Order Flow - Achieving the mindset

I can sense your frustration just reading your post, haha. You're halfway there man. First things first, defining order flow, and it's important to define because you need to see that order flow is NOT something that you can only get with level 2 data or DOM or whatever.

In the simplest sense it means that someone - whether a person, hedge fund, whatever - has an opinion where price will head and wants to execute a trade. If they want immediacy, they can opt for a market order which removes liquidity from the market. If they want to provide liquidity, they can opt for a limit order (I read Darkstar's book years ago so I'm a little rusty on the microstructure--it's not that important anyway, IMO). This person is providing order flow because they're participating in buying/selling and influencing the price.

Anyway, the art and science of OF trading comes from analyzing the metagame - looking at the order flow of traders that actually move the markets. Trying to figure out what would cause big traders to sell off their positions in droves, or start buying like crazy and drive price up. Small fish like us are in the order flow too, but we don't have the power to move markets so why bother. That's all order flow analysis is.

So you've charted the info on forexlive, but why? The goal is to find a price level that many people are aware of and will gun for. Forexlive is a widely read site so if they post some stops, you can bet people will mark them on their charts. You can do the same by pulling up a daily chart and marking obvious S/R. So this is the first part of the puzzle and fairly straightforward.

The second part of the puzzle is knowing how to actually trade with that info...this is where analyzing the metagame comes in - meaning learning about sentiment analysis, market expectations, scenarios, etc. 99% of this information is foune outside of the charts. You're trying to figure out how to use price action to do that, and that will lead you to a dead end because price action isn't what moves markets - large order flow is.

I would strongly, strongly recommend you check out orderflowforex.com and darkstarforex.com. I'm a member of both.

PS - let me know if I'm rambling...just trying to pass time at work

I have visited those websites, orderflowforex is a pay site, I have read darkstars book. I have it.

Now you say 99% of what I'm looking for is not on a chart, so where would I find this info?

you are suggesting that I look at fundementals and try to figure out what it means?

That is a daunting thing, why? because there are lots of things that can effect a currency pair. How do I know which one to place weight on?

To me that is another subjective topic, correct me if I'm wrong?

You are right in your first comment, I am a little frustrated. It seems like these forums are a way for people to theories what the market is and does.

It's a wild goose chase trying to find the truth.

You have a forum like forex factory and others, traders helping each other and newbies to learn, that is the purpose of it?

But its like the blind leading the blind on some of these threads.

Now I have tried everything, I realised that I needed to understand what was going on behind the scenes to be able to trade, I realised that its not price action that makes you money but what causes the price action. That's what has lead me on this journey.

No your not rambling at all, but some more clear concise answers would be nice. you could Pm me if you don't care to share it with the thread vistors.

dappa is not the only one
it's kind of frustrating too for me


i don't know the where to start...
any idea lolpie?

There are so many ways to play it, you must do a lot of testing and see for yourself. I suggest you check out the news feed on Darkstar's site and see if you can get something out of it, apply the flow info in your trading.

Dappa - you've read DS's book...I wasn't aware of that. So what's the confusion with exactly? The book tells you how to learn sentiment analysis (well, sort of - that chapter was so half-assed and frustrating) and then how to trade off of it. Where are your hangups? What I had said wasn't to learn fundamentals. You don't need to learn how interest rates work and how they'll affect markets...you need to learn whether a good or bad interest rate announcement will cause traders to short or long - see the difference? It's a lot less work than learning economics.

Rockrobb - I'm still learning order flow trading, everything I know comes from DS's book and the mastery course from orderflowforex. I hate to be that guy, but if you're interested I would suggest investing in either product. It would seriously cut down on learning time and most importantly tell you what to actually focus on. DS's book was like $120 or so when I bought it. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to divulge the price of the mastery course as I got it in an pre-sale offer from grkfx directly, so you'll have to PM and ask him.


Sorry I can't be more help

I read the book, the book didn't really go into sentiment as I recall, it more talked about market mechanics more so if I recall.

