This is an essential skill required by every aspiring trader. All professional traders definitely know this, for it forms the basis of many setups, and can mean the difference between breezing on the right side of the market, or clenching your fists in anger as the market goes against you.

I am referring to the ability to tell the state of the market.

Besides behavioral analysis, there are some simple price action guidelines that we can use to accurately determine the state of the market. This is important for obvious reasons.

There are 2 basic states of the market – trend or range. As the market shifts between these 2 states, it creates many trading opportunities in the form of setups.

Newbies who attempt to trade by memorising setups while ignoring the underlying structure of the market are heading for the proverbial iceberg. That said, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

This video should provide you an idea of how prices move, and if I have a chance to share more in upcoming seminars next year, I will show how these transitions give rise to the different trading setups that we teach during our training programs.