#4: Inside Bar Trading Strategy

Inside candles show that there’s indecision in the market, we don’t want to see indecision at places where the market could reverse, we want to see confirmation. Also in December, an inside bar in a longer time frame became a signal of consolidation in a shorter time frame. At the same time, its configuration indicates the formation of the Expanding wedge pattern. A trader familiar with this pattern had no difficulty in opening long positions at 50% retracement of wave 4-5. Most forex traders look continuously for profitable day trading or swing trading strategies. However, they fail to specialize in understanding a trading strategy thoroughly.

• The same is in force for bearish breakout of the inside range, but in the opposite direction.
• The formation of the mother bar, in combination with the trend, is what tells you which way to trade an inside bar setup.
• When you see this type of candle, it usually means that there has been reduced volatility within markets.
• Ideally, we want to see the inside bar form within the upper or lower half of the mother bar.
• An inside bar pattern can sometimes have multiple inside bars within the same mother bar.

The blue circle on the price graph above shows an inside bar candlestick pattern. See that the highest and the lowest points of the small bullish candle are fully contained within the previous bearish candle. The black horizontal lines on the image define the inside bar range – the high and the low of the pattern.

Pin Bar and Inside Bar Combo Trading Strategy

Inside bar trading is also relatively easy to use when analyzing trade opportunities. Because this approach is best utilized on daily charts, you only need to check charts once a day to look for inside bar opportunities. For some traders, this can amount to a few minutes a day to look for trade potential and set pending orders. Traders should open a position when the price is still within the range established by the inside bar or when the price breaks just above the upper level of the inside bar. By the time you wait for the price action to move swiftly in one direction, you’ve already sacrificed a huge chunk of your would-be profits. Maybe they don’t have the appeal of pin bars and engulfing candles, or it could be because it’s a little more complicated to understand than other price action signals.

There are five things you want to look for when evaluating any inside bar pattern. When buying, place the stop-loss order just below the lower limit of the inside bar. Because an inside bar essentially represents a tug-of-war between the bears and bulls, traders need to expect that bears will win a few of those battles. Setting stop-loss orders will help you minimize those losses, preserving your profit from the instances when your prediction comes true. Keep in mind that, while inside bars can represent the calm before the storm, you’ll be able to turn a profit only if you can reliably evaluate these trades to determine what kind of position you should open.

Other traders would do it differently, but ultimately, this entry itself is not going to be profitable in the long run. This is my preferred approach as you’ll enter the trade as the price moves in your favour — but there’s a possibility of a false https://forexhero.info/ breakout. In a strong trending market (when the price is above 20MA), the pullback is shallow. Many traders would spot an Inside Bar and they’ll trade the breakout of it. If you have gone short, keep a buffer of 1% at the high of the mother candle.

Inside Bar: Entry

Taking low but unnecessary risks over the long run is not profitable. The inside bar setup is capable of producing consistent profits, but only to the traders who mind the five characteristics discussed above. However, it isn’t a setup that occurs often, at least not in a favorable context. This is why I don’t advocate using the inside bar as your only setup to trade the market. By doing so, you limit your trade potential to the point that you are likely to begin taking subpar setups.

Next we are going to look for significant horizontal levels in the market, or areas were price has bounced from numerous times; I refer to such areas as “hot points” in the market. We next look for price action signals as a third form of confluence to “confirm” our entry decision into the trend. In the chart below, we can see an example of a good inside bar reversal signal. Notice that the inside bar formed at a key chart level, indicating the market was hesitating and “unsure” if it wanted to move any higher.

Formation of an inside bar is only a probability, not a certainity at resistance, and it may or may not be guaranteed that the market will go down. Investopedia does not provide tax, investment, or financial services and advice. The information is presented without consideration of the investment objectives, risk tolerance, or financial circumstances of any specific investor and might not be suitable for all investors. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal.

Now, I’ve covered a lot about Inside Bar trading strategies and techniques. So, you go long when the price breaks above the highs of the Inside Bar. Previously, you’ve learned how Inside Bar allows you to catch reversals in the market. This is still an Inside Bar as the range of the candles is “covered” by the prior candle. This is a standard Inside Bar candle where the range of the candle is small, and it’s “covered” by the prior candle.

