I don't know anything about the ADX indicator but expanding ATR could help gauge activity yeah. I usually just look at the speed of the actual tape (time and sales) as it reacts to levels. Right now it's crawling really slow, obviously. The less lagging the better, imo. So yes the lack of activity causes problems for us. Knowing when to trade is huge I think. And then knowing what strategy will work given the conditions and if the conditions are actually slowly changing before your eyes, and to be able to sense that in real time in order to say "hey I usually stop when I've made $200, but this can be an exception due to XYZ"

Last night I traded euro session and was able to make $200 and then got some sleep. Came back at US open in order to see if I could at least add to that a little more (pushing myself a little bit to test myself and my rule). I expected price to stay range bound, made $75 extra and quit, but the conditions were not easy for me today.

Stopping while ahead for the day is probably due to an emotional need of feeling some amount of certainty, which I admit isn't the best practice! Many times it works out in my favor, but I've also missed countless setups too. Several times a day I am "feeling out" my emotional state. Am I forcing a trade? Am I chasing? Am I frustrated?

Volume profile is interesting, but I don't yet use it or fully understand how I could use it (would like to use it though or have it as a reference), other than high volume areas are congested popular entry points and the low volume points can be traded through very quickly, due to a lack of volume there. The higher volume spots can support or reject price at times. So based on what I know about volume profile, that would at least help filter trades, if one decides to continue after hitting a "target daily profit".

I absolutely use that statistic every day! I trade between 8am and 11am and the low or high of the day happens approximately 40% to 60% of the time within the first hour or so. There are a lot of "things" for me to remember.

I am profitable finally after years and slowly becoming more of a "retail professional" I guess. But I do not trade in a mechanical way, at all. I'm very creative naturally, so maybe a way of explaining it is to connect your left and right side of your brain and then you'll get my "system".

Because look...here's an example having to do with the opening range... you might be buying support right? Then suddenly support is a trap-door that opens downward with a rush of selling on the Tape, and you need to be flexible to at least exit and possibly reverse (realizing you are wrong vs being shook out unnecessarily). Also, there are days I scale into my position. Today at open I sold, and I kept selling, because I knew price was near resistance and prior highs that held. It rode a little bit against me, but not enough to even make me nervous at all.

I'm a scalper who refuses to trade more than 3-4 hours a day. So even though I do use that statistic you mentioned, I don't turn 1 single statistic into a full blown "mechanical system". I try to keep my trading loose.
I can attribute most of my improvements to monitoring my psychology and learning how to use the Jigsaw platform. I'm reading the tape for large orders and I have a tape for small orders, as well as total bid/ask at each price summarized. My alerts are set for large trades, icebergs, and divergences (good for turns, absorption, or knowing when price is stalling).


I'm looking for momentum in the tape, is the tape speeding up at a turning point?
Cumulative delta vs price is often helpful. When you get a massive divergence lasting hours, that's the big trade about to pop! That was yesterday's long...a negative divergence with price trading up steadily.

I don't know what I would do without a proper Time & Sales tape at this point. It would be like trading blind. It saved me on Monday..all it took was 1 trade to show up for me to close and reverse. Eventually the cards are shown and if you watch closely, you can take a "free" ride.

I recently came across some very interesting articles that discuss statistical evidence of certain price behaviors during the trading day that could be taken advantage of when trading.
Al Brooks is one example of a discretionary trader that uses statistics such as - in 90% of the days the high or low of the day happen during the first 1.5 hours of the day - as a trading edge.

Are there experienced traders here who successfully use such statistical edges in their trading? which ones?

there are literally a 100 things you can measure

hi, what do you look for on the Time and Sales?

With time &sales, I look at it for confirmation when price hits a level I'm watching. The pace of the tape, is it crawling or speeding up. Is it pausing. High volume or sweeps with volume. I trade a thinner market so a little market order volume can move price substantially.