Let me preface this by saying what follows is my answer to your question. It is not the only answer. But it is the only answer that I know to give.
1a) There is no substitute for a period of sustained market observation with no thoughts of trading or looking for "set ups." Live with the 5 minute bar interval real time chart for 30 days, 20-22 market sessions - ONE MONTH. Just watch it, tick by tick, bell to bell. You should take notes but only when something strikes you. Do not put undue pressure on yourself to have frequent flashes of insight. Insight is the objective and it will come. But don't force it. Watch price, its rhythms, its flow. I say "tick by tick" to emphasize that the bar is merely a collation of data. Price is live, it is flow, and it should not be confused with being the "the bars."
You should journal this activity. And I do not mean open an ET journal - I mean get yourself a notebook and a pen or pencil and physically (not electronically) journal your thoughts and observations daily - even if your only thought is you have no idea what you just watched for the last 390 minutes. The objective is not to identify "set ups." The objective is to learn the character of the market you wish to trade. That is all. And the ES does have character.
I cannot stress just how strongly I believe in the superiority of the 5 minute bar interval to all others specifically for learning the character of the ES market. I also cannot stress enough that there is no substitute for this exercise of simply watching the market unfold tick by tick, minute by minute, hour after hour for six hours and 45 minutes each day for 20 RTH sessions. None. But nearly no one does it. Skip this step and go to the next ones and you might still manage to put together a plan and succeed. But skip this step and no matter what success you might muster in the future, it will be a fraction of what could have been.
Also, more bars are not better. Resist the temptation to look at any bar interval less than 5 minutes. And yes, for swing trading big picture is monthly, weekly, daily, 240 minute and 60 minute ... but specifically for learning the character of the ES relatively quickly where the price action will correlate with larger bar intervals over longer timeframes, the 5 minute is king.
1b) Co-requisite: Read Zen and the Markets by Edward Toppel. Start the meditation exercises now. It will augment your fitness for the mental and emotional pressures of trading.
AFTER completing 1a and 1b:
2) Read The Trading Rule that Can Make you Rich by Edward Dobson
3) Study Al Brooks's Trading Course. What will you get out of his course? Take the exercise I suggest above - sit and observe 20 to 22 market sessions bell to bell of simply observing price action, one month of market observation - and multiply it by 60 - that is the knowledge and experience you can pour into your brain by intently studying Brooks's price action course. But you will get even more out of his course if you do the exercise in step one above first.
3) Read Trading the Measured Move by David Halsey ... My only complaint about this book is that the charts are nearly useless. They suck. Terrible. But the material is invaluable to understanding the underlying structure of the ES as it is exploited by today's algorithmic trading systems.
You can do the above and, assuming you have the mental and emotional fitness for active trading, and you'll be running a profitable operation in six months time. Or, don't do any of it, and instead do what everyone else here does, and 20 years later you'll be like some here who tell us that they are (finally) "just getting started."
Prove to me you've gone through all the above, and I'll help you put it all together. But do all the above, and you may not need me to help you put it together. But if you do all that and you feel you need a little more direction, you'll get it.
. I'm opportunistic and outspoken so I have no problem going after value when I see it. It's definitely here to be had if you want it bad enough.
