Basic Principles of Support and Resistance Trading:
1. You need a clear Market Direction
2. Avoid Alien Zone
3. Search for highways
4. Follow the Trend
5. Always remember Long-term trading is better than Short-term trading.
6. Use proper time frame
7. Horizontal S/R is better than Diagonal lines (trend lines)
8. Don't try hard to find a trade. If you don't find it, it is not there.
You need a clear Market Direction:
Please make sure the direction of the market before taking any trade. Always remember there are only 2 possibilities. {For example: If you have an up-trend you can search for either continuation moves (up) or breakout (down)}.The same thing goes with range boundaries.
Avoid Alien Zone:
The Alien Zone what I call is when the price is very far from the S/R levels. If the price is nowhere near the support or resistance, stay out of it as there is no clear direction.
Search for Highways:
Search for highways free of traffic. Here traffic jam represent the support / resistance. If you are driving in a highway with plenty of cars (horizontal & diagonal lines of support / resistance) it is just painful to drive (take trade on those charts) as there is lot of confusion. Likewise wait for the price to show you a clear direction and trade where there is more room for your trades.
Follow the Trend:
This is very important. Buy of support and sell of resistance. {For example: if you have an up-trend and has a resistance line drawn before, if the prices breaks upwards and follows the trend, wait for the price to retest the support (former resistance) then buy of support line or if the price breaks below the support (former resistance will be stronger and again acts as resistance) then sell of the resistance}.Don't sell of support and buy of resistance. Specially you must not sell against long term support or buy against long term resistance.
Long-term trading is better than Short-term trading:
If you get two trading signals on different time frames, always remember long time frames are better and safer to trade than the short term time frame charts. This is very effective for your win/loss ratio.
Use proper time frame:
You have to search for the price patterns (you will know about this in next post) in the same time frame where you drew your Support/Resistance. If you have your S/R on Monthly time frame, don't try to enter your trade based on Daily or weekly time frame just to sharpen your entries. That is called micro-managing your trades, which are most of the times, fake entries end up in losses. Wait for the proper time entry point on proper time frames. The sharper the S/R the better.
Horizontal S/R is better than Diagonal lines (trend lines):
As a trading set-up, the signal you get from horizontal lines of S/R is of higher quality than that you get from diagonal lines (trend lines). But it doesn't mean that you can consider diagonal lines as bad set-ups. If you get two signals on one pair, one each from horizontal line and diagonal line, you better go for horizontal line S/R as the quality is better.
Don't try hard to find a trade. If you don't find it, it is not there:
Be Selective of your trading set-ups. If you don't find it, it is not there. Don't try too hard to find a trade just for the sake you want to trade. Wait for a good quality set-ups and pick the proper charts to place the trades for better win/loss ratio.
That's all for now. In the next post we will talk about price patters which you want to trade on the Support or Resistance.
