Price-Structure-Order flow

1st Target Hit on USD/MXN:

Price did surprise me and took my first take profit on this trade just at the exhaustion point on the intraday chart. I have moved the stop down on the remaining portion of the trade to prevent further loss. If this is the range, as I suspect has now formed, price will very quickly move higher during the rest of this week. However, if I am wrong, I will continue to profit as price breaks down further.

I will only know later...when the intraday chart starts to balance. Note the balance zones the form at the top and bottom of this range. This tells me that the range is fairly "stable" because the order flow balances at the extremes. When the order flow starts to balance in the middle of the range, this will tell me there are trend traders (usually longer term traders) trying to establish positions for a break out. So far I'm not seeing that.

GBP/USD:
Looks like price is dancing along the top of the first balance zone I had drawn in on my charts. NFP helped move price lower, but I am not seeing the buyers give in...At this point buying looks like it is profit taking from the shorts on the previous week. Sellers too lack real commitment on direction. So it would appear that price will continue to "meander".

When price does this, it is usually the participants that are their own worst enemy. In this case it looks like the buyers are driving price lower. WHAT?? Yes. Weak buyers seem to be taking positions but don't have the volume to really push price higher. So when price starts to move lower, their stop orders combine to enough volume to send the price lower. We are entering the summer doldrums now, and price may wander back and forth for another month as volume in Europe goes off line.

I did enter a short position just before NFP, and am currently positive roughly 100 pips. I will pay very close attention to price as it enters these target zones to see what price does.

Hello Don! Excellent thread by all means, many thanks for your wonderful insights and your effort to share them so informatively! I would like to, if you may indulge me, to initiate some dialog on the nature of the order flow. I have learned what I can about order flow (OF) from Jason Alan's book and from gspajon's threads - although I cannot say that I have the honor to have spoken, or learned from him, directly.

The thing I want to discuss with you most, is the origin of the dominant OF in the market. I'll take it through the example of the balanced zones, in particular. I understand that your view of a balanced zone is a price area, where sellers and buyers face each other off, until one side gives up, gets their stops "consumed" by the winner, and soon the OF unbalances out of the zone.

After having watched the market for a bit, I have seen quite a few instances of OF producing price action that is too precise to be a result of a chaotic battle between bulls and bears. These are the places where the market makers "show their hand", in my opinion. So often does this happen, that I have developed this crazy notion that the entire balance area OF is pretty much manipulated by market makers to achieve their goals. And since most of the market is a balance zone from a higher TF perspective (take EUR/USD for the past 2,5 years), this gives me some curious thoughts.

To make my point clearer, I want to share this chart of NZD/USD from the beginning of the year (in fact, the same thing seems to be occurring in Kiwi right now).
Here, I have highlighted two balance zones with blue boxes, one at the top of the larger monthly/weekly range, and one directly beneath that one. To me, at least, the bottom zone seems to have formed for no other reason than for the market makers and the institutional traders to be able to add to their existing sell positions at the spots market by the red circles - and doing so by consuming the liquidity of retail traders, who would think a "bottom" was forming (judging from my broker's trader positioning data, that's exactly what they were thinking).

So. The smart money are taking partial profits from their shorts from the top of the upper zone, forming the very first swing of the bottom zone, and are pushing the prices up towards the first red circle - leaving late sellers underwater, at the foot of the swing. The move up, which is nothing more than profit taking by the market makers and those underwater sellers liquidating to a buy, will cease where the stops will run out, and where the smart money market makers will have their large sell orders located. Of course, these sell orders will be placed against the retail buyers liquidity, who now think a "bottom" is in. Price will quickly fall back towards the foot of the first swing, because of the market makers' sell orders, where all of this story will repeat itself - again and again and again. Up and down, down and up. Retailers will keep selling the bottoms and buying the tops of this balance zone, which is, in fact, one big (beautiful, efficient) scheme to place more sell orders at better prices.

In fact, if you have ever watched the movie Rogue Trader - in it, they are doing precisely the same scheme in order to get their clients enormous orders placed.


There are further things I would like so much to discuss, but first please, Don, tell me - does this make any sense to you at all? Am I making all of this up?

