Senior Trader: Morning Routine

Hi guys, I've just got into the office in London and I thought I'd show you all how I start my day every morning before the European session, how I would go about planning my possible entries for the day ahead, looking at the charts from a blank canvas to then the moment that I would look to execute a trade. I'm sure, as you can see on my, my right-hand side with the YouTube channel, um, we do a morning briefing every morning, Anthony and myself. And what I would do is each morning is speak to Ant, and I want to know what is driving the markets fundamentally. Has there been any change from overnight? Is there anything I need to be aware of? Also with the data calendar as well So for example, we've got retail sales data coming out at 9:30 this morning. So therefore, if I'm trading the pound, I just need to be aware of that. Or in some cases, it would be a point of just waiting for that. Moving over to the charts, and you know, this is, you know, a discussion I'll have with Anthony Cheung every morning, and we'll talk about what were the headlines, was there anything that has changed on the macro environment or fundamentally. Was there any data out overnight? Was there any central bank speakers from the Asian session? How are markets looking? And if I was just to bring in— we'll start off with, say, EUR/USD, you know, the most traded currency pair. How I would, you know, very much start each day is on a longer timeframe. So here we're looking at the euro, and this is going back here to June to where we are now. So quite a clear trend to the downside. So that's something something I would be making a note of. Obviously, trading this market every day, you know, you don't necessarily have to put it on the, the longer time frame to know that, but it just helps you, uh, establish where the market has been going and where it is likely to, to go through, unless there's been a change of anything as mentioned fundamentally. So for me, what I like doing here is just marking up the key highs and the lows near where we are trading. So you can see We're currently trading at 1.1175.5 on the futures. Now I'm just putting in these important highs and lows almost to contain the range, as if there was to be a breaking story right now. I'm already aware of what is happening. And also, if I wanted to, to be, uh, super vigilant about where price could go, I could make this time frame even longer and put it on to, say, a weekly chart. And then suddenly, if that low of the year was to break, well, I'm already aware that we've got the high of the week of the 2017 May that price could go to and find support from there. Back to the daily chart. So this is, as mentioned, something I would do for each product just as a way of starting fresh and identifying where price, you know, if it was to go to, we could have an area of support or resistance, a similar reaction to the ones we've had previously. So I'm lining up here to see those highs, the highest points or the lowest points where price was before we saw a reversal or a breakthrough and so on. And at this moment here is where I would drop it down to, you know, a 4-hourly chart. And I would, as mentioned, do this for every market that I trade. And by this point, there's no moving averages on or the RSI or Fibonacci as of yet. I want to keep it relatively, uh, simple at this moment. And, you know, here is, is then where I would just put it on to say a 240, as mentioned, 4-hourly chart, just to see is there anything that I'm missing? Where are these really key levels that I need to be aware of? So again, I'm just going to mark up this one because for whatever reason, you don't necessarily need to know, on the 2nd of August the buyers took over and we haven't come back since. So if we were at any point today to drift down to 111.07, could half expect a similar reaction in the market. So just looking at this market here, you can see, well, we've had a previous range that we've just broken through. So as we know, support when broken can turn to resistance. So that's a really key point that I need to be aware of. Also, to the downside, we almost made it yesterday, but we had a really key level of support before that I need to be aware of now that we've broken through. We broke through 10 days ago, so if we were to come back to test that, and we almost did yesterday, another level that I need to be aware of. So I've gone through the daily, I've gone through the 2.4, uh, the 2.40. I spoke to, to Anthony Cheung to see if there's anything fundamentally that I need to be aware of, any data points that are coming out, and out of the eurozone, you this morning was quickly switch back to the calendar. You can see there's nothing, so I'm happy to take a trade on any time from now until the afternoon when we have some US numbers, unless there's any central bank speaker that I need to be aware of, or any, um, further developments maybe on the trade side if Donald Trump is up and tweeting. At this moment here in the 60-minute, this is when I would look to add other technical tools. So here I could add the pivot points that majority of intraday traders will use, and you can see here just how well the pivot was respected yesterday, and we had a good reaction to the S2 as well. So just looking back previously, I know