What is price action (to you?)

Many on these boards and plenty of others profess trading is all in 'price action'.

What is price action?

Is it price and its relation to support and resistance levels?
Is it price reacting to patterns (triangles/head and shoulders)?
Is it just watching the way a candle/bar forms?

Does it have anything to do with...

Candlestick patterns (doji/flying dragonfly...)?
Fibs and its relation to these levels?
Pivots and its relation to these levels?
Ross hooks?
1-2-3 formations?

Or is it all athe above?

When I conjur up images of the wonderous ideas of price action I see blank charts with OHLC bars only and PA traders trying to gauge the future movement purely by how price is acting right now, this bar alone and how its moving... Is it that stripped down or do more of the above come into it?

Also, can you then really see further ahead than the end of the bar forming now, if going via price action alone?

I'll leave this open now and go back to my MA's crossing wildly!

I don't know about "many", but, for me, price action is the movement of price that results from changes in the relationship between buying pressure and selling pressure. It has nothing to do with Fib or Gann or Pivots or even charts. My focus is support and resistance.

As for gauging "future movement purely by how price is acting right now, this bar alone and how its moving", no. The character of any particular bar alone is so rarely significant that it's not worth including in the trading plan.

Db

I have to disagree with this portion at least. Of course markets are fractal, seems a popular buzzword at the moment, but any one bar within this anlysis, and dependent on your own favoured time frame can relaease as much info as any other, and they all tell something.

I agree that supply and demand is the key, more particularly an understanding of the origin of that supply and demand, but if you have a supply for example approaching a simple trendline support or major Fib retracement, the action of the bar around this level, likely has significant weight for at least a little while to come, if not longer.

If all of this were true, however, one would require bar charts in order to trade.

Db

well unless you have a crystal ball that does the trick - I find them a good start.

A crystal ball would be helpful, but not essential. Some traders trade off LII, some off T&S, some by the tape alone. And traders have been around a lot longer than charts have.

Therefore, while the bar or the line or whatever may be essential to one's own strategy or even the strategies of many, it is not essential to all strategies, primarily because the market hasn't the slightest idea where the trader's lines are.

Db

But the bar could be broken up into smaller portions?

For instance, today's daily bar of RTR shows nothing, except a downtrend with all the others, but split it into 15 min ones and we get a breakout to the upside.

Split

I agree split- thats the point I think, markets are fractal!