Indicators are crap!

[Kgauhelo]

The only indicator I use is the Stochastic Oscillator and I’ve found two ways to utilize it.
The first being as confirmation that the price is now trading in a certain direction and it’s now safe to enter in that direction too, this is for HTFs like your daily to montlhy charts.
The second being as an indicator that gives a clue/sentiment that a trend reversal is about to occur, I use the oscillator like this only on the 1H-D1 charts.

So, for me indicators are not crap at all, its all about how you use them.

[dushimes]

@Kgauhelo

So, for me indicators are not crap at all, its all about how you use them.

Yup. There’s not much to say after this…
I stopped using MAs, but maybe it was too soon to stop using them. Who knows?
There are people who use them, and those who don’t. It’s about the person, not the tool.

[greenscorpio]

A high percentage of members on here must know, by now ,nothing foolproof regarding trading

[Snowredeemer]

Perhaps, all indicators are crap, but Moving Averages still work. I would cancel all indicators but leave MAs instead. The market always rebounds from them.

[flamingoproxy]

@Kenn_Edy

I don’t really get the “hate” on indicators

i think i do, now …

i think the people we see hating on indicators comprise six main groups (with quite some overlap between them, admittedly):

1. people trying to use for forex indicators that were designed for other kinds of trading, such as stocks, which of course behave very differently (Ichimoku is a good example of this)

2. people trying to use on much faster charts indicators that were designed for daily charts (Ichimoku is an example of this, too, but arguably it actually applies to most indicators)

3. people trying to use indicators to decide when to enter trades rather than for more obvious and productive purposes (like identifying trends and directional biases)

4. people who believe that if they use multiple indicators, they’ll necessarily have a higher probability of a successful outcome if some of them appear to “confirm” others (they might, and then again they might not, and it’s a complex subject!)

5. people who try to use indicators for purposes very different from the purposes for which they were created (PSAR is perhaps the classic example of this)

6. people who don’t do their own research and backtesting, but rely on what people on Youtube and other online sources are telling them

people who subscribe strongly to most of those six perspectives are mostly pretty unlikely to be using indicators in a way which will make them profitable, in my opinion, and some of them end up “hating”, as you mentioned

for myself, i find moving averages useful as a quick/easy/lazy way of identifying trends, and i sometimes find ATR useful to give me a quick estimate of volatility

@Snowredeemer

The market always rebounds from them

“always” is quite a dangerous word, in this context, but even if that’s true, it’s a very long way indeed from that observation to using it to trade profitably

prices “always” eventually revert to a moving average, too (the “mean reversion theory” or “mean reversion fallacy,” depending on your perspective!) but of course the catch is that by the time it does so, the moving average itself may have moved so much that the trade is still a big loser when the price eventually crosses it

[dushimes]

@AlfaaJalloh

I literally spend my whole day backtesting these indicators: 20 & 10 EMA + RSI. I am still on it. When I am done with that, I will change the RSI to MACD by combining it with the 20 & 10 EMA for backtesting. I can even backtest different currency pairs to see which one work best with my risk management strategy.

How did that work out? How was your backtesting?

[Emi.s]

You know, nothing’s really 100% in this world. We’re always talking about frequency. The only 100% thing is that nothing’s 100%.

[Jugore]

There’s a kind of unconditioned hate toward indicators, because majority of traders think that they are useless and oftentimes lag behind the price changes.
But the main, in my opinion, is to be more far-sighted and don’t use them as standalone instruments.
Variety of indicators are perfectly mingled among each other and the main is to define which combination will be the most useful.
Use mix of indicators combined with some other variables like macroeconomic data, economic calendars, even though they aren’t usually takein into account for short-term purposes.

[Lalbine]

That’s a good question, because indeed tons of traders treat indicators biasedly, meaning that they believe they should indicate the future price movements and when then find out that the majority of them appeals to past prices - they get disappointed.
Supply and demand zones showcase not only the demand and supply on the particular asset in the past, but also in current situation as well. If the price gets several times too close to the support or resistance level and always pulls back, then there’ll be a breakthrough, and either bears or bulls eventually win. Analyze volumes, too.