Academy · Intermediate

Trading strategies

Four or five real approaches exist, and each one needs a specific market condition. Most strategy failure is a good method applied in the wrong conditions.

  • ✓ 24 lessons
  • ✓ 95 minutes end to end
  • ✓ Free in MarketPro
  • ✓ No sign-up to start reading

Last reviewed by the MarketPro research desk · Editorial policy

There are only a handful of genuinely different ways to structure a trade, and each one needs a particular market condition to work in. Trend following needs price to keep going. Mean reversion needs it to come back. Run both at once without knowing which regime is in front of you and one of them is losing at all times, which is the usual reason a method that looked convincing on a chart falls apart in practice.

This category covers trend following, breakout and retest, mean reversion, moving average crossovers, range trading, scalping, swing and position trading, carry, and pure price action. Each comes with the conditions it needs, the way it typically fails, and the tell that the regime has changed.

It assumes you can read a chart and size a position. What it leaves you with is a shortlist of approaches specific enough to write down, which is the raw material for a trading plan.

The 24 lessons in order

  1. Trend Following Fundamentals Trend following is a method for being wrong cheaply and occasionally right on a large scale, and the arithmetic only works if… Intermediate4 min
  2. Mean Reversion And Range Trading Range trading sells the top of a defined box and buys the bottom, and almost all of its profitability is decided by what you do… Intermediate4 min
  3. Breakout Trading Strategy The same breakout can be entered three ways with three different risks, and the stop placement matters far more than the entry… Intermediate4 min
  4. Moving Average Crossover Strategies A crossover converts a vague judgement about trend into a rule you can follow, and charges you a measurable amount of the move… Beginner4 min
  5. Using RSI For Overbought And Oversold Signals A reading of 78 says price has been rising quickly relative to its own recent pace, and nothing at all about whether that pace… Beginner4 min
  6. MACD Strategy Basics MACD is an average of an average of a difference, so every signal it produces arrives after the move it is describing has… Intermediate4 min
  7. Trading With Bollinger Bands Bollinger Bands support two strategies that give opposite instructions at the same moment, so the regime has to be decided… Intermediate4 min
  8. Fibonacci Retracement Trading Fibonacci levels have no mechanism behind them, only attention, which makes them areas of interest rather than predetermined… Intermediate4 min
  9. Trading Key Candlestick Patterns A candlestick records what happened in one period of trading, which is useful at a level that matters and close to meaningless… Beginner4 min
  10. Classic Chart Patterns Explained A recognisable shape is a hypothesis with a measurable risk attached, and measuring it before entry is most of what makes… Intermediate4 min
  11. Multi-Timeframe Analysis Skipping the higher timeframe check does not make your entries worse, it makes you take well-executed trades straight into walls. Advanced4 min
  12. Scalping Strategy Overview On a five-pip target the cost base is the strategy, and everything else is a detail arranged around it. Intermediate4 min
  13. Day Trading, Swing Trading, And Position Trading Hold time decides the timeframe, the stop size, the cost structure and the hours you must be available, which makes style choice… Beginner4 min
  14. The Carry Trade Strategy A carry trade is not an interest-rate product with a currency component, it is a currency position that happens to pay interest. Advanced4 min
  15. Trading Around News And Economic Events The most important thing about event trading is that the numbers you planned with are not the numbers you get. Intermediate4 min
  16. Pairs Trading And Statistical Arbitrage A directional trade has one way to lose. A pairs trade has a way to lose on both legs at once, exactly when the relationship… Advanced4 min
  17. Volume Analysis For Confirmation Volume describes how many participants turned up, which is information price alone cannot carry, and it says nothing at all… Intermediate4 min
  18. Price Action Trading Without Indicators Every indicator is a transformation of price, so a bare chart holds the same information earlier, and gives up the second… Intermediate4 min
  19. Reading Market Structure And Swing Points A trend does not change because the chart looks weaker, it changes at a specific price you can write down before it happens. Intermediate4 min
  20. ATR-Based Stop-Loss Placement A stop inside one third of a typical candle will be hit by ordinary movement, on trades whose underlying read was perfectly sound. Intermediate4 min
  21. Position Sizing Strategies Where price goes is not up to you. How much it costs when it goes the wrong way is entirely up to you. Intermediate4 min
  22. Risk-Reward Ratio And Win-Rate Math The relationship between reward-to-risk and how often you need to be right is fixed arithmetic, not a matter of trading… Intermediate4 min
  23. Building A Trading Plan A plan fixes your decisions while you are calm, so the hardest ones are not being made with a position open and money moving. Beginner4 min
  24. Divergence Trading With Oscillators Divergence describes a condition rather than a moment, which is why correct analysis about weakening momentum so often becomes a… Advanced3 min

Guided paths that use these lessons

A path is an ordered run through lessons from several categories, which is how the app sequences them. One path draws on trading strategies.

Strategy Building Blocks

Trend following, breakouts, mean reversion and price action. Core approaches to structuring a trade idea.

10 lessons
Trade · Learn · Earn

Take trading strategies with you

All 24 lessons in this category, plus the other 296 in the academy, with a quiz on each one and your place kept. Free on any MarketPro account, in the app or your browser.

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Not investment advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results.