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Richard Jackson sits down for a straight-talk interview about how he actually trades—why his engineering roots, prop-desk experience, and years of mentoring shape the way he reads markets. Based in Australia and active across FX and indices, Richard explains why “trade what you see, not what you think” is more than a quote—it’s his operating system for filtering noise, timing entries, and staying accountable.
In this piece, you’ll learn his two-question pre-trade checklist, how he builds confluence around price action (Fibonacci retracements, key moving averages as support/resistance, and RSI only to confirm divergence), and when he flips from trend continuation to reversal. We’ll cover his 1-hour swing approach, his news-release playbook driven by consensus vs. actual deviations, and the risk framing that makes timing the core edge. You’ll also get his take on patience, statistics over certainty, and why mentorship shortens the five-year loop most traders spin through.
Richard Jackson Playbook & Strategy: How He Actually Trades
Market Framework: bias first, trade second
Before hunting setups, Richard frames the market so decisions feel mechanical. He defines a daily bias, maps key levels, and only then drops to the execution timeframe. This keeps him from forcing trades and helps him stay patient for A-setups.
- Define bias from the daily: higher highs/higher lows = long bias; lower highs/lower lows = short bias; chop = reduce size by 50%.
- Mark levels: previous day high/low, weekly open, and nearest HTF swing high/low; keep no more than 6 levels on the chart.
- Note structure zones, not single prices: use 5–15 pip/points bands around levels to avoid getting wicked out.
- Only trade in the direction of daily bias unless a reversal setup shows both structure break and momentum confirmation (see “Reversal Blueprint”).
- If HTF is “unclear,” stand down or move to half-size until the next daily close clarifies.
Set up Archetypes: continuation and reversal, nothing else
Richard sticks to two families of setups so he can master them deeply. Continuations compound trends; reversals catch the turn when structure truly shifts. Everything else is noise.
- Continuation ingredients (need 3 of 4):
- Pullback to a prior structure zone or 20/50 EMA pocket
- Overlap with 38.2%–61.8% retracement of the last impulse
- Mini-consolidation (3–8 candles) showing absorption
- Session alignment (London or NY drive in trend direction)
- Reversal ingredients (need 4 of 5):
- Sweep of a prior high/low into an HTF level
- Violent rejection (impulsive counter-candle closing >60% of its range beyond the swept level)
- Market structure shift (MSB/BOS) on execution timeframe
- Momentum confirmation (e.g., breakaway candle or volume spike)
- Divergence is only a bonus; never a standalone signal
Entry Triggers: make timing the edge
The goal is precision without prediction. Richard waits for the price to tip its hand in his area, then enters on a simple, repeatable trigger.
- Continuation trigger: limit order at the midpoint of the pullback range or stop-entry 1 tick above/below the break of the consolidation; choose one method per market and stick to it.
- Reversal trigger: stop-entry beyond the breakaway candle that confirms the structure shift; no touch trades on reversals.
- If a valid trigger doesn’t appear within 3 candles after the price hits the zone, cancel the idea and re-assess.
- Never chase: if price runs 0.5R without you, skip the trade and log the miss.
Risk Sizing & Protective Stops: survive first, scale later
Richard treats risk as a product decision: position size flexes with volatility, so every trade feels emotionally identical. He defines loss in R, not dollars.
- Risk per trade: 0.5R standard; 1R only during peak performance (rolling 20-trade win rate >55%).
- Stop placement:
- Continuation: 1×ATR(14, execution TF) beyond the pullback low/high or beyond the structure zone—whichever is further.
- Reversal: 1.2×ATR beyond the sweep extreme to survive a retest.
- If ATR expands >40% versus its 20-day median, cut size by 30% but keep stop logic the same.
- Daily loss limit: 2R hard stop; hit it and shut down the platform.
- Weekly drawdown guardrail: −5R triggers size cut to 0.25R until back above −2R on the week.
Trade Management: Let the market pay you to hold
Once in, Richard wants the market to earn the right to keep his capital. He pays himself early, then gives the remainder room to trend.
- First scale: take 1/3 off at +1R; move stop to entry only after a candle closes beyond your entry trigger in trade direction.
- Second scale: take another 1/3 at the next HTF level or +2R, whichever comes first.
- Trail the remainder behind swing structure or a 20-period EMA ladder; never tighter than 0.8×ATR.
- If price returns to entry after the first scale and momentum is gone, scratch the rest at breakeven.
