EMA Strategy for Beginners (Simple Approach)
Beginner traders almost always want a strategy first. The thinking is logical. If you have a strategy, you know what to do. If you do not have a strategy, you are guessing. So the strategy becomes the thing to chase.
The problem is that a strategy without the underlying structure to read a chart is borrowed conviction. The trader can follow the steps but cannot tell when the conditions for the strategy do not apply. That is how beginners end up taking the same setup over and over in markets where it does not work.
The simple EMA-based approach taught inside the Agorion Foundations course is called the Touch and Go. It is the practice strategy used to get acclimated to TradingView, the Long/Short tool, and the rhythm of structured trade-taking. It is not the final strategy any trader will use forever. It is the scaffolding that builds the eye and the process.
A quick note before going further: this article is educational. It walks through the Touch and Go strategy as taught in the Foundations curriculum. It is not financial advice. Every trader's situation, capital, and risk tolerance is different, and decisions about whether and how to apply any approach should always sit with the individual trader.
What is a simple EMA strategy for beginners?
A simple EMA strategy for beginners uses the 9 and 21 exponential moving averages to identify directional moves and find lower-risk entries on pullbacks. The 9 EMA reacts faster to price. The 21 EMA acts as a stronger reference point. Beginners use the relationship between these two lines to read trend and time entries while the chart still feels overwhelming. The strategy taught inside Foundations, the Touch and Go, builds a specific rule set around this relationship.
Quick Answer
This is a practice strategy, not a final strategy
The setup uses two EMAs: a 9-period (black) and a 21-period (blue)
The 9 above the 21 means look for longs. The 9 below the 21 means look for shorts.
A candle must touch the 21 EMA and close on the correct side of both EMAs
Entries get planned with the Long/Short tool at a 1:2 risk-to-reward
Pending orders get cancelled if the next candle does not trigger entry
What this approach actually teaches
The point of using a simple EMA setup early is not to find the holy grail. It is to give the eye something to track while it learns to read price.
Before this approach feels useful, charts look like noise. After working with the 9 and 21 for a few weeks, the same charts start to show shape. You notice when price respects the EMAs and when it does not. You notice when a trend is healthy and when it is fading. You notice when consolidation is forming. These observations are not specific to EMAs. They are observations about market behavior that you happen to be making while using EMAs as a guide.
That is what makes this a learning approach. The tool is doing less work than the eye is. If you want the underlying explanation of what an EMA actually is and how it tracks price, start with the EMA lesson before working through this strategy.
The 9 and 21 EMA setup
On the chart, you add two exponential moving averages:
A 9-period EMA, the faster line that hugs price more closely (shown in black inside Foundations)
A 21-period EMA, the slower line that smooths price more broadly (shown in blue inside Foundations)
When the 9 is above the 21 and both are sloping upward, the chart is showing an uptrend. When the 9 is below the 21 and both are sloping downward, the chart is showing a downtrend. When the lines are tangled together or flat, the market is in consolidation, and trading off this setup gets significantly harder. Trading in consolidation should always be avoided.
The relationship between the two lines is what tells you which direction to look in. The 9 above the 21 means you are looking for buy setups only. The 9 below the 21 means you are looking for sell setups only. The cross of the two lines is the early signal that direction may be shifting. The cross itself is not a trade. It is a notification that conditions might be changing.
The Touch and Go rules
The Touch and Go has a specific rule set. Each rule is there for a reason, and skipping any of them is what produces the inconsistent results most beginners get when they try to trade indicators on their own. We teach this day trading strategy to beginners on the Daily Time Frame - so each candles full formation is a full day of data, and you can start the habit of looking at charts 1 time a day - after the 23-hour market reopens.
Rule 1: Direction comes from the EMA relationship. If the 9 EMA is above the 21 EMA, you are only looking for long (buy) setups. If the 9 is below the 21, you are only looking for short (sell) setups. This single rule keeps you out of trades that fight the current direction.
Rule 2: The candle must touch the 21 EMA. You wait for a candle to pull back into the 21 EMA. The 21 acts like a magnet, drawing price back to it before the trend continues. Entries near the 21 give you a tighter, structurally defined stop loss. Without the touch, the setup does not qualify.
Rule 3: The candle color must match the direction. For long setups, the entry candle must be green (closed higher than it opened). For short setups, the entry candle must be red (closed lower than it opened). The color is your confirmation that the side you are trading with is still showing up at this level.
Rule 4: The candle must close on the correct side of the EMAs. Green candles closing above both EMAs for longs. Red candles closing below both EMAs for shorts. The wick can pierce, but the close decides whether the setup is valid.
Rule 5: Use the Long/Short tool to plan the trade, wick included. Place the entry at the top of the wick for buys, or the bottom of the wick for sells. Always include the wick. The stop loss goes on the opposite side of the candle, also including the wick. The Long/Short tool draws the structure for you visually so you can see the trade before you take it.
