Griff on his 1-hour forex strategy and trailing stop rules

0:00So this is the trade which famously got me on the FCMO leaderboards. This was a 25% profit trade. Interestingly, just 2 weeks later, I had another two trades which made 20% and 20%. It's one of the reasons why my riskreward is so unbelievably high. Most traders say they want freedom, but they spend all day looking at their charts. Well, that's not true of today's guest. Meet Griff. He spent 17 months back testing before placing his first trade, and that patience actually paid off.

0:25He went on to hit number one on the FTMO leaderboard with a whopping 80% profit in a single month. People have said you should consider locking in 1% profit or 2% profit, but that ruins the whole principle of the risk management rules. So, in terms of prior price action, there's a couple different ones that I found work well over the years. The most traditional and the best is just But here's the thing, that profit didn't come from doing more.

0:51It actually came from doing less. He started to be more selective. He knew exactly what he was looking for. And today we show you exactly what that looks like. I was at $10,000 in profit. So rather than trading reduced risk, quarter% risk, I increased my risk to 1% per trade at the perfect time. So I was able to really capitalize on these trades which formed a bit later on. Griff shows us his entries, his trade management, and we follow that all the way through to his exits.

1:18If you're someone that wants to know how it's possible to trade alongside a full-time job, this might just be the strategy for you. I was able to optimize my stop loss using this. So, basically, I'm looking at where the majority of my trades are and most of them are. Let's get into it. What's up everyone? Welcome to the prop firm trader podcast. The number one podcast in the world for all things funded traders. I'm your host. I'm Sanjieve. I'm here to pull back the curtain on a strategy which made this trader 80% in one month and put them number one on the FTMO leaderboard for 100K accounts.

1:50You guys are in for a treat today. I'm not going to waste any more time. It is my pleasure to introduce Griff. Thank you, Z. Looking forward to Thank you so much for being here, man. Of course. Thanks for having me. Right. So, what we'd like to do here is I want you to start off by essentially just teaching me your approach to the markets, how you approach the the charts, what specifically you're looking for, and I think what makes most sense is we're going to start off with the whiteboard.

2:18I want you to give me your strategy in theory and then we're going to move into actually looking at some live charts. Brilliant. Um, show me what the theory looks like in action. Um, but start me right from the very beginning. What does your day essentially look like? Are there things that you're doing even before you get up to the charts that are an important part of your approach? Um, so my strategy, it's a price action strategy. No indicators.

2:43I'm just looking at the candles and I trade exclusively on the 1 hour time frame. Okay. So, it's pretty unorthodox. I'm basically just checking the candles for the last five minutes of each hour as the candle's closing. And based on that, I make a decision of whether I need to check the candles again in the next hour or whether I can wait two or three hours. Um, so my process is basically just checking the charts at the end of every hour of 245.

3:04So, um, like my morning process, my evening process is just is there a setup? is nice price action forming. Um yeah, and there's four specific patterns that I'm looking for. I thought I could start off just showing you please those four. Let's dive in. patterns. So, um there's an order I'd like to kind of go through. Um so, I'll start off. I'll just draw up in the corner here the four patterns that I trade. So, we've got a flag in the top left.

3:46Mhm. We've got a continuation in the top right. We've got a what I like to call a combo number three here, which is a mixture of a flag and a continuation in one. And then we've got a reversal entry at number four there. Okay. So, I thought I'd walk you through these and then we'll talk about the prior price action that I need before these entries because I kind of view these entries as my vehicle to get into good price action. Uh, and the price action is the more important part.

4:15Um, so we'll go big now. Sure. Um, so for a flag, super simple. I'm just looking for a big impulse. Big impulse. So that's a black candle. Mhm. So, three soldiers there. And then I think a lot of people when they look when they think

4:40of a flag entry, you've obviously got this kind of pattern. Most people would enter it on the break of the high here, they'd set a buy stop. But if you look at this flag pattern, the best place to get involved would be right here. M so that was kind of my methodology when it comes to entering into these flags. So trying to mechanicalize this what I'm looking for in a flag.

5:07So first of all impulse then counter trend candle. So that means that this candle is counter trend to this one. We're not breaking higher right and then I'm looking for a flag low to be formed. And the way that we get this flag low right here is by getting a counter trend candle back in the opposite direction. So this is kind of like a a swing low because both candles on either side Yeah.

5:32are um higher. The lows are higher. And then what I'm looking for is that when we create this flag low is I'm looking for a break of this flag low. So we might range around in here for a minute and then break this flag low. And I'm just looking for the first retrace candle. And then super simple, I'm market executing at the end of the hour, setting my stop loss down here. And then when we break the flag high with my risk management strategy, which is the special thing about my strategy, the risk management is what it's all about.

6:03I'm able to immediately reduce my risk below this flag low. Okay. So sometimes you might get a an entry candle which is, you know, massive. In this case, I do not enter. the flag has been invalidated. And other times we might not get the the the entry candle at all. We might just continue moving down. In which case, perfect. I've managed to save myself uh from entering by waiting for that retrace candle.

6:29So, in essence, that's what I'm looking for with my flag entry. Um, and the main, let's just tidy this up. The main things I'm looking for when I'm looking for this entry is I want to make sure that we've got clear bullish momentum and more importantly no shift in momentum in these retrace candles. So for example in this example I've drawn on I would argue that maybe we're starting to see a bit of a shift in momentum in which case I may be a little bit hesitant to take the tra the trade and if we break the flag low something like this I'm not going to take the entry candle here because I'm starting to see a shift to the downside.

7:03we're more likely to start trending down like that and not continuing. Um, so yeah, that's in essence my first entry. Okay. Do you have any any thoughts on that? No, I think uh all makes sense. Pretty pretty logical. And again, we'll go through context and stuff a little bit later, but in terms of entry, that makes complete sense. Super simple entry. Um, so that is the flag.

