Quote from Arthur Deco:
Don't know if you read any of Jack Hershey's stuff here. He's such an old fraud (reminds me of me) that I have him on ignore. But he said a number of things that stuck in my mind, curse me for a fool. One of those was that as the years passed, he was able to absorb more screen information than he would ever have imagined possible. I sit close to a largish screen and put the least informative stuff on the edges, where I hope my peripheral vision will catch changes. The other thing I do is use a lot of color-coded helpers, "red light short, lime light long, orange light scratch your ass." And after a period of layout stability all that stuff seems to osmose into the brain. I also use a lot of playSound() calls to lighten the visual load.
If by OHLC you mean pure price patterns, I think I agree, never thought about it, that is a very distubing notion. Not quite sure what you mean by "market themes." I use what I call "market internals" based on thinking like the specialist, or the ax, or the big limit order trader thinks, whatever the fuck the right word is now. I have a lot of pricepattern stuff in my repertoire, but none of it is robust.
One thing I have had to get over is the pro who condescends to chime in and laugh at us pajama traders. Sure none of what I believe makes any rational sense, but I make money at it, if only accidentally. There is a lot to be said for random entry with money management.