Q&A Ask me anything about trading

After a cheeky but serious question in my main thread, and lacking much inspiration for regular posting any more, I decided to ask FF members for inspiration.
Hence starting this thread.

I'm not claiming to be anything other than a long time serious student of trading and markets.
I won't reveal any proprietary or secret information that would break any of the Non Disclosure Agreements I have signed i the past.
I won't be monitoring this thread frequently.

But I will do my best to answer any serious questions about trading - so ask me !

I am looking for a simple price action trading system, can you recommend one?

Short Answer: I know of many simple price action trading systems, I spent years researching and back-testing them, but I could not recommend any of them.

The reason for not advising use of simple price action systems is that they are all missing vital information:

1. Volume is important - even the tick volume supplied by MT4 Forex Brokers. It tells you which price action bars/candles are considered important by other participants. This applied to all markets, stocks, futures, commodities, options, forex etc. Anybody who tells you that Volume isn't important is either ill-informed, is an idiot, or is trying to sell a simple price action system! - Now you may say that you would include Volume as a component of a simple price action system, but volume is only the start.

2. The two major 'schools' of thought about trading are 'Technicals' versus 'Fundamentals'. The key information to extract from them is in which direction and from what price(s) are the large Institutions trading. Obvious really, since you don't want to be trading with the current biggest participants taking the other side of your trades.
Most traders tend to classify themselves as either a Technical or a Fundamental trader, though for the timeframes that most retail traders use, both of of equal importance for success - so focusing on one or the other doesn't usually work out very well.

2A. For Technical trading you want to know things like: Are the majority of Buy trades in profit - or is it the Sells that are in profit? And at which price would this change? Are there large Buy or Sell orders waiting to be filled? Are those large orders likely to be real or just spoofs? Where are people placing their physical/mental Stop Loss Orders and Profit Take Orders? - The study of these subjects is known as Order Flow Analysis or 'Tape Reading'.

2B. For Fundamental trading you want to know things like: Where do the big Institutions see Buy Value and where do they see Sell Value (known as either a Discount or a Premium to value respectively)? Are the big Institutions currently active in this market at this time? Are the biggest Institutions currently hedging this market against another one? Do the biggest need to keep price around the current level in order to load up on Orders before they allow the market to move? They can take days to get their whole position size on - a 10 Lot is no use to Goldman Sachs LOL! Or do they need to take price higher/lower in order to force out some other traders, so that they can load up on additional position size at a good price?


The nearest thing to a simple price action system that I can recommend uses Momentum and Acceleration as a proxy indication for many of the above. It is called the MAX.

Hi Ian0ster

Thanks mate, this is an eye opener, i will look into the MAX trading system.

Here is a question I was asked in my main thread: https://www.forexfactory.com/showthr...7#post12704957

My answer is:
Yes, you are correct about prior day High and Low (or even 'overnight' High/Low for US session traders) are important levels.
I agree that one of the main reasons for this is the existence of Stop Loss Orders (and possibly also 'mental' Stops) just beyond these levels.
I also agree that price extremes made during the main session(s) for a particular market are much more significant (because of higher volumes and more participants) than those reached outside of the main session(s).

However there some other things to consider when looking at new price action around these levels:
1. Are the Stops still there? Or have the buyers/Sellers already had such a big swing so that they have already taken their profit and perhaps fully exited?
2. Is 'value' still roughly the same as it was the last time at this level? - If so might whoever traded away from this extreme last time be likely to 're-load'?

I hope this helps.

No apologies for going off topic.
Off topic, but how about instead of just making money from it.
Why not help by joining international volunteer group to stop the Covid-19 outbreak?
See this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/sta...67530638282752
They have a group Slack workspace, which I have joined, for organising and sharing ideas.

They are looking for organising skills, technical skills down to people to deliver food to those self isolating and vulnerable, or just people with contacts/influence to find others with skills etc.