7:27Okay. And now we'll take a look at the continuation, which is very similar. I'm just looking for a large impulse. I probably shouldn't have gotten rid of the last one. Okay, good. And again, I'm looking for a counter trend candle, preferably no shift. So, I want this to be a small retrace candle. The best the best ones, let me redraw this. The best retrace candles are where you maybe have a let let me redo this slightly.

7:51The the best retrace candles are when you have so this is not counter trend. Okay? The best retrace candles are ones where you kind of have a tiny body but a really long wick like this. Like that's that's beautiful. That's the ultimate retrace candle. There's no shift. We've seen loads of buyer strength because of that massive wick. All the sellers have been decimated. And then I'm just looking for a break of this high. Mhm. And the really important part here is that I get quite a large candle.

8:29It varies on the pair. the tolerance of this the size of this. Um, and then what I'm doing is in this case I'm not setting a market execution. I'm setting a pending order. Yeah. Two pips above the this high that was created. So I'm setting a pending order here normally with a 10 to 12 pip stop loss. And then what we very very often get is we get price coming down and then flying off like that. Okay. Um, sometimes we may get an inside bar.

9:01Mhm. So like this in which case this is actually counter trend on both sides. So like this which would mean that the flag the entry candle would actually be a bit lower. So I I I really like it when we get an inside bar on the retrace candle because it gives me the opportunity to enter at a lower price and it's even more likely to tap and go.

9:20Now the important thing again we're focusing on momentum and shift in momentum. The important thing is that we don't impulse too much in this this candle here. Um because it means that we may get a shift in momentum to the entry which is probably what we'd get here to be honest. This would be quite a heavy retrace. So generally I do it is it is a fine balance. I made a bit of a mess here. No, you're good.

9:47You're good. It is a fine balance because I really need to see momentum to the upside with as little momentum going against me and I need I need a little bit of momentum going against me so that I can actually get tagged into the position. Okay. Uh so that that that's the continuation and then the flag super sorry the combo super simple version. It's basically just a we get that that uh kind of swing low and then it's tagging me in and then I'm getting a bit of both.

10:10So it's it's a beautiful entry because I'm getting a flag and a continuation and these are particularly high probability on JPY pairs. I found AJ and NJ. Got you. Got you. Right. Okay. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Again, are you So just for again my clarity here, you're you're not taking a breakout of that top level.

10:33You're waiting for a pullback. You've got a limit order resting there. That's right. So I'm setting a buy limit at this this high or if this is an inside bar like it is in this case this is actually the the the level I'm setting my my order and I'm not setting my order if price come is looking like it's going to come back too quickly.

10:51So in this case momentum has really it's really gone flying. Um and I would not set my order in this case. I would wait an hour for price to retrace a little hopefully not not continue going without me which is what happens sometimes. Yeah. And so in this case, we're actually coming a bit closer to the entry. And I feel and I imagine if a candle were to form here, would it show me a shift in momentum in context of the prior candles? And uh that's when I decide to set my order.

11:18And sometimes it's kind of difficult to visualize this. So on my trading view, I use the box tool and I have a a a setting like a template to make it the same color as a bearish candle. So, I can put that box there and then I can imagine what the candle would actually look like and I can decide, okay, will this show me a shift or not? One uh question I have, you've mentioned you don't want to see a shift in momentum.

11:41Yeah. What What do you mean by a shift in momentum? Are you talking about just a candle that closes back through the level that you're interested in? Like, so my definition of a shift in momentum is basically this is where the discretionary comes element comes into play. I'm just getting a feel of are we still bullish is this is this candle if if I draw on a candle here it really is discretionary because to some people this may not show a shift in momentum meaning we're still on an uptrend but I may say I think we're starting to pull back and see the beginning of a downtrend.

12:14So for example maybe you would say we're not that's not really a shift in momentum. We're still clearly on an uptrend, but you know, at this point, you would probably agree, okay, we're starting to be on a downtrend now. Um, so it's trying a shift in momentum is trying to kind of spot that change as early as you can. Um, and over the years of back testing and a process that I call focused charting, where I just go candle by candle trying to anticipate what the next candle's going to do, I've got really good at kind of feeling out when we're seeing a shift.

12:44Um, and you can use the the previous candles as well, you know, like this wick here and the fact that we've broken and retraced. So, we've actually not continued. We've retraced quite heavily. We're starting to see an ascending channel. So, you could anticipate this even more. Um, so yeah, uh, it is important that we're able to kind of get this move up with as little going against us as possible. Okay. Um, which is why it's important that we have quite a large breakout here because a small breakout well and a small breakout and then this retrace.

13:16We're actually just ascending. Like if I we're doing visual visual here. So imagine a smaller breakout and I wouldn't want to see a retrace here because we're definitely ascending now. That's showing weakness. I want to see strength. Um, so yeah, that's uh three of the four entries I trade. Okay. Um, and then for the fourth, which is my favorite, reversals are huge because unlike the first three, where you're getting in on an pre-existing trend, a reversal you're getting in at the very beginning of a trend.

13:48Okay? So, reversals often bring me the largest trades. Um, so I'm not going to bother drawing candles candles for the descending. So, imagine a descending here and then, uh, we'll we'll we'll draw a couple candles here. Now, so the way that I kind of define a descending is where we're getting breaks of the lows and retracing. So, we've got all these swing lows and we are not breaking we are not breaking the swing highs.

14:19Okay? And what I'm looking for is that first break of the swing high, which would be this candle in this case. I'm looking for a shift in momentum. So unlike the first ones where I'm looking for no shift in momentum, in this case, I very much want a big shift in momentum. Um,

14:41and then quite similar to the continuation entry I described, I'm setting my pending order at the previous swing high. So my pending order would be here. Okay, with a 10 12 pip stop loss again, right? And um, yeah, again I I we've got this shift in momentum. say that we're starting to see a shift in the context of the previous candles that's showing that we might reverse and again I do not want to see a moment momentum going against us.

