Did You Trade Ranging Market?

English is not my first language, so it may not be perfect.

I'm starting this thread to ask you guys: Did you trade ranging market? Did you (or your expert) managed to trade them successfully?

So here we go. The chart is GBP/USD 18th of July 2016. The range is 126 pips.



I focus only from 0000 of 18th July until 0000 of 19th. The range was too tight for many trend based system.

You can use the following indicator to test your strategy in this market situation. Put the ma disappear by putting them to none. Move the vertical green line to your long and the red vertical line will automatically be your short. This indicator was created by hayseed and i changed them a little bit so it will count from close to close, not open to open as it was at first. After setting up your red/green line, you may need to refresh the chart to get the pip reading on the top left.




You can see the video here:



Many thanks for hayseed for the contributions.

no...retail should not trade in high liquidity

I just trade when there is a good signal.

hi,

yes i trade the ranges when i feel confident that i have reconised the stability of the present range,hindsight ranges are very simple as are after the fact trends,identifying these conditions in the unfolding ticks is a different ball game.

here is the first trade of the day in question 18th july at london open 8 am .bottom of range 13218 upto around 13285 ,i took 30 pips from that first move live in my journel.identifying the range within the range is also a very useful tool which allows one to capture the intire range which as you stated on that day was 100 plus pips .i would concider that to be a trend

i lost the next trade and gave 8 pips back followed by a break even ,this was trying to trade the range within the range,once i Identified the conditions i traded long as though trading trend ,to capture your 100 pip larger range .

i made over a 120 pips that day all traded live on my journel.

so i am emphasizing the word INDENTIFY the market conditions is key and the preperation for change at any moment.once those conditions change we need to abandom what we are presently doing.one of the biggest problems in this game is traders hold there conviction and position even thou its quite evident that the conditions are not what you originally traded upon,again if you have yet to reconise such changes your system is not yet complete

That maybe true, but imo we need to be ahead of the 'big move'. So, we need to position our interest in the market while the market is consolidating.

Did your trading system/method give 'a good signal' in this kind of market?

Nice pips you got there. Without doubt, i learned a lot from this kind of posts.

The sentence identifying the range within the range quickly caught my attention.

Are your method fully mechanical/need some discretion?

I'm working my way to mechanically trade this kind of chart, but i would like to see what others got to say.

Here is an example from tuesdays cable , london open market had been ranging between 13185 and 13205 20 pip s for 16 hours or so ,this is 5 min chart and range ,i determined my bias and with the added advantage of entering at the bootom of that range 13187 .intially capturing 30 pips .once price had established itself within the the larger 15 min range i was comfortable to trade long in that range,ultimatly price broke the 15 min and traded the highs on this well estabished 4 hour range.when i say 15 min 4 hour ,these are used from the perspective view point and are quite errelivent as none of this is actually time based.all you require is the prices

my profit in pips that day was also over 100 pips traded live on my journel ,understanding the ranges within the greater ranges allows you to trade the present trend.

if you notice on the 4 hour there is a price band upto the older highs from the drop ,that would be clearer on daily.

Just thought i would throw my opinion in the mix, i like to trade ranging markets as they are just essentially moving from the top to the bottom of the range or vice versa, i find this easy to predict. So i looked at the point in the market from the first post;

So on this first chart, points 1 & 2 were my setup points for the trend line. i didn't know if the trend line was correct or even a confirmed significant level yet, we need to wait until the confirmation which was point 3. i allow a small tolerance for the wick to go above the trend line and as you can see its only just visible above it. The wick touching it and the candle closing below confirms the trend line has significance. But in this case i wouldn't have traded it as the candle closed back half way within the range, lowering my probability of a winning trade.
So chart 2;

This is the second opportunity i saw, Once again points 1 & 2 are my setup points for the trend line but i need to wait for point 3 to confirm it. By this i mean you can use candle bodies or wicks. whichever has the most kissing points. As you can see point 3 kissed the trend line and reversed off it and closed above it, confirming the trend line is in the correct place and it has significance. At this point i would have already done some pre-analysis (for positioning size & potential return, i only take trades with a 3/1 risk reward ratio) and i believe i would have taken this trade on the close of that candle. So point A was my entry price, my stop loss would be on the setup break just below the trendline which is point B. So for a 3/1 risk/reward the price needs to reach point C. As you can see it does just about do that. But even if my TP was slightly higher, the next bearish move did not break the setup and then it moved up well past my TP.
And now chart 3;

3rd opportunity, As you can see once again point 1 & 2 were the setup points and point 3 was my entry. This time the wick broke the trend line but reversed and closed on the line. This confirms its in the correct place and has significance. once again another trade or if i was still in trade from chart 2 i could scale in.

I threw this together pretty quickly and i do not think i missed anything. I hope this wasn't over complicated as i like to keep things logical when i trade, i never trade off of indicators, they only help me with position sizing. As for the candles closing on the trend-line or Fibonacci depending on what i am using, Type 1; wick hits the line and reverses. Type 2; wick breaks the line but closes on it. I usually also see an increase in volume in this area. and this confirms a significant level for me. Hope this helps in some way

I am a range trader. A "trend" is merely a range on a higher time frame. If you want to make a lot of money, you simply trade the ranges that are offered daily. Of course, that is work, and requires skill, so it is not a common practice.