Fundamentals of Trading
May 20, 2023

PO3

The power of three. The market is cyclical and is always in one of three basic phases: consolidation - manipulation - distribution.

Determining the following zones is key to finding the true price position.

  1. Consolidation

During a consolidation, the price is in a narrow range, on both sides of which are blocks of buy or sell orders. During a consolidation, the big player usually gains his position.

In this example, the above consolidation resulted in the big players gaining the position they needed over a long period of time. After that, a manipulated skewed movement occurred.

2. Manipulation

When manipulation occurs, one can observe a rapid expansion. Instead of creating a series of HH / HL price moves rapidly, ignoring the resistance on its up.

The purpose of the market is to attract traders. During this phase in the market, we can clearly say that this was a manipulated move in the sense that it occurred rapidly rather than more organically.

Participants are made to think that the price has broken the MC and will continue the upward movement. In fact, the opposite happens, those who have filled their positions in the long, begin to unload them and in parallel open short positions. Most often during this phase FVG are formed, which is an additional indicator of the current phase. After that comes the distribution.

3. Distribution

The price slowly returns to the beginning of the upward movement.

Given the nature of the breakout and how quickly it occurred (the manipulation phase), we can assume that it was a manipulative move in the market. Due to the presence of FVG, prices tend to overlap the imbalance, which happens in this phase - a slow overlap.

The price slowly closes the imbalance created during the manipulation to the point where the manipulative movement began.

Given the nature of the manipulation and how quickly it happened, we can assume that it was a move in the market to fill long positions.