By Josh Taylor FIND US ON: Visit our web site for TONS of training articles and videos This information is meant to be a guide to help you learning how to be a better Forex trader. In this guide there are lots of links. Click the links..as most of them take you to articles on our website that give you even more in-depth training based on the words in the links.
Trading Forex can be quite a challenging endeavor. Especially if you are like the rest of us, being bombarded daily with yet another system or miracle software that is going to make you rich. But let s be real. If everyone had such a system or magical software everyone would be rich everyone would be successful and you would not be reading this. But that is not the reality is it? The reality is that 90% of Forex traders lose money consistently. And with all of the emails and advertisements you re being bombarded with, which one do you trust? Because make no mistake about it. There are traders who are making BIG money trading Forex. All that you need to do is find what works, keep it simple and follow a process Which is why we offer our FREE FOREX TRADE SIGNALS SERVICE to help you make some successful trades while you are learning how to become a better trader *** Click Here to get my Forex Signals for Free *** and that is exactly what I am going to give to you a simple process that will allow you to NOT have to be sitting in front of your computer monitors all day long watching charts, slowly going mad while the rest of the world is moving on without you. The reality is that you can be successful trading Forex AND have a life in the process Hmmm imagine that
What I am about to show you works. Because I have traded this particular system for almost 8 years. So let s get started The first step in this process if for you to understand the following: Currency Pairs Trade in a RANGE 80% of the Time Here is what this means.80% of the time a currency pair will trade in some type of range bound movement. You can also call this a Channel. That channel can be an upward moving channel, a downward moving channel, or a sideways moving channel. Here are some examples:
In the daily chart example above you can see the USD/CAD went into a sideways channel from about February 1, 2012 through May 15 th, 2012. For 3 ½ months this pair offered at least 11 profitable trades for you. And this is only one currency pair. You simply sell at the top of the channel and buy at the bottom of the channel. We will get into where to place your stops and profit targets later but for now I want you to see the patterns here.
In this example of the GBP/USD daily chart that for a 2 ½ week period there was an upward moving channel or bullish channel and there were at least 8 solid trade opportunities over this period. So there are trading opportunities everywhere. I just need to teach you how to recognize them and how to properly execute and manage a solid trade. So let s talk about how to recognize a range and to do that we need to go back to the basics support and resistance.
SUPPORT/RESISTANCE You may have heard of Support and Resistance, and if you have not well this is the basis of all trading if you want to start seeing success as a trader. Think about support and resistance as the floors and ceilings. Look at the picture below: Now imagine you are in the first floor. Directly under your feet is the floor and if you look up you see the ceiling. The floor is your support and the ceiling is your resistance. Now what happens if you move up the stairs to the second floor? Well,
what used to be your ceiling or resistance now becomes your floor or support. The same thing happens in the Forex market as well. The pairs will create support and resistance levels where traders have a history of not wanting price to break through. But when it does: Support Becomes Resistance and Resistance Becomes Support Look at the chart below: In the chart above you see the EUR/USD daily chart. The line drawn is at 1.2723. Let s start on the left. First you can see that price was working its way down and then rejected off of the 1.2723 line giving a base support. Price went a bit into a
sideways channel for quite a while and then started working its way back down. Once it hit this line there was a hesitation in the market. But eventually price broke through the support NOW..this is where it gets interesting. Eventually price works its way back up to the 1.2723 market and what happens?? It bounces off TWICE. Because traders recognized that the previous support was a solid key level and now respect that level as a key resistance area. Eventually price does break back but what happens when price hits the line again once its been above that level for a while? You guessed it. It bounces again. So here it is If you are going to be a successful Forex trader you MUST trade using support and resistance. This is EXACTLY what the banks and large financial institutions are looking at when they are trading and they are the drive behind most of the market moves. So if you want to be successful as a trader, you need to be trading the way the banks are trading.
Ok so now you have an understanding of support and resistance. Not hard. What I can tell you is that when you trade from the higher time frames (daily, weekly) looking for solid support and resistance levels (key levels) and then execute the trades from a lower time frame (4-hour, 1-hour) you can see some nice bounces off of these key levels..but that is another training program that am developing (CLICK HERE to get my new 40-Hour FX Course for FREE) Let s Get Rolling First of all this strategy works best when you are trading from the daily charts and is set to let these trades run for 3 to 5 days at a time perfect for the 99% of traders who actually have jobs and a life and cannot stare a charts all day long. So let s pull up some charts and start scoping some opportunities. Right now I am looking through my past trade logs and in March I nailed over 2,000 pips alone using this strategy. My Pro Signals Direct customers were STOKED to say the least. One of the pairs that we took a LOT of trades on was the NZD/USD. If you want to pull up your own charts you can follow along. We are looking at the January and April 2012 NZD/USD daily charts:
In the above NZD/USD daily chart you see the pair going up, up, up (upward trend)..consolidate into a small sideways channel (which I traded) broke through support and started a new channel before eventually dropping like a rock. Can you see the 2 channels? HINT: 1 is at the very top and the other is right under it.
