortunate early into exploring this business to obtain an introduction to 3 professionals who ran a live trading room.
I obviously didn’t realize at the time how much of an impression & insight that experience would leave, until I began browsing these sites.

Part of the day involved 1 of them specializing in 2 momentum type set ups taking advantage of a 4-5 hour opportunity window based around the late Tokyo/early European market action.

The room usually remained live & active up until the opening 90 minutes of New York, but I got all I needed from the early stint.

I guess my rhythm, trading style & behavioral habits were imposed on me rather than me having to scratch around to find them.
I guess it helped enormously that I had nothing to pre-judge it against & was quite open & receptive to what they were presenting.

During that brief experience, & prior to them closing the room down, I discovered a relationship link between them & the material presented here by these guys:
301 Moved Permanently

Thankfully, that’s about as deep as I’ve needed to go.

I’m very lucky. It’s saved me an absolute fortune in lost time & effort having to dredge places like this & filter all the garbage in search of something genuine to hang my hat on.

Much of the half decent discretionary stuff out there that beginners can base a solid foundation from & get to work building a framework, pivots around the core material contained within their work anyhow.
It’s just they strip it back, cover & present it more succinctly & professionally than anywhere else out there that I’ve ever come across.

If it’s enabled you to fast forward through some of the laborious wheat from chaff groundwork & establish a solid foundation from which to build a platform then you are indeed very fortunate. Those types of opportunities don’t come calling every day.

How long ago are you talking here if you don’t mind me asking? I’m just curious whether their set ups were designed & tailored to specific price behavior at the time, or generically market (& pair) responsive.

Thanks for the thread link. Are any of the posters on there descendants of the live room?

I’d take this private, but I gather that’s not possible? If you want to move the conversation elsewhere so it doesn’t clutter up this thread just say where.

I’d suggest getting a copy of Martin Pring on Price Patterns, by Martin Pring. Well worth a read and much of the James16 stuff is really based on Pring.

Also, like catcher says, have a look at the Alternative technical templates threads. They’re very high quality and you can learn much from them.

Great responses, thanks.
Please keep them comming.

I have started reading the Alternative Technical Templates thread, while I agree it seems to be high quality, I’m thinking it might be more advance than where I am at the moment, however I have book marked the thread and will continue to read and persevere with it.

I have been plotting s&r lines and trendlines and the occasional fibo retracement (yes I know its an indicator!) and trading pin bars, I have had some good results the last couple days and the last week or so, mainly been trading in demo accounts.

I’m wondering is there another name for Price Action, as some websites (and some books) don’t specifically use those words (eg babypips school) or is it a term for technical analysis or a sub part of technical analysis that traders do not use indicators (or a minimal number of indicators).

Also reading through Technical Analysis for Dummies and will be moving on to Martin Prings book and I also have access to John Murphys book (recomended to me by my fx dealer).

Hope all this makes sense.
Comments, throughts, suggestions, lets hear them!

Thanks

Unfortunately it wrapped up 15 months ago.
The set ups are price responsive. They’re not new, complex or secret.
One of them (1-2-3 reversal & continuation) was referenced on their original thread a few times & mentioned again quite recently by Sean P in answer to a trigger query.

That one is as old as the hills, but because it’s not wrapped around a complex structure I guess it’s considered too simple to be an effective trigger by most folks.

One is but he only made a brief appearance on their threads.
The girls brother also headed it up. He doesn’t post here either, but that’s the obvious relationship link to this place.

They’re really not advanced for you at all. In fact the core structure is quite basic & uncomplicated.
Try perusing the latter two threads:
http://forums.babypips.com/free-forex-trading-systems/19076-technical-templates-2-a.html
http://forums.babypips.com/free-forex-trading-systems/29902-technical-templates-continued.html

They’re a condensed version of the original. The current thread is obviously market specific.

Basically once you got your previous day high-low & previous week high-low levels marked up + the next localized support & resistance zones, you’ve got all your bases covered.
Add the average days range coverage into the mix & that’s most of what you’re going to require on a typical day & weeks play.

Price can only move & tag so many zones at once.
If it attacks & consumes the near term reactionary zone, then you simply dial out & plot the next stage.
Rinse & repeat.

Check for any dominant directional bias & trade in sync with it.
If none exists or you can’t readily identify it, then either step aside until you can, or bring a range type template into play if you possess one.

The same levels & zones regularly play out regardless of the conditions.

You can keep abreast of the markets drivers & influences by perusing the regular intra-session & end of day missives via Bloomberg, Reuters & ForexLive so you’re always up to speed with events.

Here’s todays chart of the Cable as an example. It’s not cherry picked, it’s simply whats playing out here & now.

