In determining the direction of price will the bigger time frame influence the direction of the smaller time frame or is it the smaller time frame that influences the direction of the bigger time frame?
Bigger time frame usually affects smaller one, but it can go both ways
neither 
although either can appear to be the case
what’s actually happening, here, is not A affecting B, nor B affecting A, but both of them being affected, at different apparent speeds, by C
the price movements displayed on both the slower and the faster timeframe are both (obviously) affected by movements of the price (caused by imbalances between buying pressure and selling pressure of the instrument/pair concerned, of course)
those price movements appear to be displayed more quickly in the faster timeframe
maybe a specific example will help to clarify what’s actually going on?
let’s say you’re charting a specific instrument (EUR/USD, let’s say, for the sake of argument) and you’re looking together at both a one-hour and a ten-minute chart, with a 20-bar moving average displayed on each - now, for example, if prices have been consistently rising and are above the MA-20 on both charts, but then change direction and start consistently falling, they will cross the MA first on the ten-minute chart and then more slowly on the one-hour chart, won’t they?
this can make it appear that one chart or one timeframe is somehow “affecting” the other - but of course that isn’t really what’s happening at all: it’s just that price movements are affecting both, but at different speeds
correlation is not the same thing as causation
on a practical level, you will always increase the overall win-rate of a trading method by taking entries from a faster timeframe when whatever the signal is (for the entry) is also showing a signal on one or two slower (“higher”) timeframes as well, and of course you’ll always have fewer entries, overall, that way (because sometimes it isn’t!) … but note that increasing the win-rate in this way will NOT necessarily increase the overall profit as well as the win-rate (because sometimes the trades excluded by using this method would also have been net-profitable, had they collectively been taken)
i don’t know to what extent this explanation will help you, but it’s a widely misunderstood subject and not trivially easy to explain - but do tell me if i have confused you rather than clarifying the issue, and if so i’ll try to explain it a different way!
The thing with timeframes is that they are not different at all. The weekly timeframe is the same as the daily which is the same as the hourly etc… They all contain exactly the same data just packaged up differently. The weekly timeframe shows you the weeks worth of data in a single candlestick and the daily timeframe (when viewing 5 candlesticks) has exactly the same data just broken out into 5 candlesticks instead of one. If you take the 5 daily candlesticks and put them together you get the weekly candlestick. The higher timeframes allow you to see more data because they have less candlesticks and can fit more on the screen. The difference between the timeframes is the size of each packet and the amount of history shown, that is all.
Hi,
Apart from a ranging market (which they say happens up to 80% of the time) you only have a choice of two strategies to follow - that of with the trend and that of against the trend. It is said that going with the trend will result in a higher probability of being right than going against the trend, though opinion is divided.
Personally, I follow the “trend is your friend” philosophy. It sounds corny but is easier to remember. I remember it better by thinking in a speech impediment way “The Twend is your Fwend” (reference to The Inbetweeners TV series and movies).
So in theory when the 4 hour, daily and weekly trend are all in the same direction, enter at market open with the trend. In practice? Good luck, you may do a couple of trades per year.
I currently use six criteria for setup and entry - that is why I don’t trade very often. But when I do it is sometimes for big bucks, and no leverage so I can’t be stopped out. Not everyone’s idea of a good strategy, but it is mine and I stick to it.
I don’t think time frame has any role in all these rather time frame is important for traders as they adopt different trading styles.