Price action trading is the art of reading raw price movement — support, resistance, trends, breakouts, and pullbacks — to make trading decisions without relying on lagging indicators. It's one of the most widely practised methodologies in Forex and Futures trading, and it's the umbrella that SMC, ICT, and supply & demand trading all live under.
But reading price action is only half the edge. The other half is knowing, with data, which of your price action setups actually make money. That's where a price action trading journal becomes non-negotiable.
Most price action traders use a handful of core setups. Your journal should let you tag each one on every trade so you can later measure win rate and average R by setup type.
Support and Resistance Bounces — entries at horizontal levels where price has reacted before. The question isn't whether S/R works; it's which levels and which sessions produce your best bounces.
Breakouts and Retests — entering on a confirmed break of a key level, ideally after a retest confirms the level has flipped role. Breakout traders need to know their false-breakout rate.
Pullbacks and Trend Continuations — entering on a retracement within an established trend. Trend traders live and die by their pullback timing.
Supply and Demand Zones — institutional-style zones where large orders are expected to rest. Closely related to SMC Order Blocks but used by pure price action traders too.
Candlestick Confluences — pin bars, engulfing patterns, inside bars. These are entries, not strategies — but tagging them lets you see which carry real weight in your data.
A spreadsheet or basic log captures entry, exit, and outcome. That's enough to calculate a win rate. But price action's edge lives in the subsets: which setup, which session, which market condition, which emotional state. Without structured tags, you can never ask those questions of your data.
A proper price action trading journal lets you tag setup type, session, HTF bias, and emotional state on every trade — then breaks your performance down by each.
After 50–100 journaled price action trades, these are the numbers that matter:
Expectancy in R — (Win Rate × Average Win R) − (Loss Rate × Average Loss R). If this is positive, you have an edge. If not, no amount of win rate will save you.
Win rate by setup — your breakout retests might win 55% while your support bounces win 38%. That's not a reason to abandon support bounces if the R is higher on the ones that work.
Average R by session — price action behaves differently in London, NY, and Asia. Your data will show you where your real edge lives.
Emotion correlation — trades taken calm vs anxious. Price action requires patience; your emotion log will almost always show a sharp edge gap between the two.
CoreEdge lets you tag any price action setup as a strategy confluence, logs your session and HTF bias, calculates R automatically, and breaks everything down by setup type, session, instrument, and emotion. You can also tag SMC confluences (Order Blocks, FVGs, liquidity) on the same trade if you blend methodologies.
The result: after 100 trades you know exactly which price action setups are your real edge — not the ones you think are your edge.
Start journaling your price action trades free today.
CoreEdge is a trading journal for SMC, ICT, Forex, and Futures traders. Free plan available.
Get Started Free →