I mentioned about looking for trends in the previous post and I want to touch on that in this one. There are long-term trends and med- to short-term trends. Which of these you trade is a personal decision but I am convinced that unless you have taken a firm stance on where the market is moving, relative to the trade you're considering at this moment, the greater the likelihood that you may fail. My approach is quite simple; if I see the long- to medium-term charts in a pair are pointing up, I tend only to trade Long; if I see, in a different pair, the same type of charts pointing down, I tend only to trade Short. This way I feel I'm always swimming with the tide. Occasionally I will trade against the major trend but only if I can determine a reasonably defined range that offers the appearance of a strong move down to Support or up to Resistance.
The importance of choosing when to go Long and when to go Short - knowing if price is moving up to Resistance or down to Support - is key to survival. Many of you will trade your short -term charts with only a cursory look at, maybe, the next higher time frame (TF) or two. Even if you think that scalping is the way to go (and I don't), a proper understanding of how to apply S/R in higher TFs will benefit your current methods. Often, you will be in and out in seconds, maybe minutes, as you try and keep one step ahead of the market. How much easier your life would be if you knew you were taking a Sell signal as price was bouncing off Resistance in an overall downtrend.
Marking S/R isn't that hard; it just takes a bit of screen time and selectivity. The rewards are huge; I can promise you that once you have developed a feel for it, you will be able to mark up any chart in a matter of minutes. Here's a shortish video that will show you that looking back into the history of a chart can provide very strong clues as to where and when price might react at a certain point.
The one thing to be aware of is this: no Support/Resistance area, no Moving Average, no Trend line, no Fib level, no Oscillator nor any other indicator is infallible. They only show the Potential to provide you with a trade opportunity; at times of real stress in the market, price will blow straight through whatever lines you've marked on your chart. Even having said that it is amazing how the steepest fall in price will find a Support level somewhere; it just depends whether you are still in business to take advantage of it.
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Unfortunately, this video was too long to fit on YouTube but I hope it will show how history repeats itself, despite what you may hear to the contrary.
