Welcome to the third and final part of this chapter.
Thank you all for the 100s of comments and upvotes - maybe this post will take us above 1,000 for this topic!
Keep any feedback or questions coming in the replies below.
Before you read this note, please start with Part I and then Part II so it hangs together and makes sense.
Part III

• Squeezes and other risks
• Market positioning
• Bet correlation
• Crap trades, timeouts and monthly limits

Squeezes and other risks

We are going to cover three common risks that traders face: events; squeezes, asymmetric bets.

Events

Economic releases can cause large short-term volatility. The most famous is Non Farm Payrolls, which is the most widely watched measure of US employment levels and affects the price of many instruments.On an NFP announcement currencies like EURUSD might jump (or drop) 100 pips no problem.
This is fine and there are trading strategies that one may employ around this but the key thing is to be aware of these releases.You can find economic calendars all over the internet - including on this site - and you need only check if there are any major releases each day or week.
For example, if you are trading off some intraday chart and scalping a few pips here and there it would be highly sensible to go into a known data release flat as it is pure coin-toss and not the reason for your trading. It only takes five minutes each day to plan for the day ahead so do not get caught out by this. Many retail traders get stopped out on such events when price volatility is at its peak.

Squeezes

Short squeezes bring a lot of danger and perhaps some opportunity.
The story of VW and Porsche is the best short squeeze ever. Throughout these articles we've used FX examples wherever possible but in this one instance the concept (which is also highly relevant in FX) is best illustrated with an historical lesson from a different asset class.
A short squeeze is when a participant ends up in a short position they are forced to cover. Especially when the rest of the market knows that this participant can be bullied into stopping out at terrible levels, provided the market can briefly drive the price into their pain zone.
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There's a reason for the car, don't worry
Hedge funds had been shorting VW stock. However the amount of VW stock available to buy in the open market was actually quite limited. The local government owned a chunk and Porsche itself had bought and locked away around 30%. Neither of these would sell to the hedge-funds so a good amount of the stock was un-buyable at any price.
If you sell or short a stock you must be prepared to buy it back to go flat at some point.
To cut a long story short, Porsche bought a lot of call options on VW stock. These options gave them the right to purchase VW stock from banks at slightly above market price.
Eventually the banks who had sold these options realised there was no VW stock to go out and buy since the German government wouldn’t sell its allocation and Porsche wouldn’t either. If Porsche called in the options the banks were in trouble.
Porsche called in the options which forced the shorts to buy stock - at whatever price they could get it.
The price squeezed higher as those that were short got massively squeezed and stopped out. For one brief moment in 2008, VW was the world’s most valuable company. Shorts were burned hard.
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Incredible event
Porsche apparently made $11.5 billion on the trade. The BBC described Porsche as “a hedge fund with a carmaker attached.”
If this all seems exotic then know that the same thing happens in FX all the time. If everyone in the market is talking about a key level in EURUSD being 1.2050 then you can bet the market will try to push through 1.2050 just to take out any short stops at that level. Whether it then rallies higher or fails and trades back lower is a different matter entirely.
This brings us on to the matter of crowded trades. We will look at positioning in more detail in the next section. Crowded trades are dangerous for PNL. If everyone believes EURUSD is going down and has already sold EURUSD then you run the risk of a short squeeze.
For additional selling to take place you need a very good reason for people to add to their position whereas a move in the other direction could force mass buying to cover their shorts.
A trading mentor when I worked at the investment bank once advised me:
Always think about which move would cause the maximum people the maximum pain. That move is precisely what you should be watching out for at all times.

Asymmetric losses

Also known as picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. This risk has caught out many a retail trader. Sometimes it is referred to as a "negative skew" strategy.
Ideally what you are looking for is asymmetric risk trade set-ups: that is where the downside is clearly defined and smaller than the upside. What you want to avoid is the opposite.
A famous example of this going wrong was the Swiss National Bank de-peg in 2012.
The Swiss National Bank had said they would defend the price of EURCHF so that it did not go below 1.2. Many people believed it could never go below 1.2 due to this. Many retail traders therefore opted for a strategy that some describe as ‘picking up pennies in front of a steam-roller’.
They would would buy EURCHF above the peg level and hope for a tiny rally of several pips before selling them back and keep doing this repeatedly. Often they were highly leveraged at 100:1 so that they could amplify the profit of the tiny 5-10 pip rally.
Then this happened.
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Something that changed FX markets forever
The SNB suddenly did the unthinkable. They stopped defending the price. CHF jumped and so EURCHF (the number of CHF per 1 EUR) dropped to new lows very fast. Clearly, this trade had horrific risk : reward asymmetry: you risked 30% to make 0.05%.
Other strategies like naively selling options have the same result. You win a small amount of money each day and then spectacularly blow up at some point down the line.

