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"Wait for the retest" is common advice. It's useful to define precisely what a failed retest is, so it can be acted on.

A definition for a breakout on EURUSD:

• Price breaks a level and comes back to it.
• A successful retest: price holds the level, rejects it with a clear M1 candle, and moves away again.
• A failed retest: price closes back through the level on M1, and the next candle continues.

What to do with a failed retest:

• Cancel any pending entry.
• Don't reverse immediately; failed breakouts sometimes turn into ranges.
• Note it in the journal; failed retests at the open are useful information about the day.

Why define it in advance: in the moment, everything looks like a retest. A rule decided before the trade avoids reinterpreting price action to justify an entry.

A worked example: a level at 1.0850, breakout to 1.0862, return to 1.0851, and an M1 close at 1.0846. That's a failed retest under these rules.

How do you define a retest?

I use almost the same definition, with one extra condition that saved me a lot of bad entries. I need the retest candle on M1 to close back on the right side of the level within two candles of touching it. If price sits on the level for five or six minutes and keeps closing a pip either side, I treat that as indecision rather than a retest, and I don't take the trade either way.

The point about not reversing straight away is a good one. I used to flip short as soon as a long retest failed, and I'd say half of those turned into a messy range that chopped me up on both sides. Now when a retest fails I just cancel the order and wait for the next clear structure.

I also log the time of each failed retest. Over a few months I noticed that most of my failed ones happened in the first fifteen minutes after the London open, when price was still finding its range. Waiting until a quarter past eight before trusting any retest cut a lot of those out.