Last minute direction changes

I have been trading and watching charts for a couple years, and it seems like a lot of the time the direction of a bar will change in the very last minute or few minutes depending on the time frame. I consider the close price really important, so it seems significant to me that the last couple minutes of movement in a 15 minute bar for example are often different than the first 10 or so.

Is anyone else seeing this or am I just noticing it when it does happen? This would of course be the way reversal bars like pinbars and outside bars are formed, but it seems like many bars show this behavior.

I'm wondering if this is something a trading system could be developed around. Maybe an indicator that tracks and displays the last minute or two of movement on several time frames. I'm open to ideas and thought this might be something worthwhile to discuss.

Thanks in advance for any input, all I ask is that anyone who posts does so with respect to the opinions and input of others.

Cheers,

Cory

il answer to the best of my abilities. its a bull trap, what happens is when the market gets exhausted and near a price ceiling or floors, bigger traders like.. westfarmers even know where the stop losses are so they put in enough money to make a small spike to hit the stop losses.. because it hits the stop losses every trader automatically closes their trade therefore has a counter effect. e.g. eur usd price is going up and ur shorting the eur but ur only 5 pips away from your stop loss. they spike it up 5 pips so u close the trade others buy your position so that strengthens the euro.

i could explain better but im so exhausted from studying goodluck hope u picked up on it

If you think you've noticed something valid and are wondering if it works...why don't you try it out?? Hello.

oh right my bad i thought u were asking what that spike was haha

Well I am curious if other people have noticed the same thing. This is the "discussion" forum . I don't have a specific idea yet for a method to take advantage of it, but I think it could be useful information to share with others, and I was wondering if anyone else would like to work together to find a way to profit from it. "Two heads are better than one."

I'm doing my own research as well but sometimes getting different perspectives and ideas together leads to something great.

Cheers

Cory

your observation is quite valid, and in fact if you check the times you will notice that this usually happens right before a major market closes...ie Tokyo, London, US, etc.

This is the result of the major player jockeying their positions right before "the fix" at the end of the day's trading in each zone.

lately GBP/USD has been jumping around like this at the London fix. It jumped like 40 pips in 90 seconds today.

This only really matters if you are trading extremely small time frames and running tight stops as a result. For those of us who trade longer time frames it isn't much of a concern.