Change in Market Structure Creates New Candlestick Patterns
What has happened in the past 5-6 years, is a dramatic shift in the overall Market Structure on the professional side.
While retail traders and investors have not seen much change to their trading platforms, online broker accounts, or charting software, the professional side has had a major overhaul of every facet and aspect of their trading platforms.
This includes broker/dealer professional orders available to them, analytical tools, and especially their trading and investment strategies, algorithms, and automated trading systems ATS.
The changes are massive on the professional side but few retail traders know about them.
Where these huge changes are having the most impact for retail is in how price patterns form on the charts, what candlestick patterns are forming, and how indicators behave.
These are critical areas for all retail traders to keep up with and to recognize, if they are not to be left behind as the evolution of the stock market internal structure continues in the next few years.
The changes are only beginning and most institutions are still adapting and modifying just about everything they do in entering orders, processing orders, and share lot quantities in different trading venues.
One of the most common mistakes retail traders make is not identifying the very common Platform pattern that forms often in the automated marketplace.
Platforms develop when giant lot orders are placed off of the exchanges in ATS aka Dark Pools or Twilight Pools.
The specialized orders that the ATS have developed for these giant lot investors, controls price and candlestick patterns in a way that is unique.
Unfortunately many swing, momentum, and day traders do not recognize this pattern and try to swing or day trade the Platform sideways action.
This is one candlestick sideways pattern that causes many whipsaw trades and often chronic losses, especially for retail traders who are relying upon red light green light or other retail side trigger orders.
These retail side automatic signals to buy or sell are not sophisticated enough to recognize the Platform pattern, and cause many traders to lose money trading short term.
Most of the time price bolts out of the Platform candlestick pattern, running with strong momentum energy for excellent swing and momentum profits.
However it is important to not only be able to quickly identify when a Platform has started, but also to recognize when it is completing.