I have been trading on a demo for 3 months and i have come to a conclusion I dont think indicators have much validity I think that at the end of the day it all comes down to just a best guess and luck. Any professional traders out there that can tell me different?I’m getting frustrated with lags, false signals,and any signals that are or seem to be accurate happen when the price move is practically over,It seems when I did just guess i made more money then when I used indicators,but I dont want to risk money trading like that!!Can anybody give some good honest advice I just want to be a good trader,and I’m getting so frustrated with these indicators that sometimes I just feel like quitting.
the behaviour of pairs are different and i only stick with eur/usd and seem like my combination with support/resistance , pivot point on hourly chart works quite well.
i think it is the art of drawing support/resistance would suit you. Study the pair that interest you most and stick with it. Try drawing s/r through every angle that possible even the sharpest line proved quiet helpful, draw and draw more and more, you dont need to combine with indicator, see if it works 
cheerioooo
I know you asked for seasoned veteran response but couldn’t help it. From what you say goldfibre, you’re making money on your demo account?
Since doing a demo for a few months, I have begun trading with a live account for about a month now (and nearly wiped it out already). While trading demo, I found that it was too easy for me to psychologically ‘get revenge’ with fun money and sort of force myself in to a profit that I wouldn’t have the balls with real capital. I know full well had I done that with my real account I would have wiped it, simply because I have nearly done it with my micro thus far. This matters because (for me at least) the added pressure of real risk affects us.
Only in the past week have I been employing a system religiously. Before that I really was doing the ‘pull the trigger and prey’ based on what looked right to me from what I’ve learned. It is not sustainable. Where I am at now, I drop in to my demo fairly often and keep my indicators to a minimum (5) with 3 different time charts (15,60,240 minutes) and rely mostly on the 15 and 240. If I make a trade on my live account, I make no more than 2 trades per day. I am now sustaining my live account (and never ever risking more than 1% at a time ever again) by doing this.
I am now going back historically through the past few years of the pair based on that system, and tacking up how many times the system I’m using would’ve succeeded and failed based on three different pip spreads. After that I will try to cross-reference any major statements for that days trading that would impact my pair. Time consuming? Yeah. Worth turning this fx more in to a fishing expedition than russian roulette? Hell yeah.
I’m now starting to appreciate this is a marathon and not a sprint. Being new to it, 3 months is really just a drop in the bucket. Getting market insight (like what indicators work for your scenario) is going to take me at least another few months experience.
well said expatyank…
to add to that, the market environment is constantly changing from ranging to trending and back to ranging…and so on…
If you have your indicators set up for one type of environment, ranging or trending, you will go through periods of where your system will give you false signals. And remember that indicators do just that… they “indicate”…they are not “guarantees” that the market will react as you expect it.
This is why money management is crucial. To keep you in the game during those drawdown periods and get you back to the profitable periods.
Imagine you walk into a hospital and you see a bunch of doctors and nurses looking at some machines. At one minute, the doctor will say “He is going to die!”, and the next he would say " okay…he is coming back". All they are looking at is the hearbeat monitor that comes up and down, up and down.
This is the same with technical indicators. Because they are based on ‘something’, lets say price or volume, they are lagging.
I have tried almost every indicator out there. the only ones that i am using now are S+R lines, pivots points, fibonacci and candle price actions.
Why? Because basically almost everyone is trading based on these, these ‘indicators’ are also NOT real, but because so many people use them, they became a self fullfilling prophecy.
Very well put! Excellent part about the heartbeat monitor.
I agree with what you say. Maybe some of the better known moving averages, such as the 50 and 200 ma could also be included in the list of much used indicators.
thanks for the reply It was really helpful Its nice to know I’m not alone out there