Trading and Crypto

7 Steps I Use To Find Trading Entries On Any Chart

How I Find My Trading Entries | Trading Course 003

Video: How I Find My Trading Entries | Trading Course 003

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· based on the channel SCI

Key takeaways

  • Entries are found in a fixed sequence: higher-timeframe context first, execution timeframe second — never the other way around.
  • Marked-up liquidity zones (old highs, old lows, equal highs/lows) are the reference points where entries are planned, not random candlestick patterns.
  • A valid entry needs three things at once: direction from the higher timeframe, a reaction at the level, and a defined invalidation point.
  • Risk is defined before the entry is taken: stop placement and position size come from the level, not from a fixed dollar amount.
  • Sitting on your hands when price is mid-range is part of the process — no level, no trade.

Finding trading entries is a repeatable process, not a talent: you build context on a higher timeframe, mark the liquidity levels where orders are likely resting, wait for price to reach one of those levels, and only then look for a confirmation signal that gives you a defined invalidation point. In this breakdown of SCI's Trading Course 003, "How I Find My Trading Entries," the entry is treated as the last step of a checklist — not the first thing you look for when you open a chart. The course author, who posts his live trades as Trades By Sci and shares chart walkthroughs through his Instagram, builds the whole lesson around that order of operations.

What "finding an entry" actually means in trading

An entry is a specific price where you are willing to risk a defined amount of money because the chart gives you a reason to expect a reaction. That definition matters, because most beginners confuse an entry with a prediction. A prediction says "price will go up." An entry says "if price reaches this level and behaves this way, I buy here, my stop goes there, and my target is here." Only the second version can be executed, measured and repeated.

This is why the process starts with context and ends with a trigger. If you skip the context, every candle starts to look like a signal. If you skip the trigger, you enter too early and get stopped out before the move you correctly anticipated. The framework below keeps both in place.

Step 1 — Set the higher-timeframe bias before anything else

The first job is not to find an entry, it is to decide which side of the market you are allowed to trade. On the higher timeframe — daily or 4-hour for intraday traders, weekly for swing traders — you are answering one question: is price making higher highs and higher lows, lower highs and lower lows, or nothing at all?

If the higher timeframe is clearly trending up, you look for long entries only. If it is trending down, shorts only. If it is chopping sideways between two obvious boundaries, the honest answer is that there is no bias, and the best entry is often no entry. Traders who lose money in ranging conditions are usually taking entries that the higher timeframe never justified.

Step 2 — Mark the liquidity levels where orders sit

The second step is drawing the levels that matter: previous day's high and low, session highs and lows, equal highs and equal lows, and obvious swing points where stop losses from other traders are clustered. These are the places where resting orders — stop losses and pending orders — accumulate, which is exactly why price so often reacts there.

You do not need twenty lines on a chart. Five to eight levels is usually enough for an intraday session. The point of marking them is to turn a chaotic chart into a small set of decision points: price is either at a level, approaching one, or in the middle of nowhere. Only two of those three states are tradeable.

Step 3 — Wait for price to reach the level, not near it

Most poor entries come from acting a few candles too early. Price approaching a level is information; price reacting at a level is a signal. Until price actually trades into the zone you marked, you have nothing to evaluate.

This step is where patience does the real work. Set an alert instead of staring at the chart, and treat the arrival at the level as the moment your analysis starts rather than the moment it ends. If price never reaches your level, you simply did not have a trade — that is a normal outcome, not a missed opportunity.

Step 4 — Read the reaction: rejection, sweep or acceptance

Once price is at the level, you classify the reaction. There are three outcomes worth naming:

  1. Rejection — price wicks into the level and closes back out of it, showing that the level is being defended.
  2. Sweep — price pushes slightly through the level, takes out the stops sitting there, then reverses back inside the range. This is the classic stop-hunt pattern and often produces the sharpest moves.
  3. Acceptance — price closes through the level and holds beyond it. Here the level has failed, and the correct response is usually to stand aside or wait for the level to be retested from the other side.