I got these questions via a personal message. There is no way i could reply via a PM (even if I was not severely limited on use of PMs by ForexFactory), so I plan to reply here in this thread, though it will take several posts.:
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Hello Ian,

I stumbled upon a few of your comments within a Market Maker (Steve Mauro) thread I was looking at. I was struck by the way yo spoke about Trading, especially from an Institutional understanding.

Anyway, I am contacting you as I am interested in learning more about some of the concepts and various approaches/understandings of how and when Institutions/Hedge Funds enter/exit and move the markets?

Thanks and I hope to hear back from you when you get the chance!
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Part 1 of my answer:

Types of market participant and their trading styles:

1. Market Makers (also known as Liquidity Providers). They are extremely short term 'scalpers' placing orders for both buys and sells on the Limit Order Book. Their aim is to make a 1 or 2 tick/pip 'spread' by offering to sell to (Market Order) buyers at a price of XXXX and at the same time to buy from (Market Order) sellers at a price of YYYY where YYYY = XXXX - 1 or 2 or sometime more.
They provide a service for which the various exchanges pay them. In the (non currency Futures) Forex, they provide Bid and Offer prices and quantities to the Brokers.
Mostly they are departments of Institutions who use Algos to do the actual trading because they need to be super quick so as to adjust their 'book' when they see signs of a trend. If they are too slow to widen their spread or to reduce the amount they are offering they can make huge losses since they are always taking the 'other side of the trade'.
There are some individuals who trade using this style, but they need very deep pockets!
It is in their interest to keep price fluctuating up and down continuously within a small range.

2. Momentum or Trend traders. These vary considerably in type and in Timeframe. From High Frequency Trading (HFT) Algos to those looking to make a profit based upon a weekly or even a monthly timeframe trend. They include all sorts of different sized Institutions as well as 'prop desks', individuals and even retail traders.
I include so-called counter-trend traders in this group because a successful counter-trend is itself a trend!
It is in their interests to have price trend - just the opposite of what the Market Makers want.

3. Commercials (also known as Hedgers). These are the really big guys who actually move the markets because they trade in such huge size, even when they are partially or completely hedged and so not risking any directional exposure to the market direction.

Part 2 follows later ...

Part 1A ....

I hesitated about including this piece because it is something that I really only understood after Ray taught it.
However other people have talked about it in somewhat different terms.

4. Liquidity Hunters (also called Stop Hunters, or Goldman Sachs). These are the trading equivalent of the School Bully. I believe that an ex-employee of Goldman's made them infamous for this by writing about it in the book 'Liars Poker' - I have not actually read that book.
Back when I first joined Forex Factory a pro-trader known as Dark Star was an exponent of this trading style.
It is most easily seen and understood on the Futures markets where you can see it in action by watching a Depth Of Market (DOM).
The key here is that it is only 'safe' to use this style if there are no Commercials active in the market at the time.
It consists of taking price into the nearest level of higher liquidity (orders on the Limit Order Book).
There are 2 important factors involved in this:
1. Most liquidity is false - even though this is theoretically illegal and some poor bloke in the UK was prosecuted for 'spoofing'. Thus the liquidity is only there to convince others to try to 'front-run' it and it will disappear once price gets too close.
2. A buyer needs other buyers at higher prices to which to sell (unload) their trade to. And a short seller needs sellers at lower prices to take the exit from their trade.

So the Liquidity hunter Algo (they are usually Algos) takes price to the nearest liquidity, absorbs the small amount which is too slow or too dumb not to get out of the way and then pushes prices far enough to trigger their Stop Losses for the exit.

Liquidity Hunters have no view on an overall market direction, they just need to avoid bigger players who might be using an 'Iceberg' technique for entry.

Next time it really will be Part 2 ....

Part 2 of my answer:

How do institutional Traders decide to Enter and Exit their trades:

Actually many/most retail traders use this too although they may not think of it that way.

It is VALUE. Back when I first came across Ray De Medici at CompassFX I was used to the concept of value for stockmarket investing, but had not realised that in a different way it could be applied to trading and even to things as esoteric as Currencies or currency pairs.

