Sick Of Indicators-Anybody trading w/Out ANY indicator?

Hellor Friends,

I am working on a system that trades without indicators. NO INDICATOR of any kind. The maximum I will draw on my chart is a trendline other than that Just plain price action. Indiators tell you the same price action with a considerable delay or lag. So why not to devise a system to trade without using any indicator and just looking at price action. May be we have involved ourselves in indicators too much and have forgotten to pay any attention to the source code of those indicators i.e. PRICE ACTION.

If anyone of you has any idea to trade without any indicator please post it here. Time frame I am looking for is 4Hour or daily. There is too much noise in the markets on lower time frames.

I will post my sytem here whenever I felt comfortable with it. Still in testing process. System is just a set of rules: when to buy; when to sell; when to reverse direction; where to put the stop; how to take profits etc.. The system is devised so that it almost always keeps you in the market so you dont miss any big moves. There is no guess work invloved at all. The core of the system is based on two basic concepts: GO WITH THE FLOW and TRADE WHAT YOU SEE NOT WHAT YOU THINK. We wont be guessing markets at all. We will trust price action completely because that is what we trade.

hoping to hear back from someone out there who has the courage to think outside the box.

Lucky

LOL..if you do a quick search..it's been hundred times people telling about this indicator and price action thingy..not something new i guess.

Beside in my opinion, trading naked and trading price action is somewhat different, just like you said above, you only allow some trendline on your chart.Trading using the trend line meaning trading with pure price action but it's not naked.

So if you mean to trade naked, it's good too.price action?

Maybe someday u'll end up like me..first time..fall in love with MA's and the gangs (nearly turn to be a Picasso pupil) then going naked..then back again with MA with price action..Indicator is not that bad to me .It's the way you see/apply them the one need to tweak, Im using MA now just for an area/zone of re enter a trade..not a hocus pocus crossing then a buy and sell .But it just me and my opinion. good luck on your Price Action trade.2 cents

JohnW has a great thread on trading PA titled "the holy grail - found" in the beginners section.

Skunny too has a thread on trading PA which is great but i haven't been able to read it entirely yet.

Why not check em out.

Hi Parlenk,

Thank you for your kindness to post in this thread. I am a firm believer;

1. Where there is will there is a way and
2. There is always a better way.

I also believe that we don't trade the markets but we trade our BELIEFS about the markets. We don’t see the world as it is but we see it the way we have been conditioned to see it. Same is true about markets. At any given moment in time some see it as a sell signal and some see it as a buy signal. Here the problem is not with the eyes but the thinking process. Everyone’s mind processes the same data differently. I have tried to get out of that black hole by not doing any market prediction for any reason.
· People use different indicators to predict markets. Moving averages, MACD, RSI, Momentum, Pivot Points, and Trendlines just to name a few. Then people use different time frames to trade. An indicator might give you a buy signal on one time and give you a sell on the other time frame exactly at the same time. WOW. One is buying using the same indicator and the other is selling using the same indicator. That is why whenever you make a transaction at any one time there is always someone at the other end of the bargain to complete the transaction. All those indicators take past price data and convert it into some kind of visual effects to make us believe what we want to believe is happening.
o IT IS HARD NOT TO BELIEVE WHAT WE WANT TO BELIEVE.
When we have made up our minds about an instrument that it will go in a certain direction; we try to find indicators that support our view. We don’t interpret the indicators as they are but as we want to see them. For example; I am bullish GBPUSD. My MACD is telling me on 4H to sell. I don’t like that MACD at that time because it is trying to contradict my view. I will change the time frame to see if it is giving me a buy signal on 1H, 30 Min or anywhere. If it does and surely you can find a time frame where an indicator can support your view; you will get even stronger on your bullish aspect about GBPUSD. You will only pick that goes with your brain. YOU will only see what you want to see. Then you see other indicators and surely some indicator at some point will support your view. You add up together, MACD on 30M bullish, Moving Average cross of 5 and 21 on one hour, Trendline on 5 min is holding, candle on 1 hour is bullish. Price breakouts from channel on 30 min. BUY. And you pull the trigger. This is mostly how trading decisions are made mostly by 95% of crowd who come with a dream of getting rich quickly trading the forex markets and end up donating their equity to their brokers account. I did this for 5 times in a row. I always changed brokers so everybody out in the markets can benefit from my donations.
If you try a little harder, you can find more indicators that do not support your view but that’s not what we want to see. So what is important? Indicators or the way we see them? Do they tell us something is going to happen? NO ABSOLUTELY NOT. They tell us only what has happened. And that too with a considerable lag and out of all that mess we will only see what we want to beleive is happening.
I would like to quote from Dr. Van K. Tharps Book "Trade your way to Financial Freedom"
There are probably hundreds of thousands of trading systems that work. But most people when given such a system will not follow it. Why not? Because the system does not fit them. One of the secrets of successful trading is finding a system that fits you.
Most successful market professionals:
· Achieve success by controlling risk. Controlling risk goes against our natural tendencies and requires tremendous internal control.
· Have success rate of 35% to 50%. They are not successful because they predict prices well. They are successful because the size of their profitable trades far exceeds the size of their losses. This requires tremendous internal control.
· Are patient and are willing to wait for the opportunity. That also requires tremendous internal control.
Ralph Vince once did an experiment with 40 Ph.D.s. They were asked to play a 100 trials of a simple computer game in which they would win 60 percent of the time. They were each given $1000 in play money and told to bet as much or as little as they wished on each of the plays. None of them knew about Money management. Only 2 out of 40 had more than their original at the end of the game. Or 5 %. If they had bet constant a $10, they would have ended with $1200. And if they had bet optimally for achieving the maximum gain ( which was to risk 20% of their new equity each time—not recommended here) they would have ended with $7490 ( on average ).
Look at the following two scenarios and see for yourself what it means:
· Which would you prefer:
o A sure loss of $9000 or
o A 5% chance of no loss at all and a 95% chance of $10000.
· Which one your prefer:
o Sure gain of 9000 or
o A 95% chance of a $10000 gain plus a 5% chance of no gain at all.
In the first case More than 80% of the public does not pick the sure loss and picks the risky gamble which works out be a bigger loss (9500).
In the second case more than 80% of the population picks up the sure gain which works out to be less profitable (9000) whereas the second option is a gain of 9500.

