Your Charts are Too Complicated | Forex Factory

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Your Charts are Too Complicated

  • #1
  • First Post: Nov 17, 2025 9:41am Nov 17, 2025 9:41am
I have been trading futures since 2008. I'm going to tell everyone here that gets too into technicals or trading systems... That timing is only half of the equation, and it's the less important half. Big money and big position shifts happen for real reasons.

These are my simplified market structure charts which I use for macro analysis. All big directional breakouts in currency markets have real themes and stories behind them.

At this moment, the euro is easing back as people take profits on the massive surge of buying which was done as DOGE cuts were reversed/eliminated, and Trump's big BBB spending bill shocked everyone who thought this admin was going to be somewhat disciplined about spending.

Big speculator positioning was moderately extended long the euro recently, but it was not super-crowded…

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Structure and time.
  • #2
  • Nov 17, 2025 10:05am Nov 17, 2025 10:05am
If you cannot explain the theme and story behind why the big boys are positioning tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or even more... You will never make it in swing trading.

The day to day movement is just noise... Sometimes someone big puts on a buy program, or a sell program, or people getting hyped about some random news.
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Structure and time.
  • #3
  • Nov 17, 2025 10:02pm Nov 17, 2025 10:02pm
anybody can take a chart and then create a story to sit next to it
life is a reflection of what we allow ourselves to see
  • #4
  • Nov 17, 2025 10:40pm Nov 17, 2025 10:40pm
Quoting mikeeating
anybody can take a chart and then create a story to sit next to it
Exactly! Threads like this don't help people to become better traders.
Learn from your mistakes and march on.
  • #5
  • Nov 18, 2025 1:11am Nov 18, 2025 1:11am
Quoting mikeeating
anybody can take a chart and then create a story to sit next to it
Whatever the story is, can we trade without it ?

One of stories:

Short POC and cover naked POC below.
POC highest volume level = biggest interest.
Price move from level of interest to then next.
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I might be wrong , I have been wrong before
  • #6
  • Nov 18, 2025 3:06am Nov 18, 2025 3:06am
When it comes to big money managers... Except for a few discretionary funds... Literally NOBODY moves money around just based upon "technicals" when it comes to FX.

They watch central bank decisions, trends in countries economic data, etc... Hard data, and real policy shifts.
Structure and time.
  • #7
  • Nov 18, 2025 3:17am Nov 18, 2025 3:17am
FX has much more "Price agnostic order flow." noise than equities. Billion dollar buy/sell programs hit the market every week which warp the market for hours or days which are literally just "noise" and buisiness related. It's not speculators trying to "game" the market.
Structure and time.
  • #8
  • Nov 18, 2025 3:24am Nov 18, 2025 3:24am
Actually, they do. If you just look at the market technically and do not consider central bank decisions, the Fed, and government fiscal policy...

You will never be consistently successful in trading. This is just a warning to those that get lost in the market numbers, and fail to look at the real fundemental shifts which are causing a directional bias in the random day to day noise.

Quoting here2there
{quote} Exactly! Threads like this don't help people to become better traders.
Structure and time.
  • #9
  • Nov 18, 2025 3:31am Nov 18, 2025 3:31am
Thats not a real story that anyone who moves real size makes decisions based upon...

Thats just something random you made up based upon random numbers.

Big money shifting positions is literally only just doing stuff like monitoring how close their order executions are to VWAP, and making sure their order execution is not warping the market pricing too much and giving them bad execution.

Quoting Mandariin
{quote} Whatever the story is, can we trade without it ? One of stories: Short POC and cover naked POC below. POC highest volume level = biggest interest. Price move from level of interest to then next. {image}
Structure and time.
  • #10
  • Nov 18, 2025 3:39am Nov 18, 2025 3:39am
Point of control is just a random number which you are using as a "point of reference." Everyone has different timeframes, different start date/times, etc... Everyone sees random different point of control numbers.

There is no standardized number that everyone is using like decades ago when daily pivot numbers were published for all the floor traders to pay attention to.
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Structure and time.
  • #11
  • Nov 18, 2025 4:19am Nov 18, 2025 4:19am
Quoting mrBaller
Point of control is just a random number which you are using as a "point of reference." Everyone has different timeframes, different start date/times, etc... Everyone sees random different point of control numbers. There is no standardized number that everyone is using like decades ago when daily pivot numbers were published for all the floor traders to pay attention to. {image}
Nice, you are using SC too. Biggest volume traded on daily/weekly/monthly, can we call that level random ?
I would say biggest money managers have hand in it and are happy to buy under value area and sell above value area.
But you are right - traders break good working things by twining settings. Lets use EMA instead SMA,
lets outsmart other trades by using 18 EMA instead of 20 EMA and smartest even shift/displace it to the "future"
I might be wrong , I have been wrong before
  • #12
  • Nov 18, 2025 4:39am Nov 18, 2025 4:39am
There are certain things which pretty much "everyone is on the same page" on...

For example, if you look at the turning points for all EMA's in the 15-50 range, and all SMA's in the 10-40 range... You will notice that everyone is pretty much seeing the exact same trend changes, but with slightly different delays.

If you use EMA's and SMA's for entry, but combine it with other types of news/fundemental analysis... It does not really matter what numbers you use. Just get used to the numbers you pick and have a reason for picking them. Shorter MA's are better for shorter trade durations.

