Hello to you tony.
it is right what you speak about always to repeating the same message. i like this becose it instills confidance and reinforses the importence of keeping things simple and structeured.
i have much enjoyed in reading the posts of you from the very start when thes threds began instructing this method of folowing price action. thank you for all your very good work. it is inspireing to me to be a part of this threds. 
Matt - I took the same trade idea obviously with the same result!
Hawkmoon - I have been impressed by the way you have set about your task of taking the ideas here and developing a working approach. In a way thats all it takes. The only additional skill is to be able to deal with your personal psychology which for all of us tends to try and defeat our best intentions. Keep posting - I enjoy your input
Ever check out ForexLive?
Kind of a running commentary throughout the day with whatever pops up news wise.
Fairly entertaining, if nothing else.
They’ve posted links of light recap material a few times here Matt.
That one Master Tang has kindly mentioned is one + if you only want a quick, snappy summary to obtain a general feel for current & short term market appetite etc then the free Bloomberg & Reuters pages will suffice.
There are various additional story fillers in both of those options if you want a closer look at a specific item of interest.
Hi Matt,
You can also check out “The Gartman Letter”.
Not a free service but they have a trial for a month and its a good read.
I’ve diverted this mini discussion across here from the 3 ducks thread as I’m conscious of dragging that material off topic & spoiling it for those who wish to follow it in it’s original format. It’s also a good opportunity to thank the creators of this material & the posters who contribute regularly to this thread.
Following on from exchanges on another thread, DoubleEcho recommended I take a look in here as he thought the two might offer complimentary advantages & so far he’s not wrong.
I’ve already discovered an entry technique from Carll that I’ve actually used for the first time yesterday on my demo testing account, that I’m certain will offer added zip to my own interpretation of these combined trading methods. I also like the way they’ve presented the use of the average daily range as an entry & trade management aid.
What I find most interesting & intriguing however is the accuracy & consistency of the key levels that are evidenced so regularly in their pre & post trade chart examples. Yesterday being a classic example on eur/usd as it encountered buying & selling at Thursday’s high & low prices almost pip perfectly.
Anyway, here’s the quoted comments from the last exchange on 3 ducks.
I didn’t demo trade the short you explained during the London morning trade session, but nodded in agreement as I read your post. I did however take the short trade 90 minutes after the American jobs report when price clearly again failed to break up through the high of Thursday & Friday’s London morning session.
Both the 5 & 15 minute charts were displaying extreme stochastic hooks, price was continuing to find resistance at the moving average on the hourly chart, which was still sloping strongly down, & the risk was very favourable to test out the week long bearish momentum. There were also no visible technical obstacles in the way of price slipping back towards the London morning low.
I’m assuming the acid test for more shorting action will be anywhere from current levels back to last Thursday & Friday’s highs again, as that area will have to break first in order to snap this recent bearish lower high outlook?
Yes it will.
By keeping it as basic & simple as that you won’t confuse or second guess yourself each time you open up your charting package.
That framework is plenty enough information to tell you whether you need to be betting the long side, the short side, or staying flat.
Once the hourly begins displaying potential exhaustive behavior by failing to put in a higher high (as it did last Tuesday) or lower low, you’ll notice your moving average playing catch up & it will begin hugging, then tracking the price action.
As soon as you’re satisfied that the peak-trough activity offers you an acceptable risk opportunity you can drill down into your trigger frames, lock into your avg range & level confirmers & look to buy a dip or sell a rally in sync with the flow.
If the fundamentals or market driver/s orchestrating the move whip up sufficient momentum, you’ll catch an impressive ride – both intraday & intraweek. If however the market is rotating from one bias to another on the back of conflicting market influences, that hourly timeframe will give you a fair heads up to the choppy & hesitant conditions. Plus of course your moving average will flatline.