Market positioning

We have talked about short squeezes. But how do you know what the market position is? And should you care?
Let’s start with the first. You should definitely care.
Let’s imagine the entire market is exceptionally long EURUSD and positioning reaches extreme levels. This makes EURUSD very vulnerable.
To keep the price going higher EURUSD needs to attract fresh buy orders. If everyone is already long and has no room to add, what can incentivise people to keep buying? The news flow might be good. They may believe EURUSD goes higher. But they have already bought and have their maximum position on.
On the flip side, if there’s an unexpected event and EURUSD gaps lower you will have the entire market trying to exit the position at the same time. Like a herd of cows running through a single doorway. Messy.
We are going to look at this in more detail in a later chapter, where we discuss ‘carry’ trades. For now this TRYJPY chart might provide some idea of what a rush to the exits of a crowded position looks like.
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A carry trade position clear-out in action
Knowing if the market is currently at extreme levels of long or short can therefore be helpful.
The CFTC makes available a weekly report, which details the overall positions of speculative traders “Non Commercial Traders” in some of the major futures products. This includes futures tied to deliverable FX pairs such as EURUSD as well as products such as gold. The report is called “CFTC Commitments of Traders” ("COT").
This is a great benchmark. It is far more representative of the overall market than the proprietary ones offered by retail brokers as it covers a far larger cross-section of the institutional market.
Generally market participants will not pay a lot of attention to commercial hedgers, which are also detailed in the report. This data is worth tracking but these folks are simply hedging real-world transactions rather than speculating so their activity is far less revealing and far more noisy.
You can find the data online for free and download it directly here.
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Raw format is kinda hard to work with
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However, many websites will chart this for you free of charge and you may find it more convenient to look at it that way. Just google “CFTC positioning charts”.
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But you can easily get visualisations
You can visually spot extreme positioning. It is extremely powerful.
Bear in mind the reports come out Friday afternoon US time and the report is a snapshot up to the prior Tuesday. That means it is a lagged report - by the time it is released it is a few days out of date. For longer term trades where you hold positions for weeks this is of course still pretty helpful information.
As well as the absolute level (is the speculative market net long or short) you can also use this to pick up on changes in positioning.
For example if bad news comes out how much does the net short increase? If good news comes out, the market may remain net short but how much did they buy back?
A lot of traders ask themselves “Does the market have this trade on?” The positioning data is a good method for answering this. It provides a good finger on the pulse of the wider market sentiment and activity.
For example you might say: “There was lots of noise about the good employment numbers in the US. However, there wasn’t actually a lot of position change on the back of it. Maybe everyone who wants to buy already has. What would happen now if bad news came out?”
In general traders will be wary of entering a crowded position because it will be hard to attract additional buyers or sellers and there could be an aggressive exit.
If you want to enter a trade that is showing extreme levels of positioning you must think carefully about this dynamic.
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Bet correlation

Retail traders often drastically underestimate how correlated their bets are.
Through bitter experience, I have learned that a mistake in position correlation is the root of some of the most serious problems in trading. If you have eight highly correlated positions, then you are really trading one position that is eight times as large.
Bruce Kovner of hedge fund, Caxton Associates
For example, if you are trading a bunch of pairs against the USD you will end up with a simply huge USD exposure. A single USD-trigger can ruin all your bets. Your ideal scenario — and it isn’t always possible — would be to have a highly diversified portfolio of bets that do not move in tandem.
Look at this chart. Inverted USD index (DXY) is green. AUDUSD is orange. EURUSD is blue.
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Chart from TradingView
So the whole thing is just one big USD trade! If you are long AUDUSD, long EURUSD, and short DXY you have three anti USD bets that are all likely to work or fail together.
The more diversified your portfolio of bets are, the more risk you can take on each.
There’s a really good video, explaining the benefits of diversification from Ray Dalio.
A systematic fund with access to an investable universe of 10,000 instruments has more opportunity to make a better risk-adjusted return than a trader who only focuses on three symbols. Diversification really is the closest thing to a free lunch in finance.
But let’s be pragmatic and realistic. Human retail traders don’t have capacity to run even one hundred bets at a time. More realistic would be an average of 2-3 trades on simultaneously. So what can be done?
For example:

• You might diversify across time horizons by having a mix of short-term and long-term trades.
• You might diversify across asset classes - trading some FX but also crypto and equities.
• You might diversify your trade generation approach so you are not relying on the same indicators or drivers on each trade.
• You might diversify your exposure to the market regime by having some trades that assume a trend will continue (momentum) and some that assume we will be range-bound (carry).