Naming the reaction keeps you honest. Without it, every touch of a level feels like a reason to click buy or sell.

Step 5 — Use the lower timeframe to time the trigger

Once the higher timeframe has given you direction and the level has produced a reaction, you drop to a lower timeframe — 15-minute or 5-minute for intraday work — to time the actual click. The lower timeframe does not decide direction; it only refines the moment of entry so your stop can be tighter and your risk smaller.

What you are looking for is a small shift in structure in the direction of your bias: a break of a minor swing point, a reclaim of a short-term level, or a clear rejection candle closing the right way. If the lower timeframe disagrees with the higher timeframe, the higher timeframe wins and you wait.

Step 6 — Define invalidation and size the position before entering

The entry is only half of the trade. Before you click, you must know the exact price at which your idea is wrong. That price is your stop, and it should be placed where the setup is genuinely invalidated — beyond the wick, beyond the level — not at an arbitrary distance that feels comfortable.

Position size then follows from that stop distance and the amount you are willing to lose on the trade. A wider stop means a smaller position; a tighter stop allows a larger one. Doing this arithmetic before entry removes the two most common causes of blown accounts: oversized positions and stops moved mid-trade.

Step 7 — Manage the trade and journal the outcome

After entry, the job changes from analysis to execution. A simple, repeatable plan — take partial profit at the first logical target, move the stop to break-even only when structure justifies it, and let the remainder run toward the next marked level — beats improvisation every time.

Then log the trade: the level, the reaction type, the timeframe alignment, the result. After twenty or thirty entries you will start to see which combination of conditions actually pays you and which ones you should stop taking. That log, not a new indicator, is what improves your entries over time.

Common questions traders ask about entries

A recurring theme in the comments under the course is that the concepts make sense on video but feel harder live. The usual sticking points are timing — entering a few candles too early or too late — and emotion, especially after a losing streak. Both are solved by the same fix: shrink the number of decisions you make per trade and write the rules down before the session starts.

Another frequent question is whether you need a specific market. The framework is market-agnostic: gold (XAUUSD), major forex pairs and crypto all produce the same liquidity levels and reactions, though volatility changes how wide your stops need to be. Traders who work night shifts or low-volume sessions often report making clearer decisions simply because there is less noise on the screen.

Finally, several viewers mention that risk management, not entries, was the lesson that changed their results. That is consistent with the framework here: a good entry with bad sizing is still a bad trade, while a mediocre entry with strict risk control is survivable and repeatable.

Final thoughts on building a repeatable entry process

The value of this framework is not any single step — it is the order. Bias first, levels second, reaction third, trigger fourth, risk always. When you run that sequence every session, entries stop being guesses and become the output of a checklist you can review and improve.

SCI's Trading Course 003 is a useful reference precisely because it treats the entry as the end of the process rather than the beginning. If you want to follow the rest of the series and see how the levels are marked in real time, start with SCI's Instagram and work through the course step by step, journaling every trade you take along the way.

Source: How I Find My Trading Entries | Trading Course 003 · Markdown version

Questions & answers

How do I know which timeframe to use for entries?

Use the higher timeframe for direction and a lower timeframe only for timing. A common split is daily or 4-hour for bias, 15-minute or 5-minute for the trigger. The lower timeframe never overrides the higher one — if they disagree, you wait.

What if price never reaches the level I marked?

Then you had no trade, and that is a valid outcome. Marking levels is about narrowing your attention to a few decision points, not about forcing an entry every session. Missing a move costs nothing; taking a bad entry costs money.

Is this entry method only for gold and forex?

No. Liquidity levels, sweeps and reactions appear in any liquid market, including crypto and indices. What changes between markets is volatility, which mainly affects how wide your stop needs to be and therefore your position size.

Why do my entries work in review but fail live?

Usually because the rules were never written down, so timing and emotion fill the gap. Define your bias, level, trigger and stop before the session, size the position from the stop distance, and journal every trade so you can see which conditions actually pay you.