Hi!
I’ve been around the trading scene for a while now, both stocks, futures, forex and so on.
Just curious if anyone here is trading the traditional indicators (like RSI, macd, stoch) successfully? And if you care to share, how you use it?
S
I’m also a newbie, so I was curious which market you entered into first.
Remove all indicators from your charts and focus on price, S&R, structure and institutional patterns/behaviours. Indicators are a trap!
I rely mostly on price action and only use the RSI to confirm my analysis. I disagree with kezm that they are a trap, but one needs to understand how to use them and really ‘get them’. Many traders prefer to trade forex through price action and S/R, but there are successful traders who use various indicators. Just take your time and learn how to use the one you like to apply to your chart and stick with your strategy.
Using indicators is like trying to predict the weather based on the previous day. There is no connection to actual things that affect the weather.
I focus mostly on price action (inflection points, chart patterns, candlesticks) but use stochastic as confirmation. So far, so good!
I’m always surprised when people say things like this. Seriously, is this what you think?
Of course they have to base it on the previous weather…they certainly don’t have the future weather to base it on. Doh!
Not just yesterdays, but the day before, and the day before, and last weeks and last years, etc. High pressure systems, lows, wind currents, temperatures, etc., etc., etc.
There is a noticeable correlation between past activity and future responses. No, it’s not “obvious” or guaranteed, but there is some ‘indication’ (hence their name) that past prices of X give you value y…and therefore you can make a trade decision based on y.
I use Ichimoku (officially, Ichimoku Kinko Hyo) with the default settings. I’ve used other indicators with it, but always seem to get rid of them after a while, when I realise I’ve started to ignore them.
The only other item included is pivot levels, as they are significantly noticeable areas where the market will stall or hesitate and without them, I would be left wondering why.