Now the first thing to note is that even outside of the investment and financial trading world, there is no such thing as absolute value.
You may feel that there is - for example when something you buy at a shop becomes either more expensive of more cheap than earlier. But this is just making the mistake of looking at it in isolation.
If the item has dropped in price, but in that time you have become unemployed, or even just you fixed outgoings such as rent has gone up, then despite the lower price, that item may well have become relatively more expensive to you in your changed circumstances.
Just think of toilet rolls and hand sanitiser before and then after panic buying caused by Covid-19, items that were well supplied in the shops and were low value for most people just had a huge surge in demand and so became much more valuable.

So Value isn't a static thing and is always relative. As Warren Buffett famously said 'price is what you pay, value is what you get' . They are two different things In the ordinary day to day domestic world prices and values change relatively slowly and infrequently, but in trading and investment they can change extremely fast. I am a 'news' trader so I can see a piece of scheduled news, or even a Tweet or a comment from some official dramatically change price and value in many different markets.

In Part 2A I will start to examine different types of relative value and how they are used in different trading styles.

Part 2A...
Howe different styles of Trading use different forms of Relative Value.

Retail Traders: Most retail traders are either pure gamblers or they use the probability of success in either Price Action, or Indicators or a combination of both. Many do this subconsciously, but others actually keep track of the success rate of their set-ups. From Double Tops, Head & Shoulders to Moving Average Cross-overs.
Even though there is a huge book on the probability of price action set-ups, in real life these probabilities change dramatically both between different markets and over time as the character of a market changes.

Market Makers: Value for a Market Maker lies in finding a period of higher than normal volume but lower than normal volatility. They would like price to stay all day long within a 1 or 2 tick/pip range provided people still kept trading. What they do to protect themselves against losses is to try to take as little trade as possible against the direction of the big Commercials whenever they appear. To help visualise this here is a made-up scenario and then a screen shot (one taken during a normal period of trading (i.e. no Economic News within the period).

How Market Makers avoid taking too big a loss on a swing:

Attached Image (click to enlarge)

How historical and current Liquidity looks on a chart. This is a chart from one of Ray's students asking me about Stop Loss placement. He had his too far for a scalp and too close for a Swing trade. I think it is a Jigsaw Auction Vista chart, but you can see similar using BookMap or Sierra Chart etc.). The lighter the line, the higher the liquidity, you can see how liquidity pulls away when price gets too close.
https://www.forexfactory.com/attachm...6&d=1529753322

Part 2A continued...

So lets make that diagram in the previous post a little more realistic and also reveal something many don't know about MarketMakers.....
Here's the diagram again

Attached Image (click to enlarge)

The Market Maker could also place Orders in the Limit Order Book above price as it dropped (filling in the LOB). Also they aren't the only potential counterparty to these Sell @Market orders. There may be other Market Makers and/or there may be some Commercial who wants to build up a position to the Long side and perhaps they already had Limit Order Buys in the book which formed part of those 80 contracts at which the MM decided the price would hold and so they could afford to accept more size.



Now the reveal - exchanges grant special order privileges to Market Makers. Normally the orders placed in the Limit Order Book are transacted first in first out, but Market Makers have access to special Orders which allow them to jump to the front of the queue (or the line as Americans would say).
Here is an example of the effect. Say that the Market Maker say only originally had 20 lots on the LOB out of a total of 60, where I show 80 reducing down to 40 - so some non -Market Maker had 40 lots there.
Then knowing that there were still 40 contracts/lots of Market Order Sells to be transacted, The MM could have added in another 20 lots to absorb all the Market Orders instead of just the 20 that they originally had in the LOB at that price.

Thus you can see how Market Makers use liquidity to manipulate both price and their exposure to getting too Long or Too Short at the wrong price, because to a large extent it is they who decide how much size they want to take on in which direction and a what price.

In my next posts I will consider Commercial (Hedgers) and then Momentum Traders

Part 2 continued

Commercials and Hedgers
The actions of the big Commercials and Hedgers seem to mystify most retail traders, but They aren't really so strange. The biggest problem that we have is that because of their sheer size most of them move very slowly - you can't turn an oil tanker around like you can a speedboat.