15:04Okay. Um so I don't want in this case this is pretty good because I'm I I feel like no matter retrace candle like this it's not that big in the context of these previous candles. So you could the only shift you could really get is if it was huge like that. Okay. Um, so yeah, for the reversal it's great because we're really getting in at the very the very very beginning of a trend.

15:26So yeah, those are the four entries I take. I mean, you can also get a combo in this case as well, by the way. It's not just a combo. It's not just from a continuation. You can also get a combo reversal. Right. Right. Uh, yeah. Got you. Trading education is completely broken. For years, the industry has been purged and poisoned by bad actors, fake results, and strategies hidden behind pay walls. But in every industry, every once in a while becomes a catalyst, a moment in time for change.

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17:24Join the weight list now and be part of a movement that is going to change trading education forever. Um, so the and again just for my sanity here, the reversal entry is this done on a market order or is this done on this is a pending order. This is a pending order. This is the only one that's a market order, the flag. The other three are all pending orders. The imagine the continuation and the reversal are the same type of entry.

17:55We're just looking at pre-existing trending price action and the and coming from a a descending channel. So a continuation and a reversal in essence. Okay. And then the combo is just you know a combination of either the either one and two or one and four. Okay. Uh yeah. So those are my entries. But more important than the entries is the prior price section. So we'll touch on that next. Yeah. Perfect. Do do you find that any any one of the specific four give you like the most amount of setups or one of them has like a higher win rate than the other?

18:25Um, I'd say it's helpful having this in the corner cuz I can visualize it. I' I'd say the continuations form every day. They form all all the all the time, right? Um, but you don't often get continuations where you've got all three elements, which is an impulse, a small pullback. Yeah. And a strong follow through. So that those those are three ingredients that make a continuation.

18:57Quite often you'll maybe get uh two and three but not one so we'll not really be coming from much. Or you'll get one and three but not two so we've got a deep pullback not worth taking. Or you'll get uh one and three. Yeah. Yeah. I said that one. Okay. Cool. Cool. So in terms of prior price action, there's a couple different ones that I found work well over the years.

19:18Uh the most traditional and the best is just a channel. M. So to have an entry coming from a descending or an ascending, any of these coming from that is brilliant. Okay. Um, also a V and a range is what I call it. Quite often when you get a V and a range, you'll often get a continuation of the second leg of the V. Um, so this is basically like a head and shoulders, but I found that the pre the the range before the V is really not necessary.

19:50Okay. Um, so Vina range and you'll get a continuation of the second leg. So a flag from here or continuation from here. Um, because you couldn't get a reversal from there. Well, you can if you get something like this. This kind of combines two things. So you can get something like that where we're kind of getting a descending below this range, right? uh which is another type of high probability price action that I found which is when we kind of break below a key support or resistance level.

20:18So if price has been ranging for a long time uh I would not take a flag here. Okay. Because this is an area where I'm expecting price to kind of reject. Yeah. Gotcha. But a reversal so kind of going back into the range with the descending here. That's great. Um, and I would also say we just rained or let me let me rather than drawing it all again. Um, I would also be happy with something like this and then a continuation or a flag or a combo.

20:50And this is actually kind of like a V as well. So they they all intersect in many ways. So yeah, those are the there's actually one other piece of pri prior price action which is really high probability and that's just a massive impulse um which works great for the first three um and even the fourth in many ways because you

21:10can get kind of like a weird flag where if you have a huge impulse you can get something like this and that's in essence a reversal because we've we've I I have these highs and lows which I won't it would take me a long time to explain. Um but we've uh we've we've broken this low. So these are the new highs and lows now. And uh yeah, reversal here. So yeah, prior price action. That's the other ingredient.

21:38Um so all I'm looking for good prior price action. That's the first thing I check on my checklist in my mind. And then I'm looking for momentum, no shift in momentum, and any of these entries to form. That that's basically what I'm looking for. Um, and yeah, there's a lot of little things that go into it. Like I'm I'm looking at wicks. I'm looking at um I'm really focusing on individual candles uh to build a story in context of the I'm trying to build an image.

22:07Yeah. Looking at all the candles. And um yeah, over time I take very very few setups because I only take the best of the best like the creme de la creme. Got you. These days. Yeah. And how do like stop-loss placement work for you? I recall I think it was on the I think it might have been the continuation you mentioned you had a 10 to 12 pit stop loss.

22:24Yeah. How how does that work across all your different models? So the way that I've optimized my stop loss I don't put it below lows and above highs like with structure. I I don't do that. I've I've optimized over time with MAE maximum adverse excursion. Um, and so I've looked at the MAE for all my pairs, all my patterns and just as a whole, and I've been able to optimize my my my stop loss that way. Um, so we can probably draw out MAE.

22:57Sure. Um, so here's an MAE chart. For anyone that doesn't know, MAE is just the maximum number of pips that price moved against you before closing. So, for example, um if I took a flag here and I have my stop loss down here and my entry here, the MAE would be the distance from my entry right there to the furthest price moved against me. So, it would be this distance here. And what you can do with this data is you can plot it on a graph.

23:35I made a video about this recently um explaining MA in a bit more detail. Um, I think you have the return on the x- axis and your MAE on the uh y axis. So, let's see. Let's say I've got 20% winning trades over here. Okay. And negative 1% over here. And this is 0% of course. Mhm. And then this is a very very low MAE. And this is very high ME. Okay. Um, so what you'll often find is it will look something like you'll have a graph that forms something like this and you have a very high density of winning trades with a low MAE which means that your winning trades move very little against you.

24:25Yeah. And I was able to optimize my stop loss using this. So, uh, basically I'm looking at where the majority of my my trades are, and most of them are, funnily enough, uh, oh, no, it's nowhere near 10 12 pips. Um, most of them are around, I'd say, like 7 to eight pips. So, I realized that if I just adjust my stop loss to these levels, sure, all of these will become losses. Yeah. But these will become much bigger winning trades. Right. Right.

