How to Trade With Multiple Time Frame Analysis in Forex

By monitoring different currency pairs in different time frames, you can make your Forex trades more successful and profitable. Multiple Time Frame Analysis provides traders with ideal entry and exit points, identifies market direction, and offers close-to-accurate market price predictions. All in all it is a powerful tool that can enable you to increase the profitability of your trades and minimise risks. Lets took a look at everything you need to know to ace multiple time frame analysis

What is Multiple Time Frame Analysis?

Multiple Time Frame Analysis is a process that monitors and analyses a particular currency pair in the Forex market across different time frames/ frequencies. It helps traders confirm market trends, price predictions and the right entry and exit points. There are no set rules for how many or which frequencies you should monitor, it depends a lot on your trading goals and strategy.

Benefits of Multiple Time Frame Analysis

1. Indicates critical support and resistance levels

With Multiple Time Frame Analysis, you can find the critical support and resistance levels in the market by monitoring currency pair prices over a substantial period of time. When you analyse a market in the long run, it brings you the market direction and trend, which then helps you predict the future market movement accordingly. When you identify the support or resistance level in the chart, as a trader, you can place more successful trades by trading with the market direction or against it, based on what the levels suggest.

• Support levels during a downtrend suggest traders to enter the market
• Resistance levels during an uptrend suggests traders to exit the market

2. Identifies market price trends

In different time frames, the market trends appear differently. For example, a trend might seem to go downward in the short-term time frame, but the same trend would actually be an uptrend when seen in a long-term time frame. Hence, using Multiple Time Frames to trade enables traders to identify the actual market trends occurring in the market and remove possibilities of false signals. This, in turn, results in placing profitable trades in the market.

3. Provides entry and exit points

Trading with Multiple Time Frame analysis helps identify ideal entry and exit points in the market. This is one of the biggest benefits of trading with Multiple Time Frame analysis as it leads to accurate and profitable trade decisions in both the short and long term.

Types of Multiple Time Frame Analysis

1. Long-term

The long-term time frame analysis helps traders understand the most dominant market trend over a year or a number of years. Since it is an extremely wide-angled chart, it is recommended that traders take positions in the current direction of the chart. This means it is suggested to go long during an uptrend and short during a downtrend. The profit target has the highest rate of success in long term charts when a trader trades with the market direction along with keeping a close eye on the overall economic trends and global news affecting the market.

2. Medium-term

The medium-term time frame analysis is a hybrid of the long-term and short-term time frames. This particular time frame helps traders monitor a currency pair’s market movement over the past few months to make successful trades accordingly. The medium-term time frame works best to make any trade decisions about an already opened trade. For example, if you have opened a trade in USD/EUR and you monitor its medium-term chart that signals an uptrend, you can continue holding the position to maximise profits. However, if the same chart indicates a downtrend, it signals traders to short the position to minimise losses.

3. Short-term

The short-term time frame analysis is monitored on a daily basis that day traders can use to finally execute the trades. It provides traders with clearer price fluctuations throughout the day and week, enabling them to pick ideal entry and exit positions if they wish to make a trade decision immediately.

Example of Multiple Time Frame Analysis

For example, if you are trading USD/EUR, you first look at the price movement of the currency pair over the last one year through a monthly time frame. This shows a stable price movement in the currency pair prices since the beginning of 2020, with a swing low taking place between March to May, with a continued uptrend ever since. This is a long-term time frame analysis, which mostly long-term traders use.

Moving to a medium-term time frame analysis, one can use the same chart as above to notice that the first half of 2021 was comparatively more volatile than the second half. The USD/EUR prices were on a constant increase and decrease, simultaneously. Starting from January, the prices fell consistently before shooting up for a while in March and then tumbling back down in March-April. After that, the prices were a little consistent, not making any new highs or lows till May-June, and started increasing again thereafter in the month of July. The volatility in the market signals traders not to open any new positions immediately and wait for the prices to calm down a little. A long position can be taken after the month of July, once the prices start increasing consistently. This is a medium-term time frame analysis, which mostly swing traders use. However, if a trader wishes to take an immediate long or short position, it is suggested that they consider a short-term time frame, which only lasts a few days or weeks. With respect to the chart above, if a trader monitors the USD/EUR prices in the month of January, it sends them a signal to short the trade due to the constant dips. A short limit order can also be set according to the moving prices in the month of January, protecting the trader against any hefty losses. This is a short-term time frame analysis, which mostly day traders use. It is suggested that a trader trades by analysing at least two charts in a day to ensure that the trade decisions they make are successful.

