Technical analysis allows a trader to examine the market with support and resistance, moving averages, Fibonacci and many other techniques. One specific part of analysis that catches a great amount of attention is the round numbers. How to use round numbers in trading?

What are Round Numbers?

We use round numbers in our daily life all the time. Just like you round up $9.75 into $10, you can anticipate that most stop losses in forex trading will be around the nearby round numbers. Why does this happen? Most traders make their next decision at round numbers:

“As soon as it gets to 4.200 I am out”

“When 3.500 breaks I am going long”

What does it mean to us as traders and how can you use this? First of all, it means that round numbers are special. In forex market you can see the pull of the round numbers on daily basis.

People are naturally attracted to the order of round numbers and as a trader you have to be aware of this behavior to use it in making proper decisions.

The use of round numbers in forex trading is to seek for price action signals at or nearby round numbers areas. The more you trade, the more convincing it becomes that round numbers plays an important role in the structure and behavior of price action.

Types of Round Numbers

Parity

This is one of the strongest types of round numbers. You can see that levels such as 1.0000 takes months to finally be broken by either bulls or bears.

Thousands

This is also one of the crucial levels of support or resistance. You may notice a lot of 1.4000 in the market.

Hundreds

Numbers such as 1.2400 are plenty to be found and become significant zones for market outcome for a selected session.

How to use Round Numbers?

Round numbers are psychological support/resistance levels. For example, if EUR/USD is going upwards and reaches 1.5000, you will notice strong bearish reactions, because a lot of traders believe that the currency pair cannot go any higher than that, so they sell in fear of losing their profits.

Traders can use the round numbers as a strategy. Psychological levels are 00, 25, 50 and 75. In order to use the numbers, you need to go short when market goes up and one of these levels is reached. This method might not throw tones of pips your way, but it sure is a great scalping method.