The problem with threads like this is that it all ends up in a battle of semantics. One man's price action is another man's order flow.
Over time I've gone from 5-min charts with little dots telling me when to go long/short to J16 price action studies to where I am now. I came to the conclusion that all I needed was to define key levels of Support/Resistance and then learn how to play the market around those levels.
During the course of this journey I became a disciple of the 'Trade the Trend' cult to the point where I now sit and watch 100s of retracement pips go by whilst waiting for a chance to go long again. (I trade EURUSD, almost exclusively, on the live account.)
Initially I would only trade J16 price patterns which confirmed - or seemed to confirm - the continuation of the trend I had determined. In that early stage of understanding S/R I've seen Pinbars succeed and fail. I've seen Outside Bars succeed and fail; the same thing with every other pattern that you can imagine. Although, to be honest, I haven't traded H&S, triangles etc to any great extent as I came to the conclusion that nothing is cast in stone and the simpler I can keep my trading the better the chance of taking money off my broker, or whoever is taking the other side.
In the same vein, I have no indicators on my charts other than my horizontal lines and the OHLC bars (no doubt some pedantic folk would class these as indicators, but you know what I mean).
During this most recent period I've slid back into short-term mode and this was as a result of reading the Order Flow thread. At this time I don't have access to L2 information and I'm not sure I want to go back and spend another year re-learning a new facet to my decision-making process. All I try and do on the short-term charts is to see if I can get a feel for how the market reacts to my S/R levels without confusing things by trying to see if there's an ascending triangle, falling wedge etc.
Trading can be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be and once enough people have told me that no pattern is worth diddly-squat as far as where price is going next I take that on board and move on.
No doubt that in the futures market, where you have volume information that has some validity, there are ways of confirming pattern breakouts or failures using volume confirmation but for the vast majority of traders on forums like these patterns have less value.
From all the books I've read, no professional takes a trade simply on the break of a pattern; they will stand aside and look for other signs that the direction has been confirmed. That, I think, is why many new traders (I'm not including the OP in that comment) get stuffed by trying to trade these things. By their nature they haven't developed the ability to stand aside and wait to see what is actually happening; they just jump aboard the first bar that clears the consolidation area. Maybe that was my trouble as well!
Nevertheless, I still feel that all chart patterns can be distilled into one simple fact; price is responding to an earlier S/R area and will eventually break out of it. My job is to try and find the best place for me to get in the trade and I haven't found any pattern that helps me better than my own eyes.
Over time I've gone from 5-min charts with little dots telling me when to go long/short to J16 price action studies to where I am now. I came to the conclusion that all I needed was to define key levels of Support/Resistance and then learn how to play the market around those levels.
During the course of this journey I became a disciple of the 'Trade the Trend' cult to the point where I now sit and watch 100s of retracement pips go by whilst waiting for a chance to go long again. (I trade EURUSD, almost exclusively, on the live account.)
Initially I would only trade J16 price patterns which confirmed - or seemed to confirm - the continuation of the trend I had determined. In that early stage of understanding S/R I've seen Pinbars succeed and fail. I've seen Outside Bars succeed and fail; the same thing with every other pattern that you can imagine. Although, to be honest, I haven't traded H&S, triangles etc to any great extent as I came to the conclusion that nothing is cast in stone and the simpler I can keep my trading the better the chance of taking money off my broker, or whoever is taking the other side.
In the same vein, I have no indicators on my charts other than my horizontal lines and the OHLC bars (no doubt some pedantic folk would class these as indicators, but you know what I mean).
During this most recent period I've slid back into short-term mode and this was as a result of reading the Order Flow thread. At this time I don't have access to L2 information and I'm not sure I want to go back and spend another year re-learning a new facet to my decision-making process. All I try and do on the short-term charts is to see if I can get a feel for how the market reacts to my S/R levels without confusing things by trying to see if there's an ascending triangle, falling wedge etc.
Trading can be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be and once enough people have told me that no pattern is worth diddly-squat as far as where price is going next I take that on board and move on.
No doubt that in the futures market, where you have volume information that has some validity, there are ways of confirming pattern breakouts or failures using volume confirmation but for the vast majority of traders on forums like these patterns have less value.
From all the books I've read, no professional takes a trade simply on the break of a pattern; they will stand aside and look for other signs that the direction has been confirmed. That, I think, is why many new traders (I'm not including the OP in that comment) get stuffed by trying to trade these things. By their nature they haven't developed the ability to stand aside and wait to see what is actually happening; they just jump aboard the first bar that clears the consolidation area. Maybe that was my trouble as well!
Nevertheless, I still feel that all chart patterns can be distilled into one simple fact; price is responding to an earlier S/R area and will eventually break out of it. My job is to try and find the best place for me to get in the trade and I haven't found any pattern that helps me better than my own eyes.