Best regards

Wow...there is a lot here to answer...I may need to do this in several posts...but let me try to take it from the top...
Thank you for your kind words I am gratified that you find something of value here.
Excellent book (if you refer to the multiple time frames book)...and I know that gspajon was a student of Jason Alan Jankowski. I have learned directly from both of them...
I cannot say if this is true or not. I agree that there is often "big volume" that comes in at certain point that is able to move the market or absorb dominant order flow, but whether they are malevolent manipulators of a TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS A DAY market? I highly doubt it. Simply because it that's a lot of capital and even the richest "entities" on earth don't have that kind of capital. However...that being said, there are instances where some banks get together at the "fix" (closing of the day) and "adjust" the closing price to favor big clients. Those being discovered go to jail, and that's not to say it doesn't continue, but market manipulation at in a decentralized market of such enormous volume defies common sense. (my opinion)

In the end...it doesn't matter, because anyone who would manipulate the market must do so WITH the market...meaning that they must engage the market the same way we do...using orders. Thus if you lean to "see" the order flow underneath lost cute little candles and "price action signals" you will be able to follow the manipulators (should you still believe that hypotheses).

For my part I really don't care if the market makers are manipulating the price or not...I just want to find a good place to enter and take profits quickly enough to keep them.

These are exactly the area where I like to place my sell orders as well. It is nothing more than understanding how order flow works...

Lets imagine you were long just before that first box formed, and as price peaked and then started to range, you (I would imagine) would tighten your stop to either: (1) protect profit or (2) reduce risk. As you mentioned this is a weekly chart? I count 10 weeks of stalled price. This back and forth movement was probably intraday or swing traders entering buy orders at the bottom and then taking them off at the top, or perhaps holding in hopes of a break out higher.

In any case the stop orders are starting pile up at or below the bottom of that nice box you have drawn in. What happens when price starts hitting those stop orders? You get a "woosh" of sell orders flooding the market and viola, a break out. Once all those stops are run and there are no more sell orders coming into the market, price stalls again and retests the area where those sell orders first started cascading. Is this manipulation? I don't know but if it is they are leaving a very big clue behind for the rest of us.

Thus the reason price stalled and formed that 2nd balance zone, was because no more sellers came in for another 14 weeks and, once again the intraday traders created a range that resulted in the exact same scenario...price will ALWAYS move to where the orders are placed. If they pile up above the range, then price would've moved higher...and everyone would say, "oh look a trend continuation..." but instead they said, "Oh look a trend reversal..." Then they get out their math calculators and moving averages and say, "look here it moved below x EMA, or y trend line...yeah right. It was just orders being filled, and if they are piling up on one side or the other the market will eventually drift there because THAT's WHERE THE ORDERS ARE.

I have also drawn in on your chart here a previous balance zone that formed at the top of what looked like it might form a double top, but then broke higher before the first box you've drawn in. Note how price cam right back into that area and formed your 2nd box...coincidence? I think not. This area initially formed (the way I see it) because sellers came in at the "top" of the market. It would appear they were "new" sellers, or selling entries as opposed to profit takers. They had enough volume to stall price, but once again, where were their stops? just above that last high I would imagine...and "whoosh" they were all taken out, and then nothing...no one else wanted to enter buys at that high price...so price stalled and ranged for a very long time.

It makes perfect sense, (except for the conspiracy part) but this is what profitable traders do... To put it in terms of Jason Alan Jankowsky, "The losers watch the charts, the winners watch the losers" In other words, as soon as the losers stop out, for what ever reason, they create an initial order flow imbalance, that can be clearly seen on the charts. This area...the area where the last opposing order flow lost the battle, is where price will almost always come back to...I have personal stats that show 85% of the time. So lets look below and identify those areas on your chart here.

At the bottom of this move buyers moved higher, forming a bottom (most likely profit taking)...then sellers came back in for their last stand and moved price back down but no "new sellers" were interested at that bottom, so, when those sells stopped out, price moved higher...stalled, and retested that same area where the sellers stopped out....with me so far?

Now extend that box over to the right...

just like magic isn't it...? manipulation or just profit taking at the most logical spot? I vote for profit taking. Again the exact same thing happened here except this time it happened much faster... Any late shorts in the market where quickly stopped out and then price came right back down to the top of that area, tested it and moved on.

Shall we do it again? Lets look now at this latest swing low and do the same thing.


Does THIS make sense? It happens on every time frame and also across them all, as part of one market. Also keep in mind that time is relative. Order flow and price will not keep to a schedule. Thus what you may see on a large time frame, like a big range...may look like a trend on a very small time frame. So always try to maintain a larger perspective and look for the order flow to express its theme. When you find the time frame where it is the clearest...that is where you should trade...this trade. It isn't the same time frame every trade.