You may or may not have aready noticed that the majority of the keener odds opportunities they mention so regularly play out at the start of the Frankfurt/London business day & occasionally again around the European/New York overlap. If you get the chance to regularly hang out around those windows of opportunity you’ll grab your fair share of bargains.
The real bonus here of course is you don’t need to waste time proving any of this actually works. That’s all been done for you by a whole host of folks going back 4 years.
All you got to do is pick the ready made structure off the shelf, wrap your own style around it & start trading.
i use that very nearly all of the time now whenever i trade the shorter 5 and 15 minutes timeframes kyle. i very much agree what DoubleEcho is saying about the opening 1 or 2 hours of the major volume periads, but that entery tecniqe is also ok to use all thruogh the europe sesion as long as the genarel bias is moveing one way. Sometimes it signals 2 or 3 times dureing the day if you missed the best early entery.
It appears you’re not going to need any confirmation of DoubleEcho’s recommendation judging by your opening couple of posts, but I’ll add it anyway for good measure. I was also very lucky to have found this material & these guys, very quickly when browsing this forum & believe you me (only on hindsight) it’s saved me absolutely tons of wasted time & hassle.
Listen to these guys & don’t for one minute doubt or be afraid to follow & put into practice their apparently oversimplistic, straightforward advice – because it works!
If you can quickly get into the habit of viewing & observing the generic market positioning on that timeframe exactly as you’ve described it you’ll find yourself on the right side of the flows more often than not.
The only times you’ll get shoulder barged out of trades prematurely is when the conditions get choppy & directionless at market turns due to (as DoubleEcho alluded to) conflicting fundamental drivers, where the differing market players who directly affect short term momentum (model funds, institutionals, large spec funds etc) are readjusting weightings and/or reacting to a noticeable change in risk attitude.
And there are also no visible obstacles in the way of price slipping further towards the twin June lows of 1.4070-4110, which represents the extreme of the current average days range off today’s Tokyo highs.
If prices fail to jog on towards that next clump of support the immediate upper levels that price has travelled away from will have to be negotiated & consolidated first before any bullish momentum is generated. And that will be determined in the initial stages by the strength of stop orders building at those levels.
Short (trailing) stops will now begin to be adjusted down to the late New York highs at 1.4280 from that lower high level you shorted from on Friday, with intraday stops now resting above this mornings Tokyo top at 1.4240.
Thanks very much hawkmoon & Kevan for your posts. I have no doubts at all regarding the material & am looking forward to rolling my sleeves up & getting to work trading this foreign exchange market armed with a competant set of trading tools.
Hi DoubleEcho, yes I’m aware London is considered the major influencial region in dictating daily currency volumes in the spot market. It would therefore make perfect & logical sense to begin paying attention as that market starts up & moves through it’s working day.
Thanks for mentioning it & for the comments in the 2nd paragraph of your post.
It’s that part of the equation that actually makes the most sense Kevan. It stands to reason that unless prices are able to penetrate the previous swing points then progress is going to quickly be snuffed out.
So if the general trend & bias being displayed on the hourly timeframe is bearish & price can’t push through the previous high on a pullback, that will be an optimum level from which to consider preparing another short entry (which I did last Friday) as & when the trigger is confirmed on my smaller timeframes.
It’s treading the path of least resistance until my entry or trailing stop loss tells me otherwise.
Thanks for that. I’ve seen Tess & a few of the others talking about these stop order placements & upon scrolling back on the charts after the price action has encountered their flagged levels, in the majority of cases it’s behaved more or less exactly as they called it.
I’m assuming that once price leaves these swing & consolidation levels behind, such as the ones you’ve highlighted earlier this morning, they will immediately begin attracting trailing short stops & I presume, counter buy stops anticipating any switch in directional momentum if circumstances begin altering & influencing the bearish flows?
Thanks for your posts guys. Good luck for this week.
That’s it exactly. Go with the dominant flows until it tells you otherwise.
I doubt I need to tell you that the smart trade this morning is the add-in short to add to your original position that triggered this morning off the pullback to [B]last weeks low[/B] on your 5 min chart @ c1.4195 as London began stirring.