And so on. Basically you want to scan your portfolio of trades and make sure you are not putting all your eggs in one basket. If some trades underperform others will perform - assuming the bets are not correlated - and that way you can ensure your overall portfolio takes less risk per unit of return.
The key thing is to start thinking about a portfolio of bets and what each new trade offers to your existing portfolio of risk. Will it diversify or amplify a current exposure?

Crap trades, timeouts and monthly limits

One common mistake is to get bored and restless and put on crap trades. This just means trades in which you have low conviction.
It is perfectly fine not to trade. If you feel like you do not understand the market at a particular point, simply choose not to trade.
Flat is a position.
Do not waste your bullets on rubbish trades. Only enter a trade when you have carefully considered it from all angles and feel good about the risk. This will make it far easier to hold onto the trade if it moves against you at any point. You actually believe in it.
Equally, you need to set monthly limits. A standard limit might be a 10% account balance stop per month. At that point you close all your positions immediately and stop trading till next month.
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Be strict with yourself and walk away
Let’s assume you started the year with $100k and made 5% in January so enter Feb with $105k balance. Your stop is therefore 10% of $105k or $10.5k . If your account balance dips to $94.5k ($105k-$10.5k) then you stop yourself out and don’t resume trading till March the first.
Having monthly calendar breaks is nice for another reason. Say you made a load of money in January. You don’t want to start February feeling you are up 5% or it is too tempting to avoid trading all month and protect the existing win. Each month and each year should feel like a clean slate and an independent period.
Everyone has trading slumps. It is perfectly normal. It will definitely happen to you at some stage. The trick is to take a break and refocus. Conserve your capital by not trading a lot whilst you are on a losing streak. This period will be much harder for you emotionally and you’ll end up making suboptimal decisions. An enforced break will help you see the bigger picture.
Put in place a process before you start trading and then it’ll be easy to follow and will feel much less emotional. Remember: the market doesn’t care if you win or lose, it is nothing personal.
When your head has cooled and you feel calm you return the next month and begin the task of building back your account balance.

That's a wrap on risk management

Thanks for taking time to read this three-part chapter on risk management. I hope you enjoyed it. Do comment in the replies if you have any questions or feedback.
Remember: the most important part of trading is not making money. It is not losing money. Always start with that principle. I hope these three notes have provided some food for thought on how you might approach risk management and are of practical use to you when trading. Avoiding mistakes is not a sexy tagline but it is an effective and reliable way to improve results.
Next up I will be writing about an exciting topic I think many traders should look at rather differently: news trading. Please follow on here to receive notifications and the broad outline is below.
News Trading Part I

• Introduction
• Why use the economic calendar
• Reading the economic calendar
• Knowing what's priced in
• Surveys
• Interest rates
• First order thinking vs second order thinking

News Trading Part II

• Preparing for quantitative and qualitative releases
• Data surprise index
• Using recent events to predict future reactions
• Buy the rumour, sell the fact
• The mysterious 'position trim' effect
• Reversals
• Some key FX releases

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Disclaimer:This content is not investment advice and you should not place any reliance on it. The views expressed are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other person, including their employer.

Following a post from u/donjonne about a HUGE Weibo story on how to actually start your own 1:1 repsneaker empire, I figured as a native Mandarin speaker I gave it a shot and translated the entire article, since I myself am pretty damn intrigued what the guy's speaking.Do note this article is written in March 2017, lots of stuff may have been outdated, and I translated word-for-word with some pruned paragraphs that seems like the fella repeating himself. I absolutely hate the weird flowery prose Mandarin always carry when I work on translations, so apologies if the in-jokes or general writing gets a bit dry.
This is my personal tl;dr without the author's boastful claims, so if you're short on time, here's the quick rundown.
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How do replica sneakers get sold?

Taobao: Long history with the reputation for being the single biggest online BST hub, with Tmall and Xianyu Second-hands integrated. Lots of fake reviews and seller reputation ratings. The rep game there got outta hand, CEO of Alibaba stepped in and cleaned house, thus everyone moved to...
WeChat: Lots more convoluted, no proper tracking and confirmation like a real shopping app and build quality can vary greatly between sneaker models from the same seller. But through word-of-mouth, standout resellers get recommended more organically, of course you need connections to start with.
Agents: Your best friend if you're overseas, usually ran by freelancers merely collecting orders, reporting back to resellers and have them directly ship your kicks to your doorstep. Agents can be a single person, or a huge operation i.e. Wegobuy and Ytaopal.

How's the quality tho?

Depends. Some will try to bait-and-switch, some will bond genuine friendships for simply being a return customer. Factories often cut corners to save some dough and end up with a worse rep, so like the purpose of this sub, dig into forums and guide yourself to trustworthy sellers. Author also goes on a tangent and revealed the numbers and figures of selling reps, along with the sheer gold rush he's in now. Read below for more info.