I really hope this helps...please feel free to continue this discussion...I am very excited that there are now at least two people who want to continue this discussion.

Taking a CADCHF CT short. Normally I'd be more interested in a CT trade at the extremes, but as you can see on weekly we're at a key level. Sellers have already come in once and pushed it down to a little level that would have been a nice long. Expect them to come in again and push it further south. I'll be looking for a long from that deeper push.

To really zero in on the best price use market profile and locate volume cluster

Looks to me like your intraday chart is stretching out to the buy side and your weekly chart may have another bit Left to get above your upper white line area. That's where I might look for the change in order flow.

Hello Divergence...yes I've use those histograms and found them helpful however they don't present anything that isn't already seen by reading the order flow... simply a concentration of where (what price) the transactions occurred. But that doesn't help the way I trade.

Again I don't just put an order out in space. I watch for a zone then a change in order flow then a reassurtion of dominance. Then place my order.

I like to watch the order flow change and then decide where to put the order. Too often I get hammered because I leave this little bit out.

BTW. Thanks to all of you who are leaving comments and questions. This is exactly what I was trying to get going. Some intelligent conversation. Much appreciated friends

Don, many thanks for your detailed reply! Much to think about. I would say that "conspiracy" and probably "manipulation", too, are too harsh of words. In the end it's all the same, like you said - it's the order flow and it's the market by whose rules we must all abide (because we ARE the market).

I've been trading those 85% retests of the last balance areas for a while, with mixed success mostly due to my so-so money management skills - as in, cutting the losers and letting the winners run. But the market is always right, and this method definitely works - when saturated with good personal discipline, which is currently the main focus of my work.

My most recent successful trade has been a break out of the May-June balance area on EU and EJ:




And my most recent failure has been just two days ago on EUR/GBP (though my intuition whispered doubts to me about that one):



I realize that just entering on retests of broken-out-of balance zones is probably a limited approach. But I still don't quite know what to look for beyond that. Could you comment?
Also, I would like to hear your opinion, what causes the price to eventually "stall and peak", as in - what order flow causes the real swing, as opposed to the continuation balance areas on the way up? Does it happen when enough people are finally deciding to take the profits, when big positions are liquidated from below? And more specifically - how do you think this "critical mass" of liquidation finally decides that it's time? I would be very interested to hear your thoughts.

On a side note, I've seen you mention a couple of times that the absence of FX market volume data makes it harder to follow changes in the order flow. Doesn't FX futures volume data help with that? Have you tried that? Is it reliable?

Also, as far as trades are concerned. I am currently watching NZD/USD for a possible short:



It has been balancing on top of the yearly range, and not a whole lot of buying seems to be showing at those levels:



The recent "whoosh" have forced alot of sellers to liquidate, but failed to attract new buyers to push price above the range - in fact, to even close around its upper edge. I'm waiting to see what happens if and once the late buyers sitting on that large wick are stopped out - will the move attract any new serious selling.

If you have learned to recognize an area or zone of balance, that is the part most have difficulty understanding. During this time you will be able to clearly see where buyers are stepping in, and where sellers are balancing that buying. It is what forms the extremes of the ranging price action. Again it not as simple as a single price point, it is a zone of where sellers, (liquidating longs, and new sellers) are coming in...it will never be the exact same price, and will cause "false breaks" that extend the limits placed by a single price point. However if you watch them often enough you will begin to see what is going on by the live price action, as it moves to the extreme...and poops out...then reverses. As well you will see the tick volume drop off at the extremes, and accelerate in the middle of the range, only to drop off again at the other extreme. I call this a "stable range". Not to say that the price or range is stable, but that the order flow is balancing between the buyers and sellers.

Once you learn to recognize this, then it will become obvious as well when one side has dominated the other...sometimes even before the break occurs. Most often one side (lets say buyers), are able to raise price to an area that completely cancels out the selling. Sometimes this is evidence by a big bullish candle that leaves no question as to what happened. Other times, you will see selling attempt at another run down, but that selling gets "absorbed" by new buyers. So price will go up to the top and stay there while price action goes back and forth furiously (all within a single candle)...then it suddenly breaks and the resulting "whoosh" takes out all the short stops...creating an even greater move higher...these "absorption" moves are usually the ones that DON'T come back to retest...my theory is because the absorption phase WAS the retest.

