Sign up to one of our 3 months or Annually memberships today, drop us a message and we’ll send you out a piece of free TST merchandise. (Other would charge for this, but we are a team)
Prepare for your trading week with our unique strategy insights. Dylan and Max break down the Forex, Commodities, Indices and Crypto markets on a weekly basis to give you an over the shoulder look into the markets. Compare, adapt and capitalise. (45 minutes + in length)
@ GB
22 Mar 2021
An Absolute amazing community!
I have been part of this trading community for over a year now and full credit to both Dylan and Max for the amazing community they have put together.
From daily evening updates to weekly market breakdowns this community has 10x my trading knowledge and many around me.
@ GB
22 Mar 2021
An Absolute amazing community!
I have been part of this trading community for over a year now and full credit to both Dylan and Max for the amazing community they have put together.
From daily evening updates to weekly market breakdowns this community has 10x my trading knowledge and many around me.
@ GB
22 Mar 2021
An Absolute amazing community!
I have been part of this trading community for over a year now and full credit to both Dylan and Max for the amazing community they have put together.
From daily evening updates to weekly market breakdowns this community has 10x my trading knowledge and many around me.
According to TrustPilot
Raw Price Action: A quick-start guide to raw price action trading.
(By the way, if you are a trader who is struggling for consistency you can qualify for free TST merchandise by checking the boxes at the end of the article. The pros of joining the pro team ay?)
– What is price action?
Price action is analysis of the basic movements of the price, to generate signals of entry and exit in trades and that stands out for its reliability and for not requiring the use of indicators.
Using price action is a powerful way to develop your true understanding of the markets (that is, your ability to get into winning trades and leaving the losing trades). Many of the world’s best traders, including Paul Tudor Jones, use this technique.
But let’s not confuse you, let’s jump straight on the charts to explain..
This is a piece of raw price action
I want to highlight two areas within this piece of price action
The areas highlighted exactly what having an understanding of price action really is.
Within these two areas traders will be looking to play short
Characteristics of Area 1
Impulsive price action
Huge bullish volume stepping into the market
No clear and obvious slowdown before reaching the area of interest
Now if you are a trader looking to play this short the odd of price action reversing within your areas of interest are drastically reduced,
Why?
Well price action is not ready to reverse, the bulls are still clearly in control of this market and are showing signs of slowing down.
What happens?
The market sees a small pullback at the locals double top and then continues in its original direction – sellers trading shorts have been squeezed out of the market.
You won’t believe how many strategies would be looking to trade shorts like this…
Characteristics of Area 2
Corrective price action
Bulls beginning to slow and bears stepping into the market
A clear and obvious slowdown before reaching the are of interest
Traders looking to play the market short from area 2 have a much higher probability of the market seeing a rejection in their intended direction,
Why?
Price action has shown signs of the market wanting to reverse, we have bearish volume stepping into the market at every given opportunity so it is only a matter of time before this corrective piece of price action breaks and the impulse happens.
We also have other technicals developing providing more confluence to take this trade.
What happens?
Price action tops out followed by the bears impulsively step into the market
This is the move The Social Traders capitalize on,
However, the technicals drawn here are not a true representation of how we would analyse our charts and enter the market, we have simply drawn out an example of understanding true price action .
We would enter the top of this trend using our pro Patterns and SMC strategy,
This is how:
This trade went to bank 17.42%
Powerful isn’t it?
A little later, you’ll understand these other technicals in more detail,
Or why not jump in straight away?
What’s your goal today?
1. Join The Social Traders To Improve Your Profitability
We’ve helped over five hundred traders, using our unique SMC & Patterns strategy. To discover how we can help level up your trading:
2. Learn how to trade to the highest level
Jump back into our free community, our strategy dashboard will give you access to module 1 this includes our highly rated videos ‘The art of discretion’, ‘The power of liquidity’ and ‘The beauty of the swing’
Join pro and browse over 25 videos and articles, containing an amazing number of useful tools and techniques. Many traders tell us they have simplified and refined their process resulting in consistency by following the advice in these videos and articles.