Rule 6: Target placement aims for a 1:2 risk-to-reward. Drag the green target box until the tool displays a 1:2 ratio. That means you stand to make twice what you are risking. As you start to train your eyes on what market structure looks like, this rule will develop.
Rule 7: Pending orders that do not trigger get cancelled. You place the trade as a pending order based on the setup candle. If the next candle (23 hours later) does not cross above your entry (for a long) or below your entry (for a short) and trigger you into the trade, you close the pending order before the next day's session. A setup that does not fill within its window is a setup that has likely lost its momentum.
Reading the trend before the setup
The Touch and Go only works when the broader chart is actually trending. A clean cross in a sideways market produces signals that fail repeatedly. Before looking for the touch and the candle, the first job is to read whether the chart is trending or consolidating.
Trending markets and consolidating markets look different on the chart. Trends show clear higher highs and higher lows, or lower highs and lower lows. Consolidation shows price overlapping itself in a tight range with no clear direction.
When the EMAs are tangled, price is moving sideways, and the cross signals keep flipping, the right answer is to step away from the chart. Not every market is tradeable at every moment. A consolidating market is data. It is the chart telling you the next move has not been chosen yet. The most useful action in that environment is to wait for a clean break and a fresh trend before looking for the next setup.
Recognizing when this approach does not apply is part of the skill. The Touch and Go is not designed to work everywhere. Inside Foundations, the watchlist includes clean trending pairs like EUR/USD and GBP/USD alongside choppier pairs specifically so beginners can see where the strategy lands and where it breaks down.
A simple way to think about it
The 21 EMA works like a magnet for price. The 9 is the leading indicator, reacting faster. The 21 is the structural anchor price keeps returning to. Watch the 21 with the rules above in mind, and the shape of a clean setup starts to come through the noise of the individual candles.
Common Beginner Mistake
The most common mistake is treating every cross of the 9 and 21 as a trade signal. A cross is not a trade. A cross is a notification that conditions may be shifting. The actual trade only forms when the touch comes, the candle color matches, the close is on the correct side, the structure holds, and the risk-to-reward works.
Taking the cross alone leads to a series of small losses in choppy markets. Following the full rule set filters out most of those losses, even though it also means missing some moves that never pull back to the 21. That tradeoff is part of the strategy. The step-by-step guide to using EMA in trading covers the underlying mechanics that sit underneath the Touch and Go rules.
A note before you Continue
The Touch and Go is the practice strategy used inside Foundations. It is not about being right or wrong on any individual trade. It is about being able to take the rules and follow them repetitively, every time you set a trade. That repetition is what builds the trader, not the win rate of any one setup. The strategy gets tweaked and expanded in the Academy tier where additional pieces get added to the framework. Foundations is where the base habit is built.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why use the 9 and 21 EMA instead of other moving averages?
The 9 and 21 are used in the Foundations course because they give a clear distinction between fast and slower price reaction without being so far apart that the signals lag heavily. The specific numbers matter less than the principle: you want one line that tracks price closely and one line that smooths it enough to show structure. The Touch and Go is built specifically around the 9 and 21 relationship.
What happens if my pending order does not get filled?
You cancel it. If the candle that follows your setup does not cross your entry line and trigger you into the trade, the original setup has lost its context. Leaving stale pending orders open invites trades into conditions that no longer match the setup. The rule is to close the pending order before the next session begins and look for a fresh setup.
What timeframe should I use this on?
For practice, a higher timeframe like the Daily or 4-hour chart is easier to learn on because the signals develop more slowly and there is more time to think through each step. Lower timeframes move faster and require quicker decisions, which adds pressure that does not help while the eye is still developing.
How long do I need to practice this before trading live?
This is a practice strategy to acclimate you to a charting platform and its tools. You should not use this strategy to live trade. Once you have gone through the Foundations curriculum, the next step is learning context and the actual pieces of a strategy, then paper trading with it long enough to Identify your own patterns that support live trading. In Academy we recommend 100 good trade entries in your journal before watching live trade decisions executed by a mentor. Because knowing when not to take a trade is just as important as knowing the setup.
NEXT STEP
The core lesson this connects to is Using the Long/Short Tool, which walks through the planning side of every trade including how to map entry, stop, and target on the chart before you commit.
This Concept Is Part Of
The Foundations Series inside Agorion Insights, a structured beginner education path covering the mechanics of trading before building your strategy.
If you want to see how this strategy fits into the larger learning path,
the Foundations Hub walks through each concept in order so the pieces build on each other.
Inside The Atrium, our free community space,
is where you can access the recorded lesson library for each lesson
By Rachel Pennington
Rachel Pennington is the founder of The Agorion Collective, a structured trading education platform designed to educate and support women building real skill in the market. Her approach is rooted in clarity before complexity, teaching traders to understand price, manage risk, and develop their own process step-by-step.