25:01Um, and yeah, doing this on a bunch of different symbols, bunch of different patterns, I was able to optimize my stop loss on all the pairs. So, I think AJ I used 10 pips, AU 10 pips, EJ 10 pips, EU12, GU 10, and NJ 12. So, those are the six pairs that I trade. So, question I have I I love this approach by the way, very data orientated. And I'm going to ask you the same thing about your takeprofits, whether you use MF for the the same sort of thing.

25:26But initial question that I have, completely agree with this and I completely understand why you would optimize for this. Do you ever find that daily rollover is a problem in some of the um Forex pairs that you trade if you get spreads that go wide and you have a relatively tight stop? So my approach for spread hours is 15 minutes before spreads widen I'll increase my stops by um the amount that spread is going to increase.

25:58So like for example on AJ spreads will go to like 40 to 50 pips. So I will just widen my stop to like 60 70 pips. Interesting. Um and then once spreads have returned to normal at 11:00 I move it back to where it was. And I've never been tagged out doing this in the last five years. Um yeah, obviously some pairs like NJ um they increase a lot because it's a bit more exotic. Um but like EU AU they don't increase that much.

26:27It's like 30 pips. So um quite often as well um my trade might even be in profit in which case I and I may I may not have been able to because I use a trailing stop loss which we'll talk about. I may not have been able to trail my stop loss that much yet. So I just don't move it. I just leave it where it is.

26:42Make sure that the EA I use doesn't move my stop loss during spread hours. And uh yeah, interesting. Yeah. So, we'll talk about the risk management next because I I think I mentioned on our um on the on the podcast we did, I think I said the risk management is the really exciting part about strategy. It's usually I think make or break for a lot of strategies. You can have a perfectly well good strategy. I use quotations that have it ruined by poor risk management.

27:09And equally, you could have a terrible strategy but actually make it breaking even or profitable with good risk management. So I think I in my opinion it's everything. Yeah. Um so I mentioned my highs and lows a little bit. I don't think it's worth getting into that too much because it is a is a complicated thing. Um it's not complicated but it's just confusing to explain. Um but it's it's very it's very simple to kind of uh to visualize it. So in essence, I'm trailing my stops with swing lows each time we break a high.

27:41So I will just draw some random price action here. Okay. And we will imagine that I have entered the trade a trade down here and that my stops are currently right there. Okay. Um so I'll draw some random price action. Mhm. Right now my stops are here. We've moved up. Let's say I've entered like that. So once this high is broken, yeah, I will trail my stop loss um two pips below this low. Okay. And then we move up.

28:19There are no countertrend candles. And what I mean by that is there's no candles where we've pulled back. So each candle breaking higher, this would be a counter trend candle. when we I am I will not move my stop loss from here until we break this high which is where we had the first counter trend candle. Okay. Um and then I will trace back along each high and I will look for the next counter trend candle.

28:47So in this case it would be around probably around here. It's not it's not very good with a line with a line chart. Yeah. Um and then again we we move up here. Boop boop boop boop boop. And I will trail back along the highs. Right. Stop loss is now here. Okay. Breaking this high. Trace back. Stop loss is now here where I was tagged out. Gotcha. And there's there's my trade. And this is how I get such massive positions because on the pairs which trend more correctively, which and what I mean by that is maybe a bit more like a channel where you're not really getting these these low breaks.

29:19Like I would be tagged out here for example. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It can just go and go and go. I've had trade I've had trades go to 30% profit. I've had trades go to 50% profit but I've only been able to lock in 10. So it really that that's where it's another element where the psychology can get pretty brutal because a trade you might enter. Let's take all this all this away. You might get a trade where it massively goes in your position and you've entered down here and there's been no counter trend candles the whole way up.

29:57So you're running at 10% but you're still, you know, maybe you've been able to reduce it to half a percent risk. And I have had times where, you know, over days it comes back and I get tagged out for half a percent loss even though it's gone 10% in my way. And you know people have said you know you should you should consider locking in 1% profit or 2% profit but that ruins the whole principle of the risk management rule.

30:23So this is one of the reasons my strategy is lower win rate but it's one of the reasons why my riskreward is so unbelievably high right. Um yeah so that that

30:33that's my favorite part about this strategy because the risk management itself is very mechanical and I have an EA on a VPS. Nice. Uh which just does it all for me. Nice. Yeah. Do do you ever add to any of your winning trades if you got an entry model after? I love to. It's funny you say that.

30:51I I made a list. I think I mentioned I was going to talk about the entries, the prior price action, the risk management, and then scalins. So, you're right on Q. Let's do it. Um, yeah. So, when it comes to scaleins, I can't scale in with a reversal. It's not possible because uh to enter a reversal, we are breaking and retracing lows. Um so the only methods for scaling in that I can use was the one, two, and three entries, the flag, the continuation, and the combo.

31:17Okay. Um and I've got an example I can show you on Trading View later as well. Um so I will only take trades if I grade them nine out of 10 or above. Okay. And the way that I kind of measure that as a rough way of doing it is if there's one thing bad with the trade, I'll take a point off. Okay. So I I have a tolerance for maybe one small warning sign, but if there's a big warning sign, like a huge wick, then I won't take anything.

31:40So So everything starts as a 10 out of 10 and then it goes down. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. So everything starts as a 10 out of 10 and I take points off based on how many bad things there are. Um but most of the time I'm not even looking for a trade until I see a setup.

31:58So I look at the setup and then I count how many things are wrong with it. I've just found that this is better. It's it's cynical but it seems to work. I like that. I like that. Um so for scalins though and the reason I mentioned that for scalins I have a bigger tolerance for uh the grade. So I will take scalins which are maybe a seven out of 10 or above. So it's a it's and it's because well let's let's visualize it.

