+1 Never truer words were spoken
Sometimes the simplest of rules are the hardest to follow.
Hereās a key lesson. Know your levels. They will tell you where to look for box patterns, where resistance can be expected, where your trade can work. When it is time to exit a trade. So what are these levels. Support and resistance levels and rounded numbers.
Support and Resistance
Like any other time frame swing highs and lows will form our support and resistance levels. And just like every other time frame, support levels will become resistance levels and resistance levels will become support levels. But we are not interested in yesterdays levels, last week or two years ago. Only the here and now. Look at todayās swing highs and swing lows. Map them out. It demonstrate where the current players have doubts about the price. And these levels will hold true for the day. Also donāt consider them as support and resistance. Think of them as proven areas of indecision. Price levels where the bulls and the bears canāt make up there mind who is in controls. When the price finally breaks in one direct or the other it is free to move as others see this movement and join in.
How you go about identifying these level on your chart will be up to you. I simple zoom out and draw rectangles to show them. Hereās my current chart
And of course if we zoom in we now see this
Rounded Number
Our rounded numbers are 000, 200, 250, 400, 500, 600, 750, and 800. Why the main players respect these numbers I donāt know but they do. So we can use that to our advantage. When swing highs and lows match a rounded number it makes that level of even more significant.
Using levels to confirm a trade
The best way for me is just to demonstrate in a trade I took while writing this post.
So may bias is still bearish even though the market is correcting. All day the price has basically been bouncing around between 1.29250 and 1.29500.
So Iām looking for a short box pattern breakout at these two levels. And I got one.
Right on the 1.29500 level a box pattern formed and the rest is history.
Enjoy the pips
Bob
You make it look so easy!
I read the book quite some time ago and I do recommend buying the book if you are interested on his techniques. You can also read this tutorial based on his book. Bob Volman is also active uploading all his trade setups for the month at his dropbox. From what I remember he also uses a 20 ema and heās bias to go short if price is below it or long if price above it. One big no no for him is to use your brokers feed, he recommends a third party charting service and he himself uses prorealtime.
Good Luck
It aināt easy bro, but very rewarding. Now golf thatās easy. I play off a 6 handicap but as a young fella got it down to 2. Achieved that by spending hours on the driving range and putting green. Practice, practice, practice. Today 25 years on, my swing is just an extension of me, its just natural.
So too should your trading be. An extension of you. It should come naturally. The best thing about this style of trading is you can practice. Any time, any day. I still spent most of my time in practice (Micro) account only switching to my trading account when Iām happy how Iām reading the market. The brain is a wonderful thing. By specializing in this one pair and practicing it quickly learns what it needs to do to trade. And you will be surprised just how quickly things start to fall into place.
+1. Yes Bob Volman book is a must read. As I said my methods are based on the teachings inside it. But as all trading styles in must reflex you the trader. And thatāsā my purpose behind this thread, to demonstrate that trading tick charts is just as variable strategy as swing or position trading. What you get out of the book will depend on what you bring to the markets. Often is more about whats not writing than what is.
Bob acknowledges that different brokers have different tick feeds. So feel free to experiment with selecting what tick number you use to āviewā the chart. Also remember that it was written in a time when volatility in the market place was higher. When was the last time we saw daily ranges averaging 120+ pips.
This is probably the final element I can bring to this style of trading. But it could be the key element to link it all together in making that final decision to trade. KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS!
There is probably no better filter than time. You will learn this as you practice. There are two components to this aspect of time, market hours and news release that I take into account.
[I][B]Market Hours.[/B][/I]
The strength of trading market open strategies is well documented and it is no difference here. Except we get to see it first. But again just because we can trade doesnāt mean we should. We need only get one trade a day in to be profitable. We want to give it ever chance to work. So naturally enough, London and New York opens are prime times to trade. Donāt be too keen to enter. The market might take some time to show its hand. It might go straight away and you miss the opportunity, if so just move on. There will be others.
And donāt ignore Tokyo, Singapore, Moscow or Frankfurt opens. An early trade can leave the rest of the day for play.
Also expect a market reversal a couple of hours into trading after London opens. Itās a good time to take profit if your mark has not been hit. The market can also start to range from this point until New York open so range trading opportunities open up. Also itās probably not wise to open a trade half an hour before New York open. At lot of the U.S. Leading is done in these first few hours before Europe closes and trend can change swiftly to something more tradable.
