Unfortunately, you are asking questions that have no definitive answers. All indicators are reliable to a certain extent while at the same time, none are reliable. It all depends on how you use them or mis-use them.
Personally, I do not use indicators. Never saw the need.
Indicators are great at telling you what has already happened but no indicator signal, taken without other analysis, can lead to results better than a coin toss. Profitable traders using indicators, and there are many, just to be clear, never take indicator signals in complete isolation.
You say you want to trade price action – so, learn price action and start with the very basics. First, learn what actually drives the market (supply & demand) and second, who actually drives the market (a relative handful of large financials). Then learn the relatonship between the two. When prices are going down, who is buying? When prices are climbing, who is selling? Hint: it is not the average retail trader. Who is making money in forex? Another hint: it’s not the average retail trader.
You will not have enough capital to manipulate markets as large financials do, nor can you copy their movements. You can, however, learn to follow closely behind, or jump out just in front of them, when they reveal their intentions (check out any of Petefader’s threads to see what predictive powers are possible in forex – many of his predictions of price movements, made in advance, are absolutely mind blowing. He uses supply & demand zones, volume, fibs, trendlines and little else. It just goes to show that indicators aren’t necessary. Unfortunately, his VSA style of trading is NOT a simple and easy method to learn let alone master).
If you insist on using an indicator and want a simple, profitable method, try this –
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Pick any oscillator (RSI, CCI, Stochastics, QQE, etc.).
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Reduce the standard settings from 14 to 7 (you can leave the standard setting alone for stochastics).
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Learn how to spot a divergence (go to the BabyPips school for that) – it is when price action and the oscillator disagree. Price is making higher highs, for example, while the oscillator is making lower highs.
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If there is a reversal bar at the point of divergence, take the trade. A reversal bar is, in an uptrend, a bar that exceeds the high of the previous bar but closes down. If you are in a downtrend, it is a bar that goes lower than the previous bar but closes up.
This method is very easy to learn and has close to a 70% win rate at a R:R of 1:1. It works on all time frames from 15 minutes on up. The only drawback is that signals are relatively far and few between. The longer the timeframe the better the win rate but the rarer the signal.
I do not use the above method (I use supply & demand zones, tick volume and currency correlations) but I have tested it extensively and it is a simple, profitable method. Again, not many signals so you will find yourself staring at charts endlessly. As soon as you leave your computer to walk the dog, you return to find you’ve missed the signal and repeat the endless watching again :31:
Best of luck.