32:17Okay. So let's say there's a flag forming here, right? I've entered. I love it. It's a nine out of 10 or above. Um, and we move up, I'm able to reduce my risk. Yeah. So, I will not take a scale in until my risk is completely off the table. Okay. So, I I never have more than 1% risk per pair. Okay. Uh, so I'm not take say a scale in forms here. Well, actually, I would be able to take it because a continuation here, I would be able to reduce my risk and I would be able to consider a scale in right there.

32:49Okay. As a continuation entry, right? Right. Um, but say I got a flag a flag right here. I still have some risk on the table and I would not be able to enter it because I haven't had this move higher. Okay, so I would not be able to enter this flag entry. Okay, so at this point at least I am unable to enter but we get a counter trend move. We get a nice break above this high. So this is showing me momentum.

33:19This is showing me no shift in momentum. This is showing me momentum. So, we've got impulse, small pullback, continuation. Um, I would be able to take this because my risk has been reduced below this low. Yeah. So, I would set an order right here. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And I would be able to enter right there. Okay. And I'm in two trades. And it's great now because for every pip, we continue moving in my anticipated direction, getting double profit. So, scalins absolutely love them.

33:49and I will take scalins even if uh it it's not very pretty. Um but now I'm in a similar position where I won't be able to take any more pos any more scalins until I've taken risk off the table of this even though this is running at you know 5% whatever profit I still have a little bit of risk on this.

34:09So I will not take a scale in while I have any more than 0% okay um on the table. So yeah that that that's my approach to scaleins. um they are fairly infrequent particularly in the most recent year's market conditions. We haven't really had any strong trends particularly on the forex pairs on the hourly time frame. Um but previously I' I've had some some really nice scaling. Do you And you only trade this on FX pairs. That's right. Yeah, just the six pairs I mentioned.

34:36So that's AUD JPY, AUDUSD, EURUSD, EUR JPY, GBPUSD, and NCD JPY. Okay, let's take a quick break here and I want to tell you about a prop firm that's actually trusted and proven to pay their traders. There's only one name you need to know about. It's Traderify. You see, Traderify Futures is one of the most trusted names in the industry. They've had consistent and stable operations over the last few years and they've paid out over $125 million to traders.

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36:14And trust me, this is not something you want to miss. Prop firm Trader is going to be there hosting live podcasts on stage with some of the best prop firm traders in the space. As always, we're not just going to be talking results. We're going to understand how they think, how they trade, and how they actually stay consistent.

36:35You're also going to see live sessions from chart fanatics, plus an opportunity to meet some of your favorite prop firms. There are going to be giveaways and opportunities to win prizes throughout the day. We're going to have our own booth there alongside Words of Wisdom, Chart Fanatics, and Chart Academy. So, make sure you come down and meet the team. We're going to

36:53be giving away free accounts and merchandise throughout the entire day. It's all happening on June 27th in London. All the links you need are in the description below. And if you're planning to grab a ticket, make sure you use code PFT to make the biggest savings. I'll see you there. H Have you ever tested it on any other markets or is that something that you're thinking about at all?

37:07Um I have a little bit. So I've tested it on a lot of different forex pairs. Those are just the ones that trend the best. Okay. Um or get the entries cuz for example on GU I don't trade reversals. Reversals don't work out for some reason. Um, other pairs I've back tested are like USD JPY continuations and reversals don't work out. I found only flags work on that pair. Um, so I like like the same way that I've been able to optimize my trades into a very small data set maximizing the profit.

37:39I've also reduced the number of pairs I was trading uh the all the back testing I did in early in my trading journey. It was it took me so long because I was back testing like 15 pairs um before I was able to optimize it. In terms of on other um other instruments, I've not personally had the opportunity to test as thoroughly as I'd like. Um because for indices, you'd think it would work very well because we're getting really big trends.

38:05Um but it just doesn't seem to work with the risk management I described. We we we often will get these huge trends, but we're often breaking lows on the way. So, I'm not able to to lock in as much profit as I can in forex, which tend to just go like this. Yeah. Um, so yeah, that's the issue I found with with with with indices, commodities like gold. Mhm. Obviously, recently it's been really good. They've just been trending like crazy.

38:32Um, but before that, they would tend to just you get stuff like this. Yeah. Where you're not really getting any clear trends. And, uh, yeah, trading gold is for people who want to make some quick money. I think that's where a lot of people start. Um I I asked primarily because I primarily trade FX as well and I have found that volatility over the years has been something that has seemingly just been dying in FX. Yeah, it's been really more choppy.

39:01Uh I mean I remember when I started in 2012, the hottest part of the month was NFP. NFP could swing things hundreds of pips. Yes. Whereas nowadays there are some occasions NFP is just a non-event. It's crazy. Yeah. Because it's funny you mentioned that NFP is the only news event I look at.

39:18I don't consider news at all. And the reason I do that is because in my back testing I can't consider news. I can spot a news candle. It's just a large candle with big wicks. Um but yeah, NFP has always been the one day I would take off which doesn't really benefit me anymore because I'm not full-time trading, but it was nice in the past I could take NFP off.

39:32Um and yeah, I agree with you. Volatility has just not been there. And funnily enough, in 2025 I had my first break even year. Wow. And I'm still averaging 40% per year on average. 2021 I only had like a quarter of the year I made 20 30%. 2022 I made 40 or 60% and then 2023 was where I had the big um the big FTMO trade which made 80% and that was basically my year's profit. Nice. Um 2024 I think I made 20 or 30%.

40:05And 2025 fat zero and I took I've taken um fewer trades than ever. Uh, and just thankfully my discretionary trade plans kept me out of all these poor market conditions because if I was trading the same way as I was in the past, I would have had my first losing year. Um, but yeah, I'm pleased to see that you're saying, you know, market the volatility's not been there in forex and I've seen on other um like verified track record, traders track record results that I kind of look up to, um, a lot of them have experienced the same.