You are almost correct...I think of it more along the lines of exhaustion. Here's what I mean by that....for the moment forget about 4x or financial markets and think in terms of your local store that sells apples. I don't know what the price is where you are, but here a typical price is by the pound, let say, $1.31 USD/pound. Apples being fairly plentiful in the summer, usually sell for less, but during the winter, sell for a little more....but lets say the price rose, to $1.50...then $1.75...then $2.00...While some my continue to buy apples, there will come a point when no one will buy because its just too much...then they will buy something else...So apple sales plummet and prices come down before they all spoil.

That point where no one is interested in buying...is what I call the "exhaustion point"...price is just too expensive and people spend their money on some other fruit that costs less.

OK...it is the same with the financial markets. At some point, those who have bought are already in, and in order for price to continue rising, we need new buyers to continue bidding the price higher. So if no one else is interested in buying, price will stall and then start to tick down to attract more buyers. But if everyone that is going to participate has already bought, there is no one left to buy. This is the "exhaustion point". So those that were the last to buy, see the price moving against them, and start to "panic out". Those that bought below the market, have no urgency to sell quite yet. So as the late buyer liquidates (either by selling the market, or stopping out), this starts a cascade of sell orders that begins to attract sellers. The sellers join in and the price starts to "whoosh" downward. But again, at some point, all those interested in selling (for what ever reason) are in and no one is left to push price lower, you have another exhaustion point...this time on the sell side...and the cycle repeats. This is what causes "swing" points...they are really exhaustion points, where no one is willing to continue in the same direction and all those who are going to participate...are in.

Thus if your swing points continue getting higher, both on the bottom and top...you have what technicians call, a "bullish trend"...and the opposite is true for a "bearish trend". But it is nothing more than the same mentality that you use to buy apples at your local store. What do you consider too expensive to buy, or what do you consider a real bargain?


As I've said before, time is relative. What do I mean by that? How much time does it take for ALL the buyers who want to participate to actually pull the trigger and get in? Likewise with sellers? No one knows. Further, it is never the same from one exhaustion point to the next. That's why when you divide the market into 5 min increments, it will tell you a completely different story than if you divide the market up into 4 hr increments....and so on.

It really depends on how each and every participant views his/her goals, and what period of time they are wanting to accomplish those goals. Day traders want to accomplish their goal before the end of the day...even before the end of the session they are trading. The CEO of Toyota who is repatriating YEN, doesn't care if price moves 100 pips up or down, his time frame is much longer, most times out to 5 years. I doubt he would worry about a 150 pip drop on the day price when he is looking to capture 5000 pips over 5 years or less.

The best way I've found is what I've described ad nauseum here...

1. Look for exhaustion...usually happens inside my zone...if it moves through that zone, no worries, I didn't place an order yet anyway.
2. Watch for and "see" order flow change from dominance to balance
3. Watch for and "see" order flow change from balance to dominance (in the direction I want to trade)
4. Place my order for the retest.

For me it doesn't matter when the exhaustion happens, only that I can recognize it on time.

Agreed. Like I was saying in my original post I typically would be looking at the extremes, the point where you're referencing. But if you look at the area I shorted there's 6 weekly wicks, sellers came in heavy. Worth a shot. Stopped out but only half position. Hence why I don't trade CT

Update on USD/MXN - Short:

Price has continued to move my direction and now stands at approx. 800 pips profit. I have a limit order set at roughly 17.00. The current stop is locking 400+ pips.

The weekly chart shows, selling has once again clearly dominated the market. I have placed my stop above the the balance area where selling resumed its dominance. I suspect a retest will come this next week. I am a bit "uncomfortable" that my stop would survive a retest, when I look at it in terms of the weekly chart. I may begin running my stop down on a faster time frame, to preserve profit but will need to see how next week shakes out first.

Yes I can see what you refer to...and I completely understand your logic. I would only point out that those weekly wicks (for my part) would be considered now "cancelled" with the rise above that area and the dominance displayed as a "whoosh" occurred above that area. Now that supply area (from my view) is higher, where the eventual balance zone formed...at the high point.

Don, hi again. Thanks for your reply. The concepts you have described I seem to understand rather well. Most of them. I struggle specifically with point No. 3. Alright, there are obvious cases when a move out of a balance zone is a stop run, that gets "faded" immediately, i.e. it ends up being a long wick. But there are other cases, when the candle leaves the zone AND closes well above it, only to return the next day or in the next few days. Which is exactly what happened to my most recent unsuccessful trade on EUR/GBP, and this is why I want to take it and try to analyze it. FXCM's software is usually locked for maintenance (why would they need so much maintenance anyway?) throughout every Saturday, so I cannot post the most accurate chart with my exact position, I apologize in advance for that. I'll use MT4 instead.



