One of the simplest and most effective trading strategies in the world, is simply trading price action signals from horizontal levels on a price chart. If you learn only one thing from this site it should be this; look for obvious price action patterns from key horizontal levels in the market. If you just stick to that ‘formula’ you will have plenty of high-probability trading opportunities over the course of one year. Don’t over-complicate the process of analysing the markets / charts and finding trades. The market will generate signals for you when it’s ready, all you need to do is learn what the signals look like and where to look for them at. This is what you will learn in this lesson…
Price action signals + Horizontal levels = Success
It doesn’t really matter which component you find first, the price action signal or the level. What matters is if the two have come together to form a confluent price action trade. When you have an obvious price action signal, like a pin bar or a fakey signal, and that signal has formed at a key horizontal level of support or resistance in a market, you have a potentially very high-probability trade on your hands.
Key horizontal levels of support or resistance are areas or levels on the chart that price made a strong move either up or down from. They can be used in any market condition; trending, counter-trend or trading ranges. The important thing we are focusing on in this lesson is finding a clear price action signal at a key chart level. These levels tend to act like ‘magnets’, attracting price to them before price pushes away again. They can also be thought of as ‘value areas’, or areas on the chart where price found ‘fair value’ which typically happens before a strong move occurs again.
Let’s take a look at some examples of trading price action signals from key chart levels:
The chart below is a daily Gold chart and it shows us a nice clear example of a well-formed pin bar pattern that formed at a key horizontal level in the market. Clearly, the 1170.00 was already an important horizontal level that you should have had marked on your chart before this pin bar formed. Then, all you needed to do was sit and wait for a signal to form at or near that level. We can see a very nice pin bar buy signal did form at that level, showing a rejection of it that indicated price might push higher in the coming days..
The next example is of a pin bar buy signal that formed at a key chart level of support in an up-trending market. When you get a price action signal that has confluence with a trend and a level, that is a good-quality trade setup. You won’t find a much better example than the one below that formed on the daily GBPUSD chart. We had an uptrend, a key horizontal support level near 1.6655 and then a very well-defined / ‘perfect’ pin bar trading strategy formed at that level. You can see the trend resumed the very next day after that pin bar as price continued pushing higher.
In the chart below, the NZDUSD was trading in a large range, back and forth between horizontal support and resistance levels. In these situations, where a market is range-bound, we can look to the boundaries of the range (support and resistance levels) for potential price action buying or selling opportunities. We can see a fine example of this in the chart below when an obvious pin bar sell signal formed from the horizontal resistance of this trading range, setting off a huge move lower, to the bottom of the range…
Finally, let’s look at a counter-trend example of trading price action signals at key chart horizontal levels in the market. This is the EURUSD daily chart and we can see a very obvious fakey trading strategy formed at a key resistance level near 1.3950. This fakey signal showed a rejection and false breakout of that level, indicating that the bulls were exhausted and that price may fall lower in the coming days. We can see that price did fall from that fakey signal and it fell significantly lower in the ensuing days. Another clear example of the power of trading price action signals at key horizontal levels in the market.
Conclusion
The main point of this lesson is simply this: You DO NOT NEED a complicated or confusing trading strategy to find high-probability entries in a market. All you need is the ability to recognize price action trading strategies at key chart levels of horizontal support and resistance. If you just focus on this one strategy and really ‘master’ it, you will be able to look at any chart of any market and find high-probability price action trading opportunities.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this lesson on the simplest trading strategy in the world. To learn more, visit the price action trading university.
AboutNial Fuller
Nial Fuller is a Professional Trader & Author who is considered ‘The Authority’ on Price Action Trading. He has a monthly readership of 250,000+ traders and has taught over 25,000+ students since 2008. Checkout Nial’s Price Action Trading Course here.
FAQs
One of the simplest and most effective trading strategies in the world, is simply trading price action signals from horizontal levels on a price chart. If you learn only one thing from this site it should be this; look for obvious price action patterns from key horizontal levels in the market.
What is the simplest trading strategy ever? ›
When price is obviously bouncing back and forth between a horizontal support and resistance level, we can wait for price to hit one of the boundaries of the range and then watch for price action signals forming there. This provides us with a very high-probability entry scenario and a very simple trading strategy.