40:36You know, I think it's not glamorous on Twitter. You hear people making huge trades, but you don't hear the kind of real realism of trading, um, which is just boring, chugging along, making a couple percentage here and there, um, not making huge profits. And I ask again a lot of stuff that I resonate with and this these are things that we obviously discussed on the pod as well where we we talked about the similarities in terms of swing trading but I I found that the second half of last year my performance was very very flat and I I remember doing a journal

41:15review specifically for Euro dollar right and I found Euro dollar between January and I think it was July or June its range during that time from top to bottom was somewhere near like 1,600 00 pips and then if you look from July to December was like 500 pips which for me on a daily chart is everything right you've got volatility reduced by 70%. Of course it's it's going to have a massive impact on my performance.

41:37Yeah. So I I think about this a lot personally because I'm thinking about the the markets that I'm trading and the approach that I'm looking at and I'm like is FX still the right asset class? I've been thinking the same to be involved in. Yeah. I mean it's always when you switch that FX will start picking up again though isn't it?

41:53So that's why you just got to keep doing the same thing you've always been doing. But maybe you can look at something else on the side, which is what I kind of started doing. I started looking at like liquidity sweeps. Um, now I I I'm not really a fan of that term because like I don't really believe in stop hunting and stuff. Um, but I do like the idea of execute orders getting executed a lower price. So like um on a couple of pairs I looked at just really simple entry where if we're ranging um just taking a uh a Marcus execution just as we break these major lows preferably there are several uh points with momentum.

42:36I found I found that if you if you have a range where you've got lots of buying momentum and then lots of buying momentum um when these lows are broken I find that as though it's a stop hunt um you you you tend to get a reaction there but I think it's more support and resistance to be honest and people just being like oh it's nice low price um because realistically a lot of the volume is actually within the range um which is what you see reflected on volume profiles another thing I've been looking at but yeah like it the market if if you were trading a a mechanical trade plan be screwed.

43:06You need to be flexible like and and that's why, you know, I've kind of explored um all sorts of things to kind of supplement my trend trading strategy because I'm just not getting any trends. Yeah. Um and it sucks because going a whole year of trading and not to be rewarded. Um but that's that's what it is to be a trader. Um you're you're getting rewarded uh a random distribution. So yeah, fair enough. Okay, awesome. This was really good. really give me an insight into at least seeing things in theory.

43:36Um I would love if you're open to it to us for us to jump on Trading View and actually some live charts. We'll see if my laptop can handle it. Yeah. Right. Let's get into it. Okay. So, we're back onto some real charts now. Um we're going to take some of the theory that you've shown us on the whiteboard and see and if we can apply it to some live price action. So, I know you've documented a fair few trades that you've taken previously. Yeah. um talk me through them market by market, setup by setup and uh let's let's see how we get on.

44:03Okay. So, I've done my best to get an example which shows kind of one of each entry. Okay. And also as varying price action as I possibly can just to show just to really illustrate this to those watching at home. Yeah. Um so first entry I've got is a flag on AJ and you can see what I was talking about where we've got the counter trend candles. this candle here is not breaking the previous candle's high and we've got the flag low where this wick there's higher the the low of the candle on either side is slightly higher.

44:41Okay. And then we break this flag low. I'll take this tool to draw on and you can see we form the entry candle. Um so more important than the entry is the prize section. And in this case we've got a very nice V. We didn't get the range, but we broke this kind of neckline and continued moving higher. Okay. Um, so in this case, I think that the V, it it doesn't necessarily need need a range if we just continue moving higher like this.

45:08Um, we're also, if I zoom out a touch, always got to zoom out. We've got a descending in prior price action over here. And then we're also the V is breaking below this range. So, there's kind of three nice ingredients that go into this. We've got a good impulse, bearish wicks, no shift in momentum, and I've set a market execution, and you can see I use quite a small stop loss, 10 pips here, and we can see how it goes.

45:41So, we break the high. We can see my highs and lows adjusting automatically with an indicator. Okay. Uh this is an indicator that my friend in Korea has made. Nice. And this wick here, you can see that it's still kind of within this. We can't adjust our stop loss yet because we'd actually be increasing our stop loss. So, we still need the counter trend candle up here. Yeah.

46:03And we get that there. So, now I'm able to trail my stop loss two pips below this low. So, that would be in this case 557. So, that would be a 4.62% winner. And that's a trade I took live in 2022. So, a long time ago now. Yeah. Um, so yeah, that was a pretty good example because it's got lots of different examples in prior price action.

46:28The impulse isn't as as large as I'd normally have it on a flag, but because there's so much good prior price action, I was willing to take it. Okay. I think when it comes to trading, like I said, um, in the podcast, I think a lot of variables hold different weights in context of one another. So, I don't need as much of an impulse because the prize price action is so good.

46:49Got you. Um, so yeah, so that that's a really solid trade. Quick question for you. Are you actually tracking your trades properly or are you just taking them and then moving on? Because if you're not reviewing your data, you're not actually improving. This is exactly what Tradezilla fixes. It's an automated trading journal that connects directly to your broker, pulling all the information about the trades that you are taking. This is the absolute best way to get a full breakdown in terms of how you're actually performing.

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47:41Is that fair to say? Uh yeah, I suppose I'm looking at the previous price action a lot more than the current price action. Um obviously it holds kind of more weight in my mind as we move to more recent time. Okay. Um but yeah, I I am putting quite a heavy emphasis on prior price action to determine my entries because ultimately that's kind of the the fuel that is moving the market. um the patterns forming in prior price action and current price action.

48:13Um you're not often going to get the whole the the entire story told in just those few candles. So I really zoom out to get the full picture. And again, this is one hour exclusive. Um so really really simple uh to follow. Uh I like the the hourly because you're kind of getting a perspective on what's happening on the higher time frame as well as on the lower time frame. So on the lower time frame, you know, you can there's obviously uh like some kind of uh liquidity sweep there, right?

48:42Probably people taking little ICT reversals here before the news event down. It's also probably forming at a good session. Um but yeah, so you can kind of tell what's going on in the lower time frames and you can also quite clearly tell what's going on in the high higher time frames. I can see I can see one week at a time. Um so it's very it's very convenient intermediary kind of uh time frame. Nice. Yeah. So that's that's that's my AJ example.

