Which indicators and why?

Informal poll. What are the most popular indicators and why? Other than the FIBO. What others are people using along with these to get in or out? What time frames are the most popular for you? Curious.

The 3 most important indicators are 1 PRICE

2 PRICE

3 PRICE



boycie

First of all, The Fibo is not considered to be an indicator...It's called a layout as far as I know...In my opinion, the most popular indicators used are moving averages, stochastics and the bollinger bands...Not based on any statistical measures though....

About the time frames, I am not sure, but I think the 5 minutes, 1 hour and 4 hours frames are the most popular....


Thanks,

Nader

I use RSI(14).

1 Right On!

2 Right On!

3 Right On!

(and if that's not enough, you can always use price :-)

I'm moving away from using indicators. Over the past few months of learning to use price action (through Jim and the PF) I've been getting a good feel for just reading the charts. A few weeks ago I went back and added some indicators (trendsignal, like BT and ASCtrend, and some other indicators) to these charts and I was amazed at how lagged these indicators were. At the moment my charts basically have some moving averages, as an envelope to help gauge price extremes (VWB principles etc), and I sometimes snap on some indicator for overbought/oversold conditions (I do this less and less).
1) Price
2) Price
3) Price and moving averages
Timeframes: Some 1H, mostly 4H and 1D.

Most popular indicators? probably moving averages, Stochastic, RSI, MACD and Bolling Bands.

I pay attention to none of them myself though. For me, it's all about trendlines bounces, channel breakouts, fib retraces and specially confluences of them.

Some people also rely on candle formations such as Jim16. In my opinion, I think they are valuable but only if wrapped in the right scenario (which again would take us to trendlines, fibos, etc). I think that trading candle formations exclusively by themselves lead to too many false signals.

When you have indicators below or above the price charts, where are your eyes most of the time? Probably on the lagging indicators. In trading, price is king, price is king, and did I forget to mention, price is king.

Price is the most important, but don't forget indicators are a different way of looking at the price. All idicators are about the price...

Sometimes to see better you have to take a diffrent position. Like when you go to the movie the first row is the closer to the screen... but you have to go back a little to see better. That's how I see price... take the right position when you look at the price... don't get to close 'cause you won't see the whole image, don't go to far 'cause you won't see anything. Find the right spot

That's what different time frames are all about After all, you are watching the same movie...


Thanks,

Nader

Going to the movie different time and sitting in the same bad first row won't make you see the movie better.

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double Bad seat =Bottom Line;

double TA + Price =Bottom Line;

double Time Frame 5m,15m,30m,60m, Daily, Weekly=Bottom Line;



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if Bottom Line = Profits

then draw system passed

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Hope you enjoy it
Highway

Could not have said it better. No indicators here. Why use something that gives you information after the fact? It is like using a map only after you have reached your destination.

Using different time frames means that you are watching the same movie from a different prespective, but after all, you are still watching the same movie, aren't you???


Thanks,

Nader

Well... candlesticks or bars... they are still indicators, at least they are not just price. If you trade by looking at a table containing prices... that's more "price and no indicators" to me...

Well, thanks to all of you. When I stated indicators what I meant was "WHAT" are you all actually looking at. Not necessarily the pretty colors in, over and around the price indicator.


Thanx.

Do you mean what signals generate everyindicator? What do they tell you regarding the price?

No one answered why they use price alone. Just curious about your reasons.

Hi, I touched upon my reasons. The indicators are lagged. They don't tell you anything that price is not telling you already and they tell you *after* price has already told you. Now that I've been learning to read price, I can put on some indicators and when the indicator may be giving a buy or sell signal, I would have already been able to understand whether prices were going north or south based on price alone and be able to get in at a better price.
The indicators tend to be based on price and do not add anything else and they are lagged. Why not just use the price, which is what hte indicators are using anyway?
Cheers,
Linc.

Indicator bashing?

I read this thread and need clarification. Can someone give me the definition that you are using to define an indicator.

The the definition that I have always gone by. An indicator is a graphical representation of a mathematical formula.

By this definition, I could easily make a graphical representation of the spreadsheet, which many of you are fond of which Vagus uses.Since it would now be in a graphical form would it become useless!

Using price, if there is a large bar up the bottom portion 25% would usually be considered support. This is using pure price action but I could make a graphical representation of it and write an indicator that would look like an overbought oversold oscillator. Using that exact mathematical formula.

This would now be an indicator is the information less valuable. Just because it is in graphic form.

Attached is a picture of what I would consider an indicator. What it represents is a Denmark trendline nomolised at zero and price crossing the trendline. It looks like an oscillator of course, but it is in a forum that I prefer does it make it less valuable. Then a regular trendline.

I have even read some people do not consider a moving average and indicator. Please define your definition, which would exclude a moving average from being an indicator without making exceptions.

If I consider many people only using price. This would mean a lot of people simply looking at an Excel spreadsheet. That is updating as new prices are put in. I honestly doubt many people are doing this. As humans, we decipher information graphically much better.

A computer would prefer the spreadsheet.