Here is the same chart with the channels and lines drawn in them: Do you realize what you are looking at? If you follow the process I am about lay out for you, you could have kicked complete ass over a 4 month period trading only this pair. So here we go Step 1: Look at your weekly and daily charts and draw the key support/resistance levels (horizontal key levels)
Step 2: Look for opportunities where you see the currency pair is ranging. Step 3: Decide in advance where you will buy/sell. So let s get into these steps. I do not think I need to get into complete detail on support and resistance. The previous examples where pretty clear find an area where price continues to makes a base or ceiling and.draw a line My 6-year old can even do it Lay out your key levels. #2..find where price has been bouncing between these key levels #3 decide where you are going to buy/sell. So let s take the same NZD/USD chart and zoom into the first range and let me show you what I would have done.
On the first channel here is what I notice. Look where you see #1. Those 2 blue candles...the candle bodies gave a good level of support/resistance so I know that line would be worth watching.next I noticed that price started going sideways in consolidation period. At #2 we hit a high, so I marked that as a resistance high. At this point price has already been going sideways for almost 2 weeks so I know we are in a channel. I just need to choose my optimal entry and exit points. So once I see a strong top and bottom of the channel I set my entry points. And I am setting 2 pending limit orders at once. I set a pending limit order to buy at the bottom of the channel (support level) and to sell at the top of the channel (resistance). And I will continue doing that until price breaks out of the range and stops me out. As you can see in this pair that eventually I was stopped out on the trade (marked with an X) but price moved swiftly back into the range where I reentered the trade and more than made up for the loss. Setting Your Stop Loss Depending on the currency pair I may set a 30 pip stop or I may set a 100 pip stop on these trades. The tighter the stop the more often you will be stopped out on these trades. But the tighter the stop the more profit you make when the pair
goes in your direction. Tighter stops offer a better risk/reward but I would keep them to 30 to 40 pips. So there are 2 strategies on this. I personally like Stop Loss (SL) strategy #1 better take the loss and look for the re-entry. Get More Info in Risk/Reward and SL on our Web Site So Let s look at this Once I set a sell order at the top of the channel and a buy order at the bottom of the channel I will place a 30 to 40 pip stop loss on these trades. Many times price will hit my key level and reverse putting me into a profitable trade within the day. NOTE: NEVER let a winning trade become a losing trade. Once price gets 50% of the way through the channel which should have been at least 50 to 60 pips if I am using a 30 pip stop I close 50% of my position (or all of it if you want) in profit and move my stop to break even. That way even if the pair turns around and goes against me I have already taken my profit and now I have removed the risk from the trade. And then what? I wait for price to continue hitting the tops and bottoms of the channel. Now a pair will not stay in the range forever. Look at the example on the NZD/USD again:
What happened when price eventually broke out of range #1? You got it it started a new range with the old support of range 1 now being the resistance of range 2 easy huh? And range 2 was even better. This was in March/April of 2012. In March alone my Pro Signals Direct customers cleared over 2000 pips and I traded the NZD/USD MANY times during that month. Easy to see why You can see the many buying and selling opportunities.
Now, this is an example of a sideways trending/channeling market. What do we do when we are in an upward trending channel or a downward trending channel. Well let s take look: The above chart is the EUR/GBP daily chart. I have no lines drawn. I want you to take a look at this chart for a minute and see if you can find the ranges. Hint: There are 3 of them and 2 of them are a range within a range. SEE RESULTS ON NEXT PAGE
Here are the 3 ranges. Range #1 is a downward trending range. Range #2 is a sideways trending range and Range #3 is an upward trending range. All 3 of these could have been traded over and over and over for consistent profits. So what do you do on the upward and downward channels? The same as before. The trend lines act as the support and resistance for you leaving very easy to see targets for optimal entries. So that s it folks. It s pretty simple. Use the daily charts to draw key levels horizontal support and resistance and trend lines, wait for a solid channel to be formed and trade the tops and bottoms of the channels. Be sure to use a solid Equity Management Plan, be patient and watch the profits roll in But in the mean time
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