Improve your trading strategy by simply taking the bigger picture into account.
Just like traditional assets, cryptocurrency can be analyzed across multiple time frames. These can be as little as one minute or as long as one month. Professional crypto-traders use multiple time frame analysis to get a big picture view of market trends.
What looks like a positive trend over a 1 hour time-frame could actually be negative when viewed over a 4 hour or daily time-frame. The big picture view provided by multi-time frame provides traders with knowledge of the overall market direction and helps them avoid any unpleasant surprises.
How to get started with multiple time frame analysis
The time frames you choose will depend on the type of crypto-trader you are. Long-term traders won’t get much value from hourly or smaller time frames, whereas day-traders shouldn’t primarily be looking at weekly or monthly frames.
First, you’ll need to use some sort of crypto-trading terminal or platform. In Kattana, for example, you would go to the Market Scanner workspace where you can select the amount of charts you need and their respective time-frames. In the left-side window you have the option to navigate through the connected exchanges and cryptoassets you want to view, as well as add the most interesting ones to the watchlist. Just above the charts, you have controls to help you setup the necessary amount of chart windows with different time frames.
Four Chart Layout in Kattana’s Market Scanner
In most cases, three or four time frames is the most you’ll ever need. Fewer than that and you could miss important data, but more is likely to be overkill.
To determine the which time frames to use, you first need to quantify your intermediate period. The intermediate period is how long your average trade is held. Once this is determined, choose a shorter and a longer period based on the rule of 4. That is, the shorter period should be at least 1/4 of the intermediate period, and the longer period should be at least 4 times greater.
Using multiple time frames to find entry/exit points
Time to dive into the technical analysis. Let’s say you’re an intermediate-term trader. In this case you’ll want to have the daily chart (1D) as your intermediate period, the weekly (1W) as your big picture view and the four hour (4H) chart as your shortest timeframe.
Once you have identified advantageous long and mid-term trends, then you can drill down into the shortest time frame to optimize your entry and exit points. This is where you should apply Fibonacci analysis or other techniques using various indicators or drawing tools to optimize your strategy.
PRO TIP_:_ If you’re an active trader, you can add a two or one hour time frame (2H, 1H) to the ones you already have to spot divergencies in MACD and RSI. This is useful in obtaining additional verification of your planned entry or exit points.
Common mistakes
Many traders use multiple time frame analysis from the bottom up (from the shortest to the longest time frame), but this is far from an optimal approach as it often simply serves to confirm existing biases. A top-down approach (starting from the longest time frame) will result in much more objective decision making.
Top-down approach in Kattana’s Market Scanner
In other words, you should use the longest time frame for big picture analysis, the intermediate chart for setup and the shortest time frame chart to fine tune execution.
IMPORTANT: You should only get to the bottom chart if the first ones show trends that support your trading plan.
Tools for multiple time frame analysis
There is a number of tools that you can use to perform multiple time frame analysis to improve your trading and become more profitable. Our team has combined our trading knowledge with the latest technologies to create Kattana, a feature-packed crypto-trading terminal with Market Scanner, a tool specially designed for multiple time frame analysis. This is just one of the tools that will allow you to easily trade digital currencies on multiple exchanges and improve the execution of your trading strategy.
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The Kattana Team