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I find that when in a trade sweaty hands are also a pretty good indicator.
As an after thought I'd like to add that the notion that price movement is random is an argument made by those who cannot see the well defined structures and behaviors that are there regardless of time frame or bar type. (Circling back to the subject of the thread. )Were movement random then the orderliness shown in charts posted above and the insight they offer would not be possible. There is an art to trading and that art is in the ability to see the patterns that price movement continually carves out. When you get it right it's possible to make thousands in minutes. The difficulty and challenges that stand in the way of getting to the point where you have the skills and experience to make that consistently happen is never truly appreciated and because of that, rarely attained. And this includes the assumption you possess innate ability.
Perfection is not possible nor is it necessary to find success. There is no perfect bar type, there is no perfect time period, there is no perfect tick or volume or Renko setting. There are rational decisions that can be made in creating your charts that help you see the opportunities that are there. Rather than think of price action as random, think of it as dynamic and not doing the same thing the same way each and every time. What is consistent is that there will always be a Open, Close, High and Low of every bar type on every time frame. The High of the Day will always be the High of a 6 Hr bar, the High of a 60 Min bar, the High of a 15 Min, 5 Min and 1 Min bar as well as any tick, volume or Renko bar of your choosing. The challenge is whether or not you are able to recognize these events as they are occurring. Understanding how indicators can be useful will help with this. Being aware of potential areas of S/R can help you with this. But unless you can "see" what is taking place you cannot possibly trade it. I've built a library of screen grabs of Hrly H/L's, 24Hr H/L's, 6 Hr H/L's, thousands of images over that last decade. The pix posted above are from those folders. If you study how the turns you wish to trade look when they show up on your charts you will eventually be able to recognize when the opportunities are present and more importantly, when they are not. The information is there for you find if you put in the time looking for it.
All you can do is try. I posted at some other time that because the overwhelming number of people who start off trading will disappear within five years, that your primary goal should be to press on for more than five years. If you can survive longer then that you'll have accomplished more than most and when you cross that threshold with all the battle scars from lessons learned you will transition from being a "pie in the sky" novice to being a "just might make it" trader.
I use 60 minute and daily of ES for big picture overview, trend and what my bias should be at the moment (long or short)
I use 1 min chart with VWAP for intraday trades with emphasis on longer chart bias
(meaning if the bias/trend on larger time frame is down then I will put more emphasis on trading shorts from VWAP rather than looking at longs from VWAP
Is the fact that people don't use their shoes to peel potatoes a reason for you to believe that shoes are not relevant and you should now go bare foot? I'll admit that while I don't use moving averages to mow my lawn I do find them useful in making money. That others may not have found a way to make them useful does not make moving averages or any other indicator or trading method invalid. It is foolish to accept statements as absolutes unless the person making them can provide some supporting argument to help us understand how they arrived at their conclusion. I don't post here very often but when I do I will usually post charts that illustrate the concepts I am trying to convey. I do that out of respect for the readers and to show the chart based reality that underpins my comments. To say that moving averages distort price is as illogical as arguing that because they are not used to select toilet paper that is somehow proof that they are not useful in making trading decisions. Moving averages are primarily a low pass filter. They remove higher frequency noise (lower time frame price movement) and show lower frequency trends (higher time frame price movement). They help you avoid the problem of not seeing the forest for the trees. Being aware of the larger context that is determining how price is behaving is information I find quite useful.
If people have alternate points of view to share it would be better if they explain them in detail so that we can all benefit and learn from their experience. Posting charts that illustrate the points you want to make are much more informative than just making comments more appropriate for Twitter trolls.
Usually 1 min for my intraday trades. There are times when I do analysis for swing trades and long term views but that's not always for trading, I usually do that on 15 min for swing and Daily for really long term(weeks and months) view.
Usually my charts looks like this
This is 1 min one.
Also, to add some personal touch, all TFs do work, what you should be concerned about is how much time you want to stay in trade first and then decide which TF is suitable for you to get maximum input for that period of time, you also need to come to terms with maximum time you want to allow yourself to get to target or out of trade if things go sideways.
1 min chart works for me because I do not like to stay in trades for more than 10-15 mins. Its not to say that I never, but its very rare and for that purpose 1 min TF offers enough input to make decision.
Do traders, that actually trade, need a chart with moving averages to see how they distort and lag price? Really?
Here is SPX daily chart with a 10 period MA. On first glance it appears that MA offers support on some days, some days not. It is illusionary. Change the length and/or change the calculation to weighted/exponential/shifted back/shifted forward/Jurik/Hull/etc etc it is all the same. Nothing follows price as closely as price itself. MA's offer no heads up for reversals. All they can do, after the fact, is emphasize trend direction. Which, for the experienced, should be obvious anyway.
A useful insight by Richard Nordquist, Ph.D. Rhetoric and English, into how innuendo can be used to defend a point of view that is not credible.
>>Innuendo is a subtle or indirect observation about a person or thing, usually of a salacious, critical, or disparaging nature. Also called insinuation.
In "An Account of Innuendo," Bruce Fraser defines the term as "an implied message in the form of an allegation whose content constitutes some sort of unwanted ascription towards the target of the comment" (Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse, 2001).
As T. Edward Damer has noted, "The force of this fallacy lies in the impression created that some veiled claim is true, although no evidence is presented to support such a view" (Attacking Faulty Reasoning, 2009).<<
The only persuasive argument about the uselessness of moving averages that can be made is if we can be assured that none of the < 5% of traders who are still around past the theoretical 5 year mark use moving averages in their decision making or that none of the >95% of traders who fade away in less than 5 years have ever tried trading without moving averages, thus sealing their doom. The problem with this is that I and the traders in my group and every other successful trader I have met in my decades of doing this use moving averages in one way or another. That some have not found success doing so is no more conclusive than the fact that many have also not found success using indicator free naked price action. There are many ways to skin this cat and to insist that any particular approach should be avoided because of the belief that one's failure with that approach somehow represents a universal truth that everyone should heed at their own peril, is a narrow minded disservice to those seeking assistance.
This particular conversation is way off the subject of this thread and out of respect for the OP it needs to wind down. Those who have an open mind and want explore how moving averages can be useful I invite you to PM me and we can get together on Skype voice chat and do some real time analysis during the trading day. Mine starts at 5:30 Central and usually ends by 11:30. This offer is for 1 week only.