What is the most simple price action strategy? ›
The head and shoulders reversal trade is one of the most popular price action trading strategies as it's relatively easy to choose an entry point (generally right after the first shoulder) and to set a stop loss (after the second shoulder) to take advantage of a temporary peak (the head).
Does price action trading really work? ›
Although price action trading does have the potential for making handsome profits, it is up to the individual trader to clearly understand, test, select, decide, and act on what meets their requirements for the best possible profit opportunities.
What is the best trading strategy in the world? ›
Top 10 Most Popular Trading Strategies
- Trading Strategy #1 – Buy and Hold. ...
- Trading Strategy #2 – Value Investing. ...
- Trading Strategy #3 – Swing Trading. ...
- Trading Strategy #4 – Momentum Trading. ...
- Trading Strategy #5 – Scalping. ...
- Trading Strategy #6 – Day Trading. ...
- Trading Strategy #7 – Positions Trading.
Rule 1: Always Use a Trading Plan
You need a trading plan because it can assist you with making coherent trading decisions and define the boundaries of your optimal trade. A decent trading plan will assist you with avoiding making passionate decisions without giving it much thought.
What is the easiest pattern to trade? ›
The easiest to learn patterns are the falling wedge, rising wedge, bull flag breakout, and cup and handles. The cool thing about trading patterns is that they happen repeatedly, and you can fall in love with or even marry them.
What is the most profitable trading strategy? ›
From our experience, mean reversion strategies tend to be the most profitable. One of the reasons for that is that the market moves sideways more of the time than it trends. Even when it trends, it moves in waves that often oscillate around its moving average.
Who is the best price action trader in the world? ›
Nial Fuller is a Professional Trader & Author who is considered 'The Authority' on Price Action Trading. He has a monthly readership of 250,000+ traders and has taught over 25,000+ students since 2008.
What is the 5 minute price action strategy? ›
The 5-Minute strategy is created to aid sellers and buyers engage in back tracking and spend some time in the location with the appearance of prices proceed in a latest route. The system depends upon exponential moving averages and the MACD forex trading indicators.
Price is Better Than Indicators
Price action traders often think their method is always better. However, price action and indicators are quite similar. Both use price info from charts like candlesticks or bar charts. Indicators just apply a formula to the same info.
How to master price action trading? ›
A step-by-step guide on how to trade on price action? Identify the existing trend in the market. Identify trading price action opportunities based on the trend's strength. If there is a strong uptrend, place long orders and if there is a strong downtrend, place short orders.
How long does it take to learn price action trading? ›
Probably more than 2-3 years at the least. It took me a lot more ( started with things that did not work for me…) . Just reading everything wont give you skills immediately and you have to do your own work and figure things out. Trade small.
Is there a trading system that can win 100% of the trades? ›
There is no such thing as a trading plan that wins 100% of the time. After all, losses are a part of the game. But losses can be psychologically traumatizing, so a trader who has two or three losing trades in a row might decide to skip the next trade.
What is the 3-5-7 rule in trading? ›
The strategy is very simple: count how many days, hours, or bars a run-up or a sell-off has transpired. Then on the third, fifth, or seventh bar, look for a bounce in the opposite direction. Too easy? Perhaps, but it's uncanny how often it happens.
What strategy do most day traders use? ›
Common day trading strategies include Momentum, Breakout, Range, Reversal, Gap, Trend Following, Mean Reversion, Scalping, News, Pattern, Support and Resistance, Fibonacci, Volume Spread Analysis (VSA), Event-Driven, Arbitrage, and Statistical Arbitrage, each with its own set of rules and indicators for entering and ...
What is the most profitable trading strategy of all time? ›
Three most profitable Forex trading strategies
- Scalping strategy “Bali” This strategy is quite popular, at least, you can find its description on many trading websites. ...
- Candlestick strategy “Fight the tiger” ...
- “Profit Parabolic” trading strategy based on a Moving Average.
To increase your chances of profitability, you want to trade when you have the potential to make 3 times more than you are risking. If you give yourself a 3:1 reward-to-risk ratio, you have a significantly greater chance of ending up profitable in the long run.
What is the oldest trading method? ›
One example is the bartering of food: if one person had pigeons and wanted wheat, they would have traded pigeons for wheat. The first long-distance trade occurred between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley in Pakistan around 3000 BC, various materials such as spices, metals, and cloth, were traded.
