As of now, the whole European markets are extremely ultra-dead; index, currencies, commodities, bonds ... all refused to move. They want to sleep. The big boys are sleeping soundly. They will wake up later. Some 'crisis' in Europe?!?!? Traders don't like such a 'crisis'. Let's see what the Americans will do.
It is not unusual to see range-bound markets before expansion, I read posts from some position traders who are frustrated by the price action, as you said, it is stuck at the moment, but something will happen soon hopefully.
Close below high close bar would have been the time to enter, or after either following 2 daily bars that failed to close back above that now .... resistance level:- What's was that about European markets not moving? Almost 200 pips so far.
Nice hypothetic example bro. I go with longer time frames because I don't have the time to watch screens all day long. And this the range-bound DAX for example, a month of stagnation. It is close to ATH, so I sold that fecker too via Stoxx 50
Welp since you cropped out (why?) some details such as timeframe I choose Daily as a catchall. And yes it is hypothetical for me since TradeStation no longer provides Forex trading, but it is a standard entry technique to sell a close below high close or vice versa buy a close above a low close bar. Anyway why dwell on markets being rangebound. Happens all the time:-
Looking at the above charts, easy to see a correlation of stagnation phase between DAX and EUR, with DAX having retraced most of the downside towards ATH whilst EUR retraced and got stuck at 50% of the range.
Percentages, or in the case below, a Spread ratio chart shows differences better than just eyeballing charts. Here's EURUSD vs DAX clearly showing currency underperformance against the index typical of a trend move. Although not always the case weaker currency often coincides with a strong stock market, i.e. export prices are lower creating more demand and eventually more profits for exporters.