And as an added benefit the short will be picking up & pocketing all those stops along the way from those attempting to trade long against a very clear bearish bias this morning - and there will always be plenty of those easy dollars around to take advantage of.
The levels that Kevan was referring to (4280 & 4230) are obvious & highly visible ledges on this leg down.
The trailing short profit stops from speculative interest will usually get tiered back & forth in 15-20 pip bunches around those typical levels because they represent decision zones.
Shorts would expect those levels to hold up if the momentum driving the bearish interest was heavy & primarily one-way. If it fails to hold & continue, shorts don’t want to be holding bad money so they’ll scratch, take to the sidelines & wait see how the next upper level plays out, usually readjusting offers as they scale out.
Offers (additional & fresh sell orders) will get stacked around those levels too in order to catch the tail end of the ebb & flow of profit taking that manifests as pullbacks.
If you look now at your 5 minute eurusd chart you’ll clearly see 2 close quarter levels (1.4080 & 1.4140) that will begin attracting readjusted trailing stops on this aggressive push down today.
Fresh bids will now be eyed at 1.40 back to 1.3960 & again at 1.39 back to 3850.
The strength & longevity of any pullbacks will be closely monitored now for clues as to where the weak spots are in the upside swing zones.
Short range players will be looking for shallow pullbacks towards those highlighted levels to re-engage shorts & certainly watching with interest the reaction to anticipated bids back at these key support levels to jump all over if the expected bids are weak or nervous.
the first batch of profit stops at 1.4080 were never under presure at all DoubleEcho and the bears got the shallow pulback you warned of. i read before in the first thred about how to guage the steps of a move by the strenth of the pulback, so it is good thes things are mentoned again ever so often.
if someone traded thos short time-frame hooks in early asia sesion they got easy follow on trades alredy today. the same behaviuor is now hapening down above your next bid area.
They’ll attempt to go after the stops underneath 1.39 now hawkmoon to see what’s hiding down there.
If bids are plentiful & the defense is robust you can expect to see a sharp move back up from that level. If it’s quite equally stacked with buy & sell orders, it will drift & consolidate until those holding the majority hand soak up the weaker orders & price continues on it’s way, which happned as New York closed & Tokyo opened earlier.
There would have been light stops under that last European low @ 1.3970, looking to jump on another wave as it slips further. There will undoubtedly be light buy stops beginning to get placed along with fresh offers above this recent high @ 1.3980 back towards todays current high of 1.4160 in anticipation of a sharp counter move back up.
Thos stops under 1.39 will be fresh orders placed only recantly yes? also ther will be bids in ther from traders who i asume are protecting option related positions too. also of course the average daily range is alredy covered today quickly in europe as it was also yestarday.
Do you get to hear of thes stop placemants and how strong a leval is DoubleEcho and Kevan? becose the acurecy of your coments is very high. i like to see this tred active when conditons like this are happening becose what you guys post is very helpful and interesting.
Yes they’ll be quite recent. Once 1.40 gave way sell orders began lining up underneath each of these lower tiers.
Option defenses are just as likely to breakdown as not hawkmoon. To be honest I’ve never found them to be too inhibiting when trading around a big figure.
You can’t rely on average range numbers in these conditions. The extreme risk limits render them pretty much useless until the market settles back down again.
I don’t but I hang out with a crew who do.
Tess & her colleagues have an impressive & extensive contact base & get to hear all sorts during a typical trading day. Some of it they use & other stuff they ignore.
They obviously won’t know everything that’s taking shape at every level because that’s impossible given the vast depth of the spot market + there are different agenda’s at play too, but they’ll certainly know when particular spec firms or prop desks are active around a level & whether they’re sitting on the bid or offer.
It’s sort of like a domino effect such is the close interconnection within certain sectors of the industry, that once one or two of these types of participants get to hear something others soon get wind of it.