Jump to strategy now
3. Join our team (we’re actively looking for new team members)
If you want to join our team—or discover why our team members love The Social Traders —then see our “sign up” page.
4. Contact us
We help businesses worldwide, so get in touch!
Patterns, Patterns, Patterns…
Written off by most traders as they are seen to be subjective
Combined with our understanding of price action and smart money concepts they are one of most powerful tools in our trading arsenal.
Let’s dive into our 3 step list for pattern play optimisation.
Up first,
Pattern Optimisation #1 Understanding Orders
I will say it now,
Patterns will always lead your trading eye to the most probable area of reversals within the market.
It’s not the most accurate but once you add in the other technicals you will learn it is incredibly powerful tool,
Let me show you,
There are 3 order blocks within this region that price could respect.
1, 2 and 3
Without using patterns here, our probability of selecting the correct order blocks is a 1 in 3 chance.
If we add in our 3 touch pattern (predicting a reversal from the 3rd touch) our vision can now be focused on one order block.
Order block 1 – occurs too early to be in sync with order block
Order block 3 – occurs too late to be in sync with order block
Order block 2 – lines up with the 3 touch of the pattern, whilst also providing enough room for any liquidity grabs.
This is the result when other confluences have been added to the setup
You see how everything stacks?
They are not always perfect, price action just spikes out of the patterns before pushing to the upside but if used correctly they can be an excellent guide and additional confluence.
Pattern Optimisation #2 Understanding Structure
A common trait beginning and some intermediately experienced traders is their lack of experience in understanding true structure.
This means they will enter trades when the trend is exhausted and is due to reverse. Not ideal when you’re looking to take profits from the market.
Using patterns can correct this,
I have highlighted two patterns here,
One being a reversal, the other being a continuation move.
Both provide opportunities to trade.
Pattern 1
Without drawing this structure into the market a trader would be looking to continue to trade short in the market as the only other technical we have is the larger wick to the left.
Once the 3 touch structure of the pattern plays out, price has bottomed out and therefore reverses.
Pattern 2
Now we have had some commitment in the market, what next?
The next safest way to enter is to wait for a continuation move, this is where pattern 2 comes into play.
You see, although price has been manipulated around the pattern, price action still respects our pattern structure.
We can clearly see that nice three touch structure play out where we can look to get involved in longs.
Going back to optimisation #1 The red areas highlighted within this action of price action are where we would look to drop down for refinement on entry.
Pattern Optimisation #3 Improving The Skill Of Market Discretion
What separates the most profitable traders with those who are just beginning out?
The answer is experience.
Like any profession, experience will eventually pay dividends with your overall profit. You will begin to see the market in different ways, understanding like second nature where the liquidity is saturated, where potential entry points are and most importantly when not to take a trade.
Sounds good right? But how is this relevant to patterns?
Well patterns will help with your experience
Se them as the guidelines to help you pick the highest value areas but not only this:
⦁ Give you the correct overall bias
⦁ Help you understand when price action is changing
⦁ Simplify your analysis
Unfortunately, though, understanding patterns will not come easy. That’s where our expertise comes into play. And this whole website gives you a taste of what we can do.
Happy Trading!
What’s your goal today?
1. Join The Social Traders To Improve Your Profitability
We’ve helped over five hundred traders, using our unique SMC & Patterns strategy. To discover how we can help level up your trading:
2. Learn how to trade to the highest level
Jump back into our free community, our strategy dashboard will give you access to module 1 this includes our highly rated videos ‘The art of discretion’, ‘The power of liquidity’ and ‘The beauty of the swing’
Join pro and browse over 25 videos and articles, containing an amazing number of useful tools and techniques. Many traders tell us they have simplified and refined their process resulting in consistency by following the advice in these videos and articles.
Jump to strategy now
3. Join our team (we’re actively looking for new team members)
If you want to join our team—or discover why our team members love The Social Traders —then see our “sign up” page.
4. Contact us
We help businesses worldwide, so get in touch!
