1-To-1 Pinbar Scalping

Forex Trading Strategy

There are two aspects of a trade entry that should be

considered, first, the trade direction, then the entry itself or
the timing of the entry.

Both are equally important, but one is trickier than the

other.

First, trade direction. Trade direction refers to whether you

would be buying or selling.

This is determined on whether you think price would go up

or down. This is very important.

If you get this wrong, then the whole trade would already be
wrong, and it would be very hard to salvage that trade.
However, this is a bit easier to decipher.
In fact, majority of traders get this right. It’s the second
thing that usually messes up a trader’s profitability.

So, what about trade entry and timing? Why is it so hard to

determine?

This is because, when in trade direction, you only have two

options, up or down, in timing the entry, you’d have many
different options, in fact, each tick that the market makes is
an option.

Not only is it difficult, it is also critical in order for a trader to

have a positive reward-risk ratio.

Those who haven’t got the skill of timing an entry down

often resort to hedging strategies that are a bit risky and
doesn’t allow a trader to predetermine the risk.

Indicator Based Entry Timing Versus Candlestick

Pattern Based Timing

There are many different ways to time an entry. It could be

based on whether price reached a certain area or breaks out
of one.

It could be based on patterns or it could be based on a

specific set of rules.

But I think there are a couple of ways to time a trade that

could be very specific, it seems surgical.

One way would be based on a confluence of reversal

conditions coming from indicators.
It could be a crossover of an oscillator, an overextended
market scenario, Heiken-Ashi reversal, etc.

This is a great way to surgically time an entry because it

takes subjectivity of decision away from the trader.

Every decision is based from an indicator, which is

mathematically derived from price movement itself.

This allows us to statistically test whether our entry works

or not.

The setback though is that it often is a bit more lagging

compared to observing price movement itself.

Another way to time entries would be through the use of

candlestick patterns.

There are candlestick patterns that have been proven to

have a positive expectancy of yielding a profitable trade.

One of the most popular is the pinbar pattern.

A pinbar is basically a reversal candlestick pattern with a

small body and a long wick.

The long wicks signify price rejection.

Whichever way the wick is pointing, the market is rejecting

that price.

Whichever way the small body is on, the market might be

going towards that direction.
Below is an example of a bearish pinbar with a long wick on
top.

Next, we have an example of a bullish pinbar with the wicks

below.
Trade Strategy Concept

Knowing that pinbars are commonly recurring, higher

probability reversal patterns, we will be trading based on
this strategy and allow the probabilities of this pattern to
work on our favor.

But we can’t take just every pinbar pattern that presents

itself.

We will have to filter it based on the general direction of the

longer-term trend.

So, we will be trading pinbars that agree with the direction

of the market based on the 200-period Exponential Moving
Average (EMA).

What this does is that it allows us to take trades just as the

market is about to end a short-term retracement on a
long-term trend.

Also, since we are relying solely on the pinbar and the

long-term trend, it might be good to have conservative
targets for a scalp.

We will have a 1:1 reward-risk ratio based on our stop loss

and take profit targets.

Timeframe: 1-minute, 5-minute, and 15-minute chart

Currency Pair: any major currency pair

Session: Tokyo, London and New York session

Buy Trade Setup

Entry

 Price should be above the 200 EMA (gold) indicating a

long-term bullish market
 Enter a buy market order on the close of a bullish
pinbar

Stop Loss

 Set the stop loss at the low of the candle

Take Profit

 Set the target take profit at 1x the risk on the stop

loss
Sell Trade Setup

Entry

 Price should be below the 200 EMA (gold) indicating a

long-term bearish market
 Enter a sell market order on the close of a bearish
pinbar

Stop Loss

 Set the stop loss at the high of the candle

Take Profit

 Set the target take profit at 1x the risk on the stop

loss
Conclusion

This is not a high reward-risk strategy as we are limiting it

to 1:1.
This strategy is also not a high probability strategy because
its entry is based on a confluence of only two conditions.

Where this strategy shines however is in the volume of

transactions that you could have and that is very important
for scalpers who take minimal profit per trade.

This allows for the statistics to work on our favor.

It would be very tedious and brutal at times, but the law of

large numbers could be on your side.