This is the daily setup of the trade. The bullish candle has closed above the smaller immediate daily/weekly area, as well as above the larger weekly/monthly area dating to the beginning of the year. As is evident eventually, this was not a breakthrough, but a big stop run. It has failed to attract any more buyers at those high levels, and the price then retreated deep back in to the daily/weekly balance zone (=your apples analogy). Now I am trying to figure out what haven't I "seen" about the change in the order flow (or its absence).



Here we have the H4 situation (with the red line marking where my order used to be), up until the moment the order was activated. My reasoning was this - if this really is a breakthrough, there would now be buy orders waiting on top of that swing high and it's wick from June 27th. And for a while it seemed like it was the case.



Now I'm looking at H1 of the same time period, this is what I would see once my position would be in. I currently struggle to see any warning signs here that would scream at me - no buyers are coming in!! In retrospect, it could have been wise to wait for the price to retreat a little further, into what you, Don, are calling "the last stand of the opposing order flow", specifically this small hourly balance area, marked by the red box:



But what I observe once price does retreats there, would've given me an even stronger bullish case.. would it? Hm, I don't know.
I am well aware that I've made a mountain of mistakes here, but I am having a hard time identifying them. Hopefully you can point me in the right direction.

Hello again ZeliniCaj...you ask many salient questions and I can feel your frustration. Let me tell you that you ARE on the right path even though you don't seem to see it clearly yet. I understand this frustration completely...and lived with it for many years. Your questions cut right to the heart of the matter...how to put the "theory" into practical, usable, and repeatable actions. It sounds like you understand the basic concept of order flow and are now struggle to actually "see" it across the entire market. So before I go too much further let me lay down a few caveats:
(1) Understanding, seeing and then acting are different things...you've take the first step which is understanding...now you must train yourself to "see" it consistently, then develop an actionable rule set that will allow you to take advantage of your observations. This takes time and lots and lots of personal data. If you haven't already started tracking your observations and data on some kind of spreadsheet or database, I strongly encourage you to start asap.
(2) In English we have a saying, "Hind sight is 20/20". It is easy for me to tell you what you should've done, after the moment has already passed. But for the sake of learning and analysis, we use these "givens" to help us see what happened, and then recognize it as it IS happening in the present.
(3) No one is right 100% of the time. In fact the best of us struggle to be right more than 50% of the time. So my opinion is worth just what you're paying for it...nothing. I trade the way I trade because I have LOTS and LOTS of personal data on my trading that tells me there is a higher probability of success if I do it this way...that's not to mean that I don't lose...I do lose, and too often for my preference.

With that said, lets look at your market. First off, remember the market works as a whole. That is why we call it "THE market". When you begin to divide it into time frames, sometimes it is easy to lose your perspective and then find yourself going against the market. So with that, lets compare your daily chart referenced above to a weekly chart.

In the above shot this weekly chart encompasses the entire period of time in your daily chart. At first glance you can see most recently that on this time frame the market has been in a balanced state for the last 5 weeks. This may begin to explain why your trade failed...you were trying to go long at the top of this "short squeeze" where the shorts had their stops...but that doesn't explain everything...lets look out a little farther in time, again on the weekly chart.

Can you see on this area that what has been going on for the last 5 weeks is a retest of a previous balance zone? One that up until now had not yet been retested. With this perspective in mind, entering longs where you did might not have been the best plan...but you didn't look back that far and so, this view was hidden from you.

This brings me to my first point. The market is a whole entity even though we look at it through the lens of time, we are often bamboozled because we can't see enough information to understand the current theme that is playing out in the market. From what you wrote I'm confident that you perceived this move higher as a "break out" above that last balance zone, but failed to see the larger balance zone and the stop hunt that was occurring. The larger perspective is what helps us understand context in the market and once understood we can take advantage of smaller time frames to enter, and exit in smaller profitable positions that occur along the more encompassing perspective.

A common mistake I see in many who use multiple time frames is: (1) they treat them as separate and distinct, and (2) they are often too close together to gain a more overarching view of the market. Remember it is ONE market, not the 5 min, the hourly, the 4 hr, and daily....ONE market. That price on the right hand edge is the same price on ALL time frames.

