DOM - Trading is still viable, but as WRB said, it's mostly about scalping.
Guys who are like "it's all algo's and fake orders" simply don't know what to look for. If some guy needs to dump 10.000 FGBL in the next 5 minutes, he will have an exploitable impact, algo or not.
But do not think it's an easy road. Prepare to spend about 3-6 months watching your market every day to get an idea what's going on. Keep in mind that every market is different, so the patterns and algo's you see in the treasuries don't necessarily translate to corn or gold. It's because there are different players in corn opposed to - lets say - bonds and a farmer or big elevator might trade differently than a local bank or fund hedging interest rates.
Choose one! market and stick to it. Stay away from CL and ES. Dont look at any charts for the first month.
- Keep a volume referrence point (mine is 1/2h after open) and note how many contracts traded at that point. This will give you an idea about how active the day is going to be.
- Use a Time&Sales window to see how big the clips are. 500 cars in ZN are doing nothing, frequent 1k - 3k trades means that bigger money is trading and they move things.
Keeping track of volume and clip size is very important. When you lean on a price and there is no activity, you might get one tick. If people want to play, you get 5 ticks from the same setup. So if you understand just that, it will make you more profitable with your support/resistance stuff. It's easier to fold it for the day when you see with your own eyes, that nothing's going on
- In the beginning, don't pay too much attention to the limit orders. Take a notebook and write down the prices where you saw a lot of volume and big size. Do this for a week. Like if your market tickles down 5 ticks on low volume and size and suddenly tape speeds up, clips get huge and one or two prices trade a lot of volume.
- After a while of watching your market, you will find that when big size transacts, they are doing it in similar ways. This is where you start to look for edge after you looked at your market for a couple of weeks. E.g. I've seen some reverse spoofs in ZB, but never in ZN where there are more drilling algos.
- Get camtasia or screencastomatic and record every session. Review the prices that traded a lot of volume and check if you can find any patterns in how big trades are executed. If you do, congrats, you have edge.
As said, don't expect it to come to you quickly. Most likely you won't be able to focus for more than 10 minutes in the beginning, keep on trucking and you will get a good understanding of how markets operate, even if you decide to keep trading with charts.