How Price Action Trading Changed My life - Full Time Forex Trading

(SANEPR.com) April 13, 2009 -- My success in forex trading started when I finally started to recognise the repetitive behaviors of the daily forex price charts. This article will talk briefly about my trading journey and where I am today as a result.

The Beginning

In the first 3 years of forex trading, I feel I had been an extremely motivated market student, undergoing intense forex training and study as I could fit into my life. My focus was to learn trading as many trading strategies, with the common goal to make money and quit my job. Like most traders, my early forex trading account statements where poor, in fact, I blew up many small accounts whilst learning the does and don’ts. The tables only turned when I discovered an extremely simple methodology to identify trading setups from daily price charts.

When My Forex Trading Changed

There was a transition period in my forex trading career when I started to move from the 1 hour charts to the 4 hour charts and then finally to the daily charts. I couldn’t believe I had been overlooking the higher timeframes for so long, and yet they offered some very clear, very simple trading setups which repeated often enough to recognise easily.

After watching just the daily charts for several months, I began documenting the price patterns, and my observations. What started as an exercise became my trading method and plan. Everything was now revolving around the higher timeframes which made the chart clear and clean. Things in that initial trading plan included, basic trend definition, plotting key levels, finding single and multiple bar price signals. Over time, I found that the largest players in the market where also using horizontal lines to trade from very often, in fact, It was when I also started to trade based off simple horizontal levels that my account started to soar.

Keeping it simple

Whilst there is no way a trader can trade just horizontal levels or just trade one price action signal and make money, the core foundation of my success lies in learning how markets react and trade around key chart levels and specific price action signals. I can certainly deduce that all traders who make serious money think in a very simple manner, me included. The daily chart allowed me to live a healthy life, with less stress, thus increasing my trading performance as well. So the message is very clear, continue to keep it simple, and keep using the same method, don’t deviate to another method, just keep mastering it and believing in it. That’s how I did it.

Why Price Action?
Price Action removed all the noise and mess of the charts. I now look at raw price charts with only 1 or 2 longer term moving averages to asset with trend definition. The entire method is based around simple, concise trading rules. I learned that markets rotate very often, and rarely move in one direction for very long, thus why I have learned to work within the market true structure. I let trades come to me as I wait in ambush for the perfect setup. Price Action is not only your ability to read a chart; it’s your ability to maintain a simplistic outlook on price and its expected direction. Patience is required, because daily charts move slowly!

Where I am today

The journey for a trader is long, it can’t ever be easy, however, there is a serious argument to what can and can’t work in terms of a trading style. You need to learn to “read price action”, not just learn a system or method. The trick is to keep it simple, but also keep learning to read price charts. Now that I am doing well in my trading endeavors, it is my duty to educate aspiring traders, to guide and assist them. I feel that if you just start to clean up your chart, remove the indicators, and look at the raw daily price charts, you’re going to discover a world that you never knew existed.