Anything of note?

We're getting ripped off. Real hard, if you're a Mainlander chances are you're being sold 1/3 of the prices we see here. Part of the reason is that the multi-level reselling jacks up the price a lot, so unless you're buying in bulk for the purpose of selling them, good luck finding GET-passable OW AJ1's for less than $70. If you get caught selling, it's fines upwards of ¥50,000 and your license revoked, but nothing too serious beyond that. Author promised more novel shoes get made in the future, like Uggs and non-hypebeast dress shoes or sumthin.
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With that outta the way, here's the translation for the whole article, hope you'll learn something for it and if there's any mistakes, feel free to point it out in DMs or just in the comments.
^{EDIT 17/05/2020: punctuation mistakes and missing formatting, also thanks for the kind words repfam}
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GOD'S HAND: The Secrets of Replica Sneaker Selling

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Having been in the rep game for around 4 to 5 years, it all started out of sheer curiosity. I spent ¥1099 for Air Force 1's some celebrity wore, only to had my buddy show up on me with a fake pair of the same sneaker only costs ¥300.
Not everyone is some rich parents' spoiled brat where a pair of shoes costing a couple grand is considered pocket change, yet everyone has that sense of envy, the need to follow the hype to really stand out from the crowd, so do I honestly. But then again you'd only wear that pair of grails for only a good couple months and it'll be out of the wave, why not I find myself a more wallet-friendly way to do so?
Ever since dipping my toe into the replica community, I'm making connections, meeting new friends and getting scammed in every step I make, keeping contacts of my favorite sellers (looking back yeah they're not the best and cheapest isn't it huh). I'm deep in the rabbit hole now, buying so many pairs I'm starting to be able to tell batches at a glance, and where to hunt down that very best batch at the cheapest price. At this point it's natural that I'm thinking of selling these reps and becoming a middleman with the best of the batches under one roof (which is what's following below).
Anyone who has dealt with middlemen know that actually tracking down the direct factory outlets are nigh impossible, and the multiple stages of middlemen-ception where bigger but more discreet resellers selling to more minor, smaller middlemen can only make one dream of the sheer profit you can make for being on the very top of the pyramid, that idea has only been a mere blip in my mind. There was once in a bar my fam hollered at me with "Yo you remember that John Doe went to Putian for two years? Dude gave up college and has been filthy stinkin' rich by now!" I was like bah it'll never work out for me, but with the summer break I'd worth giving it a shot and have John Doe on the line. And boy howdy, ain't he wildin' right now with his business.
Some say every Nike you see there's 1/3 chance it's straight outta Putian, some say Nike's LC works by handling a pair of dumb shoes to an uninformed factory worker and have him say "fuck kinda shoes are these, looks cool I guess so it's legit?" The only way is to really tear down the whole sneaker and see the markings in UV, and once we're on the point where we can fake inside tags and its barcodes, ask yourself can call out fakes on feet?
A promotion for \"discount\" NB's on Weibo
Ever seen promos like these?
It's what I saw on Weibo today, and you've seen one like it yourself did you? They all look good on the images and you'd be right that they're photos of the real deal, just that of course the shoes you actually get were reps, and for each pair profits are never above ¥100; I sell ya an NB for ¥165, I'd only make ¥50.
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REPLICA SNEAKERS: HOW DO THEY GET SOLD?

