6. Timeframes – the top-down routine
You learned about timeframes in Modules 2 and 3. Now let us turn it into a routine you can follow in 5 minutes before any trade.
6.1 The top-down routine
Step 1 – Weekly (the map). - Trend: up, down or range? - Mark 2–3 major levels. - Ask: are we near a big weekly level?
Step 2 – Daily (the road). - Structure: HH-HL? LH-LL? Range? - Where is the line in the sand? - Is price in an impulse or a pullback?
Step 3 – Entry chart (the lane). For swing traders this is still the daily; for intraday traders it is the 15-minute or 5-minute. - Is there a trigger at a level, in the direction of the higher timeframes? - Where exactly is the stop? - Is the reward at least 2× the risk, up to the next major level?
6.2 A quick example
- Weekly: uptrend, price just above an old resistance zone that has now turned into support.
- Daily: a slow, overlapping pullback into that zone over 6 days. Volume drying up.
- Entry chart: a hammer forms at the zone, and the next candle closes above the hammer’s high.
- Plan: buy above the hammer high, stop below the zone, target the recent weekly high.
Everything lines up: trend, location, story, trigger. That is a high-quality setup. Most days, things won’t line up this well – and on those days, you wait.
Even a pilot with 20,000 flying hours goes through a checklist before take-off. Not because he forgot how to fly – because checklists stop costly mistakes on a bad day.
The top-down routine is your pre-flight checklist.
Intraday karna hai toh bhi daily chart pehle dekho. Many intraday losses come from fighting the daily trend without even knowing it existed.
The weekly is the map: big trend and big levels.
All three layers point the same way. Alignment is where good trades come from.
- Top-down: weekly (map) → daily (road) → entry chart (lane).
- Look for alignment: trend, level, pullback story and trigger.
- Use it before every trade, like a pilot’s checklist.
- If things don’t line up, wait.
- Ek line mein: Weekly naksha, daily sadak, entry chart gali – teeno ek hi taraf ishara karein tabhi trade lo.