"Vic, I wanted to Thank You for the session yesterday. Last night I put on a trade in the EUR/USD using the information I learned from you. Needless to say, I was shocked to wake up this morning to find I had earned 50 pips and the trade had closed successfully. I was so amazed that I wasn't really looking for another opportunity right away and missed a trade shortly after for 60 pips using the same technique I learned from you. I have desperately wanted to learn how to trade a sideways market (since we seem to have a lot of that lately) and now I think I can. Hopefully this wasn't beginner's luck. Thanks again." * Bill Gavlas, Golden Colorado

Testimonial is not indicative of future performance or success in addition to the fact that they are unsolicited.

* Unique experiences and past performances do not guarantee future results! Testimonials herein are unsolicited and are non-representative of all clients; certain accounts may have worse performance than that indicated. Trading spot currencies involves substantial risk and there is always the potential for loss. Your trading results may vary. Because the risk factor is high in the foreign exchange market trading, only genuine "risk" funds should be used in such trading.  If you do not have the extra capital that you can afford to lose, you should not trade in the foreign exchange market.  No "safe" trading system has ever been devised, and no one can guarantee profits or freedom from loss.

The views and opinions represented in the provided website links and resources are not controlled by the introducer or the FCM. Further, the introducer and the FCM are not responsible for their availability, content, or delivery of services.

Article 4 - Part 2
How To Approach
The Trading Day Like A Pro

By Vic Noble

Dec 23, 2006

In the last article, I talked about the critical importance of getting the direction of your trade right, by doing a proper top down analysis. If you are not doing a top down analysis, you are making life very difficult on yourself in my opinion.

Here is a statement that I always emphasize to people who take a personal coaching session with me: “Always align your trading with the higher time frames!” Whatever time frame you’re trading 5 minute, 15 minute, daily, etc, figure out what’s happening in the bigger picture, and then use the smaller time frames to structure a good, low risk, high reward trade!

So let’s take a look at how we might use this information to find a trade.

Earlier this week, on December 18th, 2006, the USD/CHF had rallied off of a yearly low and as it came up, you should be asking yourself where it would be logical to expect price to stop going up. Where is there going to be resistance in the big picture?

Well, actually there was a convergence of several different tools on the daily chart that told us that we could expect a top just over 12200. Obviously I can’t go into great detail in this article on all of the different tools. But I want you to realize how powerful it is, and how important it is, just to know that there was a coincidence of no less than 4 independent tools that we like to use. All these tools converging at one price, indicating that we could expect price to stop going up at that point! Folks, that is good stuff to know.

The next step in the analysis is to then examine the lower time frames to see if they are offering any further clues that we might be at a top.

Well, last week I talked about the power of MACD divergence to price, and how divergence on higher time frames can offer great trading opportunities on the lower time frames. Now, when price had reached the major resistance that we had expected on the daily chart, take a look below at what MACD was doing on the hourly chart:

 

This is a thing of beauty! Once you see MACD negative divergence on the hourly chart, you are now getting positive confirmation that a top is likely at hand. The next step is to simply go short using whatever entry method that you like to use - Fibonacci, stochastics, trend line breaks etc.

At this point I want you to realize that entry becomes a personal choice, but what’s important here is that by doing a proper top down analysis, you got the direction right!!

Thanks traders, best of luck in your trading, keep your risk under control at all times, and make sure to do a thorough top down analysis!

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!