The obvious commercials are those who either produce a product or who use it to make something else which they sell.
So grain Farmers and Breakfast Cereal Companies.
Oil producers and Oil Refineries
Central banks and other banks

For the futures markets including Currency Futures, a good source of information is the Commitment Of Trader (COT)
Here is a link to basic information on the COT and how to read it: https://www.babypips.com/learn/forex...traders-report


This is the COT for the 6B contract i.e the futures equivalent of GBP/USD

I don't know if you can see it clearly, but the 'Dealers' (who are Commercials for this market) are most heavily long when price is relatively Low and are least long when price is relatively High. In other words they buy at lower prices and they sell at higher prices - as you would expect!

Those Hedgers who don't have a product are big Institutions who don't like to take a directional bet on market direction.So they take a pair of markets which are quite highly correlated and wait for them to diverge sufficiently that they can trade both of them back in opposite directions towards being at 'Fair Value' again.
Many retail traders know that the currency pairs are correlated with the Bond Yield spread between the respective sovereign bond. Several Banks have written articles for their clients about using the yields on the 2yr Bonds for this.
The big Institutions tend to hedge the exchange rate against positions on the respective Bonds. Obviously there isn't a quick profit in this - they take trades of considerable size and often make a small relative profit (but on huge size) and for next to no risk! But this means that such trades take time (hours to weeks) to develop.

Attached Image (click to enlarge)

You can see how they are fairly well correlated, plus the opportunity when they get sufficiently far away from fair value to each other

Attached Image (click to enlarge)

Similarly in general globally, Oil is priced in US Dollars. So Oil is relatively cheap (for non-US entities) when the US Dollar is cheap and vice versa. Thus Oil price can be hedged against the inverse of the Dollar Index (which is roughly equivalent to the EUR/USD Forex pair.



Again, the opportunities can be seen on smaller timeframes (perhaps as small as a 30min chart).

Attached Image (click to enlarge)

Some caveats to my post above about Commercials:

1. Although higher yield for Sovereign bonds is generally supportive of higher Forex rates, this is only true for the Major Currencies.
A higher yield on South African/Brazilian/Argentinian/Thai sovereign bonds is much more likely to be because of risk to the economy - and thus a trigger for the currency to drop rather than to rise!

2. While the big 'investment banks' currently need avoid directional market exposure on their trades and so must Hedge, it wasn't always that way! Before the Great Financial Crisis in 2007/2008 they used to take big directional trades (with big risks) but with huger potential profit.

3. There are other market correlations than the ones I highlighted. The ones I have shown are ones that I can show because they are well known and not something that I have only seen taught on particular courses. The 'best' ones are ones which are actually traded markets in their own right (because people are putting money on the line. Sometimes the market traders will pay more attention to one of these and at other times pay more attention to another one.
For example when Interest rates are at emergency lows (all over the major economies right now), the yield differentials are less relevant than when there is a greater differential between yields on say the Aussie bonds and the Japanese bonds (which in the past formed the basis for the 'Carry Trade').

A correlation is of no use for trade decision purposes if it is too closely correlated - since it offers too few trade opportunities. This is because it doesn't diverge enough to offer good hedge opportunities and/or only very rarely diverges sufficiently.

4. The 'secret' to how to trade in the direction of the Commercials is 2-fold:
A). You must be patient since they require sufficient divergence in order to make for a profitable Hedge trade, plus it takes time for them to get sufficient trade size on before they show their intentions and allow the trade to take off.
B). You need to understand that while the Commercials are accumulating their position on a trade they will actually take smaller trades opposite to their intended trade direction in order to create a 'false sense of shorter term trend' and manipulate price to areas where they can pick up much larger size at advantageous prices. So it helps it you have a good understanding of both Price Action/Macro Order Flow as well as of Value.

Part 2 continued

Prop Desk style traders (also known as Momentum traders)

The people who trade this style don't (usually) have the funds to be able to trade in a Hedge style like the big Banks, though some may trade this way because:
A). They are not prohibited from it by the institution they work for.
Or B). They can do what they like because they are trading on their own account.