Thick horizontal lines are last weeks high-low.
Thick vertical line is the weeks opening ticks.
Thin vertical lines are Fridays & todays open (17.00 NY).

You don’t need any more information on your chart than that. You can clearly see the near term potential reaction levels. Price moved down this morning & bounced off Fridays low + Mondays open & low (circled).

So currently we got an inside day, contained within last weeks barriers. Lacklustre & boring unless you love popping bets back & forth off range type conditions.

It certainly sprung into life after the above pic was posted didn’t it.
Although it strongly overshot it’s average days range on Tuesday, it still managed to establish a higher low & pretty much used the area around last weeks high yesterday as a lever to lift it above the recent range resistance at 1.56.

So now last weeks high level can be used as the next potential higher low gauge & likely support for further upside momentum.

If todays quiet lull is more than just profit taking & consolidation of the range high break, then the area back to last weeks high at 1.5525 to 1.5480 (Mondays pullback higher low leg) won’t be strong enough to support further upside & stop losses from the longs will be eaten up.

The over riding message I’ve got from their material is that you only really need to change your view on a bias or a trade if the price action gives you a solid enough reason to do so.

The bottom line being, if you’re currently long & you can clearly see no apparent pressure to cover an existing position and-or get short, then you look to your set ups & triggers to see if they offer you an opportunity to follow the market higher as a new intraday trade or an additional stake to an existing position.

Good couple of posts. Focusing on the day & week levels makes a lot of sense considering that in order for prices to progress they have to put these levels in the rear view mirror first.

That’s clear enough too. I take it you’re judging this bias or trend from some sort of common ground?
I haven’t had a chance to read the thread links you’ve posted yet. I assume most of the details are included in there?

Yesterdays move up proved that point well enough I see. Which would now allow you quite a comfortable margin for error. On that basis, & if I’m following your logic correctly, stops would now be adjusted up to anywhere from 5590 upwards I imagine, & that level would now act as your defensive line for a pullback measure?

I am yes. You need a frame of reference to get your bearings from & mine is the hourly chart.
That gives me up to a months worth of data to get my teeth into & that’s more than sufficient to marry up the markets current influences with. I can always zoom into a 30 minute or out to a 240 minute to get better clarity if need be.

I can then drop down & pick any timeframe underneath there to get an appropriate set up & trigger that matches the hourly chart bias. Obviously the combinations used suit my particular aims & style.

Yes it’s all in those threads.

That’s it really. It’s not exactly scientific or ground breaking. If momentum pushes prices higher or lower via a clear peak-trough route, then it makes sense to track it until the bias or momentum stalls & begins changing tack.

It’s simply going long via dips or pullbacks out of a 5 or 15 minute chart set up & vice versa for shorts.
I then got the choice of either managing it via the smaller frames or via the hourly & to assist in that I also got the pairs average range numbers to call on.

The signal for me that things might be going cold is when a higher low or a lower high fails to hold water. That’s usually the first sign of some kind of consolidation or range phase beginning to take hold.

There will always be acceptable swing highs & lows available on the trigger timeframes to tuck stops behind to test the intention of the bias & the risk cost is usually more than fair to check the potential out.
When I’m wrong it doesn’t cost me very much & when I’m right, particularly when it really opens out & starts gobbling up the mileage, I get fantastic value.

All I’m doing is what anyone else out there should be trying to achieve, & that’s carving out a small niche for myself based on the information I’ve processed.

Why make life harder for myself than I need to or try reinvent the wheel?
They’ve provided the structure & framework.
All I’ve done is picked it up, moulded it to suit my style & objectives & put it to work. And judging by the posts from one or two others on there I’m not the only one.

I have made a order for that Prings book. It was recomended by other readers on threads too.

I am also looking very hard at the technical templrtes threads. It is smart content & the people are always polite in helping with questions & offering guidance to new traders.

This thread is interesting also becaus it follows along the same road as that content & is close relationship.

I liked catchers posts also on this thread as he is on the templerts thread too, thank you.

You are 110% on the right track!

Hi all,

Thanks for the messages, hope to see more as well.
I’m still here and reading!

Hi all,

Thanks for the messages, hope to see more as well.

I’m still here and reading!
So much to read on those threads and observe the pairs.

Potential reaction levels, day high/low, and other support and resistance, trading with directional bias - there is something just in that :>

Thanks

Hello,

my opinion is that price action trading is a bit overrated. Very important is the RSI, cause in many cases he ist more reliable like the price action. Sure, the price action is important. But the price action alone is also not all.

Holder

LOL!
Just when you think you’ve read it all!

How can the RSI be anywhere near as important than the data that created it?

Good lord…