Client notes

What people say after the pack is marked

These are notes from traders who have sat tech analysis training with us — price action drills for breakout and pullback setups, and the longer sittings that sit beside them. They mention specific rounds and habits, not a score out of five.

I used to buy the first print through the opening-range high and then spend the next half hour defending it. After four drills I still feel the urge, but I can now say the break is unaccepted and sit on my hands. The notes from the third session, the one with three failed London probes, are still on my desk.

Helen Crowe Norwich, trades FTSE on the 15-minute Sat: Price-action drill sessions

The workshop was slower than I wanted. Priya would not let the group skip the pre-marked charts, and I had only done four of the six. That was on me. The distinction between a continuation dip and a failed second entry is the thing I had been blurring on cable for a year.

James Okafor Leeds, sterling pairs Sat: Pullback workshop

The clinic pack was uglier than the examples I was used to watching. One morning in the file never went anywhere, and we spent twenty minutes on why passing was the read. I have started printing the prior day before the cash open, which I had always been too hurried to do.

Sian Pritchard Cardiff, indices Sat: Breakout clinic

I sent a tidy set of charts and Rowan asked for the messy ones. The hour was mostly about two quiet Tuesdays I had omitted. Slightly bruising, and more useful than a tour of my best breakout.

Martin Ellison Bristol, part-time around a job Sat: One-to-one chart review

Two longer accounts

Four sessions on the FTSE open

Helen Crowe, Norwich — Price-action drill sessions

I trade the FTSE from a spare room in Norwich. I am not full time. By last November I could describe a breakout in the language everyone uses, and I was still first to the opening-range high most mornings. The losses were not dramatic. They were regular, which was worse.

Query Pulsecore asked for the markets and timeframes before offering dates. That already felt different from rooms that sell a calendar and a slogan. The first drill used ordinary November sessions, not famous trend days. I marked yesterday's high too loosely on the first round and had to redo it. Rowan did not fill the silence.

By the third session the pack was full of failed probes. I wanted a trend day to 'get my confidence back'. We did not get one. What I got instead was a habit of writing 'unaccepted' on the pad before I even thought about size. I still take some of those first touches. I take fewer, and I can say why I took them when I do.

The follow-up email after session four listed the levels I kept moving. That list was more useful than a pep talk. I have not booked the eight-session run. Four was enough to change the morning, and I would rather sit with that for a while than collect more packs.

Cable, the overlap, and a dip I kept calling a pullback

James Okafor, Leeds — Pullback workshop

I trade sterling from Leeds, mostly the London–New York overlap. My problem was not spotting a break. It was what I did when price came back. Every dip looked like a gift. Some of them were the break unwinding.

The pullback workshop at Query Pulsecore made me mark six examples before I was allowed to talk. I arrived having rushed the last two on the train. Priya put those two aside and worked the four I had actually sat with. I was annoyed at the time. Looking back, it stopped the afternoon becoming a performance.

The useful hour was the one on failed second entries. We had a cable session that broke a European high, came back, pushed again, and then gave the whole thing up. I had labelled it a pullback on my pre-mark. It was not. The original break was already in trouble on the second push. I still think the three hours are tightly packed — a little more air would have helped — but I left with a sentence I now write on the pad: keep the break, or the dip is not a pullback.

If you want to sit the same work

Start with a 90-minute drill unless you already have a marked fortnight, in which case a chart review may be the better door. We do not publish a league table of results. The work is the habit at the level, not a percentage.

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