title asks it all. just having trouble and rethinking my strategy. some people say just trade pure price action with no indicators but i cant help but think how indicators dont help.
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The classic old school theory for using indicators is that you use price action to select your target and direction, and an indicator will give you the timing when to enter. The implication is that the indicator will tell you something which cannot be seen in the price information available.
But you have to remember that an indicator can only use the same price information which you are actually seeing on your chart - for each bar/candlestick period of your chosen time-frame, it is the Open, High, Low and Close.
So if the indicator “sees” only what you see, how can it tell you something additional?
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Price action is simply just that, what price is doing right now, and is important to understand. The candles obviously represent price action, forming patterns such as uptrends and downtrends.
What you look for is price to continue or to break these patters.
In an uptrend, price forms higher highs and higher lows so you look to buy at the lows, or “pullbacks”:
In a downtrend price forms lower highs and lower lows, so you look to sell at the highs (pullbacks):
Or price could range, or “go sideways” so you could buy the lows and sell the highs (can be more risky than trend-trading):
There is so much info out there on price action, and I’m sure many here can recommend a good YouTube video or a book, or you could do a simple search here on BP. But incorporating it into your strategy, especially on the higher time-frames will likely increase your chances of success.
Getting to know price action takes time, but with practice and a lot of patience it can be the foundation of any successful strategy.
Good luck!
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i fully agree with both the posts above - and another, much more generalized point perhaps worthy of mentioning is that what makes entry signals from price action tend to be better and more reliable than those from a collection of indicators is the reality that price action is based on actual support and resistance rather than on substitutes for them 
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I am a trend trader utilising Ichimoku setting of 8-16-44 for a 5 day trading session.
I use MACD bars setting of 3-10-16 which shows the latest price action movement. The bar movement gives a strength picture of directional high/low order flow.
RSI 10 setting a 50 line shows up or down movement. Above is bullish and below is bearish.
ATR 10 for daily TF’s price action movement each day.
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Wow what’s your win rate or RRR?
I am a breakeven profitable trader with a 55% win rate, and RRR is confined to the garbage as being guesswork because my strategy selects where to place the T/P which is critical for success.
nothing makes price action better than some indicator strategy, all depend on trader which use certain strategy
The answer to this question may heavily depend on one’s definition of the word “indicator”. For example, to one trader, a pin bar may be considered an indicator, but another trader may argue that it is price action.
To me none is better than the other. It all depends on the trader’s perspective.
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At least for me, indicators lag. So if you’re a price action trader - and this is a very vague title - you will potentially be in a trade before indicator based traders get in. Yet, the indicator trader might be more consistent.
It will come down to you, and how you want to trade.
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Hi, the reason people say indicator don’t help is because most indicators deviates their info from (pure) price.
You always should make your decision based on pure price action and indicators should just confirm your idea/bias. Remember: the best indicator is price itself 
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Hi. I use the trading view platform to execute trades… there are so many setups to do price action trading on this platform. I have found a few useful and productive. Remember that you execute your trading plan based on your strategy … don’t deviate from your plan…Play around with it and formulate your own strategies.
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Trading with technical indicators versus trading “naked” (pure price action) is an endless debate.
It doesn’t even have to be an “either/or” situation. Why not use both?
For example, let’s say you want to trade the S&P500 index.
Based on data, on the weekly chart, a favorable signal occurs when the RSI(14):
- Crosses below 43.0
- THEN crosses back above 59.99
When this occurs, according to SentimentTrader, if you hold for 9 months, this is what has happened in the past:
As you can see, 26 of the 27 completed holding periods (96%) showed a gain.
There are four signals displayed in the chart above.
With these favorable odds, now what can you do with this info? Assuming proper risk management:
- You can either go long when the signal occurs. Which is based on RSI.
- Use this to strengthen your bullish bias, and then use price action to find a long entry on a shorter-term chart (e.g. daily, 4h, 1h) that suits your preference.
- Do nothing.
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i hear you - i don’t disagree at all with what you’re saying1 
i hope you won’t object, won’t misunderstand, and won’t take it the wrong way if i mention (for the benefit of anyone who looks only quickly and might not quite realize!) that trading the above example profitably, as shown, would have involved holding for a year and a half a position which was at one point down nearly 17% of the account!! 
the words “that’s confidence for you!” come to mind 
(this observation does not, however, detract from the perfectly valid and correct point you’re making, in general!)
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It all depends on individual trader. That’s why doing your own research is always the best way to go.
Price action is more like the basis of every other indicator, since they all function as a result of what happens to price, both in the past and present.
So I believe, rather than seeing price action as better than other indicators, I prefer to see other indicators as support for clearer confirmations for trading.
Don’t do this because of what you hear, do your own research. Find out the outcome of trading with just price action, and also the outcome of trading with other indicators and let that be the basis of your decision of either retaining your strategy or re-strategising.
This is where risk management comes into play.
Knowing what the max drawdown was in previous instances is useful in terms of having an idea of your potential loss. It’s up to you whether you’re comfortable with taking a trade given its risk/reward dynamics.
Here are some more stats:
Based on historical performance (which does not guarantee future performance), some traders would be willing to follow the entry signal and risk such a drawdown given its high win rate. Others may dive deeper and review what happened in the past and see whether it’s possible to reduce the drawdown.
The study is merely food for thought to help generate trade ideas. It’s meant to show one (of many) ways in which technical indicators can be used.
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The reason I went from mainly indicators to mainly price action and charting is because largely indicators are interval-based.
Price action still requires a school of thought or philosophy to provide a solid interpretation, but that interpretation isn’t bound to a particular interval of data.
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Price action = understanding psychology
Indicators = Tools to help measure price action/psychology
Don’t really want to use PA & Indicators in terms of better or worse; however price action for me is understanding the big picture and how markets work. The indicators are the tools to help measure psychology and make it profitable.
PA is the foundation of the house
Indicators are the tools to build the house
In short learn Price Action. Indicators may help you do that!
curious that so many robust, long-standing houses are apparently built with no tools at all, then … 
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Hands are tools are they not? Some tools are better than others and work better for different folks. Just like indicators.
Long standing is subjective and I guess robust would be too. Any more curiosity on house building?
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