Trading & Crypto

How I Find My Trading Entries

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

Trading entries are found by marking up the levels where price is likely to react, then waiting for the market to confirm that reaction before you commit — not by guessing direction. The entry is the last step of a process: bias first, level second, confirmation third, trigger last. In the third instalment of his trading course, the creator behind SCI walks through exactly that sequence, and his Instagram at tradesbysci is where the shorter day-to-day breakdowns of those entries live.

Why Entry Timing Matters More Than Direction

Most traders lose money on trades where they were right about direction and wrong about timing. Knowing that gold is bullish does not tell you where to buy it; it only tells you which side of the chart to look at. Entry timing is the skill that converts a correct bias into an actual fill with a defined risk, and it is the part of the process that most people skip because it feels like it should be simple. It is not simple — it is a sequence of conditions that must line up in order.

A useful way to think about it: bias tells you what to hunt, the level tells you where to hunt, and the trigger tells you when to pull it. Remove any one of the three and you are left with a coin flip dressed up as a strategy.

The Entry Framework, Step By Step

A repeatable entry process looks like this, and each step should be finished before the next one starts:

  1. Establish bias on the higher timeframe. Are you looking for longs or shorts today? Until this is answered, every lower-timeframe pattern is noise.
  2. Mark the level. Identify the zone, level or structure where you would actually want to be involved — not every line on the chart, just the ones that matter for the current bias.
  3. Wait for price to arrive. This is the boring part and the part that protects your account. Arrival is not the same as reaction.
  4. Look for confirmation. A reaction at the level, a shift in momentum, or a clean return to the zone after a break are all forms of confirmation. Without one, you are early.
  5. Define risk before the trigger. Stop distance and position size are decided at the same time as the entry, not adjusted afterwards because the trade moved against you.
  6. Execute and manage. Once the conditions are met, the decision is already made — the only job left is to follow the plan.

Notice that only the last step involves clicking a button. Everything before it is preparation, which is why traders who feel like they are "always early" usually have a bias-and-level problem rather than a trigger problem.

Reading Market Structure Before You Look For A Signal

Market structure is the skeleton that makes an entry make sense. Higher highs and higher lows describe an uptrend; lower highs and lower lows describe a downtrend; overlapping, messy swings describe a range. Your job is not to label the structure perfectly, but to know which of those three environments you are in, because the same pattern means different things in each.

In a trend, entries are usually continuation plays: pullbacks into a level, then a resumption in the direction of the trend. In a range, entries are reactions at the extremes, and the middle of the range is where accounts go to die. In choppy, overlapping conditions, the correct entry is often no entry at all — sitting out is a position, and it is frequently the most profitable one.

The practical takeaway is that structure filters your setups before you ever look for a trigger. If the structure does not support the trade, the trigger is irrelevant.

Confirmation: What Actually Counts

Confirmation is the difference between anticipating a level and reacting to one. Anticipation means placing an order at a price because you think it will hold; confirmation means waiting for evidence that it is holding. The second approach gives up a few pips of the move in exchange for a much higher hit rate and a much smaller number of avoidable losses.

Useful forms of confirmation include:

  • A visible reaction at the level — price touches it and rejects rather than slicing through.
  • A momentum shift, where the candles that approach the level look different from the candles that leave it.
  • A break and retest, where price clears the level, then comes back to it and holds from the other side.
  • A lower-timeframe structure change in the direction of your bias, which is often the cleanest trigger available.

What does not count as confirmation: a level being "close enough", a feeling that price has to turn, or a previous trade that worked at a similar price. Those are stories, not signals.

The Mistakes That Ruin Good Entries

Even a well-built entry can be destroyed by execution habits, and the most common ones are predictable:

  • Entering before the level is reached, because waiting feels like missing out.
  • Moving the stop loss once the trade is live, which turns a defined risk into an undefined one.
  • Oversizing because the setup "looks perfect" — no setup is perfect, and size is what determines whether a mistake is survivable.
  • Taking every level instead of the levels that match the current bias.
  • Revenge entries immediately after a loss, which are usually the same trade taken worse.

Risk management and emotional control come up constantly in the comments under this course for a reason: traders who understood the entries still lost money when they ignored position sizing. The entry is only half of the equation; the other half is what you do when it goes wrong.

Questions Traders Ask About Entries

One recurring theme is how much confirmation is enough. The honest answer is that confirmation should be objective enough to describe out loud — if you cannot explain why you entered without referencing how you felt, it was not confirmation. Another common question is whether entries work the same way across instruments such as XAUUSD and major forex pairs. The mechanics transfer, but volatility changes the size of the zones and the distance to your stop, so the same framework produces different numbers on different instruments.

A third theme is patience. Many traders report that their results improved when they simply took fewer setups, which makes sense: fewer entries means each one is held to a higher standard. Finally, there is the question of whether a course can replace screen time. It cannot — the material gives you the framework, but recognising a level in real time is a skill built by repetition, which is why watching the same concepts applied live is so much more useful than reading about them once.

The full set of channels where the entries described here are traded and discussed live:

Final Thoughts

Finding entries is a process, not a moment of inspiration: bias decides the direction, structure and levels decide the location, confirmation decides the timing, and risk decides whether you get to keep trading tomorrow. Traders who struggle with entries usually do not have a signal problem — they have a patience problem, and the fix is a checklist rather than a new indicator. The SCI channel deserves credit for breaking this down as a structured course instead of a highlight reel, which is exactly what makes it usable. If you want the shorter, more frequent version of this thinking, follow tradesbysci on Instagram and watch the entries as they happen.

Key takeaways

  • Entries are found by locating a marked-up level first, then waiting for price to confirm a reaction — not by predicting direction.
  • Entry timing is the skill that separates a good plan from a good fill: the same level can be a winner or a loss depending on when you click.
  • Structure comes before signal: higher-timeframe bias decides whether you are hunting longs or shorts before you zoom in.
  • Confirmation, not hope: an entry needs a reaction at the level, a shift in momentum, or a return to the zone after a break.
  • Risk placement is part of the entry — stop distance and position size are decided at the same moment as the trigger, not after.

Questions & answers

How do I know when an entry is confirmed and not just early?

An entry is confirmed when there is objective evidence at the level — a visible rejection, a momentum shift, or a break and retest that holds. If your only reason for entering is that price reached a line you drew, you are early. A good test is whether you can describe the trigger out loud without mentioning how you felt.

Do the same entry rules work on XAUUSD and forex pairs?

The framework transfers, but the numbers do not. Gold typically moves with larger ranges and faster swings than major forex pairs, so zones are wider and stop distances are bigger. You keep the same sequence of bias, level, confirmation and risk, then adjust the parameters to the instrument's volatility.

Why do I keep taking losses even when my analysis is right?

That usually points to timing or risk rather than analysis. Being correct about direction but entering before confirmation, or sizing too large for the stop distance, turns a valid idea into a loss. Fixing the trigger and the position size often improves results more than changing the strategy.

Is it better to take fewer trades with stricter criteria?

For most traders, yes. Fewer entries mean each setup is held to a higher standard, which naturally filters out the impulsive ones. The goal is not to trade more but to trade only when bias, level, confirmation and risk all line up at the same time.

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

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