No one seems to use indicators

Jeffro72

Jeffro72

Mostly a lurker on this site, but I frequently see others who state they "don't use indicators". Their reasoning is usually something to the effect of "indicators are great for showing what has happened"...which I agree with.

But unless one has a crystal ball, all anyone can see and react to (chart or real time dom), is past information. So any system or method anyone has, is reacting to past information, indicators or not. Otherwise they are entering/exiting trades based on hope, faith, or feeling.
 
Develop your trading intuition and skill and tactics and common sense and sixth sense and mindfulness,
(you can write a whole book on this topic...it's truly hard to explain it in a short forum post)

It puzzles me on how people can expect to rely on square indicators to tell you what the market will do next,
...and Boom...
That's your Instant Road to Riches, o_O ...to a depression-free life of Lobster and Porsche.

Swipe Up or Down on your phone depending on where you think the market ball will land next. and you will be rich.
and you will be happy.

Cupcakes and sparklers daily,
 
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Jeffro72 said:
So any system or method anyone has, is reacting to past information, indicators or not.
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I think so, yes - unless perhaps you "trade" (more likely "invest", but perhaps not necessarily) solely on the basis of fundamentals?

I don't use indicators, myself - but there are certainly people trading broadly the same way as me, who do. I do relatively fast-moving intraday futures trades (not by any means scalping) using my perception of overall trend as a directional bias indication (I know people who use indicators to assess this) and timing my entries according to immediately preceeding price action patterns, my general aim being to enter existing trends during/after retracements - in short, looking for convenient long entries in uptrends and short entries in downtrends. I think the timing/positioning of my entries would be harder to duplicate with indicators - in fact I don't really know of a way to do that.

I'm heavily dependent on assessing areas of support and resistance, but not dependent on indicators at all - and it just suits me.

It's still "past information", though, as I feel you'd rightly say - it's just that the lookback periods (yes, we price action traders use that expression, too) are significantly different for the directional bias from what they are for the entry timing. And one part of that can far more easily be substituted by indicators than the other.

For what it's worth (if anything) ...
 
Jeffro72 said:
Mostly a lurker on this site, but I frequently see others who state they "don't use indicators". Their reasoning is usually something to the effect of "indicators are great for showing what has happened"...which I agree with.

But unless one has a crystal ball, all anyone can see and react to (chart or real time dom), is past information. So any system or method anyone has, is reacting to past information, indicators or not. Otherwise they are entering/exiting trades based on hope, faith, or feeling.
More...

No they use price and/or volume which which is least lagging indicators (which is often refereed to as using no indicators )vs others Indicator which are derivative of them.

People usually go through phases where they use indicators and slowly remove and move to naked trading ... it is a process and it never happens overnight ...it can take months to years ...

Don't force it ...if you are making money with indicator ...thats good .... end goal is to make money does not matter what tool you use ....
 
Pay little heed to anyone who says you "must" or you "shouldn't"....find what works for you. We all see things differently and unless your name is Nostradamus or you have a crystal ball, everything on a chart is derived of past data.
 
Let's talk about a TA concept called a failed break out. You have sideways movement and price breaks out to the upside. Then the rally fails and price comes back down to previous support and can even break it to the downside.

So how can we know when a break should be faded or if it is real. First we look to see if overall trend has been negative, if so it's more likely a 1st rally is going to fail or retest the support level.

Next we look to a special indicator, let's call it a non lagging magic indicator. What's special about this indicator is that it shows what will happen in the future not the past in real time at the right edge of the screen. I did go through over 100 indicators to find this indicator, and 90% of them are garbage or duplicate what another indicator shows so need for both on a chart. However, this indicator like TA does not work 100%. We again want to look at it in context of overall trend and price action near the next resistance level where price rallied too during the break out.

However, we don't need 100% win ratio to make money trading, if you can get your win ratio to 60% or higher you are doing pretty good. Now normally with a higher win ratio we can have a higher stop on a short then the target. In this case of the trade I did tonight, I had a poor risk vs reward since I had my stop level above an even higher resistance level since I felt very strongly about this trade.

When I got back from 24 hr fitness just a little before now, I see my target was hit and I did not even need that high of a stop, I could have done even risk vs reward on this trade. So yes I do trade with a few indicators, but also I know when to use them. You can't use indicators blindly that is a rookie mistake. Obviously this is not a magic indicator, it's just magic that I found it and reconfigured it for my use and was able to fix it when it gets corrupt on my charts.

Finally, one needs to know when to trade. I have been getting up too late in the morning since I have insomnia and miss price action since I stay up late at night. So I am trying now to determine a better time to trade and maybe then just practice in the morning.

So we want to look at times when TA works for you. For example, for the most after hours say 3 pm PST and later is shit trading unless you are looking at some after hours report for a company. Also, around 10 - 11 am PST seems to be a lot of shit where you get bard wire price action. So find the right time for when your indicators work for you.

Finally, it can take 10 years and 10,000 hours of screen time before you become a good trader and stop making stupid mistakes.
 
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Jeffro72 said:
Mostly a lurker on this site, but I frequently see others who state they "don't use indicators". Their reasoning is usually something to the effect of "indicators are great for showing what has happened"...which I agree with.

But unless one has a crystal ball, all anyone can see and react to (chart or real time dom), is past information. So any system or method anyone has, is reacting to past information, indicators or not. Otherwise they are entering/exiting trades based on hope, faith, or feeling.
More...

First off I hand drew charts for twenty years, so am experienced with charting, but I find indicators much easier to automate my systems, you train your eyes to blend both charting and indicators in those 10,000 hours. NOTHING can say what the future will bring, so charting nor TA will foretell the market. You can have very very small winning percentages but have huge R:R or have extremely small losing percentages and have huge risk to smaller reward and do well both, comes down to what you can live. No way is better than other, just comes down to what floats your boat, but "KISS" seems to work well with us old timers. You don't need to re-invent the wheel.
 
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