- News spike against you pre-target: freeze management for 5 minutes and let the candle close before decisions.
Timeframes & Sessions: context up, execution down
He keeps analysis clean and execution focused. Higher timeframes set the map; a single execution chart keeps him from over-fitting noise.
- Mapping: Daily for bias, H4/H1 for levels and trend legs.
- Execution: M15 or M5 for triggers; pick one and don’t mix in the same trade.
- Session windows:
- FX/indices: London open → first 3 hours; NY open → first 2 hours.
- Avoid the last hour of NY unless managing an open runner with a trail.
- If your market trades thinly in your session, skip that day—liquidity is part of the edge.
Confluence Without Clutter: only what improves odds
Indicators are used sparingly to confirm what the price already shows. Confluence is additive; redundancy is clutter.
- Max 3 confluence elements per trade (e.g., HTF level + pullback to 50% + session drive).
- EMAs as dynamic S/R only (20/50); no crossover signals.
- Use RSI solely to confirm divergence at extremes during reversal setups; ignore mid-range wiggles.
- Fibonacci only on the last clear impulse; don’t stack multiple legs.
- If confluence isn’t obvious in 5 seconds, you’re forcing it—pass.
News & Events: trade the reaction, not the headline
Catalysts move price, but the edge is in the deviation and the path it creates. Richard plans and executes only if the price respects his levels.
- Pre-plan tier-1 events (CPI, NFP, central bank decisions): mark prior day high/low and nearest HTF zone.
- No fresh entries in the 5 minutes before a release; allow the initial spike to print.
- Post-release plan:
- If the spike tags your level and rejects with a structure shift, trade the first pullback.
- If price one-way trends through your zone, wait for a clean flag before considering continuation.
- Spread widens or slippage >0.3R on fills: stand down for that session.
Journaling & Metrics: measure what you can improve
Richard’s process is data-driven. He tracks the handful of variables that actually move results and iterates monthly.
- Tag each trade with: setup family (C or R), session, HTF bias alignment, ATR bucket (low/med/high), and management path.
- Review rolling 20-trade stats weekly: win rate, average R, expectancy, and MAE/MFE.
- Prune: if a tag combo underperforms for 40 trades with negative expectancy, pause it for a month.
- Double-down: increase size back to 1R only when the main setup’s expectancy >0.3R for 60 trades.
Psychology & Pace: slow down to speed up
He treats patience like a position. Fewer, better trades compound faster than constant action.
- Daily A-setup quota: maximum 2 new entries; anything more is likely B/C quality.
- “Three strikes” rule: after 3 consecutive plan violations, end the session and write a page on the trigger.
- Pre-trade checklist (said out loud): bias? Level? Set up family? Trigger? Risk defined? If any answer is fuzzy, skip.
- Post-trade reset: two minutes of chart-free breathing before scanning again.
Playbook Checklist: one glance before you click
A quick, repeatable control check keeps execution clean under pressure. If anything below fails, you don’t have a trade—yet.
- HTF bias was identified and not “unclear.”
- Level marked and within a zone, not a single line.
- Set up family chosen (Continuation or Reversal) with required ingredients met.
- Trigger rule ready and written (stop-entry/limit + invalidation).
- Risk sized to ATR with stop beyond structure; 0.5R default risk.
- Session alignment valid; no trade within 5 minutes pre-news.
- First scale, target zones, and trailing plan defined before entry.
Set Daily Bias First, Then Trade Only Aligned, High-Quality Setups
Richard Jackson starts every session by answering one question: Is the market making higher highs and lows, lower highs and lows, or just chopping? That daily read sets his bias and filters everything that follows, so he’s not inventing trades out of boredom. If the bias is long, he hunts long setups only; if it’s short, he hunts shorts only; if it’s unclear, he cuts size or stands down entirely. This simple gate keeps him from fighting flow and saves energy for moments that actually pay.
Once the bias is set, Richard waits for the price to come to a predefined level and prove it still respects that direction. He wants a clean structure, a pullback into a zone, and a trigger that confirms buyers or sellers still have the ball. If any piece is missing—messy structure, weak reaction, or a trigger that doesn’t fire—he passes and lets the chart breathe. Bias permits him, but quality earns the click.
