I find it interesting that you mentioned I should be able to answer when I should enter/exit. I would also like to know how to do this. How can one train their eyes to build this skill? I'm still at a loss.
Let me just say right off the bat that I do not read every post, for reasons I will not mention, so I apologize in advance if any of this is redundant.
I actually trade foreign currency pairs in that I found it a lot easier to make money in the Forex market than trading stocks, but having finalized my approach in that market, I returned to equities just to see if my Forex charts (see first image) would work with equities as well.
They did not, and I had to modify them (see second image), so I will just give you the principles behind what I do. (I have no idea how my current approach would perform with Futures, though I suspect it would fare better since one does not experience the daily gaps that come with equities.)
One of the things I found most helpful was visiting the “trade rooms” of people like Anne-Marie Baiynd, AJ Monte, Scott Bartley, and Nick MacDonald when they opened them up for “free trials.” It completely changed my trading mindset and personality.
Something else I found helpful was viewing video clips on YouTube recorded by the likes of Stephen Whiteside and Harry Boxer.
As for the principles that turned my trading around: I developed a system based almost exclusively on statistical probability by comparing the spatial relationships between trend, typical price range, and horizontal support/resistance levels in multiple timeframes.
Consequently, the only indicators I use are simple moving averages, and simple moving average envelopes. (I found stuff like Elliot waves, harmonic patterns, MACD and the like to be extremely overrated.)
I like one-minute charts because they offer me the precision I need, though as you can see from the 15-minute EURJPY chart, I use other timeframes as well. I was told it’s impossible to find success using one-minute charts because you are just trading noise, but perhaps these were people who assumed that if they couldn’t do something successfully—no one could.
I start off by finding a single moving average that best represents trend at the daily, hourly, and four-hour levels, and then work my way down. For example, SMA (6) on a one-hour chart would be changed to SMA (72) on a five-minute chart. I do not bother with standard moving averages, like the 10-, 20-, 50-, 100- and 200-period simple moving averages because common sense suggests to me that there is no way the same moving averages can apply to every situation and every timeframe. I also don’t bother with looking for higher highs and higher lows, or vice versa, because I see no need for this.
On the second image (a TSLA one-minute chart) the first arrow indicates where I would have placed my stop loss—slightly below the most recent local low, for if price dropped below that level, it would indicate that I was obviously mistaken about which direction price was headed.
The second arrow indicates where I would have entered a long position. Note that I have moved from using a single moving average to using a range of moving averages, typically in sets of three. (I find that my eye has a much easier time tracking price if I use multiple moving averages instead of just one.) Were it not for the closing bell, I would have exited the trade when the three GREEN moving averages began to hook downward.
The three sets of three-fold moving averages make it easy to recognize when the asset is bullish and when it is bearish, but again, these moving averages were carefully selected by examining price action in multiple timeframes.
I am typically satisfied with a 1:1 reward-to-risk ratio when trading foreign currency pairs given that my daily success rate averages between 70% to 100%. But again, this is all hypothetical when it comes to stocks, indices, metals and futures in that these are markets where I am not currently active.
As for commodities, some of them can exhibit some rather, shall we say “interesting” behavior, so I pretty much stay away from them.
and because of the fact that even for proper understanding of the generalities most readers luck sufficient trading experience