M1 micro structure shifts with an M15 bias, a plain way to time entries

[Fairman]

M1 micro structure shifts with an M15 bias, a plain way to time entries

very plain method. On M15 I decide the bias by looking at whether price is making higher highs and higher lows or the reverse. If it's mixed, I do nothing. If there's a clear direction, I only trade with it.

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Then I drop to M1 and wait for a pullback against that direction. In an uptrend that means a few candles making lower highs. The signal is when price breaks the most recent lower high on M1 with a close above it. I don't enter on the break. I wait for a small retest of the broken high and take the entry when it holds.

Stop goes under the low of the pullback. Target is the previous M15 swing high or a fixed multiple of my risk, whichever is closer. The bias filter takes out most of the bad trades because I'm not trying to catch turns, only the continuation.

It works best in London and early NY when there's enough movement. In the quiet hours the M1 breaks just wiggle around and mean nothing, so I switch it off.

[Fairman]

A question I get about this is what counts as mixed on M15. For me it is any time the last two swings disagree, like a higher high followed by a lower low, or price chopping around a flat moving average with overlapping candles. In those conditions the M1 breaks happen in both directions all day and most of them go nowhere. I would rather sit out than try to read which side wins. When the M15 is clean, the M1 signals line up with it and the whole thing becomes much easier to trade.

[Fairman]

On the retest part, I have a limit on how deep I let it go. If price comes back below the broken lower high by more than a pip or two and closes there, I treat the break as failed and stand aside. A good retest just taps the level or wicks into it and then the next candle closes back above. If it starts building candles under the level, the shift has not really happened. That one rule saved me from a lot of entries that looked fine for a moment and then rolled over.

[Fairman]

For anyone trying this, spread is the thing to watch on M1. The stop under the pullback low is often only a few pips, so a one pip spread is a big part of the risk. I only trade it during London and the New York overlap on EURUSD when the spread is tight. Outside those hours the method looks the same on the chart but the numbers do not work. I also leave the opening minutes of each session alone, where M1 candles jump around and a micro structure break means very little.