How To Lose Money With CONFUSION (timeframe mixing)

The issue for many new traders is understanding the correlation between timeframes. We often get caught up in indicators, news hype, chat room posts, and various other things.

One of the biggest challenges I see when talking to new traders is simply the lack of "experience" in reading multiple timeframes. This causes confusion and even self-doubt. The issue with the internet being so vast is there is a lot of info - but what do you go with & why?

In this post I have tried to "dumb it down" - the simple idea is to pick your timeframes based on your trading style.

Now if work gets in the way and you need to trade end of day or even swing (Longer-term) then really, you shouldn't stress so much about a 15 minute candle. A lot can happen throughout the day. But on the opposite side of the spectrum, if you are sat in front of your screen every minute the market is open. (scalping) then trying to work out what the monthly is doing whilst you hold a trade for an hour is not going to affect your trade (in general).

To give you a great example of this - I trade COT data as it's swing, with Monthly and weekly bias. I will have a mentee say something like "COT is a buy, but the price has dropped". Yes if you're looking at the 4-hour candle. If you think what institutional players can manage in terms of drawdown, especially using hedging techniques. It's far greater than the guy investing £5k of savings into Bitcoin.

If a hedge fund buys Bitcoin at 45k and the price drops to 22.5k - the likelihood is they have a hedged position & will be buying it all back at fair value. Whereas Mr £5k has lost some sleep & half of his capital - bailed, only to see the price shoot back up above his original entry.

You think of someone like Elon Musk - if his entry of a Billion Dollars was at 40k (example) and price drops to 20k, he has a paper loss of 500m for sure, it will hurt. But again if the Tesla share price drops from 800 to 700, he has a paper loss of (say 20 Billion) - a 500m loss on paper is less of a concern. *** You get the picture.

Investors & traders know that things don't just moon! they have dips, impulsive moves and so on.

So take the charts into account - You have an idea of what timeframes to pick based on your own personal availability or your style you have already identified. As a scalper it's easy to use 4 hour or even a 1 hour candle for your bias - a 15minute for a local area of interest & an entry on a 1m - 5m chart. (example only).

If you trade swing trades (depending on the overall time & expectations) a weekly bias, a daily interest and a 4hour trigger could be what you look for.

Here are some examples;


In these examples - all I have done is used 1 tool. This is only to show the idea - If stochastic is up then I want to be Bullish, if down I'll consider Bearish moves. Keep in mind this could be anything from above/below a moving average, a key price level or a magnitude of other things. Even other tools like RSI for example.

Example of step down

The idea is this gives you a directional bias.

Then we look at the area of interest.

And finally - we want to look down on the next timeframe for the trigger (entry)


Traders can easily get confused with one timeframe saying one thing and the next timeframe up or down saying something else. If you can treat it like a tick sheet, you can step down with confidence and work on a strategy favouring your directional bias & that's in confluence with the time period & your expectations.

This really is an oversimplified breakdown. Just to give a general idea.


Have a great week!

Disclaimer
This idea does not constitute as financial advice. It is for educational purposes only, our principle trader has over 20 years’ experience in stocks, ETF’s, and Forex. Hence each trade setup might have different hold times, entry or exit conditions, and will vary from the post/idea shared here. You can use the information from this post to make your own trading plan for the instrument discussed. Trading carries a risk; a high percentage of retail traders lose money. Please keep this in mind when entering any trade. Stay safe.