(By the way, if you are a trader who is struggling for consistency you can qualify for free TST merchandise by checking the boxes at the end of the article. The pros of joining the pro team ay?)
What do we mean by smart money concepts or SMC as it is often referred to. Smart money is capital placed in the market by institutional investors, market mavens, central banks, funds, and other financial professionals. … Smart money is invested on a much larger scale than retail investments therefore moving the market when orders are triggered.
‘Smart’: Because being on the right side of these liquidity flows will significantly increase your winning probability.
‘Money’: Get it right and you will fall into a lot of it.. And who doesn’t like money right?
#1 How we use SMC to gauge liquidity with patterns
We don’t often disclose this information as this is one of the key methodologies within our pro SMC and Patterns strategy.
Also, If you haven’t read our Key Trading Principle #2 Where we cover patterns, we recommend checking that article out before we cover this topic.
Let’s jump straight into it…
This is a setup on GBPUSD
I’ve highlighted a pattern we would be interested in here, I like how price action is beginning to stall, there is corrective price action and the bears look to be bottoming out. These are price action indicators that the market is looking to reverse
However, where do we look to trade long?
Now, the majority of traders will be trading the long form of the structure I have highlighted within the market. Price has bounced from here before therefore the theory is that it will happen again…
However that is not the case, let’s drop in our SMC methodology to understand what is truly going on here from a liquidity standpoint.
This is a setup The Social Traders would trade using our SMC and Patterns Strategy,
To incorporate a methodology that caters for liquidity I have
Highlighted where the lows are within the market
Highlighted institutional down orders (30 minute order block)
Drawn out the 50% of the down orders for mechanical entry
This has meant our orders are sat below the entries and stop losses of the three previous lows within the market,
When these traders get taken out we look to enter therefore creating liquidity to push price to the upside.
This is the result:
Out of the move for 1:6.5RR a nice intraday move for our team
#2 How we use SMC for refinement on entries
Let’s take a look at the same example on GBPUSD,
Last time we looked at the move we took orders from the 30 minute timeframe.
The 30 minute and 15 minute timeframe are great for refinement and to be honest where we spend the majority of time when trading the lower time frames.
However, more experienced traders can really refine their entries by dropping to lower time frames such as the 5 minute or potentially 1 minute. This can yield insane returns.
I have now refined this order block down to the 5 minute timeframe, it’s not a huge change in the scenario but does make a difference to the trades outcome and can be refined even further using our pro strategy.
The outcome of this trade has now increased from 1:6.5RR
To an increased 1:7.63RR
In addition, we noticed no extra need for additional protection. If the trade went against us our stop loss would be placed in the same location and therefore our risk was defined and protected.
#3 How we use SMC to set our profit taking regions.
Understanding smart money concepts is not only beneficial for entry.
We can use this methodology to predict and set profit regions within the market.
The most profitable traders will have forecasted, planned and have set profit regions planned out well before executing a trade. This is so that entry and exit of the market is mechanical, protecting a traders psychology and trading capital once the move develops.
In the same GBPUSD example let’s run through our take profit regions.
Take profit regions are fairly straight forward to gauge within the market. Using SMC we can find and locate the most probable areas of the market reversing. Essentially using the same methodology that got us into the trade!
You see how this profit lines up with the pattern I have drawn here!
I have highlighted 30 minute buy orders within the market, these orders drove prices higher before printing heavy sell candles and breaking structure (off of shot) – therefore there is a high probability that this is the market movers attempting to change the trend and failing.
These traders may still be sitting in position and therefore need to push price action back into these orders to get out without damaging capital.
So once price does hit these levels we see the market stall out and potentially reverse… our trade is finished.
Based on price action on the way up, we can highlight either the full order block or the 50% of the orders block. This is where our understanding of price action and discretion comes back in (covered in trading principle #1 price action is still king).
Unfortunately, though, understanding smart money concepts to its fullest is not something you will be able to pick up from reading this one article – it will help sure, but to get the most out of the market that’s where our expertise comes into play. And this whole website gives you a taste of what we can do.
Happy Trading!
Warmest Wishes,
The Social Traders
What’s your goal today?
