Today I am starting a Journal of my daily trading in an effort to improve. I feel that having my trades documented every day will allow for better record keeping and accountability on my part. These are all things other members have pointed out and don't need repeating.
The philosophy I have come to accept as truth over my years of experience is that too many indicators and rules will confuse and limit the entries a day-trader is able to take. By this I mean that adding additional filters in an attempt to "filter" out losing trades will often filter out profitable trades as well. I have spent untold amounts of money to buy different indicators, systems, chat rooms etc. and they have never worked very well for me. I have never found anything that works better then my own experience and intuition.
Having said that it is also important that some sort of framework is followed so that some order may be created out of the general chaos that is most markets most of the time.
In general I consider myself a "price action" trader. I have found that simply watching price will give the trader all the information that is needed to take successful entries and exits. Besides that Money Management is much more important then where you get in and out as far as profitability goes.
TimeFrame & Instrument
I will be daytrading RTH hours (9:30-3:30)est. Mostly I trade the YM, but I also watch and trade the ES and NQ.
Charts and Set-Up's
My Higher Time Frame chart is a 5 min of the ES and YM. I will also occasionally look at 15 and 30 min charts but generally these time frames have little relevance to someone scalping on a one min/tick chart.
Lower Time frame chart is a one min/and or tick chart. I will generally use a 1min chart but will also look at tick charts when PA(Price Action) becomes slow and the markets trade in a low-volume/narrow range.
Indicators: HTF Chart- 5min with volume and a 20ema.
Then we have my 5min YM which has the pre-market data and a Bollinger Band.
And finally we have a 233 tick with stochastic and Bollinger Band. I have BB on my charts as after the trend Up day yesterday I felt today we would have a Narrow Range market. NR7 if you like. and with that the BB would provide good entry areas.
I also use Tick and 1min3LB charts in addition to the attached pics.