49:09Okay, we'll take a look at the NJ example next, which is a bit more recent. This is from 2025. And uh in this case, the prior price action, which is always the first thing I look at, we've got a gap, which is very, very interesting because we often gravitate back towards gaps. Gaps often get filled. Not every time. You can't treat it as gospel. Um so we've got this gap. We've kind of got this larger ascending structure again. And we're also seeing a really nice impulse to the downside uh which is a requirement of the continuation entry.

49:37So lots of good things going on there. The the impulse as part of the continuation is um kind of a part of

49:49the prior price action to be honest. When we get a really huge impulse, oh I've moved that. When we get a really huge impulse, the impulse itself kind of becomes prior price action in that scenario. Um, so in this case, I'll zoom in a little bit so that everyone can see a bit more easily. I'm setting my pending order two pips below this low right here. Right there. Yeah. So, in this case, I've not actually done that.

50:13I've just whacked it on. So, I'm clicking 20 times to get it down there. So, I'm setting my pending order here. I've got another small stop loss, 12 pips this time. Okay. And we get tagged in. We've got double wicks. Now, if I wasn't tagged in on this candle, I probably would have removed my pending order. I'm that strict. Interesting. Um, and as well, again, what measuring kind of the distance, we've got momentum in this break, but there is kind of a medium wick.

50:40Some people may have decided to stay out of this because the wick may have put them off. Um, but NJ is a very wiki pair, so I've got a bit higher tolerance of a wick. Got for a wick on this pair. Um, and it's not too far away from the entry, so willing to set my pending order tagged in. But if I wasn't, if you imagine that wick was not so high, we've got double wicks now, which is a bit more of a warning sign.

50:59I would have I would have stayed out and be a minus one on your scorecard. Precisely. Yeah. Um, so yeah, moving down, you can see that I would be adjusting my stop loss above this blue line with each low break. And until this blue line is broken, I'm still in the trade. I'm not going to adjust my um riskreward tool each time just for the sake of keeping it simple.

51:20And you can see that it tagged me out there. So that's the first high break. You can see I've got the indicators marked off for me. So it would be around there around a 10% winner. Nice. Um so that's an NJ trade that I took um last year. Awesome. Um AJ, another AJ position. This time a combo. The reason I chose AJ specifically for this combo is because combos I don't know why they don't even work out on NJ that well, but on AJ they just it loves combos.

51:48Combos super high probability on this pair. Okay. Um, so I've actually clicked a couple candles ahead on accident here. So we've got an ascending channel in prior price action. Really, really nice ascending channel. We've also got a gap. Now gaps are not are quite rare. So I don't I wouldn't have really put too much weight on this because it's so old. Okay. Um, but the ascending channel, the breakout, um, this is arguably almost a reversal at the same time, but I would not say so because we've got this low break here.

52:16I would prefer if we kind of moved up from here, we didn't get this low break, then it would be a reversal and a combo. Okay, but because of this um this this is actually taking one point off on the scorecard. Um because when we break on both sides, break and retrace on both sides, it's actually showing more rangebound price action. Um I kind of want to see just breaks and retraces on one side. Okay. Uh yeah. So, another nice impulse. And I have not set my order immediately.

52:44Um because if I draw where I'm actually setting my order, it's around here, two pips below. Okay, just around there. I'll do it like that for now. Um if I take it back. So, at this point, I'm looking for trades. I know I'm looking for either a flag or a continuation. If we get something um if we get something like this and then like that, that would be good.

53:09Okay. Um waiting to see what happens though. I'm not setting any order up here. So, I'm still not setting my order. I feel like that would start to show a shift. Two candles down, two candles up. It's neutral, right? Um, at this point, okay, we've moved back down. Well, now if I got a bullish candle, let me zoom in a little bit for everyone.

53:24Now, if we got a bullish candle from this point here, and I use my template for an up candle, you can kind of visualize that that up candle is actually larger than many of the down candles. Um, and that is arguably going to begin to show me a shift in my m momentum. So again, for the sake of visualization, I'm still not ready to set my pending order.

53:45Now, this is looking a little bit better. I might cons consider setting my pending order now. Okay, that's good. We're seeing weakness wicks to the upside, struggling to move higher, which is exactly what we want. We want price to struggle to my entry and then to plummet once it's tapped in. Okay, and now we're tapped in. We've wicked, which is what we often get with these continuation reversals. Yeah. uh combo entries. It's come very close to my stop loss and then it started moving um in the middle of the night for no reason.

54:10Um and yet another case of I've uh been able to the the the highs and lows are correct. Yeah, they are correct. Sometimes they aren't 100%. Oh wow. Yeah. Zoom back out again. Yeah. Um but we've got this huge move, right? And I've only got 2% around 2% locked in and I can't lock in anymore until we've got cancer candle, thank god, but sometimes it just starts coming back, you know.

54:39So, we need a low break and we get it. Nice. And now I'm able to lock in my uh stop loss there. So, I'm not using any TPS at all. Just purely trailing um trading. And you can see that we actually gapped on market open. So, I would have been tagged out probably a bit higher because of spreads. So it would have been around a 12 13% winning trade there. So one thing just to clarify um you mentioned obviously you can't trail your stop loss until you've had a new high or low break.

55:09Yes. Is a high or low break for you literally just price movement through the candle or does it have to close through? Just a wick through is fine. Just a wick. Okay. Yeah. So I would have been able to lock in some profit, move my stop loss here for example. Got you. Yeah. I because I noticed the the tool uh sorry the indicator adjust and I was like I didn't see it had a candle close yet but okay. Yeah. Um yeah.

55:34So the way I won't talk about the highs and lows it will take forever. It's an interesting technique though. Um so this is the trade which famously got me on the FCMO leaderboards. And this was a 25% profit trade. And interestingly just two weeks later I had another two trades which made 20% and 20%. So, it it was around that. I I can't remember exactly because this was 3 years ago.

