Price action trading

Price action trading is about reading what the market is doing, so you can deploy the right trading strategy to reap the maximum benefits. In simple words, price action is a trading technique in which a trader reads the market and makes subjective trading decisions based on the price movements, rather than relying on technical indicators or other factors.

At its most simplistic, it attempts to describe the human thought processes invoked by experienced, non-disciplinary traders as they observe and trade their markets. Price action is simply how prices change - the action of price. It is most noticeable in markets with high liquidity and price volatility, but anything that is traded freely (in price) in a market will per se demonstrate price action.

Price action trading can be considered a part of the technical analysis, but it is highly complex compared to most forms of technical analysis, and it incorporates the behavioural analysis of market participants as a crowd from evidence displayed in price action - a type of analysis whose academic coverage isn't focused in any one area, rather is widely described and commented on in the literature on trading, speculation, gambling and competition generally, and therefore, requires a separate article. It includes a large part of the methodology employed by floor traders and tape readers. It can also optionally include analysis of volume and level 2 quotes.

A price action trader typically observes the relative size, shape, position, growth (when watching the current real-time price) and volume (optionally) of bars on an OHLC bar or candlestick chart (although simple line charts also work), starting as simple as a single bar, most often combined with chart formations found in broader technical analysis such as moving averages, trend lines and trading ranges. The use of price action analysis for financial speculation doesn't exclude the simultaneous use of other techniques of analysis, although many minimalist price action traders choose to rely completely on the behavioural interpretation of price action to build a trading strategy.

Various authors who write about price action, e.g. Brooks, Duddella, assign names to many common price action chart bar formations and behavioral patterns they observe, which introduces a discrepancy in naming of similar chart formations between many authors, or definition of two different formations of the same name. Some patterns can often only be described subjectively, and a textbook pattern formation may occur in reality with great variations.