Sometimes it’s not what you know, but who you know.
Having said that, & they’ll be first to admit that it’s not particularly necessary to know any of that stuff in order to make progress. After a while & with experience of knowing how the market reacts & responds to specific risk circumstances, you can more or less judge where the likely reaction & active points are going to be just by looking logically at a chart & trading in sync with the dominant bias!
yes maybe that is true, but I would still rather be in some sort of loop than not. it definatly wont do them any harm to be aware of the many developments that take place dureing a tradeing day.
it looks to have found some support at the 3850 leval DoubleEcho posted yestarday. it is traveled very much dureing the early europe sesion and past two days so I supose its naturel to catch a breath while some traders take profits from the market.
3750 i have as the next possibel target for the bears & your upper levals of 3980 & 4060, the high of today so far, will be next stages of decision.
Yes, shallow pullbacks on the intraday (sub hourly) charts when price is being driven aggressively one-way on the back of strong fundamental influences, doesn’t really pose too many problems with the type of trigger you’re adopting.
You can leg into any of those 5 & 15 minute hooks almost blind because the risk element (stop above the pullback high) is minimal compared to the profit potential, especially when there’s plenty of room remaining in the average days range.
As long as a pullback doesn’t compromize the prior swing low, you’re still good to enter (or add to a core stake) if your trigger confirms it, providing the range still has at least 40% worth of play in it. Any less than that & you’re beginning to lean too heavily on your risk to profit ratios.
Absolutely, & of course it’s still ok to continue betting the short side as long as your 60 minute leader (primary) chart is printing lower lows.
The second it fails to print a lower low & begins flattening out and/or attempting to put in a higher low you need to ease off the shorts, pull down any open trailing stops & wait to catch a hook entry to the long side as soon as the hourly begins displaying bullish tendancies.
So, those expected 1.40, 3950 & 1.39 bids highlighted in my prior post failed to confirm a potential base because price didn’t generate support by printing higher lows around those levels.
The current dominant bias was still clearly bearish at that point.
It was only when they found the genuine bid clusters back at the 3850 that price exhibited the strong kickback you need to see that will begin ringing alarm bells (if you’re still short & trailing).
It failed to move lower into Wednesday trade, evidenced by the shallow pullback into late Tuesday NY/early Wednesday Tokyo trade, & began building a higher low through 1.40
If you’re so inclined you can begin feeding into longs when you see that technical picture unfolding & play your 5 & 15 minute hook trigger to the long side until the higher low pattern fails.
First opportunity of the flip (to long) trade appeared Wednesday morning (according to that set up) at the London open around 1.40 after the intial Tokyo pullback displayed higher low strength above 1.3950.
You’ve read where they regularly advise thread readers to continually probe & test the markets intent? well that’s the sensible way to do it – allow the market to show you it’s current structural behavior & then begin laying bets in sync with the dominant market flow from your primary (leader) timeframe.
I’m posting this as price is floating around the days opening ticks (1.4160). It’s failed to move through the recent high at 1.4280, which is the weeks open, & printed a lower high.
So what will you be looking for now in order to either leg into a fresh long bet or add to an existing position? and what needs to occur to flip your focus from a tentative long stance to a confirmed short one.
well i wuold not still be long becose todays bet taken earlier at 4190 area wuold be scratched out 3 hrs later when price coud not get above the weeks high at 4280.
the 60m higher low is at 4130 so i will still look for long triggers above there. if prices fall below there i will be flat going into the weekend. it has been very volitile this week as prices are back where they started on monday open.
so for me only longs above the 60m higher low. althogh it has put lower highs in from 4280, it has yet not broken the last clear higher low on that timeframe.
thank you for that post.
Nothing else to add really is there.
Your structure is clear, concise & accurate, level identification is spot on & you’ve bagged your options well ahead of time.
Nothing like being well prepped.
Good job.
Thank you for your quality contributions.
They’re much appreciated.