Trading the Multiple Time Frame with a top-down approach

Trading multiple time frames with a top-down approach is considered one of the best ways to conduct an analysis of the trade and execute it in a broader way. This means you start trading with a broader time frame like monthly or weekly charts and then narrow it down to smaller time frames like daily and hourly charts. It is best advised to start with the bigger picture chart, for example, the weekly chart where the trader can formulate an opinion about the market’s overall trend and direction. The trader should then come down to monitor the daily charts. Here, the traders monitor the fluctuating prices and look for their trading conditions to be met for trade execution. If the conditions are met, the trader should finally narrow down even further by monitoring the hourly charts to take an ideal entry or exit position in the market. Trading with the top-down approach enhances the trader’s plans and strategies to trade and also saves them the time of shifting between charts back and forth. Starting from the widest time frame allows traders to catch the longer-term trends which are stronger in nature while spotting the correct entry or exit points on a smaller time frame chart.

Top Multiple Time Frame Analysis trading techniques you should knows

1. 15-minute charts

The 15-minute charts are most widely used by day traders who monitor the fluctuation of currency pair prices throughout the trading day. This particular chart enables traders to trade even the small price fluctuations and tiMe frames that range anywhere between one minute to 60-minute charts. The ideal market entries are spotted on the 15-minute chart frame that provides traders with significant day profits. However, time frames above the 15-minute charts are used to see how the currency pair prices are changing, based on which traders decide their next trade step.

2. Hourly charts

The hourly trading time frame is best used to establish the strong market trend for the day. The uptrends in the charts confirm an upward market bias, and the downtrends confirm a downward bias. The 1-hour chart is generally used to identify the best time to execute the trade during that hour. A 4-hour chart can be simultaneously used to evaluate the stronger market bias and confirm the market direction. 1-hour charts are responsible for the emerging price actions, whereas the 4-hour charts are responsible for the emerging price trends during the day. Traders can go in for a long position in the market when there is an uptrend in the 1-hour chart, and they can short the trade when there is a downtrend in the chart. This particular time frame is considered fast enough to give you appropriate market signals but is not too fast, giving you some room to breathe between the trades.

3. Daily charts

The daily charts summarise the currency pair price movement for the day and enable traders to predict where the market will open the next day. It is mostly used by swing traders who do not wish to spend the entire day monitoring a chart and hence choose to analyse a complete day’s chart together. It provides them with the overall trend, and they get an entry signal through 4-hour charts that act as a sub-chart of the daily chart. Both uptrends and downtrends can be identified in the daily chart, with the entry and exit points being available through the 4-hour charts.

4. Weekly charts

Weekly charts summarise the market price momentum that has been going on every day for the currency pair. It is best recommended to trade with weekly charts if you wish to spot the long-term trends to close or open trade positions in the near future. The weekly charts ignore any irrelevant noises in the daily price fluctuations and provide you with prices that are actually responsible for a successful entry or exit point. Swing traders use weekly charts to understand where the currency pairs stand during the particular week and predict the upcoming week’s price momentum accordingly.

5. Monthly charts

Monthly charts are a summation of weekly charts, enabling long term traders to monitor currency pair price fluctuations on a month-to-month basis. A monthly chart can be for a month, two months, six months or more (and less). Mostly used by long term traders, it provides them with the continued market direction of the currency pair, giving them strong signals to take short or long positions. A continued uptrend signals traders to take a long position, whereas a continued downtrend signals them to take a short position. It also helps traders understand which week was extremely volatile and which was comparatively stable in that particular period of time.

6. Yearly charts

Last but not least, the yearly chart is a Multiple Chart Analysis technique used explicitly by long-term traders. It provides traders with the strongest market trend for a currency pair price that helps them predict the future prices and market direction, on the basis of which they take their trade positions. A yearly chart for a currency pair includes price fluctuations that have occurred every single trading day for the year, giving traders the 52-week high price levels and 52-week low price levels. It does not give traders the ideal entry or exit points but enables them to understand if opening a position in the particular currency pair is going to be profitable in the long term or not, considering the historical price movements.

Trade with multiple charts together to enhance profits

Trading with more than one chart enables you to lock in profits by identifying ideal entry and exit points in the market. It provides you with strengthened market trends revealing the market direction to you, which plays a major role in placing successful orders. Blueberry Markets is a reliable, transparent and expert broker for all your trading needs. Sign up for a live trading account or try a risk-free demo account.