Insights from the Distribution of Prices
Posted by John Forman in Forex, Forex Trading, Market Analysis, Market Commentary, Market-Depth, tags: alternative investment, Euro, Forex, Forex market analysis, Forex Trading, portfolio diversification, trading, volatility
As a change of pace, I thought I’d use this post to do a little bit of market analysis looking at the market from a different perspective than the ones most often used. This type of analysis focuses more on time spent (or volume transacted) at certain levels rather than looking at simple progression of where it’s been over time as we generally see in bar and candlestick charts.
The chart below shows how EUR/USD has traded since February. Each of the clusters you see represents the distribution of trading over one month’s time. I won’t go too far into the details, but suffice it to say that the fatter a month’s distribution at a given price level, the more days the market traded at that prices, and the thinner the distribution the fewer days the market traded at that level. Think of it this way. If the market spends a lot of time at a price level it indicates agreed upon value in which both buyers and sellers are willing to transaction. Where the market doesn’t not spend much time it indicates rejection by one side or the other – value not agreed upon.
What we can see above is a trio of short, fat distributions for February, March, and April that indicate pretty narrow range trading. Then, in May, we have a long, thin distribution indicating a trend move lower. June was again mainly a consolidative month, but July started off with a trending action, then transitioned into more of a ranging set-up.
The July distribution indicates that things changed in EUR/USD near the beginning of the month and previously accepted value between about 1.2400 and 1.2700 suddenly became rejected. The market then move down to where valued was agreed upon below 1.2400.
Let’s put this in some common parlance. Think of the thin distribution of prices between 1.2350 and 1.2500 or so as a key resistance zone for EUR/USD. Selling interest far exceeded buying interest the last time the market moved through that zone. If the market can work back up there and hold the move it would tells us things have shifted and that buyers are starting to be more interested.
The concern I have, though, is that we don’t have as clear a rejection area to the downside to indicate a price level the sellers clearly found too low and/or where the buyers became much more aggressive. We have to go back to June 2010 to find the last time the market was down this low. Back then there was a final rejection near 1.1900. I think the risk, therefore, is that EUR/USD makes another move down to test those prior rejection lows.
The struggle, though, will be breaking away from the 1.2300 area. As the chart above shows, the market spent a lot of time around there in May/June of 2010. That makes it a significant attraction zone, which we’ve been seeing play out this month. If the market can start to develop more value below 1.2200, though, the odds for a run at 1.19 will increase.
There’s a bit more nuance to this type of market analysis, of course. If you find it interesting, you can learn more about it here.
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