Size Risk By Volatility: ATR Stops, Fixed R, Strict Loss Limits
Richard Jackson treats position size like a thermostat—he adjusts it to the market’s temperature instead of his feelings. He measures volatility with ATR and sets stops beyond structure by a multiple, so random wiggles don’t kick him out. Every trade risks a fixed fraction of R, which keeps outcomes comparable and emotions steady. When ATR expands sharply, he cuts size but leaves the stop logic intact, preserving the edge while reducing dollar swings.
He also enforces hard guardrails to cap damage before it compounds. A daily loss limit stops the session after a set number of R, and a weekly drawdown trigger reduces risk until he’s stabilized. Richard wants the market to earn the right for him to size back up, not his optimism. This turns volatility from a source of chaos into a parameter he can actually control.
Diversify By Underlying, Strategy, And Duration To Smooth the Equity Curve
Richard Jackson diversifies on three axes, so one bad patch doesn’t nuke the month. He spreads exposure across a few uncorrelated markets—think a major FX pair, a stock index, and one commodity—so a single theme can’t dominate his P&L. He also runs two complementary playbooks, a trend-continuation and a structure-based reversal, so he isn’t hostage to one market personality. Finally, he staggers holding periods, mixing quick intraday fades with slower swing runners to capture different volatility cycles.
This mix keeps drawdowns shallower and recoveries faster for Richard. When trends stall, reversals pay the bills; when ranges break, continuations take over. Short-duration ideas recycle capital during slow weeks, while longer-duration trades do the heavy lifting when momentum returns. By balancing underlying, strategy, and duration, he turns a lumpy edge into a steadier equity curve.
Prefer Defined Risk When Volatile; Use Undefined Only With Firm Controls
When volatility spikes, Richard Jackson defaults to defined risks, so the worst-case is known before entry. That means hard stops placed beyond structure, pre-planned partials, and no “I’ll see how it goes” management. He avoids open-ended exposure during news or fast markets because slippage and gaps can turn small mistakes into big problems. Defined-risk trades keep him objective and let him hold winners without fearing a blowout.
If Richard ever runs an undefined-risk idea, it comes with strict, written controls. He caps maximum adverse excursion in R, bans averaging down unless a separate, pre-approved add plan triggers, and uses volatility-adjusted position sizes to keep drawdowns bounded. He also sets a session circuit breaker: if a single trade or sequence breaches a preset loss threshold, he stands down and reviews before touching the next button. The message is simple—know your worst case in advance, and if you don’t, you’re not in a trade, you’re in a gamble.
Process Discipline: Pre-Trade Checklist, Session Windows, Journal Tags, System Review
Richard Jackson runs his trading like a cockpit: nothing happens until the checklist is green. He speaks each item out loud—bias, level, setup type, trigger, stop, and target—so there’s no wiggle room once price moves. He only engages during his preselected session windows, when liquidity and follow-through are statistically best for his playbook. If the window closes without an A-setup, he walks away instead of forcing a late trade. This routine keeps his energy high and his decision quality consistent.
After each trade, Richard tags the record with a few objective labels—continuation or reversal, session, ATR bucket, and management path—so the data tells the story later. At the end of the week, he scans win rate, average R, expectancy, and common failure points, then makes one small adjustment instead of rewriting the whole system. Monthly, he prunes weak tag combinations and revalidates his best ones to concentrate risk where it actually pays. Process isn’t a slogan for Richard Jackson; it’s the structure that lets edge compound.
Richard Jackson’s message lands the same whether you’re brand-new or ten years in: trade what you see, not what you think. He built his edge by setting a daily bias first, then waiting for the price to respect it at pre-marked levels—no forcing, no guessing. From there, he stacks simple confluence—structure, clean pullbacks, momentum shift, and occasional divergence or harmonics—so timing does the heavy lifting. Two core playbooks carry most of the weight: a price-action model that rides continuation or catches a real structure break, and a data-driven news approach that trades the reaction when actual prints deviate meaningfully from consensus. The goal is the same in both: clear invalidation, patient entries, and letting the market earn the right to keep its capital.
What ties it all together is process. Richard keeps a tight pre-trade checklist, sizes risk to market conditions, and treats losses as tuition that sharpens patience rather than ego. He diversifies intelligently—by market, setup, and holding period—to smooth the equity curve, and he believes mentorship shortens the five-year loop most traders spin through while system-hopping. Above all, he runs fewer, better trades in the sessions that actually move, manages winners with intent, and reviews tags and stats so next week’s decisions are cleaner than last week’s. Strip away the extras, and his lesson is simple: a clear framework, strict risk, and disciplined execution turn “edge” from a theory into a habit.
