The Technicalities of Key Levels (Institutionalization)This was made for someone asking for the key-levels on GJ and where they are. I hope this shows how powerful waiting for rejections and consolidation around institutional prices can give us high probability trades. The goal is to analyze from top to bottom, gathering the price action data in order to tally up confluences. For stop placements, the 4-hour chart will be the lowest in which we find SL points above lower swing highs and below higher swing lows.
Turning analysis into trades..
When performing analysis across the daily and weekly timeframes on a Sunday night for instance or analyzing the daily charts at the end of every trading day, the first important pieces of data to pick out are key level price points and candlestick formations. You’re looking for patterns, that might serve as clues for the next directional movement of any specified currency pair.
Price action, moving averages and key levels are displayed on the longer-term charts and these are generally the most significant and strongest. It’s best to take note of these levels at the end of each trading day or morning and then plot them on the charts using the charting tools available in your trading software of choice. Keeping a notepad at hand helps to keep track of the organizational breakdown of your selected currency pairs. Beginning traders should start out with six or seven pairs, then strip each one down, labeling the bullish and bearish indicators for each one on every time frame, starting with the monthly and working your way down to the 2-hour chart.
Timeframe rules are the basic building blocks of all other trading strategies, so it’s important to have a good understanding of them before moving on to more complex methods. Keep it simple, learn the rules, make notes and work with the price action that the market delivers through the charts. In this sense it can be helpful to remind yourself that trading is essentially a financial game between the bulls and bears – the optimists and pessimists in the market – both of whom have the same goal of earning a profit but who achieve it through different means.
Key level placement
Support and resistance levels are one of the most important technical factors in trading. “Key levels” are certain prices for a currency pair which may support the price below the current market level or a price which may resist above the current market level. Support acts as a floor and resistance acts as a ceiling, both of which are “barriers of price.” .
For example, the chart above displays various support and resistance zones. These key levels are major support and resistance areas; they are strong price points which the pair has reacted to a number of times. Currencies tend to react to these specific price points with a surprising degree of consistency. The market can either bounce or break upon the approach of a key level. Many beginning traders struggle due to not drawing key levels onto their charts accurately. Support and resistance are the absolute foundations which hold the ground for various other price action applications. Once a support level has been broken and the bears take control, the price often (but not always) pops back up to that same level from underneath in order to “retest” it once more before a continuation to the downside, and vice versa. Your job as a trader is to pick as side in this battle between support and resistance forces – between bulls and bears. If you pick the right side, then you will make money; of course, you pick the wrong side you will lose it.
