Top-Down Approach, Order Blocks, Break and Retest, Wedge Patterns

Learn a top-down price action day trading strategy for stocks and options. Identify key levels on higher timeframes and refine entries on 1-min / 5-min charts.

Published · Updated · Methodology: Price Action

Part of: Order Blocks

  • Methodology: Price Action
  • Content type: strategy
  • Timeframes: Weekly, Daily, 1 Hour, 5 Minute, 1 Minute
  • Markets: Stocks, Options

Source video

Decoded from: The Only Day Trading Strategy I'm Using In 2024 by Jdub Trades — watch the original

Key timestamps:

  • 0:21 - Top Down Approach
  • 1:54 - Pre Market Prep
  • 2:31 - Example #1 (GOOG) - Entry rules explained
  • 6:41 - Example #2 (TSLA) - Entry rules explained
  • 11:09 - Example #3 (AMD) - Entry rules explained
  • 14:35 - Live Session (AMD) - Live trade example

Strategy overview

A top-down approach means reading the same instrument across a ladder of timeframes — starting wide to establish context and narrowing progressively to time an entry — and an order block is simply the candle or zone where institutional orders are presumed to have entered before a strong move. What makes this entry worth its own page is not the definitions but the span: the setup is worked across five timeframes, from the Weekly all the way down to the 1-Minute, which is an unusually wide funnel for a day-trading routine and puts order blocks in the role of a locating tool inside a much larger structure rather than the system itself.

The source is Jdub Trades' video "The Only Day Trading Strategy I'm Using In 2024", and its structure tells you where the emphasis lies. After the top-down framing and a pre-market prep segment, the bulk of the runtime is spent on three worked examples on individual US equities — GOOG, TSLA and AMD — followed by a live session on AMD. This is a strategy taught by demonstration on single-name stocks rather than by rule list, and the order block sits alongside two other chart-reading tools the video leans on: break and retest, and wedge patterns.

That combination is the distinguishing feature. Break-and-retest and wedges are pattern-level reads that tend to resolve on the lower timeframes, while the higher-timeframe passes are what decide which side of the market you are looking to trade at all — so the three tools are doing work at different resolutions of the same chart. This page collects the concepts covered and points to the source, including its timestamped walkthroughs; the pre-market routine and the entry reasoning are best seen in the examples themselves, where the video explains them chart by chart.

Topics

price action · top-down analysis · order blocks · break and retest · day trading strategy · stocks trading strategy · options trading strategy · 1 minute strategy · 5 minute strategy · pine script · tradingview strategy · trading strategy · market structure · scalping strategy · wedge patterns

Frequently asked questions

What is a top-down approach in day trading?

A top-down approach analyses an instrument starting from higher timeframes and working downward, using the wider timeframes to establish directional context and market structure and the lower ones to locate a specific entry. This strategy spans five: Weekly, Daily, 1 Hour, 5 Minute and 1 Minute.

How do order blocks fit into a top-down strategy?

Order blocks mark zones where a strong move originated and price may react on a return. In a top-down workflow they generally act as a location tool — the higher timeframes narrow down where and in which direction to look, and the order block helps define the specific area on the chart. This video pairs them with break-and-retest and wedge patterns rather than trading them in isolation.

What is break and retest, and how does it relate to wedge patterns?

Break and retest describes price breaking a level and then returning to test it from the other side before continuing. A wedge is a converging pattern whose eventual break often becomes exactly that kind of level. Both are lower-timeframe pattern reads, which is why they tend to appear at the narrow end of a top-down sequence.

What markets and examples does this strategy cover?

The source video applies it to US equities, with walkthroughs on GOOG, TSLA and AMD plus a live trading session on AMD. Strategy Decoder catalogs strategies like this one from video sources so you can review the concepts involved and test the approach on TradingView before risking capital.

About this strategy page

This trading strategy was decoded by Strategy Decoder's AI from a public YouTube trading video and turned into a structured, reviewable specification. In the interactive app this page shows the full entry and exit logic, risk management settings, the indicators involved with their parameters, AlgoWizard-compatible logic and a Pine Script export ready for TradingView backtesting — plus an automated backtest verdict when one has been computed for this strategy.

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