He also divides Trading as following:
SYSTEM: 10%
MONEY MANAGEMENT 30%
PSYCHOLOGY 60%
So, my point here is that system is probably not as important as we think it is. After spending thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of screen time I have finally came to the point where I started from but with this time my beliefs are totally different and that is big change. Now I Know that:

1. If I have to succeed, I am on my own.
2. I have to devise a system of my own that fits me

I am just on my way to self discovery and trying seek some help from people like you who have spent considerale time here and are more experienced than me.
Thank you again for your kindness and post.

Nice quote there..Im reading Van Tharp Special on MM report as well.then..good luck..you just entering the very stage of your trading live voyage.trust me..you are still a long way to go (me too) .My suggestion?.. enjoy it ( me too).

Trading only with price?
Have you ever heard about point & figure charting? If not, THIS kind of chart only paints price - no lagging, no timeframes. Nothing, but price.
There are several patterns representing high probability trades - I know 16 of them (8 long and 8 short).
FXCM offers you P&F, but the patterns you need to learn for yourself. You'll find some good articles on incrediblecharts and pointandfigure.net for the beginner with some patterns. If you want to learn more look at a book store for further advice.

On forex I'd suggest a box size of 5 (EURUSD) to 8 (EY, GY), reversal 3.

Greetings
Freewheelin

hmm i think in the beginning everybody needs indicators

they are simple, easy to understand and you don't have to learn all the economic financial stuff which perhaps add more headache

problems usually arouse during sideways, consolidation, choppy, whipsaws period when there are more signals coming and mostly are false, the longer this period is the deeper the frustation we experienced

then one will start to think the correlation between his or her indicators and the chart pattern and conclude that we don't need those indis afterall since everything is already there on the chart telling us million stories that were covered by fancy colorful moving averages and some trading methods/books

this is of course is a learning process and takes time .... very hard time

but, a big BUT, if one needs to play multiple charts/pairs at the same time, equiped with some good knowledge regarding the time when the indicators will mostly give correct signal, trading with indicators is actually quite easy and timewise .. as we all believe time is money ...

just my 2cts

One of my strategies is just price action, no indicators, not even trend lines, the chart is completely bare.

Using it on USD/CHF 4HR. I wait for a candle to close in the opposite direction and that candle then becomes resistance or support, a close past that line in the future is an entry. Simple.

I agree with Gift_Art, in the beginning it's good to use indicators I guess to just get a learning of trends and directions of price etc. but then you get to a stage where you notice you don't really need them (on certain pairs I think) and you start slowly but surely deleting MA's off your screen.

"The Ultimate Indicator" is the Price. This is a known concept, not new.

