I don't know if anyone is still reading this, but if there are any, let's talk some more shop (trading principles).
First of all, there is no Grail. Just you and the market doing the tango, so if you want to dance, get in the game.
But...But...How does one become profitable?
I've already talked about positive RR ratio as being a major benefit, and the importance of S/R and good MM management.
So besides those tools, let's see what else out there to be used...Is it to stack indicators upon indicators? There are so many indicators out there, but one needs to dissect them to see what makes them tick. 90% of the indicators out there are built on price of some form, delayed, lagged, projected, shifted, manipulated etc etc.
I would love to use the volume, but in Forex, it is quite difficult or impossible to use from the broker. Ideally, you would want to know the up volume vs. the down volume, that is how you can tell the true market sentiment. I haven't found anything suitable, and I'm not even sure the broker's data source even have this. Tick charts or volume charts are quite handy. On balance volume and accumulation/distribution indicators are too generic as they lump all volume as up or down depending on the bar direction.
So we are pretty much left with price, time, and other relationships to use. I'm going to focus on price, since that's what all the new traders love to use anyways. Let's say theoretically I go ahead and built a generic indicator based on price, does this give me an edge? Not really. It's just fallacy to think that stacking a couple indicators that are derived from price will get you some kind of magic system able to predict the future, umm..no. The sad thing is most new traders don't even bother to look at the code to see how the price is being manipulated, or to understand what the indicators are showing. They just keep stacking them up...LOL. What's next?
Using multiple time frames is a relationship that I would utilize next to get me closer to profitability. In the equity/future world, the old timers are always talking about drilling down. "Drilling down" means to go from higher TF to lower TF to get better resolution. You are using this principle to find a better entry, and every pip saved is getting you closer to profitability, so don't discount it. I use it, and it works.
That is why you often hear people talk about determining the trend on a higher timeframe, and using that bias to trade the lower timeframe. The caveat is that your higher timeframe market bias better be right.
Personally, for intraday trading, I prefer looking at the 1hr and 15mins, or the 30 mins and 5 mins.
Hopefully that little information above can get some new traders to start THINKING about the inner workings of an indicators and how it is being applied.
Knowledge is power.
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