1. Join The Social Traders To Improve Your Profitability
We’ve helped over five hundred traders, using our unique SMC & Patterns strategy. To discover how we can help level up your trading:
2. Learn how to trade to the highest level
Jump back into our free community, our strategy dashboard will give you access to module 1 this includes our highly rated videos ‘The art of discretion’, ‘The power of liquidity’ and ‘The beauty of the swing’
Join pro and browse over 25 videos and articles, containing an amazing number of useful tools and techniques. Many traders tell us they have simplified and refined their process resulting in consistency by following the advice in these videos and articles.
Jump to strategy now
3. Join our team (we’re actively looking for new team members)
If you want to join our team—or discover why our team members love The Social Traders —then see our “sign up” page.
4. Contact us
We help businesses worldwide, so get in touch!
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate’
This quote has to be one of my favourites,
In the world of trading we can have many psychological battles, but what makes us better from yesterday is making those bad decisions a pivotal learning point.
No this isn’t a ‘sales pitch’ even though your inbox is full of them, this is merely a friend here to remind you that you are on this journey to better yourself and your future and to not give up.
This is day 4 of 7,
This string of guidance does not only run you through our 7 key trading principles within the markets from a technical perspective but we also tough base with the psychology aspects of trading.
Each one provides genuine, transparent trading insights from over 10 years combined trading experience.
With that said, I thought our fourth installment should be one to remember,
One to sit and read while sitting on the sofa relaxing or read while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
We will be looking at “7 Trading Sins That Kill Starters”
First up…
1. Greed –
This sin can make us act out of character, it can make us not realise what is in front of us, greed will leave us looking for more when we should be content.
‘The bulls and bears make money, the pigs get slaughtered’, don’t be a pig…
2. Fear –
It can lead us to do impulsive things, it can also make us put ourselves in danger. Fear is a natural emotion, it can keep us safe but we must learn to manage our fear and use that to our advantage. You’ll often find your most feared trade being the one that plays out…
3. Pride –
As human beings we want to be right about the things we have control over. WE HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THE MARKETS, leave your price at the door. You will overlook, undermine or not understand trade setups due to your pride.
4. Envy –
Have you ever felt envious of a friend or colleague? It’s human nature to feel these emotions sometimes, who wouldn’t be envious of that friend who bought Bitcoin back in 2012? However, envy will lead us down a path of wanting and expecting more – this leads your right back to Sin 1…
5. Wrath – Also known as ‘anger’, this sin can lead many people to negative outcomes. Have you ever revenge traded after losing a series of trades? This will be the wrath inside you wanting to impulsively react to the scenario, but as we know wrath will only hinder our results.
6. Lust –
Lust is an interesting one, we may love to be traders, we may love sitting in front of the charts all day, we may also love being in the markets, but with anything in life, we must have breaks to see clearly, otherwise we are blinded by our lust. Overtrading, over-refining will lead to loss after loss after loss.
7. Stress –
Too much of it will tip your emotional balance overboard, too little of it will make you lazy. However, finding the sweet spot with stress can be an incredibly powerful tool for proactivity. When trading stress is an emotion we must master to avoid negating our technical edge and ‘flow state’ within the markets.
These 7 trading sins are the cause for many traders giving up, or not committing themselves to the process of becoming consistently profitable.
We know the true power that psychology has on trading, we also know that if you don’t listen to your unconscious mind, your conscious mind will become a mirror.
To truly harness your inner greatness, you need to accept your trading sins.
Do not worry, every trader on any level has been guilty of one or more of the 7 trading sins.
The difference between the professionals and those merely testing the market waters is their ability to learn, adapt and hold themselves accountable.
The markets do not owe us anything.
Keep an eye out for our next email, we will be covering a topic we all know you want some more insight on.
… And don’t worry we’ll be jumping into some juicy technicals again…
Warmest Wishes,
The Social Traders
What’s your goal today?
