LeMercenaire wrote:BambinoFlex wrote:xplsive wrote:Can anyone here give me a clean objective definition of what a zline is, how its drawn and how its traded. If possible in not too hard of a trader slang language. I am a newbie. Looking at all these charts posted seems like everyone´s definition is a bit different. I am also not sure who is the original source of inventing "zline".
Thank for your help.
I had written an extensive explanation. Only to have the site as me to log in again, erasing my explanation. Here's the shorten version:
Z-Line, in my understanding, is the simple breaking of Highs and Lows of the market. In other familiar terms, it's also similar to "stop hunting" and pull back trading back into the Asian range (usually).
Another thing MO stated "Buy where you see buying, sell where you see selling" it doesn't help much but look at a chart, and you'll see how on a Green day, the previous low is attacked, activating short breakout trades, only to have price revert and close Green.
With the Asia session, price will create a range. Usually, in london or a few hours before, that Asia session low or high will be attacked, creating the same effect mentioned previously. ICT calls it "institutional trading." After the attack, or the breaking of a low/high, price reverts, past the other side of the range, and continues, sometimes, coming back to the same range, taking out all the "B/E" traders (zeroed out).
In theory, it works, practice is much harder. Where do you place stop loss, where do you take profit, how do you know what low/high is being attacked???
I think Z-Line, to be traded efficiently, you need to look at ranges well past the asia range. Trading with daily bias, so if price is above open, only buys, and vice versa for sells. Trading the asia range would be difficult, but once price has traveled a good amount, then the odds would increase.
Yen and CHF pairs have good stats on that. Usually once price has travelled 20+ pips in one direction, it's most likely to continue in that direction and close (giving you 30 pips if the range is usually 50). Whereas GBP pairs would travel farther and still have a high chance of closing opposite
That's a nice observation re the Yen and Swissie.
Thanks Lem! Attached you'll see my template where you can see that data.
I attached NJ to show as an example.
1. NJ High from open is 22 pips.
2. NJ Low from open is 9 pips.
Once that is established I look at the Frequency Distribution. This is where it gets confusing, but saying it out loud helps me.
1. Since NJ Low to open is 9 pips, then we have about a 45% probability the day will close Green.
2. Since NJ Open to High is 22 pips, we have less than 26% probability that price will reverse and close Red.
Trading these stats simple requires larger stop losses but the real gold is simply understanding how price tends to move on every pair.
If you shuffle through the pairs, you'll see that GBP pairs can go 30+ pips away from open, and still reverse and close the opposite way.
This information confirms Peter Crowns statement in Forex Factory about "If you want to stop the bleeding, never buy on a down day, and never sell on an up day" (paraphrased). I don't use this to open trades, but to become familiar with every pair and how they "tend" to move.