Price Action Vs Indicators

I recieved an email from a member who liked my original post asking me to post more. In reality, I'm busy trading, when I 'm not trading I'm attending to personal matters. His questions were good. I had a few minutes today becuase I had some extremely good setups this morning and I'm done for the day.

After I got fed up with mediocre results more often than not losing results, I decided that if I was going to become a trading professional I needed to have my own revelations about market action. I tossed out my indicators except for maybe 1 or 2 for my longer time frame analysis and studied price action, the market ebb and flows and how the prices acted and re-acted to market stimuli. Day after day, and burning the midnight oil night after night.

After studying my personal trade patterns I eliminated certain things from my routine that seemed harmful to my results. The number one thing was thinking I had to be in a position whenever I sat down at my trading station.
Now, I wait for only what I have deemed as high probability setups.

Indicators are just that, indications of price. They try to smooth out what otherwise might be hard to extrapolate from price action alone. I don't use hardly any inidicators, but if you do, instead of using them as triggers, use them as a guage to get a feel for price action. Is price moving away from or toward them? How does price typcially react to my indicators after a big move? Do they seem to work better in the london session or NY session. Pick a few idicators and just watch and study them and you may find yourself getting a feel for the price action. Stay away from trying one system for a few trades, then something for the next few. Pick something and master it.

Thanks for the post.

For beginners like me all of the indicators (hundreds!) and systems

are really a two-edged sword. Can be helpful but really can be confusing

and most of all distracting in two important ways: 1) "Holy Grail" searching.

This name is most appropriate. 2) TAKING PRECIOUS TIME AWAY FROM

LEARNING HOW TO TRADE PROFESSIONALLY!

I feel fortunate to have found this forum! Please don't misunderstand!

Being amused by all the bells and whistles is just human nature.

BUT, I WANT TO TRADE PROFESSIONALLY!

Way too much rambling!

Do you have any thoughts on trading "EVENS" (a la Livermore, Toppel,
Trader Vic et al)? That is, using evens for S/R pivots with larger evens
carrying more weight. This is a subject that I don't hear much about.

THANK YOU AND HAVE A GREAT DAY!

FXS

Why do you want the stress of trading professionally?
You can make a very nice living simply trading for yourself.

In my trading, S/R really come into play when they have been indicated as some sort of major sentiment number. When the EUR/USD rallied into 1.6, I sold the crap out of it, both times. It was a classic sucker move. As far as S/R goes, those are the tpes of setups that can really play out well.

Are you still doing this?

I must say, after an year of trading with indicators, I have now decided trade without them. I have tried 8-10 indicators if not a hundred but I have researched and practiced extensively with them, and did everything I possibly could to make them work. Finally, I gave up. I'm not saying they don't work, they just don't work for me. For me, indicators lead to illusions, i.e. setups that don't exist. But I also must say the experience I gathered so far with methods that don't work, is valuable to me. I believe it's not enough to know what works for someone, it's also important to find out what doesn't. One might argue that he or she believes exactly the opposite regarding the usage of indicators, and that's also fine... whatever works; it doesn't have to be price action.

I trade at support and resistance levels all the time. Major S/R level reversals and breakouts. Even better if they coincide with major technical or fundamental events!

I agree. I trade with round numbers and pay attention to what price has done around them. But price action or indicators, what can is the difference between a great trader and a mediocre trader is when to stay out of a trade, and pa helps with this.

Price action is all one needs really.
To gauge price action you need to correctly place trend lines.
Then, correctly drawn support and resistance lines help define targets.
Other than that the candles tell the whole story.
Lastly you need the tools to manage the trade before and during the entry.
Tools that can map out all aspects of the pre planned trade and then just left alone are key.. removes time and human emotion from the equation.

PM if this needs more clarification.

Both indicators and PA give you information on what the market is doing. How you interpret and apply the information to your trading is another question.

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