TAOBAO
Taobao has always been the single biggest hub for BST. Run by the faceless middlemen, sold by the page visits, and reviewed by the bots. And stores with inflated trust scores were used as a front, once costing hundreds of yuan to buy now go for the tens of thousands. As Taobao is taking action to curb counterfeits to make way for legitimate resellers, these fronts are getting more expensive by the day, since then people took it to WeChat later on.
Ask anyone who ran a Taobao store, and they'd tell you "you'll never make a cent unless you're selling fakes". A pair of (fake) shoes take some ¥100 to make, and can be sold as a legit like the thousands of yuan you see on their listings, you'd get away with dozens of fakes sold this way, where you can properly guage and adjust said price to match your profit margins. Once the rep game got popular and the snowball kept rolling, the problem got too big for Ma Yun to not ignore it and he went full banhammer on every rep seller. With every media outlet roasting Taobao's ass, everyone wises up to the knowledge that almost every sneaker you see could be fakes. The stigma lived on, and no one would touch any store where its place of origin writes "Putian".
When life gives you lemons, you make a whole damn lemonade stand and just circumvent the whole damn thing by appearing that you're not from Putian. Problem solved. As you check your shipping details, it always seems to travel from Shangai, Shenzen, Quanzhou or even goddamn Xiamen of all places, even overseas.
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Proxy services are very popular due to China's stringent laws
When sneakers are labeled as being shipped from Hong Kong, of course the sellers gonna say "it's from Hong Kong" but in fact it's shipping from Shenzhen, and the seller's excuse is that the sneakers are going through HK's borders from Shenzen then to the buyer's location. Even if you bought fakes in Tmall however, it won't be as bad as the ones sold as legit retails in Taobao. There's just too many of these rip-offs anyway! Had a reseller came to me to buy 10 pairs of sneakers, I make ¥10 each pair, but he sold it as retails and went on to make ¥500 each. Of course I'd panicked a jacked a prices a bit so I could have my own slice of extra profit to ¥20 each pair, said the factories jacked the prices themselves as an excuse.
Hoe's mad I guess
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WECHAT
While profit margins are no higher than Taobao, they still range around a dozen yuan on bulk. For all the actual friends I have in WeChat, I'd never believe them not having owned a replica sneaker in their whole life, blah blah blah "factory direct", "wholesale prices" my ass, who really can head to the factories and buy direct these days? Rep resellers buying bulk from those factories are truly the "direct from factory" purchases. Resellers then selling the reps to middlemen and agents, that's another step. Said middlemen then resell these reps to quote-on-quote "middlemen". (NB: may have been the very resellers we see on the sub) And it goes on and on and then, to you, the customer.The so-called A-grade reps you see on WC, let's say we buy it from the factory at ¥200 (for example, the real deal won't be this cheap) and sell to the end-user for ¥400~¥500, it does in fact look decent. Heck, retails may get "called out" in forums and reps may sneak under the radar. Chat and forum opinions aren't good indicatiors for a rep's actual quality. Thus you may wonder why buy retails at this point? No one would really hit the New Balance outlets at their local Wanda mall and ask the teeny-bop promoter lady if their kicks are legit anyway, so wouldn't this been the dream job you've wanted, right?
SMALL-TIME AGENTS
These sort of agents are mostly handling orders from overseas to cater the westerners, mainly Russian, SE-Asian, North/South American countries etc., and will never be some solo project as they always come in groups of a few dozen staff members. These agent groups can also hire decently well-spoken college students to help converse customers in English and pay them good pocket change, which is eerily similar to how Forex scams work before, but this time they're doing legit businesses for a change. Sort of.
FREELANCE AGENTS
The most common agent you may come across can be your close friends, they get instant payouts for attracting their local classmates to collect orders for reps, and this wannabe hustler reports them back to the resellers to ship to school dorms directly.
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REPLICA BUILD AND QUALITY

Replicas reach far, far and wide. You could see your neighborhood cleaner aunt wearing 990v4s, motorbike taxi riders wearing Duck Camo AM90's, your kind old uncle next door exercising in Flyknit Racers and so on. NB, Nike, Converse, Ascis, Kappa; any brand you wanted they got it. ¥100 to ¥500 is what the factories charge, but after it hits resellers with a ¥200 hike, the illusion what seems to be a shoe that'll last breaks down as it wears out after a few wears. Bad stitching? Poorly-tumbled faux-leather? Off-moulded shape? I'd believe you but you sure you can tell if the EVA is fake by just looking on it? Is the gluing pattern underneath it visible even? A good deal of local boutiques sell ¥120 replicas at official retail prices like ¥599, a good ¥400 profit.
Putian factories are split into "heavy" and "light" industries. The heavy industries builds the sneaker as a whole from scratch, while the light industries were like CKD vehicles, where parts are purchased and assembled together instead. and quality of each part of the sneaker depends among factories. Lots of them try to cut corners to save every extra cent, which explains the decreasing quality of recent sneakers you see now. Larger factories has always been delivering consistently decent sneakers, as customers who contacted them are much picker and won't slash prices along with quality out of the blue. The stitching (and Nike Air units/Boost soles even!) is close enough to pass off as retails. Some of the more badass factories can make a batch of 100 brand new replicas for you, just hand in a donor retail pair and they'll get to work.The old dogs in Putian has been around for ages, runs most of the resellers you know and love. They buy reps from the factory direct at ¥140, sell to resellers at ¥160 and have the resellers push ¥180, at these prices the shoes are just not enough to satisfy demand. I've gave it an estimate if the factory got his order to 30 dozen pairs of reps, with each pair a ¥20 profit, we're looking at ¥7,000 a day or ¥20,000 a month in gross profit.
Of course, the Sales and Commerce Assoc. will still take a heavy hand on counterfeit sneakers till today, basically a few sellers every month get caught in the counterfeit business. The offenders walk into the office, sit down, had "the talk" yet again and pay a good ¥30k~¥50k fine and had their licenses taken away, for just awhile. Factories themselves get raided very seldom, maybe a every 6 months only a single factory gets caught per year. Putian has become the leading worldwide repsneaker operation for the entire world, and outputs around 50% the actual worldwide sneaker market, an estimated ¥20bn yearly. The Nikes and Adidases you wear now has an "OEM" for that. You may have bought a brand sneaker [in China], but it may very well be a fake regardless, to be fair the quality itself is indistinguishable anyway.
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REPSNEAKER GRADES