Support and Resistance Levels Trading Strategy

The strategy is useful when determining market strength and to capture a swing or ride a trend on the exit. I made a 4 to 1 profit on this trade setup, meaning I profited 4 times my risk. In the examples provided throughout article, you saw that the standard inside bar and its variations can provide very attractive price action setups. And any trader, regardless of their trading style, can take advantage of and incorporate these patterns into their trading methodology. The inside bars in the chart above formed on the GBPJPY daily chart in a choppy market. This sideways price action represents consolidation, which is what you want to avoid when evaluating an inside bar setup.

So if your take profit is 200 pips, your stop loss can be no more than 100 pips away from your entry price. In this lesson, we’re going to discuss the five characteristics of a profitable inside bar setup. But before we do that, let’s first take a look at how an inside bar forms and what the pattern represents.

Once the consolidation is over, you can expect the prices to continue in the trend direction. So, forex technical traders should adopt a trading strategy accordingly. A similar setup could be formed in an existing downtrend which you can interpret accordingly. If you apply technical analysis then mostly the charts are made up of candlestick charts. Though technical indicators are applied extensively, candlestick patterns play a vital role in providing successful trading signals. In other words, you will see significant trading results if you combine technical indicators with candlestick patterns.

Special Inside Bar Trading Tips

Last but not least, the size of the inside bar relative to the mother bar is extremely important. This idea piggybacks off of number four above, where the inside bar forms in the upper or lower range of the mother bar. It means always keeping your risk to no more than half the potential reward.

So we can draw a horizontal support and resistance level, from the high and low of mother candle. Ideally, small inside bar formation within the upper or lower half of the mother bar, is a perfect trade setup. When you combine a pin bar into an inside bar, you are getting both a “wind-up” that is going to be released and a pin bar with a tail / shadow that indicates the next potential direction of the market.

In the video above there were a series of rejection candles, these are candles with long tails that are obviously showing rejection of a significant horizontal level. We want to see the market closing “off the line”, meaning we want the close of these rejection candles to be on the side of the horizontal level that is in the direction we are looking to enter. Coiling inside bar patterns occur when 2 or more inside bars are “coiling” up tighter and tighter like a spring, within one another. It shows an inside bar trade with an excellent reward-to-risk ratio. As you know, I’m a huge advocate of trading from the higher time frames as they tend to cancel out most of the noise from scheduled and unscheduled news events.

As we all know, pin bars are one of the best price patterns you can trade and when it’s when you get a pin bar that is also an inside bar, that you have an inside bar pin bar combo pattern. An inside bar pattern is a multi-bar pattern that consists of a “mother bar” which is the first bar in the pattern, followed by the inside bar. An inside bar pattern can sometimes have multiple inside bars within the same mother inside bar trading strategy bar. The inside bar is yet another “tool” in your price action toolbox that will add to your trading strategy which when mastered will help improve your chances of long-term trading success. The Hikkake pattern is another variation of the inside bar candlestick. Patterns can and do fail, but many times these failed patterns can offer nice trading opportunities for those whose are quick to recognize the fakeout.

Trading MACD with inside bars is a simple trend trade that inside bars as a low-risk entry point. Below are two examples of inside bar patterns that formed in different market conditions. The first example is what you want to look for while the second is what you should avoid. In fact, trading with the trend is the only way to trade an inside bar setup.

Spotting inside days is of interest to a trader because he may believe that the subject security is setting up for some sort of move up or down. The application of another technical tool could give them sufficient confidence to place a bet on a potential pending move in the security price. It is usually the best to trade in the direction of the main trend, but sometimes there can be nice and profitable trades in the counter-trend direction. That is why I usually take both BUY and SELL trades – depending on which side the market breaks the range of the Inside Bar.

The bearish reversal is composed of a large up candle, a smaller down candle contained within the prior candle, then another down candle that closes below the close of the second candle. Let’s switch to the H1 chart of USD/CAD and examine the first and the last inside bar in the daily time-frame. Effort and on-going study are required, some price action setups are very consistent, not all of them, but they do work very well; trading is not a get rich quick scheme.

So, if you trade a small range Inside Bar, it means volatility is low and there’s a good chance it could expand in your favour. The market moves from a period of low volatility to high volatility (and vice versa). So, a better way to set your stop loss is 1 ATR below the low of the Inside Bar (for long trades) — so your trade has more “breathing room”. You can enter using a stop order when the price breaks out of the Inside Bar.