what are your thoughts on indicators that claim to call tops and bottoms?

[tomorton]

The principle of indicators like RSI sounds good - price changes slow down before direction reverses. Not 100% accurate, but then the markets are at best semi-chaotic, with so many interfering influences.

But what's really bad about these indicators is that having been wrong, they can stay wrong for bar after bar after bar.......

 

[Handle123]

The issue is can they be used with a strategy that scales in?

I'm a tad confused here on how a 1 min chart has months at the bottom.

Maybe we should pick some days with big trends and request that they send charts for each of those specific days.

From what I can tell, you don't have an indicator showing at all, you have green/red lines and dots, huge areas of nothing showing, so you have programmed out huge part of the indictor for the masses not to see. So you have created more of a risk management tool. I believe the Dots were created by "speed" of price, faster it goes one way becomes climatic. The Good, Bad and the Ugly is almost all traders forget that indicators should be used to indicate possibilities and probabilities of what worked in the past. Just like in Price itself can't ever be 100% correct in offering which direction it is going to go base on chart patterns. And man created chart patterns as a means to think of trading in a some type of logical order.

I think time better spent breaking down Price itself, learning all the different patterns you can find that are not written in books and those where they are never shared. The longer you simply study charts, you might notice there is re-occurring patterns at tops/bottoms that your indicator might miss.

Indicators are very good at reduction in programming, whereas charting much much tougher to program, least for me.

I think too many rely too heavily on indicators and not enough knowledge on filling the "what ifs", before relying only on an indicator, better have a rolodex filled with answers of what to do when indicator is not making proper display compared to price.

 

[Humpy]

Like this?

The above looks typically like simple cross over strategy.
No good.

 

[jl1575]

The issue is can they be used with a strategy that scales in?

I'm a tad confused here on how a 1 min chart has months at the bottom.

Maybe we should pick some days with big trends and request that they send charts for each of those specific days.

There are a lot of these kinds of DOTS indicators commercially available in the market for a long long time already. Most of them are after fact indicators, meaning they only paint the dots after a certain period of time; and some claimed to be real time, but the paint dots would disappear when the subsequent prices movement contradicted the painted dots. Don't be fooled.

 

[padutrader]

The principle of indicators like RSI sounds good - price changes slow down before direction reverses. Not 100% accurate, but then the markets are at best semi-chaotic, with so many interfering influences.

yes but that can be seen with the naked eye....smaller bars with more overlap

 

[userque]

what are your thoughts on indicators that claim to call tops and bottoms?

Properly backtest it and let us know how it does?

 

[Scataphagos]

But what's really bad about these indicators is that having been wrong, they can stay wrong for bar after bar after bar.......

Especially true when you're not using them the right way.

 

[tomorton]

Especially true when you're not using them the right way.

Oh I never use them, but its easy to see how new traders are seduced by their spurious accuracy. Especially as promoted by some bad greedy people.

 

[schweiz]

Most of them are after fact indicators, meaning they only paint the dots after a certain period of time; and some claimed to be real time, but the paint dots would disappear when the subsequent prices movement contradicted the painted dots. Don't be fooled.

Install the Zig Zag indicator and follow him in realtime. You will not believe what you see. Even two or three bars later he can suddenly disappear or change direction.

Traders should be aware that the most recent zig zag line may not be permanent. When the price changes direction, the indicator starts to draw a new line. If that zig zag line does not reach the indicator’s percentage setting and the price of the security reverses direction - that line is removed and replaced by an extended zig zag line in the trend’s original direction.

 

[smallfil]

The principle of indicators like RSI sounds good - price changes slow down before direction reverses. Not 100% accurate, but then the markets are at best semi-chaotic, with so many interfering influences.

But what's really bad about these indicators is that having been wrong, they can stay wrong for bar after bar after bar.......

RSI indicator could be oversold or overbought and the stock keeps going up or down in a strong trend. I use indicators on my stockcharts only as a visual aid to confirm what I already know.