1) The Standard Putian's cheapest offering, pretty much trash tier and a certain Taobao sells them the most often :^)
2) The GET Batch A huge improvement from the Standards, and the so-called 1:1 batch from the mouths of others. It's really not, some of the materials itself is not as fine or accurate as the real deal. Tmall often sells these batches, but often get sold as retails.
3) The 1:1 The absolute tip of the high-end replicas. Take it to HuPu.com and only the eagle-eyed few would call you out. Not everyone can get their hands on them, regardless of price. [eg: similar situation to UABat's Union AJ1's]
4) The Retail Nuff said, just retails. (But really, reps cost just 1/5 of the retail price, why bother lol?)
A snapshot of KFC6855's wares

HOW TO TELL FAKES

[The author essentially details how to LC NB998's, so this is best skipped as it adds nothing to the article other than repeating the author's point over and over.]
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THE REPSNEAKER FUTURE

If you ever think replica sneakers will only remain within the hypebeast sporty trainer radar, oh you'd be surprised. The replica factories are on full steam, churning out Dr. Martens, UGGS, Tod's and a lot more to come. If you're interested, my WeChat: KFC6855 has them on sale right now, guaranteed to keep ya comfy this winter.
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With all that said, I hope you learnt something from this, and now that you know if you really wanted a retail pair to sleep well at night, just don't get 'em in online stores. There's no glitz and glamor selling counterfeit sneakers, it's just business after all.
If you know, you know.
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Due to popular demand I've decided to bring this series back for a week 2 and I'll continue to release 3-5 trading ideas every Saturday. How do you guys feel about the name of this series? Would you like me to change the name to something like "Setup Saturdays" or are you guys cool with the current naming scheme?
So this week I wanted to be a lot more in depth in my analysis and setups since I didn't think I was super clear last week with my reasoning on some the setups. I want these posts to be as beginner friendly as possible because there's a lot more beginners in this Subreddit than I had realized. I want you to use this as an educational tool and not as a signal service as a result I'm going to give you possible trade setups and I want you to be the judge of whether you should enter once/if price gets to that point since I feel like that will benefit beginners in the long run. I got a couple questions about top down time frame analysis so that'll be a focus of today's post. Scroll down to NZDJPY if you really want an in-depth look at how I perform top down time frame analysis.
I'll include a picture of a chart and my TradingView chart so if you want to zoom in and out of the chart you'll have that ability to do so.
Quick Disclaimer: Some of the charts pricing might be off by a bit since I started working on this during the New York session on Friday. If any of the charts are impacted in a way that alters the setup I'll be sure to update the charts before I post this on Saturday. Just gotta hope that hope that Powell doesn't break the market or else I might have to redo this entire post.
AUDUSD:
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AUDUSD Daily
TradingView Link For Daily: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/AUDUSD/Wb5K2bS8-AUDUSD-Daily-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Which way is the trend pointing? It looks like it's pointing up which we can see with the green trend line but how about we zoom in to the 4 hour char to see if that's actually the case.
Tip: When drawing a trend line, especially on the daily and higher time frames, remember to hit as many wicks as possible since they are relevant and not just some anomaly you can ignore.
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AUDUSD 4 Hour
TradingView Link For 4 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/AUDUSD/aah8294z-AUDUSD-4-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: When we got close to where we are with price and we draw a Fibonacci Retracement from the point where price took off to the point where price peaked we can see that price came down to .5 Fibonacci level where it then started going up again. Coincidence? Possibly. As a result I believe that price could continue higher and it would be justified if it did. However, if we look at the trend lines we can see that price appears to have broke put of of our major trend line (Green) which means that price could fall to the downside if it's actually a breakout. Price then appears like it would then adhere to the new minor trend line (Red). There's also the possibility that this was just a fake breakout and price could go up and adhere to green trend line. I'm going to have a selling bias on this trade since price looks like it double topped at the highs of this year and it looks like we could see price fall. I'm leaning towards the drop of price due to the symmetrical triangle pattern created by the major and minor trend line and looks like price is going to get pushed down which we should get an idea of soon.
Tip: Every time price makes a large move and falls/rises after making a peak/valley always pull out the Fibonacci retracement tool to see if price will bounce from the .382, .5, or .618 levels as they are the most significant levels. This can tell you if you're going to likely get a trend continuation.
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AUDUSD 1 Hour
