Trading Patterns – 1-2-3 Pattern
You will need to be familiar with identifying chart price trend like up-trend and down-trend to better recognize a 1-2-3 chart trading pattern. The basic chart pattern of an up-trend is a series of higher high and higher low and for down-trend a series of lower high and lower low.
1-2-3 pattern is one of the popular reversal trading patterns in Forex trading. Therefore you will need to have an established trend, whether up-trend or down-trend to have a valid 1-2-3 pattern. That is the reason you need to be an expert in identifying an up-trend and down-trend.
1-2-3 chart trading pattern start after an up-trend or down-trend pauses and stop registering higher high or lower low in an uptrend and down-trend respectively. The first thing you should do is to connect all the recent high and the recent low to establish a side-way price range. A side-way trading range will be established from these two lines.
Once you have the price inside the trading range mark recent high before the failed higher high as “1” then the low that come next as “2” and the failed higher high as “3”. This is the same for the steps in a down-trend and this is the main component of the 1-2-3 chart trading pattern.
The trading signal will be generated once the price moves below or above the price leveled as “2”. If the price moves and breaks the recent low leveled as “2” in an up-trend this is a selling signal. While if the price moves and breaks the recent high leveled as “2” in a down-trend this is a buying signal. It is highly effective if you take into consideration oscillator signals for additional confirmation particularly stochastic and MACD.
This is a quick trade that is why you need to place your stop-loss 10-20 pips off your entry price and you should already be profitable in the next three candles then quickly move your stop-loss to break even, target the next nearby moving average, Fibonacci levels or identified level of support or resistance. You can use this in the hourly time frame down to the one minute chart of course the higher the time the higher its reliability.
This pattern is not cast in stone and can some time result to false break out, always trade with a good risk reward ratio, this will make you profitable over the long-term. Practice makes perfect, that is why you will need to practice trading any pattern you put into your trading arsenal, once you get familiar with the nature of a pattern you start to understand how it moves, how it behave and you start to have a deeper understanding on the psychology behind the trading pattern and start to take advantage of the opportunity presented to you by such trading patterns.