the market is paying attention to these points, and I have, you know, confidence that they could also act as support or resistance entry points or targets for the day as well. I'd also get a bit more intricate with, say, trend lines. So for example, from the, the top here, I want to see is there anything that I need to be aware of. And you can see I've got a really nice trend going here from the 6th to the 7th to the 13th. And I'm not trying to overcomplicate things. I want to be looking at the levels that the majority of the market will as well and pay attention to those points. I'm not looking to be in say 5, 6 trades by the time it's already midday, I'm lining up where I see the best opportunities. What will the majority of the market be thinking should price get to whatever point? So if I just label this area here as— we'll call it A. For me, this point here is better than, say, the pivot. Reason being that we were contained by this this range here from the low of the 12th. We just couldn't get through it. It's also the 112 handle, and if we move to the left-hand side, we have a lot of noise there previously where price just couldn't get through. And once we eventually did, we then found support. So the point being here is it— if we were to come back towards that area, you know, letter A, and we've also got the previous low yesterday morning For me, this would now offer a good level of resistance to then continue the move from here to the downside. So that would be a strategy, for example, that I'd be looking to, to take on. And I'd also be starting to plan, well, where would my targets be? Where would the stop need to be? Not defined necessarily by how much risk I want to take, but how much I need to give the chart to let it breathe. So if I was to say, make this my entry, it would be a stop loss above, say, this previous low here, so giving it enough room, targeting back down towards previous levels of what would then be support, and I can already have a predefined risk-reward from what the chart is telling me. Now, does that then make sense with my risk parameters that I trade with? In this case, it does, and I'd be happy to take this trade on. So if we were to come back to 1.1190, there's no new headlines, uh, the correlation— so anything to do with the euro or the dollar remain as they are at the moment. For me, it's a great trade that I'd like to take on, and would it— we'd also be happy for that not to work because I planned— I've gone through this process from the longer term chart. I've seen, is there any trend lines that I need to be aware of? Uh, the pivot points have acted quite well. So, you know, it's technically trading nicely. We've broken this range. I'm happy to take this trade on. Alternatively, to the downside, it might well be that this market, having broken this range and we've seen a bit of dollar strength come back into things, it might be that we don't drift higher and we actually come down to, to test this lower area again. So I want to be thinking about this. So where we've got this rectangle here, I'll just remove it. If we were to break this area, now got to be starting to think about, well, where's the trade opportunity from that point of view? And it might be that just dropping this down to 15-minute, what you can see is we are starting just to trend higher. So from last night, we've got this, this trend line in play here that we just can't break through. So the opportunity I'd now start thinking about is if this trend line was to break And I want to be marking up those key levels of support because they would be my targets. So a trendline break targeting the low of the morning, yesterday's low. And you can see by doing the longer term analysis, even though you can't see why I would have a line at 1.1148 and a half, I already know that from that longer term chart that it's the low that we had back on the 5th of August. 3 o'clock where the buyers really took over, and I can have my target set up there. So I'm planning ahead of time where my stop losses, my targets, my entries would be, and in the right conditions for that to trade. Now, there will always be, you know, times where maybe I'm not too sure about a market, so I developed something like with a line in the sand. And for the S&P, so I've gone through the whole you know, 60-minute, 240, daily. And with the S&P over the last couple of days, we've seen big move to the upside and to the downside that maybe I'm not too sure about what will happen. So here we've got the low that we had back on the 13th, was also the retest high from yesterday, and also the pivot. This would be a point where maybe I want to see what happens here, and it gives me my guide to either looking to, say, go long above where the buyers will come in, or if that was to hold, well, the sellers can take over. So I can wait to see what happens on the 15-minute candle, the 5-minute candle, uh, before making my decision, and then being aware of where the next levels could be should price react to that point or break through or hold as well. I hope you found this useful. Um, we'll be doing more of these for sure. And as you can see, like, share, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. And any questions you have on this, feel free to let me know and I can take the time to get back to you.