Price Action Trading: Key Concepts
Price action is a popular trading method where traders analyse raw price movements on a chart, without relying on technical indicators. Traders identify patterns, trends, and key levels that help them understand market behaviour. This article explores what price action is, the key concepts, and how to get started with a price action strategy.
What Is Price Action Trading?
Price action is the movement of an asset’s price over time, and it’s one of the purest forms of market analysis. When using price action, indicators like moving averages or oscillators take a back seat, with traders focusing solely on the movement of the market itself. In studying how prices behave in real-time or historically, traders can spot trends, patterns, and potential turning points in the market.
At its core, price action is about reading the market’s “story” through its movements. Traders look at how an asset has moved in the past—whether it’s rising, falling, or ranging—to understand what it might do next. This analysis often revolves around key levels, such as support (where prices tend to stop falling) and resistance (where they tend to stop rising).
Because price action relies purely on market data, it offers a clear view of sentiment without the “noise” of external indicators. This makes it a go-to method for traders who prefer a straightforward approach. Price action also can be used in any market—whether it’s forex, stocks, or commodities—and across various timeframes too, from short-term day trading to long-term investing.
Understanding this style isn’t automatic—it requires practice, observation, and an eye for patterns. However, once traders get the hang of it, price action can provide valuable insight into the market’s behaviour and help them analyse future trends.
Key Price Action Concepts
Now, let’s take a look at some core price action concepts.
Support and Resistance
Support and resistance levels are foundational in price action analysis. These are key levels that the market has historically struggled to move past. Support represents a level where the market tends to stop falling, acting like a “floor,” as buying pressure increases. Resistance is the opposite, serving as a “ceiling” where upward movements tend to halt, as selling pressure grows.
Traders use support and resistance to identify potential levels where the market might reverse or pause. If a price breaks through one of these levels, it can signal a continuation of the trend, while a bounce off the level might indicate a reversal.
Trends
At its simplest, a trend shows the direction in which a given market is headed. In an uptrend, prices are making higher highs and higher lows, showing consistent bullish momentum. In a downtrend, the opposite is true: prices make lower lows and lower highs, indicating bearish sentiment.
Swing highs and lows are critical when spotting trends. A swing high is a peak formed when the market moves up and then reverses down. A swing low is the opposite. Tracking these highs and lows allows traders to identify the current trend.
Trendlines and Price Channels
A trendline is a straight line that connects multiple swing highs or swing lows in a trending market. It visually represents the direction of the trend and helps traders spot potential areas where the market may find support or resistance.
When two parallel trendlines are drawn—one connecting swing highs and the other swing lows—it forms a price channel. Channels help traders see the range in which the price is moving, and it’s common for prices to bounce between the upper and lower boundaries of the channel. Breakouts from them can signal a shift in trend direction.
Candlestick Patterns
Candlestick patterns are formed by the movement of price over a specific period and are widely used in price action trading.
Some common candlestick price action trading patterns include:
- Pin Bar/Hammer/Shooting Star: A candle with a long wick and small body, indicating a rejection of higher or lower prices. It can suggest a potential trend reversal.
- Engulfing Pattern: A two-candle pattern where the second candle fully engulfs the previous one, signalling a shift in momentum. A bullish engulfing pattern suggests buyers are taking control, while a bearish engulfing pattern shows sellers are gaining strength.
- Doji: A candle with little to no body, where the open and close prices are nearly identical. It suggests indecision in the market and can signal a potential reversal, depending on where it appears in a trend.
Learn new candlestick patterns in our article 44 Most Popular Candlestick Patterns.
Chart Patterns
Price action chart patterns are shapes that form on a chart, which traders use to determine future price movements. They can indicate the continuation or reversal of a trend.
Some common chart patterns include:
- Head and Shoulders: A reversal pattern that signals a shift from an uptrend to a downtrend (or vice versa). It consists of three peaks, with the middle one being the highest (the "head") and the outer two being lower (the "shoulders").
- Double Top/Double Bottom: These reversal patterns form when the price tests a level twice and fails to break through, indicating a potential reversal.
- Triangles: Symmetrical, ascending, or descending triangles indicate consolidation periods before a breakout.
Breakouts
A breakout occurs when an asset moves outside a defined support, resistance, or trendline level. Breakouts can signal that the market is gaining momentum in a particular direction.
When prices break beyond a support or resistance level, it can suggest that traders are pushing prices in a given direction and that momentum is likely to continue. Traders often watch for breakouts from chart patterns like triangles or channels.
Reversals
A reversal happens when a market trend changes direction. In an uptrend, a reversal would occur when prices stop making higher highs and higher lows and start forming lower lows instead. Reversals are often marked by candlestick patterns or chart patterns like head and shoulders or double top/bottom.
