What is your FAVORITE indicator?

Indicators are useless.
The word indicator and/or system in trading...kind of implies the trader requires no input or judgement of his own. -- but simply just react automatically to the given situation or impulse.

Any human with half a working brain realizes if such an instant ATM money machine exists...why would this vendor sell it, o_O

You need to study the general, loose...mindsets and trading frameworks of the rare, really successful traders out there. -- Not these generic systems that have existed to sell to suckers since Jesus was born.

I'm basically Mark Douglas 2.0
I'm currently listening to/watching one of his downloaded Youtube video interviews...Everything he is saying...I've been preaching and practicing to my trading. (even before I knew this so-called Holy Grail guy existed.)
 
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I'll be the first to give a real answer. Ttm squeeze!! Or just the bb and keltner channels to find where volatility is squeezing. And the ttm_wave is a good indicator.
 
One we like is IV rank. We add a lot of color to it. Go look at the book - The Option Strategy Spectrum by Jim Yates. If you can still find one it worth a read.
 
I think people saying indicators are useless are ignorant. What if you simply haven't found the right indicator yet? Applied it to the right type of charts at the right time frame/size? What if you need several based on which market conditions are present? What if it needs to be adjusted according to volatility? It would seem obvious that an indicator that worked prior to this spike in volatility might need to be adjusted when volatility increased by a factor of X.

The obvious advantage of an indicator is that it can make your trading more rule based and objective.

As can be understood from my questions, you can't simply adopt an out of the box indicator and expect it to work flawlessly and when it doesn't you conclude that indicators are worthless.

Indicators merely do mathematical calculations subject to the rules and logic they're based on, so obviously they work as they should. The question is if you can derive value from these calculations and if they can give you good and consistent signals in your trading.
 
Saltynuts said:
I need to read up about many of the different ones. But I'd like to start with what ETers find useful. So, what is your favorite indicator (or indicators if you have a few that you feel are particularly useful).

Thanks!!!
More...
MACD histogram. The strength of this indicator is spotting trend exhaustion.
 
I don't trust or value off-chart indicators like MACD, RSI, stochastic etc. If I was compelled - by law - to choose just one single indicator, as I am trend-follower, it would be the 50EMA.

Price can be above it or below: it can slope upwards or downwards (or flat-line for a day or two): price can be moving towards it or away: price's time above it or below it is interesting in judging a trend: how many times price crossed it in the last 6mths is interesting: how many consecutive weekly closes are above or below is interesting.
 
My previous post was done by my cat, who gained unauthorized access to my laptop, I apologize. My real answer is:

BBs for break outs or sideways consolidation.
Wiliams for entering with the trend on a pullback
RSI for divergences with double tops/bottoms
Kagi, still being evaluated, but very promising. It is kind of a green light, red light thingy.
 
Static regression channel that projects out. Calculates n bars back to n+x bars back, the regression channel becomes static, meaning it doesn't use any more future bars for the calculation, it projects out the channel n+y bars forward.
 
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