Day Trading Indicators
While each person has their own style – I personally do not use indicators to day trade.
With futures trading, I only use price action, price patterns, liquidity and institutional pivots. This suits my trading style. My belief is that anything can be used effectively – if given enough time (but, no one ever seeks to commit the time needed).
There are effective traders who use indicators or studies - trading is something that everyone can personalize. If you are using indicators and your profitable - great. If you are having trouble trading and are not consistent with your returns - consider the "less is more" approach & try removing a lot of the indicators.
At the end of this blog post - I will share a link to the TOS Work-Book … a discord library full of charts, studies, watchlists, scanners and information about these various indicators.
Market Analysis
I do use indicators to monitor the market and to analyze what is happening each day. There are a number of useful intraday indicators which can give us clues to the breadth of the action. Check out these blog posts: TICK, CTICK, ADR, Weighted AD.
Price Action Trading - through intraday and overnight price analysis and candle patterns
Nothing is 100%
Since nothing is 100% anyways – I committed my time to learning something universal which I could apply across everything that I trade- stock, options, and futures. With my success in this direction – I have never sought to replace what works and works well. Price action is what works for me.
Just pick something and stay with it
For those who are new and do not have a path yet – think about the commitment required to learn anything in life. Months and even years can be spent dialing in an indicator or indicator combination and if you picked any of the day trading indicators – you will be successful.
Secrets
There is no secret combination because there is no secret at all. So, if indicators are where you want to focus your attention then give it the time and the respect that anything deserves. Be prepared to read books, watch videos, and spend months learning all about the indicator you want to use in your day trading.
Trade Triggers
I do not trade just because price reaches these levels, I do not take a trade just because price interacts with these levels – but, I use them to inform me about my bias and help me determine if a strategy will succeed or fail.
Every person needs to determine what the trigger is to take a trade and then follow through with a developed plan. For me – the trades that I take have specific signals which come from the things like Institutional Pivots, Open Range, Initial Balance, personal pivots and price patterns.
Multicollinearity
If you are going to use indicators - it is important that you understand a concept called multicollinearity; there is a great article about this topic at StockCharts.com which you can read HERE. I believe that “spreading out” the things we look at is important (we don’t want to only look at volume, or only look at trend or only look at momentum). I know it is a big fancy word - but it’s an important concept to grasp.
Learning Takes Time
It does not matter if you trade with price action or indicators (or both) – it matters if you commit the time and the resources required to become a master at your craft.
Unique Trading Style
Focus on your style of trading and on developing something that works for you – because I promise that you are the only one who can effectively build your trading strategy. I teach people how to build their own strategy because you are unique - and while other strategies have pieces in it that can work for you - you’ll still need to adjust them to your level of trading experience.
TOS WORKBOOK
If you are interested in custom studies, charts, scans, and watchlists - (plus some educational content as well) then you can check out the TOS - Workbook (< —- click that).
This is a private discord and it is free. There is no chat room - there is no advertising - there is nothing in there but content. Some of the content I made (I can code TOS Studies) and some of the content I have found on the web. Everything in that discord is free.