56:01Now, if I skip forward, uh we'll just play we'll play forward and we'll probably be able to see it because it was on the same pair. Okay. Um so, I had a continuation on EJ, which is this one, and also a continuation on AJ. So, this was because I I couldn't request a payout quite yet, I had to keep trading the account.

56:17Um and fortunately, because this trade was so large, I I was at $10,000 in profit. So rather than trading reduced risk, quarter percent risk, um I actually increased my um because I had this buffer now, I increased my risk to 1% per trade at the perfect time. Um so I was able to really capitalize on these trades which formed a bit later on. Nice. So you can see stop loss here. Nice stop loss here. Yeah. And this was a another 20% trade.

56:49And then on AJ um it was uh sorry yeah AJ it was very similar because of the currency correlation there was actually a scaling on that as well and we'll talk about scalings in a moment. Yeah. Um so yeah I've got this up to show both the the power of this stop-loss trailing rule and also

57:09uh a reversal which you can see here. Um we've got only breaks and retraces of the high. You can see each time we're breaking, we're immediately retra retracing or showing weakness with all these wicks. So wick retrace, wick retrace, wick retrace. We've broken high with two candles here, but wick wick and then again double wick on top. And then we've broken the low for the first time with a candle which is in context of the previous candles much larger.

57:30So I'm seeing a shift in momentum. Setting my pending order. I'm happy for price to retrace here. And I'm I I I think I was actually not tagged in there, but still seeing no shift. and I was tagged in pretty soon after. Nice. And then yeah, just a massive massive trade where we just trail our stop all the way to 25% profit. Um so yeah, really powerful um risk management rule. It doesn't mean you get it mean it means you have a lower win rate, but you have huge risk reward.

57:56Yeah. Yeah. Um and then lastly, I've got this example on AU, which is three trades. Um we've got a flag here, but this is a bit of an unorthodox flag. is it's one I like to call a flag plus which is a refinement to the flag which I've made over the years and basically it requires an inside bar followed by an outside bar and then the entry candle and basically on a lower time frame it's forming this kind of this kind of shape but on our time frame yeah um we are seeing it like this so inside bar outside bar entry candle um so yeah thought I'd better clarify that and we're able to move up move up let me actually bar replay so we can see the uh the trail breaks.

58:38Um so moving up, moving up, moving up and then right here, this is an unorthodox continuation. Normally I would not take a continuation here. Okay, so we are in trending price action, but there's also a shift in momentum here. There's a quite a strong shift down. So I'm weary of there being some kind of weakness here. Okay, if I draw that. So, I'm really looking to see how we react in this area. I'm expecting price to just reject and start moving down.

59:13Um, so we wick. So, that's the first sign. I'm anticipating a bearish move here, but if we move higher, that shows a lot of buyer conviction because it was able to continue moving up despite what I consider to be a very dangerous area for buyers. So, if we're able to continue here, that actually conversely shows me a lot of strength. Um, so we continued moving higher, decided to set my pending order, tagged in just perfectly, continued moving higher. Um, and we actually get another continuation entry here.

59:48In this case, the the continuation itself is very very small. It's much smaller than I'd normally take, but because it's a scale in, I'm willing to take it. the we've we've got the uh the impulse in the first move and then in the retrace we've got a beautiful retrace candle where it's uh with the trend is what I would call that a retrace candle with the trend.

1:00:10It's only possible to get a retrace candle like this if you have a bearish top with a wick because it fills the wick um but it's still counter trend so it's it's fantastic when you get a continuation like that. Then we've continued moving higher, but considering that retrace candle and also the fact that it's a scale in um I'm willing to enter again. So I do um we move up, but I'm not able to capitalize on the entire move. I don't think I I think I'm tagged out right here.

1:00:38I'm not sure if this did move two pips against me because I have my stop two pips below. So I only moved 1.1 pips against me. So I'm still in this trade despite the low break. Yeah. Moving higher again. and then I tag out. So, collectively 5% 3% and 1.6%. So, around 10% with all of them. Uh that's the most scalins I've ever had in one go. Um and yeah, I have this as my screen saver sometimes because it's just so nice to see all those stacked riskreward tools.

1:01:02Yeah. So, those are all the examples I've got. I think that's one of each. Lots of different prior price action and I hope you know to the to the viewer at home that it's helped helped them get an idea of my trading strategy. For sure. For sure. No, honestly, that was a really really good insight. I think you've done a great job of breaking down things in both in theory uh and then coupling that up with kind of a live price action version of of each one of those.

1:01:32So, really appreciate that. Thanks. And I also want to say um when this video goes out, I'll respond to every comment. So, if you have any questions, I'd really I I love this strategy and I'd love to share it with people. So, if you have any question, I'll I'll respond to every comment. So, I'll be watching this video at least for the first couple of months. Yeah, maybe in 10 years I won't be replying, but that's super kind, man.

1:01:50Um, listen, I just want to thank you for your time today and especially just giving us the the insights behind what goes on behind the scenes. I think this is what a lot of people are curious about. A lot of people are still trying to find their edge. Um, and I think even just seeing the the process breakdown, the mentality behind what specifically you're looking for on the charts is going to be really helpful for a lot of people at home.

1:02:11So, thanks, man. Yeah, thank you so much, Griff. It's been an absolute pleasure today. Thank you, mate. Guys and girls, I hope you guys have enjoyed that. I'm sure there's a lot of insights, a lot to unpack from Griff strategy there. Um, let us know in the comments below what was your biggest takeaway from a technical perspective in terms of how you're thinking about approaching the charts.

1:02:33Was there anything that he demonstrated or showed which has got you thinking about how you can improve your edge? That's really the purpose of what we're doing here. We're providing tools, education, conversations to help you guys become more consistent with how you approach the markets. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you give it a like. Subscribe to the channel for more videos just like this. And I will see you again in the next one.