I do actually use one moving average in trading... Just one. It's just to check if the market is "running" and people are piling into the confirmation area, or if people are not really chasing. It's a critical decision point for if a trade should be held, or scratched out on.

Quoting Mandariin
{quote} Nice, you are using SC too. Biggest volume traded on daily/weekly/monthly, can we call that level random ? I would say biggest money managers have hand in it and are happy to buy under value area and sell above value area. But you are right - traders break good working things by twining settings. Lets use EMA instead SMA, lets outsmart other trades by using 18 EMA instead of 20 EMA and smartest even shift/displace it to the "future"
Structure and time.
  • #13
  • Nov 18, 2025 4:41am Nov 18, 2025 4:41am
Yes, I have only used SierraChart since like 2011.

Quoting Mandariin
{quote} Nice, you are using SC too. Biggest volume traded on daily/weekly/monthly, can we call that level random ? I would say biggest money managers have hand in it and are happy to buy under value area and sell above value area. But you are right - traders break good working things by twining settings. Lets use EMA instead SMA, lets outsmart other trades by using 18 EMA instead of 20 EMA and smartest even shift/displace it to the "future"
Structure and time.
  • #14
  • Nov 18, 2025 5:07am Nov 18, 2025 5:07am
There are guys who have entry systems as simple as this... Who barely ever have a single down day in a year. This type of MA trading results in a lot of scratches, and a some big wins.

The magic is not in the technicals, it's in the experience they have in judging how they think people will react. Will people get emotional and chase price moves, or do people really not care about the news catalyst, etc... This type of trading setup really is for VIX 20+ trading. During CPI/Jobs report days it can work, but... No news VIX 12-15 market, forget about it.

Yes... Just 50 SMA. There are guys who do hundreds of thousands a year with it as their only technical tool. It's only one part of their decision making proccess.

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Structure and time.
  • #15
  • Nov 18, 2025 5:10am Nov 18, 2025 5:10am
I mean, there use to be some guys on the floor in the old days who's decision making proccess was as stupidly simple as...

"Price is going from the bottom right to upper left, buy! And, if price is going from the top left to bottom right, sell!"

They had a system... It was just the direction the number of bars on their charts were going, lol...
Structure and time.
  • #16
  • Nov 18, 2025 5:42am Nov 18, 2025 5:42am
Let me explain it simply… Markets are driven by viral stories, themes, and fads.

It’s why you have things like Fartcoin which go viral on social media and expand to billions in market cap. It’s just like how a Ponzi scheme works. If a Ponzi has a good enough viral ratio to capture new participants vs the saturation of previously captured participants… As long as the market saturation remains below a critical collapse threshold, it can continue to spread.

All highly speculative markets work this way, from metals, to gold, stocks, etc…

You ever wonder why 99% of quant funds cannot reach above 51% win rate? It’s because the market always has a new theme, and new story, some new hype… Every week.

The past does not matter.

This week everyone in stocks and indices is waiting for NVDA earnings to see if the Ai growth story is still solid.
Structure and time.
  • #17
  • Nov 18, 2025 6:30am Nov 18, 2025 6:30am
I’m not talking about any story. I’m talking about the primary story which can be proven.

The one where you can go back and interview the fund managers and traders after the event who placed large sell orders or buy orders and what influenced their decisions. The largest participants have the most voting power, and what drove their decisions was the primary market driver.

You would be amazed what the SEC can discover through the consolidated audit trail nowadays.

Quoting mikeeating
anybody can take a chart and then create a story to sit next to it
Structure and time.
  • #18
  • Nov 18, 2025 6:58am Nov 18, 2025 6:58am
Institutional investors and fund managers are a big herd which are always talking and thinking about the same exact stuff. Media also focuses everyone else on the story and theme of the moment.

There are times when it's quite easy to just interview market participants who adjusted their positions, put in motion buy/sell programs, sent in market orders... And just get a poll for the main reason why. Sometimes there isnt a main theme, but most of the time there is. And it can be proven simply by doing interviews with active market moving participants.

In the past, it was quite simple... It was only less than a hundred active money managers who primarily dominated price movement in the S&P 500.

Retail has taken a lot more dominance over price since this NVDA/Ai mania got going. Retail was shifting upto 5 billion/day into the Mag 7 through mid 2025.
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Quoting mikeeating
anybody can take a chart and then create a story to sit next to it
Structure and time.
  • #19
  • Nov 18, 2025 7:11am Nov 18, 2025 7:11am
In markets... Stories shift price, price shifts attract people, those people buy/sell more if the story is more convincing. More people get pulled in as the story spreads. Everything spirals until the theme reaches saturation...

Once story saturation is achived, the price move is over.

During the Fed rate hike cycle in 2022 active managers reduced their stock market exposure to around 7%. The reason they did it... Rate hikes, and geopolitical risk from the russia war. Any of them can tell you that was the primary theme. There are no alternative stories or themes. There was only two. Just ask any fund or money manager.
Structure and time.
  • #20
  • Nov 18, 2025 8:44am Nov 18, 2025 8:44am
Quoting mrBaller
I mean, there use to be some guys on the floor in the old days who's decision making proccess was as stupidly simple as... "Price is going from the bottom right to upper left, buy! .
That's certainly a new one...were they using time travel?
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