One hang up I had was with the whole vacumm thing, still don't get that fully.

Now what ever the news is, my thing is this, which news , is it forex factory news?

Next, lets say the news caused some selling, we see it as a volitility spike on the chart which most times that's what causes it, fine. The sentiment now is to trade in the direction of that initial move, wait for a retrace and then look for an entry.

I mean non of this is specific and no one has posted a specific answer as to how to place all of this together.

I have chatted with guys who bougt darkstars book and still have not been able to put it together, sentiment reading?

So to me its not just , hey buy a book and you will learn, there are things I quiet frankly feel were not covered enogh to give anyone reading the book a good understanding of how to put it together. I mean what I git from the book was that market orders push into traders stops and cause futher price movement, that's pretty much it, the sentiment part is not combined with the market mechanics. Maybe I'm slow or something!

No disrespect to darkstar, I give thanks for writing the book and trying to help new guys, but to me it was all about market mechanics, everything else you pretty much gotta figure out on ya own. i believe he talked about a sentiment exercise, so I guess I gotta watch news and see how the market moves from that point?

I wish that someone that know's how to do this would just come forward and say , hey this is how you do it. I would think that's what these forums are created for, to communicate with knowledgeable folks.

Sorry for the rant. I'm done.

Tell me lolpie, explain how you trade off of sentiment?

You speak as though you know a bit, Pm me then brother. or we could skype. Seems as though trading is a secret to all that know how to do it well with all its intricacies.

Cause news trading wont work for me, the spread widening will murder you.

News is just news. Source doesn't matter, but you can use forexfactory, Oanda's IFR, forexlive, bloomberg, etc

"Next, lets say the news caused some selling, we see it as a volitility spike on the chart which most times that's what causes it, fine. The sentiment now is to trade in the direction of that initial move, wait for a retrace and then look for an entry." That's not what sentiment is...sentiment would be what caused the spike to occur in the first place. You can't trade after the move has already occured, because you have no guarantee the sentiment is going to remain that way.

I get your frustration though, and I'm trying to figure out how to answer but I don't know how. OF is not something you can just detail out in a forum post and say "just do X Y and Z" and then you'll know what to do. DS's book says it takes a month or two of solidly following the news to learn sentiment. Grkfx's course says it takes like 8 months. Part of it is that I'm still learning so I don't have all the answers haha...so you can PM me or whatever but I don't know how much help I'll be.

You have an account on DS's site right? He has a blog post where he details his entire system step by step. That might be a good starting point.

Dappa, do you have a hard copy or a PDF copy of DS's book? Pages 185-201 give exact templates of how to actually trade. The Sentiment exercise is on page 165-169. Chapter 6 beats the liquidity vacuum concept. With the book was offered forum access to clarify with the author himself.

Yeah I have the book, I will take a look at those pages again.

Verb explains the markets very well
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=343259

Don't fall down the rabbit hole of trying to discover the "orderflow secret". There is none.

There is nothing secretive about it, just people new to those concepts tend to overcomplicate it.

I keep it simple.

http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...70#post6779870

apparently the "orderflow" secret is buying dips selling rallies.

Human traders have some ways to do their orders。But，computer algo may have different ways to trade。If algo is widely used，then，pattern of order flow will be completely new in market running。

It is all already factored in the price. I mean price at the moment will determine where it will be for the next 5m, 1h etc. Learn to spot patterns in the market and you would get it. Watch bar by bar if this happen what will happen next. Its not predicting, you are just trying to trade with the flow. There are moments of opportunities(momentum) in the market. It shows itself on every timeframe. If you want to do day trading, watch 5m and 15m.

Find just one or two patterns that work consistently. Watch the price closely. If you watch close enough you would find it.

OFA cannot be systematic. Even if the same historic price pattern is presented there will be different sentiment and market liquidity at that time. ie; if BoJ announces QE, look to buy Xxx/Jpy pairs, don't short at a former resistance level. Adapt and change to market conditions, read the news, keep up with data releases and order rumors/news.

Anyone watch this guys video's?