1. Join The Social Traders To Improve Your Profitability
We’ve helped over five hundred traders, using our unique SMC & Patterns strategy. To discover how we can help level up your trading:
2. Learn how to trade to the highest level
Jump back into our free community, our strategy dashboard will give you access to module 1 this includes our highly rated videos ‘The art of discretion’, ‘The power of liquidity’ and ‘The beauty of the swing’
Join pro and browse over 25 videos and articles, containing an amazing number of useful tools and techniques. Many traders tell us they have simplified and refined their process resulting in consistency by following the advice in these videos and articles.
Jump to strategy now
3. Join our team (we’re actively looking for new team members)
If you want to join our team—or discover why our team members love The Social Traders —then see our “sign up” page.
4. Contact us
We help businesses worldwide, so get in touch!
“The ultimate reason for setting goals is to entice you to become the person it takes to achieve them”
I think it’s safe to say it’s everyone’s goal (well most who trade) to successfully obtain thousands from the forex markets.
If you’re not in it for the money, why are you here?
Keeping track of goals/achievements whether big or small, allows for progression to keep us moving forward and not grounded in one single moment in time.
With that said, this leads us into today’s topic and one of the goals we set out to achieve when starting trading, ‘How we made thousands from 3 trades’.
As we know, we can never expect ‘thousands’ from the markets, we must be content and understanding of what the market gives us,
To think we have full control over a trades outcome is unrealistic and as professional traders, we know this to our benefit.
Today, instead of showing you the generic ‘profit screenshot’ we wanted to show you how we positioned ourselves in the markets to come out on top.
You see, it’s not always about being the first into the markets, it is about seeing particular signals, patterns, or confirmations that align us for an entry into the market fitting to our plan.
Knowing our technicals like the back of our hand, we operate within the markets seamlessly, taking away all guesswork.
Let’s jump into the examples below and look at some similar commonalities that allowed us to be on the right side of the market.
[GBPUSD]
Reward: 10.56%
Taken: 28/10/2021
GBPUSD is a pair we love to trade at The Social Traders, here is a textbook setup for us.
Price action has shown us a shift in momentum, causing a break of structure,
The bears are willing to enter the market,
We know when this happens we have a higher probability that price action is looking to reverse.
Our entry was taken from a refined order block, giving us an exact and predetermined entry point, eliminating all guesswork.
‘If price action does this…. do this’
We simply looked for a shift in momentum and then proceeded to trade the price action in front of us.
This trade was closed with a very welcomed 10.56%.
[USDCAD]
Reward: 10.48%
Date: 27/10/2021 (BoC Monetary Policy)
Similarly, USDCAD is another pair we commonly trade.
This setup was taken during a highly volatile news release (BoC Monetary Policy Statement)
It’s common knowledge that these events can be risky to trade, but with the way we understand the markets, we knew the probabilities were in our favour, to not take this trade would’ve gone against our plan.
This setup ticked all the boxes for us, we had a clear understanding of price action and where market sentiment wanted to go.
I reiterate… ‘If price action does this…. do this’,
A common theme that leads us to enter and execute these trades to a high level is our ability to trust in the process, we understand our trading plan, we have tested our strategy countless times, and we trust within ourselves to manage the emotions involved with a chance to secure thousands of pounds.
[AUDJPY]
Reward: 10.15%
Date: 01/11/2021
AUDJPY is another classic pair we love to trade!
We can see that there is a clear double top when we took our entry, however, we refined this entry with the use of an order block and pattern plays.
Why trade a large stop loss when you can refine the setup to your set parameters?
Taking into account that we had a shift in market sentiment, we were looking for an entry to the downside, we used an ascending channel to show us the direction into our order block.
The rules we trade around allow us to enter and accept the outcome, win, loss or breakeven. When dealing with high probability setups like this we can manage with a little more relaxation in the markets.
Throughout 24hrs, this trade bagged us a respectable 10.15%
So what did we do right?….
Taking every trade that fits your edge/plan is what will make you see consistency, it’s about understanding your edge, using that to your advantage, and taking wins and losses as they come.