So If I could sum up, I would say, that your view lacked the perspective offered by a larger time frame, and your execution lacked the ability to see the the order flow, had exhausted yet. So lets get into this latter part in the next post.

Continuing from my previous post #318. If you've learned to read and "see" order flow on the charts, you will recognize opportunities, all over the place no matter what chart you are looking at. The next part comes in how to execute on those perceived opportunities with the best probability of success, and the least amount of risk. It goes without saying this takes practice, and again copious note taking and data collection. It is not as simple as x+y=z...like most "systems" would have you believe. To repeat: (1) you must find the theme in the market (dominance or balance?) (2) you must "read" the stability of that theme...does it look like that theme will continue or is it changing? (3) if it changes what is the most likely thing to happen? Will it move from dominance to balance, or from balance to dominance, or are we in retest? (4) Finally you must look at each of these order flow states as they occur in real time and determine when or where to execute your order...either entry OR exit.

So lets look at your daily chart because you said, "this is a daily setup of a trade". From that I assume you were taking your execution signals from the daily chart.

While you didn't state it direction, you saw price move above the last two major price swings, range, then break. You placed your order and price just plowed through it...I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me. That is why I no longer execute in this fashion.
If you are wanting to use the daily chart to execute you will have to move your stop out further, which is probably not a desirable option for you. What may be of greater benefit is that once you see your signal, (in this case the rise above your balance zone) then go down to a smaller chart and watch it as it moves back in the retest direction. WHY? To avoid this very thing...thus if you happened to misread the order flow or if perhaps, things are just different than you thought, you don't expose your account to loss until you see the smaller time frame exhaust, balance, and reverse, then place your order in for THAT retest...all on the smaller time frame. Its the same thing you do on the larger time frame, but now you are applying it to the intraday market, to sense that change WHEN or IF it happens.
In your case it would've made your loss much smaller, but not eliminated it...I think.

So, using that context, let us look at your hourly chart and see if we can't find a better solution.

I have "corrected" the box you drew in, which seemed to encompass the entire balance zone and then some, to where I believe the target zone would've been more effective. Again, the last selling dominance that was clearly overcome. You can see price come into this area and exhaust. This is step one...exhaustion into the target zone. Then price moves sideways for 5-6 hrs. This is step 2, change in order flow from dominance to balance.

Now we see the weak, "late selling" come in. And this time the move is completely negated. This is step three... a change in order flow to buying dominance...Now you can enter your buy order which by my calculation would've risked between 15-25 pips. With a potential profit of 80-100 pips or even more if that top didn't hold.

As we know from hind sight, that this trade did lose, and in my opinion was in the wrong direction. And this brings up a good point as well. If you misread the order flow, you will know right away. And that in itself tells you something. Perhaps your perspective isn't large enough, and perhaps your time frames are too close together. It could also mean you are distracted by something else and is preventing you from concentrating. This happens to me quite often as well.

I do hope this helps though. I think the points I'm trying to make here are these:

1. Look at the market as a whole, and try not to think of it in terms of time or time frames, but rather in terms of order flow themes...balance, dominance, exhaustion.
2. Using multiple time frames is a must to dissecting and understanding what you see, but don't put them so close together. I separate them by a factor of 10 at least. Then I fine tune those time frames to allow me to best see the theme I'm wanting to execute.
3. Finally, once you recognize an opportunity, don't just throw an order "out in space". Watch your retest on a smaller time frame and SEE it go from exhaustion, to balance, to dominance, and THEN put your order for the retest on this smaller (almost microscopic by comparison) time frame. This will allow you to "See" the change and keep your risk low, as opposed to hoping your level was the right one, and then watching price take your order and stop you out very soon after.

Don, thanks! This was golden! I actually bailed on that position pretty early for a modest ~30 pip loss, but it was more of an intuition. After having read your previous posts and explanations, and as I was writing that post above, I HAVE looked and studied the retest on this trade - something I have never done before - and I'm currently studying retests on my previous trades, both successful and not so, and it is very interesting indeed. Thank you. Learning to "see" the change.

This also makes this simple fact really sink in - losses will happen quite frequently, no matter how good, or precise, or deep your knowledge. To be successful in such an environment requires most rigorous money management, and quite simply put - huge balls. Still working on all of that

Anyway, there is a pretty similar situation to the one discussed developing right now on AUD/USD. As things develop on Monday, it will be exciting to try and watch the order flow to understand what's happening.
For now, peaceful and relaxed weekend to all.