What are the best indicators to trade with

There are lots of different strategies you can use. It depends on your style and what best suits you.

The following is rough outline of a simple strategy I use with only price action and S/R levels.

Entry:

  1. I start by identifying s/r levels on the higher time frames.

  2. I wait for a breakout or strong movement with certain price patterns to develop around these levels on the daily/4hr charts.

  3. I look for the strongest possible s/r level in play to use as a SL .

  4. I place an entry or multiple entries at s/r levels near my SL.

Short at levels above price/below SL
Long at levels below price/above SL.

  1. I wait for a retracement to hit my entries. Orders stay open until price action tells me otherwise.

Exit:

  1. losing trades stay open until my SL is hit. If price is 40-50% of the way to my SL from entry #1, I will consider closing the trade early.

  2. Winning trades stay open as long as possible. I let the market take me out instead of a TP. I adjust my SL if price reaches ceratin levels, if price moves to a new s/r zone, or if price action signals a possible reversal.

The goal of this strategy is to put yourself in position to capitalize in the event price retraces to a certain “entry zone” after a breakout w/o triggering your SL.

This isnt the only strategy or the right strategy for everyone. Its just a strategy that I happen to employ. Hopefully it will give you some ideas that can be of use.

Good luck

This could be some help to you, perhaps.

https://www.babypips.com/learn/forex

Must you use an indicator?

There is no best, just the slightly less poor of the poor, because they are all poor.

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Best from my experience are ATR volatility indicator, different moving averages, indicators that help to draw S/R lines.
they are easy to understand, modify as well as have clear and logical underlying ideas on why they have to work.

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You don’t need indicators to draw lines of support and resistance. It’s both easier and better to draw them directly from the price.

This surely is an excellent description of the criteria that should be present in whatever tools we use, whether they are indicators, patterns, lines or anything else. If we do not understand the underlying principles upon which they are designed to work how can we rely on them to tell us what we want to know?

Yours eyes and that bit of grey matter between the ears :grin:

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true range and volatility are two different things

S/R lines you may draw from swings by the price (high/low), not necessary to use indicators for this, and not so reliable

sometimes (quite often) indicators make trading decisions more complicated AND less reliable also

To find the best indicators is depends on your strategy and knowledge that you have with trading. I have seen that Moving Averages and RSI are very common with Fibbo.

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Does the fact that they’re “very common”, together with the reality that only a tiny minority of retail forex traders are profitable, make you think that it’s a good idea or a bad idea, to try to use them together?

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Price is the best indicator to use. All other indicators are just a mathematical representation of price.

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hi how are you? long time no see :smiley:
happy to have you back

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For someone starting out with indicators, maybe figure the logic behind what the indicator is trying to indicate.

For example right before a news release is it possible for an oscillator to indicate which side is likely to win.

The most up-to-date example is this evening’s Jackson Hole chin wagging.

Usd/Jpy - price reached up to hit the high 2 days ago pre the talking, so it seemed as if the momentum was up, but did any of the oscillators agree today when the push up happened?

Some of the simple indies on mt4 will tell a tale, say momentum or rsi or macd - did any of them make that new high of today - or were they diverging?

,

Just for clarity, this is who won this evening, did the indicators indicate it in advance?.

Happens that I watch Eur/Gbp, especially on red letter days like today.

Did the oscillators tell me a tale earlier in the day?

Wont bother with the post Jackson image, suffice to say that Eur/Usd/Eur/Jpy all told the tale - buy more Euros while the going is good.

I’m doing good. I miss hanging out here. trading is a balance of work and boredom. I do a lot of multi tasking.

Some time ago I decided to cut off social media and BP’s because they are absolute time killers, however that is just evidence of my all or nothing mentality. Balance is key. So I figured I would pop in and shay hi and see what people are up to, and of course give my opinion haha :grin:

  1. Stochastic 30, 10, 10
  2. Stochastic 5, 3, 3

Well there’s a short term indicator that seemed to indicate well, - in fairness the oscillators were indicating the timing - having said all of that there were guys selling Euro last Friday and yesterday.

Is the going good right now after this morning’s flurry of Euro buying?

Well there is some Gold buying and USD selling (N Korea) little in the way of numbers today so maybe a little pull back.

Indicators are usually not so good on their own, they are just indicators :slight_smile:

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Selling USD today like there’s no tomorrow - quite fitting given N Korea

Yeah, and given the wee bit of Gold buying yesterday, usually USD negative…

There were some guys commenting yesterday that Eur/Gbp was not making a new high whereas Eur/Usd was reaching on up. They saw this as negative Euro, (some even shorted) and since this thread is on indies,Oscillators were likely diverging suggesting a fall off in momentum.

That’s the thing about indicators, the market has to be thought about - good chance there was a drop in momentum, for two reasons - 1) UK bank holiday yesterday and 2) Traders were waiting to see what would happen when Eur/Usd hit the 2000 - NK gave EUR/USD the boost to clear out any stops and add in new buys.

Anyways, Bob is right, it’s all down to the grey stuff, now checking out.