Look for a break of structure in the direction of the higher timeframe trend. You can see that over here when you’re selling it at this point, you are selling near the lows of the channel on the weekly timeframe where buying pressure will step in to push the price higher. What you realize over here is that when you were selling early on a daily timeframe, you are selling near the lows of this trend channel. Stay with one timeframe combination for at least 30 to 50 trades before changing timeframes. We introduce people to the world of trading currencies, both fiat and crypto, through our non-drowsy educational content and tools.

• And possibly you are taking profits near the lows of this channel.
• If you understand multiple types of analysis, you can go down to a lower timeframe to better time your entry.
• The use of multiple time frames helped identify the exact bottom of the pullback in early April 2007.

At the same time, a day trader who holds positions for hours and rarely longer than a day would find little advantage in daily, weekly and monthly arrangements. In the currency markets, when the long-term time frame has a daily, weekly or monthly periodicity, fundamentals tend to have a significant impact on direction. Therefore, a trader should monitor the major economic trends when following the general trend on this time frame. At the same time, such dynamics tend to change infrequently, just as the trend in price on this time frame, so they need only be checked occasionally. In this article, I am going to discuss Multiple Time Frame Analysis in Trading.

Multiple Time Frames Can Multiply Returns

But if you understand multiple timeframe analysis, you can reduce the size of your stops because now your stop loss can be based on the market structure on the lower timeframe. After identifying the engulfing candlestick, a trader can now move to a lower timeframe to look for bullish trading signals into the higher timeframe bias. On the lower timeframe, the price is building a flag breakout pattern shortly after the fakeout signal. The break of the trendline typically signals the entry for a trend continuation.

In this article, we will describe what multiple time frame analysis is and how to choose the various periods and how to put it all together. By taking the time to analyze multiple time frames, traders can greatly increase their odds for a successful trade. Reviewing longer-term charts can help traders to confirm their hypotheses but, more importantly, it can also warn traders of when the separate time frames are in disaccord. By using narrower time frames, traders can also greatly improve on their entries and exits.

What Is Multiple Time-Frame Analysis?

As such, they would be using the long-term chart to define the trend, the intermediate-term chart to provide the trading signal and the short-term chart to refine the entry and exit. One note of warning, however, is to not get caught up in the noise of a short-term chart and over analyze a trade. Short-term charts are typically used to confirm or dispel a hypothesis from the primary chart. Moving down to the medium-term time frame, the general uptrend seen in the monthly chart is still identifiable. However, it is now evident that the spot price has broken a different, yet notable, rising trendline on this period and a correction back to the bigger trend may be underway.

When the price reaches the trendline, the candlestick signals deceleration – the candlestick turns and shows bearish momentum. This signal could be used to move to a lower timeframe with a bearish bias in mind. Candlestick trading is a very popular trading approach, but it often lacks robustness when traders solely rely on a single candlestick. To improve the signal quality, traders can apply a multi-timeframe approach to candlestick signals. The lower 15 min timeframe shows an interesting Head and Shoulders chart pattern at the time of the 4H deceleration candle.

The sweet spot

I cherry-picked these charts to illustrate my concepts, but I’m not expecting you to blindly trade them. If you think about this, you know that the market has been contained in this trend channel. You don’t want to be buying when the price is far away from the area of value on the higher timeframe.

By adding the dimension of time to your analysis, you can obtain an edge over the other tunnel vision traders who trade off on only one time frame. If you understand multiple types of analysis, you can go down to a lower timeframe to better time your entry. And this is not just any break of structure because this is a break of a structure at a key area on the daily timeframe. There you know, the 50-period moving average is an area of value for this market. If you take a step back and you look, you notice that the price tends to respect the 50-period moving average. I’ll use a factor of 6 so the higher timeframe to me is the daily timeframe.