Quote from ric3bowl:
Do you feel that there are enough signals day in and day out to trade off of support, resistance or trend lines? Are there periods of randomness where you may go through long periods of no trading signals with just those simple levels?
How are the signals in a 15m chart? The noise seems to increase a lot more on charts below 4hour. But I'm trying to focus on 15m charts to find patterns because I want to be able to get into a good trade at least every day or every few times a week. That's what I'm basing my decision on using 15m charts. If I'm using higher than that, I feel like I'd have to trade all day and night to be able to get into trades.
Anyway, that's my thought process. I could be really off base.
Any market, any instrument, any time frame, the same patterns and market behavior exists everywhere.
People talk about 'noise' in shorter time frames but it's all tradable, personally I don't usually go below 15m as I find it ideal for intraday but some traders do. Sure you get the occasional spikes which obviously aren't (as) noticeible on higher time frames, especially around fundamental news, but you can allow for that by reducung exposure and increasing stops around those scheduled releases, even if it means risk:reward is skewed at least the risk isn't increased and stops aren't unnecessarily hit on a spike.
There are plenty of intraday opportunities using just those tools, if there aren't then it probably means no-one is trading and the market isn't moving.
Equally you can trade longer time frames depending on how much time you have available to sit in front of screens, the approach is the same, the only things which change are the size of stops and targets, and consequently your trade size.
Believe me, for strategy these are the only tools you need. Sure you can add all sorts of weird and wonderful indcators to try and increase the probability of a trade being profitable but few, if any, really help. In fact most hinder, they filter out more potentially
profitable trades than
unprofitable ones!
Too many novice traders spend way too much time and energy focusing on trying to get all their ducks lined up perfectly before they'll pull the trigger......and the trade
still doesn't go right! Forget all that, just trade on probability, price can only go 3 ways! If you're wrong then you lose a little. If you're right you try to make as much as you can. If you make more than you lose then guess what....you're a profitable trader!
It's simple, it's not rocket science, although trading course and training video sellers will try to convince you otherwise. Fortunately for them there are plenty of gullible people in this business!
Of course none of this is worth diddly unless you've first mastered the basics of risk management, trading psychology, and discipline.
Read Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas, it helps put this whole trading business into perspective......