TradingView Link For 1 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/AUDUSD/IHgrnfYs-AUDUSD-1-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: I drew out multiple different scenarios which I think can play out since like I said before we're not trying to predict a single movement but we're preparing to be reactive to an ideal condition which may be thrown at us. Remember that major trend line we drew in on the daily chart well it's going to play a large role here. This trend line has been in the making since March so we're not just going to brush it off. The trend line appears to have been broken and we seem to be sticking that minor trend line after the break of the symmetrical triangle pattern. After the break of the symmetrical triangle pattern price usually gets pushed heavily to one side and it looks like price is wanting to get pushed to the downside. As a result, I'm going to really keep on eyes on scenario the blue arrows display since I think it's the most probable. Looking at the scenario there are going to be two potentially good entry points for a sell. The first being when price goes up to retest the green trend line which would also serve as a bounce from our red trend line. Once we get that bounce we could enter in for a sell with a take profit hopefully somewhere around the .66 area. Another good entry would be when price breaks the zone of support of .68 and after it retests it. Wait for a confirmation candlestick pattern showing price will fall when retesting (i.e. railroad track, bullish engulfment candle, evening star, shooting star, etc.). Look for these candlestick patterns on the 15 minute chart. Once you got the confirmation take the sell and ride price down to the .66 zone. The other scenario that could occur is we could see price go back into the green trend line by breaking the red trend line (Orange Arrows). If this occurs we want to catch the retest bounce of the red trend line and ride price up to the high of the year which is at .702. At that point price could break the resistance at which point we could catch the retest of the zone and ride price up. Or it could go up to .702 create a triple top and fall. If you get a candlestick confirmation saying it'll fall then take a sell at the high of the year.
NZDUSD:
If there's something I really like in Forex it's definitely got to be harmonic patterns due to their high accuracy. NZDUSD just recently completed one of them and this is a really good indicator of what price is going to do.
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NZDUSD Daily
TradingView Chart For Daily: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDUSD/zQpHzUcK-NZDUSD-Daily-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Yes, we have trend line that says that price is going up however I make exceptions for Harmonic patterns since they are accurate about 80%-90% of the time. The pattern you see above is know as a Bearish Bat Pattern. Like the name says it's an indicator that price is going to go Bearish so although the trend line is going up I'm going to have a bearish bias on this trade.
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NZDUSD 4 Hour
TradingView Chart For 4 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDUSD/C29kpCyO-NZDUSD-4-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Not really much to add here just tossed on a Fibonacci retracement tool from where price took off to the peak just to check for any potential support from any of the major levels which we don't appear to have. We'll go a lot more in-depth on this pair on the 1 hour chart since that's where things get interesting.
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NZDUSD 1 Hour
TradingView Link For 1 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDUSD/dKJatcM7-NZDUSD-1-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Looking at price we can see that since June 11th price has been trading in a boxed consolidation range. Again I drew out the possibilities I believe could be ideal for us. Remember that I said Harmonics work 80%-90%. Well that means that they fail 10%-20% of the time which is definitely not something we can neglect. We can see that there's a descending triangle which price is reaching the end of. This means that price is getting ready to move to one direction since big moves always come after consolidation. If it moves to upside wait for price to close above the the spot marked D then you can enter for a buy and ride price up to the .67525 zone where price could break to upside or bounce back down (Orange Arrow). Remember to wait for it to actually close above point D since it could create a triple top and drive price back down. It's the same procedure as AUDUSD here if it makes this move where if it breaks it then catch the retest and if it looks like it's wanting to fall down wait for a confirmation pattern. If it breaks the box to the downside and breaks the support zone then take a sell and ride price down to the trend line at which point you should close the trade as there's a chance price could move against you and it's best to secure profits while you can. Once at the trend line it could bounce and if it does you should be able to ride price up to that .67525 zone (Green Arrow). If price breaks the trend line then wait for the retest and you should be able to ride price down pretty far (Red Arrows). I think you should be able to ride it down to .5918 zone but you'll have to keep your on it.
EURNZD:
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EURNZD Daily
TradingView Link For Daily: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/EURNZD/jzgmGcRe-EURNZD-Daily-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Well we got a pretty clear descending channel and price looks like it's at the top part of the channel currently so we're going to want to look for some optimal selling conditions due to the down trend.
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EURNZD 4 Hour
TradingView Link For 4 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/EURNZD/YzOpvcH7-EURNZD-4-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Looking at the 4 hour chart we can see that there appears to be a symmetrical triangle coming to it's end meaning price is getting ready to get pushed to a side. I believe it'll break the triangle and fall to the downside so once you see it break it would be a good idea to take a sell and ride price down to that support zone at 1.7187. Price could also briefly break to the upside then bounce off the top of the channel and it does take a trade from the bounce and ride price down to the same support zone. At that point, I'll leave it up to you to determine how you think price will go and what you should be looking for. Consider it to be a little quiz if you want to think of it like that. You've got my charts so use them as a reference since I've already marked some crucial support/resistance zones which we should keep our on for the next couple weeks.