In the classifications of the COT these are mostly either Large Specs or Small Specs. They take directional 'trend trades' and are therefore usually going Long a market when the Commercials are selling and they are going Short a market when the Commercials are buying.

The problem that they face is in the trade-off between having enough confidence in the Trend and in getting in early enough in the Trend.
So mostly they trade in a similar way to Lance Beggs (of Your Trading Coach). I have posted several of his free emails on his trading style in my 'Institutional Education ? ' thread.
Whatever timeframe they use, from a few seconds to hours, they look for their own particular confirmation of a Trend and then attempt to enter on small pullbacks. Institutions and well resourced retail traders tend to do this using automation - computer Algorithms, but many retail traders do it manually like Lance.

These guys don't manipulate price so much as add fuel to keep a trend moving, but once it starts to stall they may resort to similar tactics to the Commercials:
Using a small amount of profit to push price just far enough against the trend to encourage other (smaller) traders to enter their own fades. Trying to time their exits from these counter trend trades so that A). they take a small profit and B). They can also not only add back to their original trade size, but use the profit to add in even more size.
Then they push price back enough to start triggering the stops of those traders they just duped. It is these Stops which then fuel the trend to continue a bit further. Then Rinse and Repeat - until the trend changes!

Part 2 (final post)

Here is an example of Momentum trading taken from one of Lance Beggs emails (of Your Trading Coach)

https://www.forexfactory.com/attachm...1&d=1584217262

Lance is pretty much a scalper (hence the larger timeframe chart is only 1 minute and the chart in the dotted box is something like 20 seconds, but the principles are the same:
Find a trend (by whatever definition you use), wait for a pullback (some only use small pullbacks, some only use 'simple' pullbacks where others also use larger and/or more complex pullbacks).
Look for whatever Price Action, Volume, OrderFlow combo meets your entry criteria and then ride that trend as far as you feel you can.

I saw this question in another thread ( was addressed to the thread starter who has not posted in FF for several months). So I answered it, and thought I might place it and my more detailed answer in here:

Question: Why would you look at 10 yr bonds over lets say 2yr or 5yr

Answer: Not sure who you are asking, since EcoTrader doesn't post in here anymore.
However many people use the 10yr bond yields spreads for Forex e.g. 1/(US10YrYield- DE10YrYield) as a correlation to EUR/USD or (UK10YrYield-US10YrYield) as a correlation to GBP/USD
But that isn't to say that they ignore the 2Yr Yield or the 30yr Yield - just that almost every country has a 10yr Bond and it represents a midpoint between the 2yr (driven almost totally by the short term economy and Interest Rate forecasts) and the 30yr (driven much more by Inflation).

I hope this helps.

I got this question in my main thread:

Quoting wmram

Disliked

Trading retail OTC Forex in USA, so FIFO affects all positions opened. Broker is Oanda. Costs with spread and slippage about 1.6pips per side. Would you take Rays' course if you were working in that kind of environment, or would you feel like you had to move to Futures mkt. to get anything of genuine use out of the course.

Ignored

Here is my answer:

Hi wmram, Thanks for your question.

It's impossible to give a specific answer, since it very much depends both upon you and your Broker. However Ray keeps saying that you should always trade the different styles and techniques he teaches using a Demonstration or Simulation Account until you have mastered them. This should be of the same size that you would trade a live money account. So that by the time you are putting real money at risk it is all second nature to you.

All of Ray's teaching is based on how he was taught by the big Banks, how he has taught traders at the big Banks and how he has adapted those so that an ordinary retail trader can either use or make use of the professional's trades.

I understand only too well how costs per side per unit can make of break a trading strategy.

While Ray's full Sharp Edge course covers all timeframes and nearly all markets and styles of trading, his 'Tape Reading' course is mainly focussing on the shorter timeframes and being able to Scalp a market. Ultimately it will cover some specifics about trading the ES Future. This was chosen because of the availability of the Micro ES Mini contract which is $1.25 per tick and has a day Margin of as little as $50 which makes it 'affordable' for most retail traders.