All other indicators are derived from the price. Many of these indicators basically try to remove the noise so that you can see the underlining price movements.

see ... same chart tells million stories

i use G/J and i wait until it makes a swing high and swing low then i enter a buy or sell at around the pivot point during low volume movement(pssst this is the h@#$ g@#$% )

and to make the game more fun i hedge and never use stop losses, the reason being is that stop losses being hunted right? but if you open a limit or stop position the broker will even happier to hit it, the more positions you take the faster those brokers will suck your money our of your account (that what they think)

i will check USD/CHF in inggscap's strategy, thx for sharing

For trading Naked and the like.... look up these FFF members... check their profile and look for threads or websites by them:

Akuma99 (a great post from last night) Kharvell (spelling might be wrong), Hensch , Jacko . These guys are price action and/or chart pattern oriented. Others mentioned: Skunny, Islander, Thexder, Bobokus , are fibonacci oriented for the most part.
James16 both and more.
If I recall correctly... Darkstar trades naked without charts.

Every trader needs filtering, even if you just trade by PA only. TF is a way of filtering... Candelsticks is a way of filtering.... Linechart is a way of filtering... You get the point right If we just look at raw info it looks something like this:

Time: Price
14.51.48 1.25694
14.51.49 1.25693
14.51.50 1.25693

etc etc

One may even suggest that this is a form of filtering (filter by time). We need to filter in order to make sense of that overload of info. Using indicators like MACD, MA or Stoch is just a way of filtering on a more deeper level. The problem is that it gets deeper and deeper and deepter so we can't see the bigger picture.

The problem is that beginners don't want to put in the effort of learning an indicator and just want a simple system that gives them constant profits. I really don't see a difference between MACD and PA. Both just filter a different way.

PA is price action. If PA is a filter as you state above, then pray tell, what exactly is it filtering? Please explain how price action can be itself and a filter of itself as well.

I see what the gist is, but to call candlesticks, or bars a filter I think is not right ... it is a "representation" rather than a "filter" in my books as nothing is excluded for that time frame, a line chart is in essence more of a filter as we are only seeing closing prices, not high, lows, opens etc ... but if we want to get really technical this only applies if you look at a chart post construction, after the fact. If you watch a bar/candle/line/tick chart live, no filtering (let's not go down the broker feed differences path please) is taking place, you see what is happening as it happens.

Really we are getting off topic and awfully pedantic though and not in the essence of what Lucky57 intended so I'll leave it there.

Lou, thanks for the mention, Lucky57, the thread Lou mentions is here:

http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=74304

I think it might encourage you in the path you are looking at as it is an example of the time frame and method you speak of.

Hi Gift_Art, thanks for sharing too mate. Yeah, the hedging I've looked at too but thanks for reminding me about that... I use about 6 strategies and inbetween that lot I had tested the hedging on the others but funny enough not the PA strat. Thanks for bring that up, I should bring that back in there, would save on the stoplosses and PA would be perfect for it.

Sorry guys... that reply was slight connected to PA hahaha

my advice when u trade naked ,
1. watch for the change of price by time , ie. how fast the price moves
2. S/R lines formed from previous swings

thats all matter ... the rest is screen time n psychology (which I'm still working on btw)

good luck to u

Dear Thread,

The best thread on trading price alone is by BillyRayValentine, right here at FF.

Lenoxer

I did not see a post about candle stick trading, ( I might have missed it) When I started out I was looking at every consivable indicator to tell me which way to go. About a year ago, I took all of that crap off of my charts and now I use support/resistance, trend lines and fibo, in that order. Candle stick trading, it's an art, you just have to take the time to learn it. Reading Steve Nison helps a lot and just watch the charts. For me it's tuff, I am easily distracted but if you just watch candles and know where you are on your chart you can make a pretty good assumption about which way the price will go. Then once you have that, always be humble and use good MM. That is how I do it and I have been making a livving for two years. That said I would like to take my trading to a higher level, I would like to move up from the zone of win, win, LOSS, pay bills, build account, win, loss, win, win, paybills, LOSS and so on. I'm only placing about 2 to three trades a week and I have to do more to make more. Most important right now, I want to move to Asia so that I would be in a better time zone for trading. I'm currently in the PNW USA, I'm thinking that being in Thailand would help my trading. Well, that's my 2 cents, Jeff

how the hell do you trade what you see? you see the trend being bullish, you buy, then 5 mins later it goes down on you.

I hear you, this can be a very frustrating business. the only advise I can offer is to read as much as you can about 4X and you will find a method that works for you. this web site has a wealth of information. As mentioned in my previous post, look at Steve Nison, the book that I'm reading is Japanese Candlestick Charting. he also has a web site and you can find his video on U-tube. Th other important thing is the currency pair and how many pips are you trying to make? Take a look at the daily charts to see if you can figure out what the adverage daily is then shoot for 50% or 25% of that when you trade. Second thing, learn your craft and don't ever give up, you can do this. Good luck.