A question to all you indicator traders

Indicators are INDICATORS, They should not be taken as TRADE TRIGGERS.

This is a LOL thread that probably should have been consigned to the Rookie section if not for the fact that big_pipin asked some pretty pertinent questions.

Ordinarily I'd have stayed away from threads like these because the pro-indicator vs anti-indicator polemics have been going on probably since indicators were first classified as indicators to be argued over in the first place. And the arguments have been going on even in the interbank world but on a less ridiculous scale as compared to you guys here in Forex Factory and elsewhere.

For example, some bank traders I knew back in the day will get some friendly ribbing about their devotion to RSI or their frantic wave counting. But friendly arguments are the norm for us. But for you retail guys, OMG! LOL

I just wanna comment on the following statement:

For the umpteenth time, bank traders DO NOT target retail stops. The retail market is just a parallel market that's similar to an "off-track betting parlor". It's a common coincidence that retail stops will tend to cluster around the "usual suspect" S/R zones that (believe or not) are also occupied by institutional/corporate order books world-wide. And as institutional stops get hit, so too do retail stops.

Coming back to the topic, I'm not pro or anti anything. I don't knock somebody else's edge for making money no matter how ridiculous against my inner being those methods are. For example, I will always think wave counting or RSIs or ichimoku or Gartley patterns (for example) are pretty flakey ways of analyzing markets. But I do know people who have a talent for them, and to these people I say, "Salut".

Disclaimer: I have indicators that show me the current price in bold, the current spread, time left to end of candle, financial centre timezones, but these are not really "indicators" in the traditional sense of the word. The only true indicators I use are simple MAs for trend direction only (no crossover analysis and related BS), and a dashboard indicator that sorts currency pairs by their ADRs (hanover's Display Info All Pairs indicator) for pair selection.

With or without indicators, all we need is to understand the market behavior.

you can make money with or without indicators

to each his own...

none is better than the other.. what matters are results...

Nice to see a thread that actually grabs my attention on FF. As a strong opponent of indicator style trading, reading some of the comments on here is like a breath of fresh air.

I, like 99% of all new comers to FX trading are bombarded by Systems that rely on indicators. When ever you see traders portrayed on Tv, movies, social media, you see screens filled with fancy indicators, making there charts look like some sort of technicolor Christmas tree, it gives the impression that this is how the pros do it, looks impressive, all my friends and family will be impressed if i show them a chart chocked with pretty indicators and i pretend to know what they are. I'll just do what everyone else does and i'll be RICH.

WRONG!!!!!!!!!!

Its all a conspiracy, a con, perpatrated and condoned by vested interests to get you trading. You see if you are continually brainwashed into thinking trading is easy and all you have to do is throw some indicators on your charts and start trading and making money, you sign up to nearest broker and unbeknown to you, you have just signed yourself up to one of the biggest legal scams in the world, and you will spend your future life refusing to admit youv;e been scammed, by continually thowing money at a thousand different systems that all promise to get you that mansion, fast car, financial independence, but it never seems to happen, Why? are you a bad trader? Or just a victim of the hype surrounding retail trading.

Fact is, no one will ever succeed in trading just by blindly following indicator based systems, not one that i know of will work unless you have a good working knowledge of price action and S/R etc.

Case in point, one very popular thread on FF that has just been moved to the commercial section, in the first few of the 1000+ pages its claims just follow the indicators and follow the rules and you;ll be rich,SIMPLE, its not until you get 500 pages in that some smart people realized that if you followed the rules and the indicators you will loose all your money, and then admited , well yes you do need to know price action to make it work, finally the truth came out, and its the same with all indicator based systems, without good PA knowledge no system will work.

So whats the solution, how do you learn PA? . Well the best way is Naked charts ,Take all your indicators off and let the candle sticks shine thru, then spend the next 6 mths studying them, any time frame, it dosent matter ,there all the same, and once you are an expert on PA, and you are ready to go back and tackle indicator systems you suddenly realize that you dont need them anymore, because you just discovered a whole new way of trading no one told you about before, its been kept a secret from you. Now you have the knowlege and tools to to go on and become the trader you always thought you could.

But will the majority do this ? NO, why? because it involves to much work and to much thinking, and that is why indicator systems will continue to flourish, because people are basically lazy and want the percieved easy way out. And thats just the way Brokers and internet indicator floggers like it.

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...... well now that I've been 'outed' , might as well admit it....... yep.... that's me..... lazy and wantin the easy way out.....h
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hey wicks..... ..... thanks for allowing me my indicator illusions....

i have no clue as to what prompted soro's trade.... but lookin at the at the 90-95 gbpusd and gbpjpy charts, a monthly psar trader could have done all right.....

and have no clue as to what institutional traders charts look like.... except for those presented in articles by banks/brokerage here on ff and those commonly seen on efxnews..... those often contain indicators or refer to them in text....

personally i use everything fundamental and technical available to me.... and still struggle..... thanks again......h
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@ everyone else.....

pipin asked a simple question....

For the traders that (1)have years of experience, (2)are profitable, and still (3)use indicators, I'd like to know why you still use them

1+2+3==me;

indicators are by no means an easy road to lazy success, or at least were not for me.... with time, you can learn to selectively trust them in proper conditions .....h
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There are many reasons to consider. Here are just a few of them.

Interesting read.

Whit


Whitout

"Indicators don't work". Well, for most traders they don't and that's a FACT. BUT if someone out there found out a way to use indicators profitably, do you expect him to show proof on forums like this that they do indeed work to disprove this notion ?

just a piece to add, now that metrader, updated mt4 to mt4- 788 it gives you the ability to download indicators for sale on the MLq marketplace and Run visual back tests on them. Could spend many hours looking for something that works over 1200 indicates, or you could study charts

What you want in successful trading is Entry, Exit and rarely Stop-loss. Either you use indicator or not its your choice. If your system is fulfilling this condition you won half battle, Next step is your mental preparation to use the system in various market conditions.this step is hard It requires more time, practice and experience.

The simple answer: in order to spare me the guesswork. And I have not yet come across anything more useful. Yet I first had to make sense of indicators: pick the appropriate ones, and equally important, the right settings.
However, indicators alone will not provide a close to one hundred percent success rate.
I too have not seen many (indicator laden) charts holding meaningful indicators, or rather settings. Also, smoothing an indicator only means smoothing away important information..