Hello.
I thought i'd share something with all the people starting out and learning TA.
Most of the books are teaching TA focused mainly on longer term charts. Most classical systems were developed to be used in the stock market where you have thousands of stocks to screen and trade using monthly, weekly and daily charts. You can be pretty active when you have that many stocks to choose from, even when trading with EOD data.
However, today, options, futures, the forex and even intraday stock trading are a favorite among new traders. Everyone wants to be a daytrader.
This thing has been spotted by all former and actual "educators" who claim that the strategies used on long term charts work the same way even on intraday charts. THIS IS LIE NR. 1.
Also they claim that the long term charts look the same as the short term, intraday charts. THAT IS LIE NR. 2.
Reason:
a) a daily bar contains the opinion of more traders than does the intraday 15 min bar. Therefore the bar has more meaning. An 8 bar swing on a daily chart means much more than an 8 bar swing on the 15 minute chart.
b) the close on the daily chart means much more than the close on the 15min chart. Actually, the close on the 15min doesn't mean anything, so therefore you can forget about any indicator that uses solely the Close in it's formula on your intraday charts.
c) a daily chart is pretty fluent because it has no "sessions". Intraday charts are fluent during active hours and tend to be less fluent and orderly when capital decreases.
Bottom line is that intraday charts present a greater degree of chaos than the daily, weekly and monthly charts.
Amidst all this chaos you need to know what exactly you are looking for and, in other words you need to spot the so called "order".
All setups have lower probability on intraday charts because of noise and fluctuating market conditions (volatility, volume, etc).
Therefore, your favourite strategies have to be filtered according to these market conditions.
I have an example. I used to trade the Triple Screen on long term charts for some years and when I switched to intraday trading it took me about half a year to realise that i needed to use and additional tool, the ADX to confirm my continuation trades. In short, when ADX was high, the market had conviction and when it was low, interest was waning so i had nothing to do in the market....
I thought i'd share something with all the people starting out and learning TA.
Most of the books are teaching TA focused mainly on longer term charts. Most classical systems were developed to be used in the stock market where you have thousands of stocks to screen and trade using monthly, weekly and daily charts. You can be pretty active when you have that many stocks to choose from, even when trading with EOD data.
However, today, options, futures, the forex and even intraday stock trading are a favorite among new traders. Everyone wants to be a daytrader.
This thing has been spotted by all former and actual "educators" who claim that the strategies used on long term charts work the same way even on intraday charts. THIS IS LIE NR. 1.
Also they claim that the long term charts look the same as the short term, intraday charts. THAT IS LIE NR. 2.
Reason:
a) a daily bar contains the opinion of more traders than does the intraday 15 min bar. Therefore the bar has more meaning. An 8 bar swing on a daily chart means much more than an 8 bar swing on the 15 minute chart.
b) the close on the daily chart means much more than the close on the 15min chart. Actually, the close on the 15min doesn't mean anything, so therefore you can forget about any indicator that uses solely the Close in it's formula on your intraday charts.
c) a daily chart is pretty fluent because it has no "sessions". Intraday charts are fluent during active hours and tend to be less fluent and orderly when capital decreases.
Bottom line is that intraday charts present a greater degree of chaos than the daily, weekly and monthly charts.
Amidst all this chaos you need to know what exactly you are looking for and, in other words you need to spot the so called "order".
All setups have lower probability on intraday charts because of noise and fluctuating market conditions (volatility, volume, etc).
Therefore, your favourite strategies have to be filtered according to these market conditions.
I have an example. I used to trade the Triple Screen on long term charts for some years and when I switched to intraday trading it took me about half a year to realise that i needed to use and additional tool, the ADX to confirm my continuation trades. In short, when ADX was high, the market had conviction and when it was low, interest was waning so i had nothing to do in the market....
). Adjust them so they contain about 80-90% of the last 100 periods' swings. 