Eliminating the guesswork involved with trading is key,
We understood ourselves and we understood our trading plan, whatever happened next in the markets didn’t matter…
You can acquire this knowledge very simply,
Instead of asking God for help – You can trust us.
Asking us is free – and we answer your questions any time, day or night.
All the best,
The Social Traders Team
What’s your goal today?
1. Join The Social Traders To Improve Your Profitability
We’ve helped over five hundred traders, using our unique SMC & Patterns strategy. To discover how we can help level up your trading:
2. Learn how to trade to the highest level
Jump back into our free community, our strategy dashboard will give you access to module 1 this includes our highly rated videos ‘The art of discretion’, ‘The power of liquidity’ and ‘The beauty of the swing’
Join pro and browse over 25 videos and articles, containing an amazing number of useful tools and techniques. Many traders tell us they have simplified and refined their process resulting in consistency by following the advice in these videos and articles.
Jump to strategy now
3. Join our team (we’re actively looking for new team members)
If you want to join our team—or discover why our team members love The Social Traders —then see our “sign up” page.
4. Contact us
We help businesses worldwide, so get in touch!
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
Great quote right?
I was thinking about this quote the other day, I was having a down day (we all have them).
Trading the forex markets can ensue ups and down, when we are riding these waves we have to remain neutral.
Other than their risk, there is one thing that professional traders manage better than anyone else, can you guess what that is?
Their emotions.
You see, emotions will lead us to act out of character, make us miss the details, and lead us astray from our missions and goals.
Professional traders rule their emotions, this doesn’t mean they do not feel these emotions, yet they have full awareness of the situation and embrace it.
The brain is hardwired to assess and be cautious of potential threats,
we may perceive that threat as harmless,
however, the brain reacts accordingly, firing off chemical reactions to stimulate our ‘fight or flight’.
This chain of events can cause us to do erratic things and when trading based on emotions there is only one result. Losses.
So how can we manage these emotions?
To manage our emotions when trading, we must first dissect what our personality is.
Now I know you can see where I’m going, these personality traits mixed with emotions influence our trading in more ways than we can consciously pick up on.
Emotions fuel our personality traits to seep into our trading plans. The professionals have mastered their emotions and know their personalities inside out.
And guess what…….so can you!
By no stretch of our imagination is this task easy, nor is it for the faint of heart.
To master our emotions, first, we must look and observe ourselves, the markets are like a mirror, they are neutral and will always do whatever it wants to, no matter how much we wish or think otherwise.
When we digest we do not affect the markets we can truly find our impactful traits by observing how we react to market scenarios, this can be done by journaling, recording voice memos, or even a vlog of our bad decisions in the markets, so we can use them as data points.
This is the first step to understanding your personality.
Impactful traits like:
These are only a few of the impactful traits that can hinder your results, if you observe and find you have one or more of these traits, do not fear, through self-assessment and 1% tweaks you will be able to minimise how you react when we feel these emotions.
You see the professionals still feel these emotions, they still get those flutters when entering a trading setup, they still get that greed before taking profit, they even fear losses!
The professionals have put the time into themselves, they have observed themselves over a series of sample sizes, giving them data, not about the markets BUT themselves.
They have gained the bi-products of discipline, knowing oneself, and accepting change.
Patience. Confidence. Resilience. Tranquility.
All the best
The Social Traders Team
What’s your goal today?
1. Join The Social Traders To Improve Your Profitability
We’ve helped over five hundred traders, using our unique SMC & Patterns strategy. To discover how we can help level up your trading:
2. Learn how to trade to the highest level
Jump back into our free community, our strategy dashboard will give you access to module 1 this includes our highly rated videos ‘The art of discretion’, ‘The power of liquidity’ and ‘The beauty of the swing’
Join pro and browse over 25 videos and articles, containing an amazing number of useful tools and techniques. Many traders tell us they have simplified and refined their process resulting in consistency by following the advice in these videos and articles.
Jump to strategy now
3. Join our team (we’re actively looking for new team members)
If you want to join our team—or discover why our team members love The Social Traders —then see our “sign up” page.
4. Contact us
We help businesses worldwide, so get in touch!
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