The first thing I do every morning, before opening my screen to the clients, is make a determination as to which currency markets are in uptrends, and which currencies are in down-trends. I rely on the current direction of both the Weekly and Daily charts to make this determination. Once I have qualified the markets by direction, I open up the shop.

Today was a little tricky initially because so many of the majors are in counter-trend mode (the monthly is counter to the weekly while the daily is counter to the 240-minute etc) which means you either don’t trade, or you be even more selective about what you do trade. My job of highlighting trade set-ups and signals in live markets, on the lower time frame charts, is much easier when the trends on those higher time frames are aligned, not in flux. When I do see a market aligned on it’s higher time frames, I keep it simple and mark off the significant structure — trendlines & retracements — which could provide suupport or resistance should the market give us a retracement, with an eye on levels where we see a confluence of structure. One good thing about the U.S. session, it does give us retracements. Floor Pivot Points and our own Directional Lines also provide excellent structure. From here the plan is simple. Look for dips to support in uptrends, or rallies to resistance in down-trends. This AUDJPY chart from this morning provides a good example: