1 The Story
From farm-country commodities to Wall Street quant
Adam Grimes has traded professionally since 1995, across every major asset class — futures, currencies, stocks, options, and other derivatives — and every timeframe from rapid scalps to multi-year portfolios.1
Growing up in an agricultural community in the American Midwest, his first trades were in agricultural commodities and futures. He moved into currency futures — trading through the Asian Financial Crisis — then to stock index futures in 2001, options, and individual equities. He holds an MBA from The Ohio State University with an emphasis in finance and market microstructure.1
His career spans both the institutional and individual worlds: Senior Analyst and Trader at MBF Asset Management on the New York Mercantile Exchange, VP of Quantitative System Development at Level Partners, Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Waverly Advisors, and Chief Technical Strategist at SMB Capital. Today he is the founder of MarketLife, which offers daily market analysis and education, and President of Talon Advisors, an institutional advisory firm.1 Though primarily a discretionary swing trader, his methodology rests on a firm foundation of statistical and quantitative research — work shaped alongside mentors including Linda Raschke, Perry Kaufman, Mark Fisher, and Victor Niederhoffer.4
2 The Big Idea
Trade the imbalance, not the pattern
“Every edge we have, as technical traders, comes from an imbalance of buying and selling pressure.”
Grimes argues we should not trade patterns for their own sake, but the underlying imbalance that creates them. His companion insight is just as important: most price action imitates a random walk, so identifying the conditions not to trade in is as much of the edge as finding good setups.2
3 The Method & Setups
Two market states, four trade categories, setup before trigger
Two states: trend or range
All market action is either trending (a directional imbalance — the source of edge) or range-bound (mostly random). Knowing which you're in decides everything else.4
Price action vs. market structure
Market structure is the static line left behind; price action is the live movement that draws it. Read structure for the map, price action for the right edge of the chart.4
The four trade categories
Every technical trade falls into one of four: trend continuation, trend termination, support/resistance holding, and support/resistance breaking — each with its own probability, reward/risk, and failure mode.2
Setup (strategic) vs. trigger (tactical)
The setup is the condition you've decided to trade; the trigger is the execution. Grimes enters when a pattern breaks in the expected direction — often a lower-timeframe breakout of the prior bar's high or low — and stresses that if the context is right, almost any reasonable trigger works.3
4 Try It Today
Test the idea for yourself
The random-lines experiment
Grimes' famous exercise: hide the price bars on a chart and draw several horizontal lines at random. Reveal the bars, and you'll find your random lines often look like clean support and resistance — because we find patterns in noise. The lesson: a level alone is not a reason to trade. You need an additional reason to expect non-random price action there.4
5 In Their Words
Adam Grimes, quoted
"So there is no escaping this truth — if you are buying in front of support or shorting in front of resistance, you must have an edge beyond just having a much larger profit target than stop loss. You must have a reason for expecting nonrandom price action off the level."— The Art and Science of Technical Analysis4
6 The Books & Their Big Ideas
What he wrote
The Art and Science of Technical Analysis
Adam Grimes · John Wiley & Sons, 2012- Edge = imbalance. Every technical edge comes from an imbalance of buying and selling pressure; trade that, not the pattern.2
- Statistics over folklore. Extensive market research debunks some popular tools (e.g., Fibonacci) and validates specific setups and structures.3
- A structure for everything. Two market states, the four trade categories, and a clear split between setup, entry, sizing, and management.3
The Art & Science of Trading: Course Workbook
Adam Grimes · Hunter Hudson Press, 2017- The companion workbook to his free, self-paced Art and Science of Trading course — structured exercises for building the same skills hands-on.1
7 Watch & Read
Go deeper
- BOOKThe Art and Science of Technical Analysis — the full framework.
- FREEAdam's blog and the free Art and Science of Trading course.
- SITEMarketLife — his trading-education platform (with Tom Hansbury).
- READTopstep summary of his approach.
- SITEHis framework underpins our Trading Technicals reference.
- STRATEGYOur sourced playbook of his method: The Grimes Pullback.
§ Sources
- Adam Grimes — official biography, AdamHGrimes.com — adamhgrimes.com/adams-bio
- Adam Grimes — “Traders get an edge by thinking in categories” — adamhgrimes.com
- The Art and Science of Technical Analysis (Wiley, 2012) — publisher/listing — amazon.com
- “Going deep on Adam Grimes' approach,” Topstep (summary & book quotes) — topstep.com