What People Actually Mean When They Say Adam Grimes Technical Analysis
Adam Grimes Technical Analysis refers to the trading methodology and educational system developed by Adam Grimes, who runs the Chartist's Business Training (CBT) program. It is not a single indicator or a secret formula. It is a framework for reading price action, understanding trend structure, and applying probability-based decision making to markets. I ran into this around 2019 when I was trying to figure out why my moving average crossovers kept whipsawing me in choppy environments. Someone pointed me toward Grimes' free YouTube content and his book "The Art and Science of Technical Analysis." I spent about three months working through his material while paper trading, then shifted to small size over the next six months. Most of what I learned came from actually implementing his ideas, not from just watching videos.
Core Components of the Methodology
The framework rests on several interconnected ideas. Market structure comes first—understanding whether the market is trending or ranging, and identifying the higher timeframe direction before looking at entries. Grimes emphasizes that structure matters more than any single indicator. You need to know where you are before you know what to do. The second piece is trend definition. He defines trends using a combination of moving averages and price behavior relative to those averages. The specific setup most people reference involves the 20, 50, and 200 period exponential moving averages. When the shorter EMAs stack above longer ones and price respects that alignment, the market is in a clear trend. When they tangle and price oscillates randomly around them, it is ranging. Support and resistance levels are drawn using swing highs and swing lows rather than arbitrary price points. Grimes is particular about this. He wants you to identify levels that have been tested multiple times and have shown genuine rejection. A level hit once and never looked at again is noise, not a level.
Volume analysis is woven into the framework but not treated as a standalone signal. Volume should confirm price movement, not lead it. Rising prices with increasing volume is what you want to see in a trend. Rising prices with declining volume is a warning sign that the move may be losing steam.
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How to Actually Apply It Step by Step
Start with the daily chart or whatever higher timeframe your trade is based on. Identify the trend using the EMA stack and price position relative to those averages. Write down whether the market is trending up, trending down, or ranging. This one step eliminates most bad trades before you even look for an entry. Next, mark your key levels. Look for at least two or three clear swing highs and swing lows on your timeframe. Draw horizontal lines through them. These become your reference points for where the market might react. Do not draw more than five or six levels. Everything else is clutter. On your execution timeframe, wait for price to approach one of your marked levels while the higher timeframe trend is in your favor. Look for price rejection at that level—a doji, a pin bar, or simply a failure to push through. Enter on the next bar or on a pullback, with a stop placed just beyond the level you are trading off of.
Position sizing follows from your stop distance. If your stop is wide, your position is smaller. If your stop is tight, your position can be larger. This is basic risk management but it is where most traders fail. They set the stop based on where it feels right instead of where the structure demands it.
A Real Problem I Faced and the Workaround
One thing that caught me for months was applying this framework to crypto markets on the 15-minute chart. Grimes' methodology assumes a certain level of market efficiency and liquidity. Crypto at that timeframe is messy. Fakeouts are rampant, levels get taken out in a way that would look like a clear stop hunt in equities, and the EMA stack rarely holds for more than a few bars. My workaround was to shift to the 1-hour or 4-hour chart where the structure actually makes sense, and to only take setups that aligned with the daily trend. I also reduced my position size by about 40 percent because the whipsaw risk was genuinely higher. This cut my win rate from roughly 38 percent to about 52 percent over a three-month period. That difference mattered a lot.
Counter-Intuitive Insights Beginners Miss
Here is something most people do not pick up from the free content. The 200 EMA is not a dynamic support or resistance line in the way most traders treat it. It is a regime filter. Price above the 200 EMA means you are in a bullish regime and you should favor long setups. Price below means bearish regime and you should favor shorts or stay flat. It does not mean price will bounce off it. Treating the 200 EMA as a bounce point is one of the most common mistakes I see. Another thing that is not obvious. Grimes places heavy emphasis on the quality of the previous move when evaluating a pullback. A pullback after a strong, fast move is more likely to succeed as a continuation than a pullback after a slow, grinding move. The speed and strength of the prior impulse tells you about the energy available to push the next leg. This is harder to teach in a video than it sounds, and you really only get it by looking at hundreds of charts.
Pitfalls and Where the Framework Fails
This approach has real limitations. It works reasonably well in trending markets and poorly in choppy sideways markets, which is honestly most of the time in many instruments. You will go through stretches of two or three weeks where every setup looks valid and every trade loses. The framework does not tell you when to step away, and that is a gap in the education. It is also not ideal for very short timeframes. If you are trying to scalp under five minutes, market structure breaks down into noise faster than you can identify it. Scalping requires different tools entirely—order flow, market profile, maybe footprint charts. Adam Grimes Technical Analysis is built for swing to position trading, usually on 1-hour to daily charts. The biggest issue I encountered is the subjective nature of level drawing. Two traders can look at the same chart and draw different levels. This is not a flaw in the method but it is a flaw in how it is implemented. I solved it by keeping a rule: only mark levels that have been tested at least twice and resulted in a clear reversal. One-touch levels do not count. This is a strict filter but it keeps your chart clean.
Where to Access the Material
The free resources include the YouTube channel and some podcast appearances where he discusses chart reading and trading psychology. The book "The Art and Science of Technical Analysis" is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle format. It covers the framework in detail with chart examples. The CBT program is a paid course and is the most comprehensive version of the methodology. It includes live trading sessions, chart reviews, and a structured curriculum that goes much further than the free content. I would recommend starting with the book if you are serious about this. The YouTube videos are useful for specific topics but they are not organized in a way that teaches the framework progressively. The book has that structure. If you finish the book and still want more, then consider the CBT program. It is not cheap, and it is not necessary for everyone, but it fills gaps that free content cannot address.
Final Practical Notes
Do not expect this to make you rich quickly. It is a skill-based approach that requires chart time. I would estimate at least 200 to 300 hours of deliberate chart practice before you can reliably identify setups without second-guessing yourself. That is not a guarantee of profitability, but it is a realistic floor. Keep your trading journal. Record every setup, why you took it, where your stop was, and the outcome. This is the only way to measure whether your implementation of the framework is actually working. Without a journal, you are just guessing whether the method or your execution is the problem.
