retail trading strategies **review**Intro :
Over the past two decades retail forex traders have gathered around a handful of trading methods, some taught by personalities, other emerging from various trading online communities. These strategies range from rules-based technical systems to conceptual frameworks and mostly try to explain large institutional behavior. Most of these strategies are the ones that i have come across in my trading journey.
What this is not : a promise of riches, holy grail system, It's a technical and practical review so you can evaluate, backtest, and adapt.
1) Beat the Market Maker — Steve Mauro
(i) Overview: Popularized by Steve Mauro, this approach claims that major institutions (market makers) manipulate retail orderflow to generate liquidity. The method focuses on identifying accumulation/distribution phases and the ensuing directional move.
Core ideas & rules:
Identify periods of consolidation where "market makers" are believed to be accumulating.
Look for shakeouts (false-breaks) designed to hit stop clusters, then trade the ensuing impulse move.
Use support/resistance, liquidity pools (highs/lows), and structure breaks as confirmation.
Key tools: structure (swing highs/lows), volume spikes (if using a data feed that shows volume), and range breakout fails.
Strengths: Provides a narrative for why false breakouts occur and where liquidity sits.
2) ICT (Inner Circle Trader) Concepts — Michael Huddleston
Overview: ICT is a comprehensive set of market concepts and tactics covering market structure, institutional orderflow, liquidity, and time-of-day edges (e.g., London Open, New York Open). It mixes SMC ideas with very specific rules (split tests, fair value gaps, breaker blocks). It also important to know it's always evolving.
Core elements:
Market structure shifts (MSH/MSL)
Fair Value Gaps (FVG) — price imbalances to be filled
Order blocks — candles/areas where institutions allegedly placed big orders
Optimal trade entry (OTE) using Fibonacci retracements, often 61.8–79%
Time-based edges and correlation analysis
Strengths: Detailed playbook with clear confluence rules — useful for disciplined traders.
3) Smart Money Concepts (SMC)
Overview: SMC is an umbrella term (overlapping heavily with ICT) used to describe approaches that try to model institutional behaviour: liquidity grabs, order blocks, fair value gaps, and structure breaks.
Typical rules:
Wait for liquidity sweeps (wick hunts) that break obvious swing highs/lows.
Identify the return to an order block or imbalance as a high-probability entry.
Only take trades in the direction of higher timeframe structure.
Strengths: Emphasizes risk management and trading with institutional flow.
4) Supply and Demand Trading ( my personal favorite)
Overview: Basically this is the imbalance between buyers and sellers, the greater the imbalance, the greater the move. A widely used retail approach that focuses on identifying institutional footprints. The idea is that price tends to revisit these levels because unfilled orders remain.
Core ideas:
Supply zones: areas where heavy selling originated, typically sharp moves away from consolidation.
Demand zones: areas where aggressive buying originated.
Trade the first return to these zones with stop-loss beyond the zone, with the entry being the proximal price and stop loss just a few pips from the distal price.
Strengths: Provides clear areas of interest for entries/exits, often aligning with institutional footprints.
5) Price Action (Naked Trading) & Candlestick Patterns
Overview: Pure price action traders use raw price and candle formations (pin bars, inside bars, engulfing patterns) rather than indicators.
Core ideas:
Read support/resistance structure
Use rejected wicks/pin bars as entry signals
Combine with orderflow context (higher timeframe structure)
Strengths: Lightweight, transferable across markets, robust if rules are clear.
6) Wyckoff Method
Overview: A classic institutional-style framework (dating earlier than 20 years but widely revived) focusing on accumulation, markup, distribution, and markdown phases.
Core ideas:
Identify phases (A–E) and spring/spring failures
Volume and price structure show the footprints of large operators
Strengths: Provides a stage-based map of market cycles; excellent for swing traders.
7) Order Flow / Volume Profile (Footprint-style thinking)
Overview: Order-flow traders analyze where traded volume clusters and how price reacts to those clusters. In spot forex, exact volume data is limited, traders use tick volume or correlated markets.
Core ideas:
Volume Profile shows value areas, POC (point of control), and high-volume nodes
Rejections from value areas often lead to directional moves
Strengths: Gives a textured read of where supply/demand imbalance exists.
8) Trend-following & Moving Average Systems
Overview: Simple, time-tested approach using moving averages, breakouts, and momentum to ride sustained trends.
Core ideas:
EMA crossovers (e.g., 8/21/55) or price above/below a long MA
Use ADX or RSI to confirm trend strength
Strengths: Low subjectivity, easy to automate, works well in trending markets.
9) Grid & Martingale (Controversial retail staples)
Overview: Grid and martingale methods place multiple orders at fixed intervals or double down after losses.
Core ideas:
Grid: place buy/sell orders at intervals to capture mean reversion.
Martingale: increase position size after losses to recover.
Strengths: Can generate small, steady returns in low-volatility ranges.
10) Fibonacci & Harmonic Trading
Overview: Fibonacci retracement/extension levels and harmonic patterns (Gartley, Bat, Butterfly) are price geometry approaches used for precision entries.
Core ideas:
Use Fibonacci retracement for pullback entries (38.2 / 50 / 61.8)
Harmonic patterns require precise ratios to qualify, the same fib levels.
Strengths: Clear entry/target geometry; widely taught, backed by math gods (hahaha)
nerdy advice:
Backtest before you believe. Use TradingView’s strategy tester or export historical bars for offline testing.
Define objective rules. Ambiguity kills consistency; translate concepts (e.g., "order block" or "demand zone") into a reproducible rule set.
Risk management is king. Use fixed fractional sizing, stop-loss placement based on structure, and stress-test for tail events.
Simplicity beats complexity. Too many overlapping rules reduce clarity and make optimization fragile.
Document setups. Save your @TradingView ideas with full annotation so you can later audit winners and losers.
put together by : Pako Phutietsile as @currencynerd
*** i also like supply and demand because most these strategies use supply and demand but under different titles, for example an ict trader calls supply and deand CP,s order blocks..