Retracements
A retracement is a temporary reversal in the direction of a trend, where the asset moves against the prevailing trend but eventually continues in the same direction. Traders often use tools like Fibonacci retracement levels to identify potential areas where the market might retrace before resuming its original trend.
Volume
Volume measures how much of an asset is being traded over a certain period. In price action trading, volume is used to confirm the strength of market movements. For example, if the price breaks through a significant resistance level with high volume, it can indicate that the breakout is more likely to be sustained. On the other hand, breakouts on low volume might suggest the move lacks conviction and could reverse.
Volatility
Volatility refers to the degree of price movement in the market over time. Price action traders pay attention to volatility because it can influence how they interpret patterns and levels. In periods of high volatility, an asset may break through key levels quickly, while in low volatility periods, it might stay within a narrow range.
How Traders Read Price Action
Let’s now look at an overview of how the process typically unfolds:
1. Beginning with a Clean Chart
Price action trading doesn’t rely on indicators, so the first step is to clear the chart of anything unnecessary. Traders focus on raw market data, meaning you’ll only initially need candlesticks or bars in a price action chart.
2. Identifying Market Structure
Once the chart is clean, traders assess the market structure. This means figuring out whether the market is trending or ranging. In a trend, prices make consistent highs and lows, moving upwards or downwards. If the market is ranging, the price moves horizontally within a set range between support and resistance levels.
3. Looking for Patterns and Key Levels
Next, traders focus on spotting recurring patterns and identifying key levels where the price has previously reacted. Patterns such as candlestick formations and chart setups (e.g., triangles or head and shoulders) give insight into what the market might do next. These patterns help traders anticipate reversals or breakouts based on past behaviour. Key levels like support and resistance guide where the price might stall or reverse.
4. Analysing Price Movements in Real-Time
As the price moves, traders observe how it reacts to these key levels or patterns. Does it slow down near resistance, or does it break through with momentum? Does it pull back to support before continuing upward? These real-time reactions tell traders whether the market is maintaining its trend or if a reversal could be on the horizon.
5. Confirming with Volume and Volatility
Traders often look at volume and volatility to further validate what’s happening on the chart. Higher volume can suggest stronger market moves, while volatility reveals how quickly the market is shifting. These extra layers of analysis provide confirmation of whether a breakout or reversal is likely to hold.
Building a Price Action Trading Strategy
Creating a price action trading strategy is about developing a personalised approach based on key patterns and setups that resonate with you. The steps mentioned above form the foundation of price action trading. However, traders usually build their own strategy over time, focusing on a handful of setups they find effective.
Initially, traders choose a few concepts to work with and avoid getting overwhelmed by too much information. For example, you could look for pin bars that appear during retracements at support or resistance in line with a trend. Another approach might be identifying a breakout after a double top or bottom, especially if it’s backed by high volume. Alternatively, traders often use candlestick patterns to trade the upper and lower boundaries of a price channel.
Setups like these can be backtested in trading platforms like FXOpen’s TickTrader, using historical data to understand why and where certain setups work. It does take time to develop an eye for price action patterns, but it’s worth the effort to be able to identify opportunities well before lagging technical indicators do.
Lastly, risk management is crucial when trading price action. Before you try out any setup, try to understand the best risk management practices for that pattern. For instance, traders might place a stop-loss just beyond a pin bar’s wick or slightly below the lows in a double bottom to limit potential losses if the market moves unexpectedly.
The Bottom Line
Price action offers traders a straightforward way to analyse market movements and make decisions based on real-time data, prioritising repeating patterns rather than indicators. To put price action trading into practice, consider opening an FXOpen account to access more than 700 live markets and our advanced low-cost, high-speed trading environment.
FAQ
What Is Price Action?
The price action meaning refers to the movement of an asset's price over time. Traders analyse these movements, without relying on indicators, to identify trends, patterns, and potential turning points in the market.
How to Read Price Action?
Reading price action involves analysing market movements on a clean chart. Traders identify trends, key levels of support and resistance, and chart and candlestick patterns.
What Is Price Action Trading?
Price action trading is a strategy where traders make decisions based on the raw movements of an asset. Instead of using technical indicators, they focus on chart patterns, trends, and levels of support or resistance to analyse the market.
What Is the M Pattern in Price Action?
The M pattern, or double top, is a bearish reversal pattern that looks like the letter "M." It forms when the price tests a resistance level twice but fails to break through, signalling a potential move downwards.
Do Price Patterns Work?
Price patterns can work, but they are not foolproof. They are often used to identify potential market movements, but outcomes may vary depending on market conditions and other factors.
Do Professional Traders Use Price Action?
Yes, many professional traders use price action as a core part of their trading strategies. It provides a direct way to analyse market behaviour without relying on external indicators.