Lagging Indicators -vs- Leading Indicators

A year on and Jets stuff will still be of use to many of us. It is very good his points are carefully thought about IMHO.

As for many of the naysayers they will look and feel very silly one day

a nice and well written thread, there are many advocating to use only leading indicators because lagging indicators are lagging behind price and leading indicators are much better because they predict the future? some people don't like to use any indicators at all, so which ones are the best? leading or lagging? the truth is that no one is best because there is no way to predict the market to any great extent with either lagging or leading indicators used alone, the only thing we can be fairly sure of is that the market will be going up and down in a zigzag formation wheter it is an uptrend or down trend or sideways, here is where the oscillator comes in to messure the cycles swing highs and lows, sure it is a lagging indicator but it can also provide leading information such as divergence so lagging indicators isn't all bad, no one should be using a single indicator to trade with because it is not enough to make a good trade, you may think that a good trade is good if you made money from it? no it isn't, even if you win on the trade it can still be a poor trade that will loose you money over the long run, a good trade is a trade that consistently makes us money if we where to run it over and over again, so how do we achieve this, there is many ways, we can use different indicators but the main thing is to look for is confluenses where several "different types" of indicators are indicating the same thing, that would be a high probability trade where the odds of getting it right more than not is very high, so that is a good trade, even if it loose! because such trades will win you money a lot more than 50% ,you can never trust any single indicator alone, it doesnt matter if it is lagging or leading, but if you have 5 or more of them on your chart and they are all telling you to go short, the probability you are right are a lot higher.


- What does a lagging indicator really tell me about the market?

they tell you where the market has been in the past but lets you view it more clear than just looking at price bars

- What makes a leading indicator different and when can I trust it?

a leading indicator dont lag behind, it is predicting future movements,
they can certanly do that, but they are not right all the time and no leading indicator is enough to constantly produce winning trades

- Am I trading "on purpose," or "just to make a profit?"

I hope you are trading to make a profit


- What does success as a trader really look like?

if you can constantly grow your acount you are having success,
but dont think it will happen in just a few trades, you need alteast 100 trades before you even can see any consistency with your system, be patiant, it is normal to have losses, you can have many in a row but that doesnt mean your system sucks, you need to give it a long time to prove it self, use money management then the losses will be small and they will not affect your mind in a negative way

- Can I really go from $5k to $100+m as a private individual trader?

Yes you can, there is no limit to how far you can go, but it takes disipline self knowledge and patiance and a lot of hard work

But, is that enough information for trading a lagging indicator with long-term success? no single indicator used alone can make you succesful,

instead use several different indicators calculating different things such as pivots fibs s&r oscillation, ma fibs, supply demand zones 00's and more,

its a bad idea to have several indicators based on the same calculation,
such as CCI RSI Stoch MoM, take your best pic and only use the one you like most.

useless thread. indicators in winning trading systems indicate the locations that repeat whilst the market keeps on going. when you identify the location that repeats itself then you can use statistics to make an assumption of where the price is going.

Do not make things so complicated
try trading with a small amount
Can you profit in 6 months or one year in your trading?
if yes
you can add the amount of money in your trading account in accordance with your ability
just simple like that

salaam

I would suggest that someone attempt using lagging indicator data to predict, or even create a forecasting indicator.
It of course would require much study, & a problem in MT4 is the limit of historic bars.

I believe Currency Strength Index can anticipate market direction.
Even better used in conjuction with HMA.

Nevertheless, I know of no technical leading indicator and do wish one could be contructed based on these I suggest.

I will put this simply for those new to Market dynamics

There is ONLY 1 leading indicator of anything to do with market price and market behavior

Volume

Everything else being technical analysis is at best a derivative of price and is lagging

Volume reading precedes everything every time and all movements of price

Read up on VSA elsewhere on FF

HTH

Ok. I'm glad you commented.
Thanks for letting us see 'Stopping volume', I had never thought of it that way.

On the other hand, I still see it as useful as candle size... it is of no greater advantage.

What we need is accurate indicators. Lag or not is another issue.