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EURNZD 1 Hour
TradingView Link For 1 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/EURNZD/ICWvgEsg-EURNZD-1-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: There's nothing that special on the one hour chart that I have to point out since I think we pretty much got all the big stuff out of the way on our analysis of the 4 hour chart. Be sure to get a good sell in there since there are two potentially good setups which I've outlined for you. Also be sure to be careful and wait for the bounce of the channel if price goes that way since there's a chance price could break the channel and I don't want you to take a loss because you were impatient.
NZDJPY:
This pair is going to be really fun since we're going to be looking through a lot of time frames so if you really want to learn about a top down approach to analyzing time frames and trends then pay very close attention to how I break down this trade.
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NZDJPY Monthly
TradingView Link For Monthly: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDJPY/jZh4F2Jv-NZDJPY-Monthly-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Yes, we're actually going to be looking at the monthly chart. I bet you guys don't do that very often. Looking at it we can see that price has been following a clear down trend line since late 2014. If you look at the wick of this month's candle you can see that it appears to have touched the trend line meaning we could see a good opportunity to catch a sell since it had just recently bounced off. Let's take a look at lower time frames to see if this continues to be true.
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NZDJPY Weekly
TradingView Link For Weekly: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDJPY/dpvI29BB-NZDJPY-Weekly-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: When zooming into the weekly we can see that using the wicks of the candles we can actually draw a channel for the low portion that runs pretty much in parallel to the trend line we drew on the monthly chart. We can see that price clearly bounced from the trend line and I think this gives us good reason to believe in the coming weeks we could see the price drop. Also looking at the Bollinger Bands we can see that price also bounced from the top band which also supports a drop of price. Let's go into the daily to see if we can get a better idea.
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NZDJPY Daily
TradingView Link For Daily: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDJPY/NbWLURkU-NZDJPY-Daily-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Looking at the daily time frame we can see that price is currently consolidated and remember big moves always come after consolidation. If you look closely however you can see that price looks like it's about to break the 200 day EMA (Orange line). If it breaks the EMA we could see price drop pretty far at an accelerated rate. Besides those couple observations there's not much else going on with the daily chart.
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NZDJPY 4 Hour
TradingView Link For 4 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDJPY/d1kaogH5-NZDJPY-4-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Would you look at that, it looks like we got a descending triangle on the 4 hour chart which looks like it's coming to an end. Looking at price it looks like it's wanting to push to the downside. Once you get a break below the lows of the day of June 11th I think it would be a safe bet to take a sell trade and ride it down for 66.825 for this week. If it breaks the 66.825 support zone then I'll definitely take a sell and try to ride price down to the bottom of the channel which we drew on the weekly chart. There's also the possibility that price could take support at any of these support zones and then head back up to test the top of the channel. At which point I'll be looking to get into a sell at the top of the channel but I won't ride price up to the channel since at this current point in time I feel like there's a large amount of risk in that.
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NZDJPY 1 Hour
TradingView Link For 1 Hour: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/NZDJPY/83b47mFS-NZDJPY-1-Hour-For-Reddit-Post-6-20-U-AD3133/
Analysis: Not much more to add here since I think by this point we got the entire story so I'm not going to say much more about the 1 hour chart since I think the analysis for the 4 hour chart also sums this up pretty well.
Well that was a lot of information to go through and I hope you found some value in this since it took me quite a few hours to put this together for you guys. Truth be told, I spent most of Friday working on this so I hope at least one person finds some value in which case I'll consider it a win.
So you guys tired of me yet or do you want me to continue this series for a week 3? It takes a lot of time and effort to put this together so I'll only do it if people want it or else I'll pretty much feel like I wasted my time. I might put together a little lesson on how to use the COT in order to catch some big reversal moves in the market since the COT pretty much tells you what the hedge funds are doing and you also want to trade with the hedge funds and institutions. It'll probably take a couple weeks since I'll have to compile some data together and wait for a setup before putting that out but I'll be working on it. Are there any other things you may want explained? Let me know and I'll try to find setups which contain the topic you may want more details on. I hope you have a great trading week!