Darin s Trend Channel method as I understand it. I have Darin s ok as to sharing his method. So Darin if I have any of this wrong or you wish to add to it or make comments. Please feel free to make changes or comments. And I want to give Darin all credit for this great and simple method. We trade without any indicators because all indicators are lagging so we trade price and we use trend channels to help us with trading with the trend and not against it. We must restrict our trading to trading in the direction of the 1 hr, 15M and 5M trend and we know that we are trading with the trend when the hourly, 15 minute, and 5 minute channels are all in alignment either all slanted up or all slanted down in order to have the highest probability of a trade working in our favor. If the 1H, 15M and 5M channels are not all slanted in the same direction then we are in a countertrend move and our chances of a successful trade drops. Objective is to always be trading with the trend. The trend channels also help us know where likely support and resistance will be. So if trading long we prefer to be long near the bottom of the channels rather than near the tops of channels because we have less chance of hitting resistance. Price will naturally bounce from tops of channels to bottoms of channels so the best buy area would be near the bottom of an hourly channel and near the bottom of a 15 M channel and near the bottom of a 5 minute channel. Vice Versa for a sell. I picked a pair for this example that is not necessarily the best pair to trade at the moment because of its higher pip spread but it was set up nicely to illustrate Darin s method. Pull up the chart utilizing as much window real estate as possible.
Draw monthly channel lines connecting 2 or more tops or bottoms of the candlestick bodies using the equidistant channel tool. Disregard the wicks. Make this channel the color black and make the thickness of the line the third one down.
Go to the weekly charts and draw a blue channel (Darin teaches midnight blue but I need to use blue for me to see it clearly from the monthly color of black). Draw the channel from the latest touch of the monthly channel as shown in the screen shot.
Proceed with day channel using color purple.
Go to hourly chart using the color of red. Darin teaches brick-red but I find red easier to see.
Then go to the 15 minute chart and draw in the channel from the last touch of the hourly channel and make it the color of dark orange
Then go to the 5 minute chart. In this case the 5 minute chart is just now hitting the bottom of the 15 minute channel and so we cannot yet draw in the current channel. The screen shot below shows the turquoise 5 minute channel drawn in from the top but now it has hit the bottom of the 15 minute channel we must wait to see if it respects that channel bottom. I have drawn in a dotted line 5 minute channel to show where I expect it to go for illustration purposes only.
So now that the price has bounced off the 15 minute channel and has made 2 higher lows and at least one higher high we can now draw in the 5 minute channel. We now wait for the price to retrace before entering into an order if the hour, 15 minute and 5 minute channels are all either sloping up or all sloping down. We place a stop order at the previous candle body high plus pair spread for a buy or at the previous candle body low for a stop sell order.
We place a stop loss order at the previous 5 minute candle low (in our buy example here).
We adjust our buy stop order as the price continues to retrace to the previous high body when going long. We adjust our stop loss order to the previous candle low.
Price is retesting 5 minute bottom channel line so we continue to adjust our buy stop order and our stop loss order.
Readjusted 5 minute channel lines as price continues its retrace and I readjusted my buy stop and stop loss orders also.
Just now got triggered into a long position. Hour, 15 minute and 5 minute are all sloping up. I will now go back and readjust my stop loss order as a new 5 minute candle forms.
Profit target placed at 2 times the risk. It should be inside the channel for greatest probability of getting hit.
Readjust stop loss to previous candle low.
Readjust stop loss to previous candle low.
Got stopped out at a small loss.