[I][B]News[/B][/I]
Donāt trade news and donāt have trades open at news times. Fairly simple rule.
Plenty of opportunities will come particularly after news release when the first knee jerk reaction is replace by a market that has had time to digest the data. Often we have already successfully traded before news release so why risk our profits.
With that said I love trading news but donāt have a set big enough to do it live. I practice religiously in a micro account. The returns that can be generated on news trades can be in excess of 10 to 1. The losses however are just as great. But I think it is a skill worth practicing but best left to someone else to do.
So hereās a trade Iāve just entered after German ZEW release. Weāll see how it goes later on tonight.
I have been making about 4 or 5 trades a day, to get the feel of the pair. Slowly I am getting more winners than losers. I open my chart at about 6 am (an hour before Tokyo opens) and so this is the point where fresh tick data starts downloading. I plot the previous days high and low together with the opening price (it is amazing how price seems to respect this level). All other levels of S/R are drawn from the swing high and swing lows. I then watch for the breakouts as per Bob Volman and reversals at the levels of S/R.
With a thirst for knowledge about tick charts I stumbled across this video. Seeing Smart Money (and Dumb Money) On Your Tick Charts By Identifying Order Flow - YouTube
I am not advocating anyone buy his product, but the principles of the pattern would seem to ring true.
And the result.
The German ZEW was bullish and in a range market like currently I was looking for a long box break. I used a standard 10 pip SL for this trade and applied my lot size accordingly. Although I had a target TP in mind I havenāt set this as Iām going to manage this one all the way as see if I can get a bit more. And we did. 12.6 pips so completely happy with this.
Note on this trade how I moved my SL as the trade was working. Particularly once the Target TP was hit. Once this target level is hit Iām going to lock in my profits, any bonus Iāll gladly accept but I wonāt get greedy. At the end of the day Iām working a specific MM plan (which I hope to post about soon) which is about hitting and taking profits at the TP price. Discipline has to be executed in every aspect of your trading plan.
Isnāt it great how you can just sit and āplayā using this methodology. And because youāre focused on nothing else but this singular pair how quickly you learn itās heartbeat and how much it can actually give up. Itās a very generous pair. Iāve probably banked over 600 hours in the past 5 months living this pair. Looking forward to another 600 hours.
Happy pip hunting bro,
Bob
Hi guys 1 hour into the London session I entered this trade on a break out of a narrow range which flew through the days open.
I set a stop at 10 pips below the entry. I have not yet set a profit target as I am watching the trade.
Fingers crossed
Daxter.
I like it so much I took the same trade. Got on at 1.29557 with a 10 pip SL n TP. So Iāve chalked my win for the day. Hope yours goes the same bro. 
Isnāt it a fun way to trade?
All the best Daxter
Bob
Price bounced around for a long time and at one point got uncomfortably close to my stop loss, but eventually hit a target of 10 pips I set when I could no longer sit at my PC.
Daxter
Looking back at the chart shortly after my target was hit, the reversal pattern described in the video I attached at the top of the page, appeared, offering a golden opportunity to enter a short.
If you havent watched the video, the 10 minutes or so it takes will not be wasted.
Daxter.
I have just taken another trade. This time during the Asian session. Price has broken out of a narrow range box, through the days opening price with a reversal pattern. I could have entered earlier when price broke an even tighter range, but it was heading for the opening price which often acts as a level of S/R.
I have set a 10 pip Stop Loss and a 10 pip Profit Target, which coincides with yesterdays low. Fingers crossed.
Daxter
The long bullish candle you can see on my chart is a āgapā where I inadvertently closed down my platform. This leads to the question, if I buy the same charting software you use bobbi does the tick chart continue uninterrupted no matter whether the chart is open or closed down?
Lets hope so bro cause Iām on almost the exact same trade except I used Moscow open as my trigger. Same deal 10 pip SL n TP my entry was at 1.28627. Lets make some pips touch wood
I have just been stopped out, but I think you may just have been ok as on my chart price bottomed at 1.28527. Still I can take a positive from missing my target by just 0.6 of a pip.
daxter