Having said that, there was nothing he covered last Monday which was either Market or Timeframe specific, though this will be less so going forward, indeed some of what he will cover will be only applicable to trading the Equity Indices and some only to trading the Futures Markets.

I found that with Forex it was not just the costs that were important, but the rules of the Broker. Some Brokers had rules which effectively prevented (or severely restricted) Scalping e.g. Actions to prevent you opening and then closing a trade within less than 1 minute, not allowing Limit and/or Stop Orders within 1 or 2 (full sized - 4 digit) pips/ticks etc.
Certainly if your Broker is like that then you won't be able to either Scalp or even trade short swings the way that Ray teaches and advises.

I know that things have changed since I last traded Spot FX. I also know that Oanda has a reputation as a good retail Broker - though I have never traded with them.
Back when I did trade Spot FX and CFds my absolute maximum spread was 3.0 ticks or pips - which is per Round Turn and was mainly for News Trading which although short time-frame is very high Volatility.
Your 1.6 would be a little outside my tolerance back then. I traded Euro/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, EUR/GBP all at less than 1.0 pips spread. I traded S&P (500) Index at a spread of 0.3 (where a Tick is 0.25), DAX Index at a spread of 1.0, and WTI Oil at a spread of 3.0 (but I only ever traded the high volatility EIA Oil Inventories with that spread).

I hope this helps.

P.S. FIFO really doesn't make a difference, except in managing complex multi-unit, multi-entry layer strategies.

Here is a message sent to me as a PM:-
My answers are in Blue

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Hey Ian, got some questions regarding Ray's reading the tape course.
1. What trading platform does he teaches on and is it necessary to get those platform in order to trade the method?

For charting, Ray has been using both TradingView and Sierra Chart in his teaching. I know that other charting platforms such as Ninja Trader either have some of the Order Flow/Footprint features that Ray shows (or can have them added as separate packages). Though they are more expensive than form using Sierra Chart. For alternatives to TradingView (which doesn't have OrderFlow) but is great for correlated markets (Value Lines) the only alternative I know of is to use Sierra Chart with an added subscription for the specific data for Ray's most used Value Lines.
However the most important basic bricks in the foundation of tape reading are just Price, Volume and Time of day - which can be found on all charting platforms.
So far as trade execution is concerned, any efficient trading platform is OK. I spent years trading from a Broker's proprietary platform while using various other platforms for my charting. Currently I trade through my Sierra Chart Platform, but still use TradingView for some of my analysis.

2. I haven't done anything in regards to what Ray teaches. Can I still understand and implement those?

I'm not sure what you are asking here. Ray teaches trading using many different subjects - more than any person could use at the same time. Even the Tape Reading course covers a lot of things from which most students will pick their choices which blend best with their own trading style, leaving others 'on the back burner' for possibly adding in after the first one have been fully digested and become second nature.

The Tape Reading course assumes that the student is familiar with trading, but unfamiliar with both market participants (Institutions, Market Makers, Prop Desks etc.) and also unfamiliar with the techniques Ray teaches.

3. Does the Sharp edge course have the materials which are in the read the tape?

Ray's courses are constantly evolving. I found that he has covered some 'Sharp Edge' material in a rather different (and helpful) way on the Tape Reading course, but the Sharp Edge course is the complete one and includes everything he has taught so far.

I have have few more questions. Thanks!
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re is a question I got asked in my main thread:

Hi ianf0ster,

I saw couple of videos from Ray on Youtube & bit confused.
He never show MT4 screen & most of the time talk about 2 lines. It's quite difficult to relate it to forex trading.
After reading last few posts understood he will share those tools later but still without MT4 & no forex pairs being discussed, I'm still wondering what exactly is the course about.
I thought of joining Reading the tape session but unfortunately it's timezone is not very convenient for me.
Can you please clarify? Thanks a lot.
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Hi mahavir,
Ray's 'Tape Reading Course' covers the basic which apply to all markets (including spot FX), but on the Order Flow side of things it is based upon the Micro E-Mini Index Futures.

