Price Action Trading and Market Structure

Price action trading means making decisions from the chart itself: where price has turned, where it broke out and where it failed. It suits discretionary traders well, and it is also the style where vague rules hide the most losses. This course keeps the craft and removes the vagueness.

What is market structure in trading?

The sequence of swing highs and lows that shows whether a market is trending or ranging. A trend makes higher highs and higher lows, or the reverse; a range does neither. The course gives you a rule for marking swings so that your map of structure is the same every time you look.

Why do so many breakouts fail?

Because many traders place their orders at the same obvious level, and the first move through it is often their orders filling rather than a new trend starting. The course studies failed breakouts as a setup in their own right and has you record how often each kind fails in your market.

Who is this course for?

Discretionary traders who read charts and want a rule-based, testable way to do it. No programming is needed.

What you will be able to do

• Map market structure on any timeframe with a consistent rule for swing highs and lows.
• Define breakout, failed-breakout and pullback setups precisely enough to journal them.
• Plan entries, stops and targets from structure, and size them by the rules of the first semester.
• Review a sample of your price action trades against a stated expectancy.

Syllabus, module by module

1. Market structure

   Swing highs and lows, higher highs and lower lows, and a rule that removes guesswork.

2. Trends and ranges

   How to tell them apart in real time, and what changes when one becomes the other.

3. Breakouts and failures

   Range breakouts, false breakouts and the trapped traders behind them.

4. Pullbacks

   Entering a trend on a retracement: where, how and when the idea is wrong.

5. Zones and levels

   Supply and demand zones, prior highs and lows, and round numbers.

6. Multiple timeframes

   Using a higher timeframe for direction and a lower one for timing.

How the certificate is earned

Weekly chart exercises and two graded problem sets: a structure map of five markets, and a sixty-trade simulated record of two price action setups with a review. On a pass you receive the Course certificate in Price Action Trading, issued by the Institute with a verification code. Read how certification works.

Before you start

How to Read Stock Charts: Candles, Volume and Levels and Stop Losses and Position Sizing for Traders.

• How to Read Stock Charts: Candles, Volume and Levels
• Stop Losses and Position Sizing for Traders