I’m still struggling with find a strategy to trade. Are you having the same problem or something else is even a bigger problem?
I’m guessing that you haven’t yet read Tushar Chande’s book “Beyond Technical Analysis: How to Develop and Implement a Winning Trading System”?
I think you might find it very helpful. A lot of people who read it find ways to solve that problem not long afterwards, once the material in it has “all sunk in”.
Deciding which prop firm to try, to come up with a virtual trading fund that will pay me out some profits is my current problem, but I think probably not a terrible one, and certainly not a permanent one.
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This thread might also help with that (just as far down as June 2024 - no need to read the rest, 11 or 12 of the last 16 posts there were junk bot posts, but the early parts of the thread have helped many people!) : -
Can you share with us a little more on the types of strategies you have tried and why did it not work for you?
I wouldn’t say I’m struggling with a strategy—I’ve built a solid approach based on capital allocation, patience, and technical precision. The real challenge is discipline in execution.
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Can you automate that part, if all the far-more-difficult parts are already taken care of?
Well you should first decide for how long would you like to keep your trades open, and this only depends on your lifestyle, after that you can find strategies for that and then back test them and choose which one is for you based on the winning ratio and the profit gained
Some MA cross over stuff. I tried one with MACD as like the main indicator. I even looked at Ichimoku, but that got so complicated I stopped trading it.
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yea that’s a good idea, thanks. I tried trading on the daily timeframe. Man that was so slow.
Here’s my personal opinion, after testing all sorts of indicators like MA, RSI, Bollinger bands, Stochastic Oscillator, MACD and a few more, I went back to just price action and marking out support and resistance zones.
That worked out for me. I would recommend that for everyone starting out.
All the best with your trading in 2025!
SIA
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With price action, does that work better on higher time frames or it doesn’t matter? Like identifying it. Do you have certain patterns you always look for?
To answer your question, since the markets are fractal in nature, there is no better or worse timeframes. However, I find it useful to have a sequence that goes from higher time frames (HTF) to lower time frames (LTF).
I usually start by looking at the monthly timeframe, followed by the weekly, taking mental notes of the general macro trend direction.
Once I observed enough patterns to come up with personal opinions, I will go into the daily timeframe and start looking for recent pivots that are above and below the current price.
I try to keep it as simple as possible when identifying pivot points, basically long wick candles against the previous trend movement gives me enough information for a higher possibility that price has reached to a zone where institutional traders are more likely to enter.
Please remember the phrase “higher possibility”. Just basing off historical data, that price range simply offers us a higher possibility of a trend reversal, but it may or may not hold absolutely.
I will mark out those points and go into 4H and 1H timeframes to observe the candlesticks respecting that price range and adjust my zones accordingly.
Once I have optimize my zones, I will dive even deeper into 15M and 5M to look for further confirmations. The lower the timeframe, the more noise there are, so keep a mental note during the validation process for 15M and 5M charts that there is bound to be more inconsistencies due to lower time frame noise.
Once I have two zones, one above price and one below price, I’m pretty much set for the day. You can have more zones if you feel like it helps with your trading, but do set a hard cap of 4 to reduce information overload during the trading process itself.
I hope that answers your question and clarifies any doubts you might have.
Feel free to ask more questions if you have any.
Meanwhile, have a fruitful journey in trading 
SIA
It’s because you lack backtesting. Usually the problem is psychology, even if you have a profitable strategy without proper backtesting you won’t believe that this strategy is profitable. It’s about believing about your edge and have full confidence about your edge is and let it play out.
MA crossovers are poor entry signals, so are other off-chart indicators which allegedly generate an entry signal when their score passes a certain threshold.
To find a more effective strategy, go back to basics. A new trader should aim to be long when the market is rising. You will not need off-chart indicators to show you an uptrend is occurring, look at the chart. Apart from avoiding a buy trade at the highest point in a continuing uptrend, where you enter and which precise signal will not be the most important decision - which actually should be, where to exit so as to protect your profit.
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Knowing which direction the market is going, where to place my enter and a top down analysis. Attended classes a couple of times and I still can’t get them most especially my enter zone with a top down analysis
Starting the trading feels really confusing. There are so many strategies out there. Just when I think I figured it out, the market does something bad but learns from mistakes and improves step by step because there is no perfect strategy, it’s about the analysis.
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Trading isn’t simple! You need to dedicate a lot of time to gaining experience and education.
Wow, crazy answer. Thanks! So the wicks and candle sticks in HTF basically set the trade direction for you, which you enter at a lower time frame.
Is there like a specific type of candle or candle/wick combination that works best?
How do you get two zones using the above? Is one from the 4hr analysis and the other from the 5-15m, or am I missing something?
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Agree. I just want to use my time wisely. I’m just jumping around right now.
Is this basically saying look at price action?