[Nial Fuller]

If you are struggling to find a trading strategy that seems like it is more than just a pre-packaged set of trading rules or a piece of software that teaches you nothing about the market, than what you are about to read in this article will help you get on the right path. The tendency for new and struggling traders to believe that they need a fancy piece of trading software or a complicated indicator based trading system to successfully trade the market is a very common belief but a huge misconception. There are various reasons why lagging indicator based systems and forex trading "robots" never work in the long run, it is important to understand these reasons so that you gain a deeper understanding of why a simple forex trading method can be used to profitably trade the market with.

Many traders who make most of their trading decisions off of technical market movements understand that the price chart is the main source of information for what causes them to decide to enter or exit a trade. Where many traders go wrong is in believing that through attempting to analyze and interpret secondary indicators to price movement, like lagging indicators, they will somehow gain an advantage that is not otherwise available to them on a naked price chart.

This belief typically arises from reading a website that claims if you learn their "special" combination of indicators you will easily profit in the markets, or from a well-marketed forex trading software program that shows insanely good returns which many beginners do not know are nothing more than a result of back testing the program over the perfect time period that fits the indicator to a T. The issue here is that no two moments in the market are ever exactly the same simply due to the fact that every single thought that every single market participant has about the market is a variable that could affect price movement; therefore, back-testing is essentially pointless. The other issue is that people tend to have an ego-driven fixation on making forex trading more complicated than it needs to be so that they can brag to their friends or family about how they are using all these different fancy sounding indicators to trade with.

The fact of the matter is that price action is the best indicator you could ever ask for. This is because price movement generates its own signals about possible impending market direction that once you learn to analyze will allow you to time your entries and exits with as much accuracy as possible. Essentially what is happening when you trade off the raw candlesticks or price bars on your chart, is that you are cutting out the "middle man" so to speak, which would be all the lagging indicators and junk trading robots, and are dealing directly with manufacturer of trading signals: PRICE.

Nial Fuller is an expert on price action forex trading strategies, you can visit his website at Learn To Trade The Market

[pricetrader99]

Great article Nial, your insight on price action continues to improve my trading

[jjthetrader]

Nial, that's a nice theory. "Price action trading" sounds great but it's a really broad term. What does one actually mean by that? Price is going up thus price action says to get long? What if it pulls back right there as soon as you buy?
Are you talking about breaking highs/lows or about speed of bar formation or something totally different?

Maybe a specific trade you would take with an accompanying chart would explain a lot.

People become very anti-indicator when in fact some are very, very helpful. For example what if you were adept at reading cycles and realized you were topping. You could then ignore any 'price action' that would get you long. It's a matter of balance.

I would love to see what a 'price action' trade actually is though so please share.

[robertm]

The issue here is that no two moments in the market are ever exactly the same simply due to the fact that every single thought that every single market participant has about the market is a variable that could affect price movement; therefore, back-testing is essentially pointless.

They don't need to be "the same". We work with OHCL references, not trying to match up identical instances in time to the tick.

Saying that back-testing is pointless implies that with no prior experience any fool could sit in front of a screen and just pump out the cash. Experience is back-testing in slow motion.