Common mistakes include treating every level as an automatic buy/sell signal, ignoring the trend, trading pivots during high-impact news, applying them to illiquid markets, and skipping confirmation.
Pivot levels are reference points, not automatic buy or sell signals; price reaching S1 does not guarantee a bounce, and blindly buying every S1 touch produces a win rate of only 48%, while adding a candlestick confirmation pattern raises it to 62%.
Pivots are best used in the direction of the trend, since trying to short a strong uptrend at R1 is risky, and breakouts on low volume are often false.