Scalping Yen in the Asian Session

I had some time to kill yesterday after work so I decided to scalp the USDYEN pair in the Asian session. I haven't scalped in ages so I thought it would be a nice way to break in to trading again. The Asian session is usually pretty mild so I wasn't expecting any monster moves.

I started with a 1m chart and setup a few static cycles off of some of the most recent major highs/lows. In my research, I've found that any number will work as long as it comes off of a point of change. I'll usually start with Gann or Fib numbers like 12, 13, 45, 68, 120, 144, etc. I may also divide the number of minutes in the session evenly. So for the US stock market it would be 390 minutes divided however. Forex can be 1440 for a 24 hr period or 480 for a specific session.

I didn't have a lot of time to get intricate with top down charting and analsysis so I just went with basic trend lines, channels, chart patterns, pivot points, and oscillator plays.

The first trade was based more on price hitting the top of a down sloping channel and hitting a pivot line. There was upward divergence from the oscillator and a time line had just barely hit, but I felt the pivot and trend line would be solid resistence. I waited for 2-3 candles to close to make sure price wasnt' going to push through and then went short. (Charts are clickable thumbnails.)



Price moved on down to the next pivot line and bottomed at the next time division at which time I closed the short and entered long. Normally, I wouldn't trade against a channel, but price was coming down to a lower range pivot which is usually strong enough support to get some action. Price had also pushed through the oscillator trend line.



There was some erratic action for a few bars and I took a chance adding another long when the next time division came up. The target was the next pivot line. Also, there is a cluster of 3 time points coming up.



Price achieved the target and both trades were closed. Now the task was to wait for price to drop into a time line for another chance to go long and see if price could push through the pivot line convincingly. I jumped the gun on the first opportunity and went long before the candle closed on the time line. It's best to wait for the candle to close at the earliest. It's usually best to wait one or even two candles after a time line especially if there is no discernible support/resistance. I also drew in some saw wave lines to gauge cycle overlap. That provided enough confidence to wait for the next time line to add another long.



Price moved on up through the pivot but did not break the previous highs. The saw wave showed the cycle was up as well as price rising into a division of time so I exited both positions for small profit.



All told, the trades yielded about 75 pips in just under two hours during a relatively quiet time. I wanted to stick around for another opportunity to go long and see if price was able to reach the next pivot (which it did) but the wife showed up. Either way, the first scalp session was a good example of adding some simple time cycle techniques to traditional chart analysis for picking market reaction points to the minute. I don't know if I'll make a habit of scalping since I don't like sitting around in front of charts for more than 20-30 minutes. I much prefer 20-30 minutes of analysis, set entry orders, and then coming back later to see how things played out.