MT4 doesn't have the features to enable examination of Order Flow the way it is used by the majority of professionals - it is a Broker's platform, not even a good one for retail traders, but convenient for Brokers since itis free and can be supplied with cheap data.

Ray talks about more than 2 lines, however for each market (including Spot FX currency pairs) there is one or 2 main correlated markets (not other currency pairs) which he calls 'Value Lines'. These enable us to have roughly 70% correct bias as to in which direction the main move of the day will be - though we use 'Order Flow' and 'Wholesale Price Levels', Price Action and Volume in order to get the best Entry and Take Profit areas.

All the course sessions (both for the 'Tape Reading course' and for the full course) are recorded and can be viewed whenever is convenient for us.

The Charting/trading platforms that Ray shows are: TradingView (the white background screens) and Sierra Chart (the dark background screens).
TradingView is also used by retail FX educators such as BKForex. We only use it for 'the bigger picture' and for our 'Value Lines'.

For professional style Order Flow, a more sophisticated platform is required (together with a paid for data feed). As alternatives to Sierra Chart NinjaTrader, Jigsaw tools and Bookmap are other platforms used by some of Ray's students.

 

1. It's no secret that Interest Rates and economic outlooks are the main fundamentals behind the currency markets. Many people know that the yields on sovereign Bonds give a good indication of expectations of both of these.
   Tradingview is the best source I know of for being able to plot these on your charts.
   
   I know that most retail Spot FX traders don't use much apart from price based indicators, here is a current TradingView chart of the Euro/USD with bond yield difference and obvious levels marked.
   
   Could you make money from knowing these plus when to trade? - Oh yes, we also learn when to trade, though it is quite obvious once you know how to find it.

A member called MAX1337 asked me the following question in my main thread:
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In the image I have marked 2 places. I was wondering if Ray's student caught these moves especially the marked on the right side (black circle) because I am sure many retail traders with numerous lagging indicators could have caught those move. I ask this because in the marked chart, the value line is not clear as in divergence to the price. Do the full institutional course teach us to trades these moves when the single value line isnt clear like in these marked chart? Would be great to catch these moves as well. It would be great if you could mark these chart as to where long/short entries would have been taken by Ray's student.
Thank you for your time

Attached Image (click to enlarge)

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Unfortunately I'm not allowed to give a detailed answer, since that would mean breaking the Non-Disclosure Agreement that I signed.

But there is more to 'Value Lines' than divergence and there are more than just a single Value Line - just that most of them I'm not allowed to share with non-students.
However in broad brush strokes:

1. Just because there is value, doesn't mean that the commercials (the biggest of institutional traders) will be trading it immediately. They need both sufficient value that they can obtain the size they want on the trade, plus they need to take whatever time it takes in order to accumulate all the trade size.
In the worst case this can take days.
This is why I place those obvious price levels on the chart - they are often called 'wholesale price levels' because their always tends to be more liquidity at them - which means that any commercial interested in accumulating a position is likely to be active in the market when price is around them.

2. So once it is confirmed that Value does exist we are taught to look for areas where Commercials may be interested in dealing and then look for signs that they are actually dealing there - or at least have dealt there in the recent past and so may still be interested in adding at around the same price.

3. The answer is yes, Ray's students (those who trade the E/U at least) did participate in the long trades in the areas that MAX1337 circled.
Because that chart is a 1hr timeframe and there were good short trades available , it is unlikely that any of Ray's students held both long trades for the whole of those trends. That initial short in the first circle from just below 1.1240 would have been taken before the 3 longs off the 1.1200.
Similarly in the second circled area, the long on the London Open (rejecting 1.1250 and 1.1275) , the short of the London 'fix', then after the weekend the short on the London Open, the long on acceptance above 1.1320, the next day's long on the rejection of the London Open's re-test of 1.1320.

There are other trades that some of Ray's student may have taken in those areas, but I'm only including those in the higher volume periods i.e London Open to New York Lunchtime, because during the quieter period Commercial may well be moving price against their intended trade direction in order to pick up more size at better prices when the volume returns.