Sunday, July 17, 2011

What is a Control Bar and how to locate it?


Ok, lets start with the question that is uppermost on everyone's minds. What are control bars? I have a specialised algorithm which calculates the bar to me but as i said, that wouldnt work out when i throw it open to the public forum. Not all people can use this algo and i cannot expect everyone to depend on me for the bars.

So, lets try and come up with a good universal definition for control bars. In my mind, its quite simple to find good control bars. Just open up your chart and choose the bar which has the highest volatility, in other words, the biggest bar. This is a good control bar for everyone to work with.

I can give so many definitions for it but that will only add to the confusion. A simple definition is a bar on your chart which has the biggest size. Simple..I have attached a chart of EURGBP and you can see that i have marked a bar, which is a control bar in my view, as A. It is the biggest bar in my chart and as you can see, it acts as a fantastic control bar as it keeps price within it and once there is a break outside this bar, you can see that there is a good breakout and also the high and low of this bar then starts acting as support/resistance.

I have taken a short using the low of the bar as the resistance. It has less SL and the idea is to take off half of the position at 1:1 and leave the rest for 3:1 or 4:1 trade.