January 15, by JB Marwood. Once commissions and slippage are taken care of, most intraday trading systems fail.

For shorter timeframes, I believe traders are best advised to utilise both a mechanical and discretionary approach. You can use a profitable or break-even trading system as a base, then use your experience and intuition to choose the best trades to take. Because, if you can combine the human mind with the computer, it gives the best chance of success.

And this is how humans were able to beat some of the most sophisticated computers playing chess. These strategies have been tested on historical data and work during different types of market conditions. It takes a lot of practice to become adept at reading charts and I believe the most important aspect of this is watching how the charts react to certain events. This is what I have had the most success with during my time, and in my mind, this is the key behind predicting future price moves.

Everyone is looking at them which means they are more likely to provide significant turning points. Always remember that the pivot is the most important level. The other support and resistance levels are usually very good levels to take profits and manage the trade. Occasionally, when the market is particularly overbought or oversold look for a high RSI or momentum score the levels can be used to take reversal trades. Take a look at this recent example in EURUSD.

You can see that the market touches the key pivot levels regularly; pivot, R1, R2, S1 and S2 particularly. Traders know where these levels are so they often take their profits and make their trades around the same place.

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You can keep your stop below S1, and use the distance between S1 and your entry to calculate your position size based on an attractive risk: For example, if the difference between your entry and S1 is 30 pips, you could make your profit target 60 pips away, looking for a 2: You can use the levels to further fine tune your best exit points.

Also, keep an eye on momentum and other indicators like RSI, moving averages and Bollinger Bands. In another article, I look at pivot points in depth and I test these levels using historical data to see if a good trading system can be developed. Check it out when you have the time.

When a positive piece of news comes out you want to buy the market and when a negative piece of news comes out you want to sell. High frequency trading HFT algorithms, for example, are able to analyse and react to economic reports in a split second, making it impossible to compete. In some cases you may want to take a position before the news item comes out.

That way you may be able to manage your trade and get in before the move. Predicting the outcome of economic releases or earnings reports might not be possible but it is possible to analyse price action and to make careful risk-based bets. That means resistance, and when the good news wears off, or when bad news comes out, the market could easily fall.

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Just recently, US non-farm payrolls came out worse than expected but the market barely budged. Markets take the line of least resistance, so when the bad news had been fully absorbed the market ended up going higher. Plenty of news releases have no effect but the best news releases for futures traders are listed below:.

The key with news trading is not to follow market sentiment; you need to work out what the market is expecting and if need be take a position against the crowd — if the probabilities are in your favor. News trading can be profitable but generally it requires quick thinking and a bit of preparation.

Scalping requires skill but is one of the most popular intraday trading techniques. The scalping method is to take lots of trades with short holding times, hoping to capture one or two pips here and there, building them up as you go. Increasingly, traders use algorithms to calculate minute inefficiencies in the market and scalp a couple of ticks here and there, particularly in the forex markets. It goes without saying that scalping requires extremely tight spreads, a lot of practice and a lot of skill.

However, another time that I will engage is if I see an opportunity come up that is too good to miss.

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They usually involve a great amount of uncertainty and emotion. So the key is usually to take a contrarian position trade the other way to everybody else then stay disciplined and try not to budge. This was an unforeseen event that caught many forex traders by surprise and sent some forex companies into liquidation. But as you can see from the chart, there was also a massive over-reaction due to forced selling and taking the opposite side of the trade the very next day would have been the perfect time to buy.

As is clear, markets often overreact and it often pays to go the other way. This would have taken out many traders but if you were alert and on the sidelines, you may have been able to jump in and make a quick profit when the market rallied off the seemingly oversold position. Looking back, the Nikkei did end up revisiting those lows but at the time of the disaster, there were fast profits available for intraday traders reacting to events.

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JB Marwood is an independent trader, educator and writer specialising in trading systems and stock trading. He began his career trading the FTSE and German Bund for a trading house in London and now works through his own company.

He also writes for Seeking Alpha and other financial publications. Nothing on this site is to be construed as personalised investment advice. Please see the full disclaimer. Charts Amibroker Systems Research Tools I Use Brokers Blog About Amibroker Book Free System Latest Top Posts. My 4 Best Intraday Trading Techniques. Intraday Trading Techniques anyone can use to profit from the markets.

My 4 Best Intraday Trading Techniques • JB Marwood

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