Order Flow - Finding cluster of stops on chart

A single chart is but one out of millions of possibilities. It's better to learn and discuss the mechanics of orderflow and forex market microstructure than to focus on specific occurrences suggested by the chart posters along with their own personal speculations that nobody cares about.

Give a man a chart interpretation; you have fed him for today. Teach a man how to trade, and he will post more charts.

Thanks for posting that chart HipsterPipster, some prefer a 1000 words I prefer a picture, and I have been wanting tick volume from Oanda as well, and now I have it :-)

Darkstar made a small point about possibility of trading without chart and we have moved from vacum to non-chart theory religion, ALRIGHT!

Exactly, focusing on the wrong thing. Without a chart how can you predict where TA's are going to place their stops?

There seems to be a natural progression.

At first everybody used 10 indicators on their chart. Didn't work.

Then the "naked" price action movement appeared, with candles only. Didn't work either.

Now we have the no-chart reverse-TA order flow religion like you said (with a sparkle of IFP, but nobody asks how come we all know about these super-secret barriers). Let's see if this works.

Obviously the next "great" thing is psychic trading - no chart, no price, just "something" which is yet to be discovered

I think people are looking too hard, keep it simple.

The secret of my success has been rumbled at last

A simple way to look at this is this. The big players have a bunch of trucks they are loading up at point A(congestion/accumulation). The big players then drive the full trucks up or down(flow/trend) to point B to unload the trucks(congestion/distribution)

Mark on your charts congestion and flow to the left of where price is now. You want to get in at the congestion (loading) period when the market starts showing which way it probably is going to go (lower highs, high volume in one direction during congestion descending triangles etc) and ride it down the flow(road) to the next congestion zone.

This happens on a grand scale and on a smaller scale all day every day. You just notice it more when its on a grand scale which means a lot of the big players/money are working together. You can see this with smaller amounts of money too.

Today on the GBP/USD at 8:30 EST it made a nice move up from 1.5940 to just below 1.5980 where it hung out and gathered money once it realized it couldn't push the market any further up which is apparent from the price exhaustion displayed. At around 9:15 EST you should of been going short here, not only was price exhausted to the upside, but we were seeing more volume/ clear moves to the south. You could of got in right around 1.5970 and rode it all the way down to the beginning at 1.5940. Thats thirty easy pips which is plenty for a day's work.

I almost prefer these small moves opposed to the obvious ones that can be seen on larger charts, because it seems that the bigger the move is the more bickering there is before the big move up or down.

What does this have to do with the stop clusters we are hunting? Well being a smaller scale there are not as many there, but I'm sure a few stops were just under that congestion area.

I'm sorry if this doesn't make perfect sense. I've taken bits and pieces from other members and just staring the charts for so long to form my own strategy.

Bleek am I making any sense to these guys. lol

PS It may be my first post here, but I have been lurking for a year.. Literally a year lol.

Or rather using the data that will create the chart.

So what sort of truck should I buy?

It's not about trucks, it's about Aircraft Carriers, the more you have and the more are the possibilities that one of those can get hit, but with a lot of them you can resist a lot, because they are 5 cells ships and so you can win the game. NO WAIT, that's sea-fight... sorry, I went OT. (lol)

Analogy overload!!!! Analogy overload!!!!

Obviously the ones that don't smell as bad.

Haha! Lost cause!

The big players loaded up on a shit ton of gbp/usd 6b contracts in their planes trains and automobiles and drove flew rolled jumped hopped skipped to a higher place to unload said spaceships this morning. Dunno about you but caught 90 ticks on that. +2800 gotta love them space ships.

In all seriousness guys take a step back. It's a lot simpler than you think.

Congrats. Now let's see ya do it consistently for at least 5 years.

Simple? Maybe. Easy? If it were, we'd all be millionaires.

No doubt it's difficult. But I'm 22 years old and have chosen this as a career. So I'm pretty determined. Do I think I'll be a millionaire, eh goals area a good thing. I'll be happy to be profitable and provide for myself and family in the future.

I don't think I'm nearly on the level of skill as Darkstar, Bleek and a few others here on the forum, but I aspire to be as good or better one day. But hey isn't that why we are all here

some stuff about trader style

Yeah, that Harris paper is a good one. The author of this paper is the Larry Harris of Trading and Exchanges, for those of you who care to know. I highly suggest all of Harris' work. There is more to be found with a google search, while you are at it look up Richark K Lyons and Carol Osler.

More market micro-structure and order flow papers than you can read - http://www.tradingphysics.com/Resources/Papers/

Good read. I felt deja vu after the first page. I didn't know Larry's real name was Lawrence.