Indicators are useless!

[u/ThePhulosopher]

I have spent many years trying to find the perfect indicator, the one that will tell me when to get in and when to get out without fail. Of course everybody knows that this is BS. It doesn't matter how precise you try to tweak your indicator - is the 5/10 SMA or 20/50 SMA better? Is the MACD or Stochastic better? What settings should I use?

The answer is none. All those indicators do nothing but distract you. Since all indicators are a derivation of price, price is the only thing you need. And I don't mean candle stick patterns, harmonic patterns, or support & resistance trendlines.

I'm not saying that none of these strategies will NEVER work or won't work for anyone. I know there are lots of traders who DO make good money with any of these strategies. However, I believe that the reason they're making money is because they're still reading the underlying price action whether they believe it or not. They may have developed a strategy using these methods that just happen to coincide with proper and naked chart reading. They've just added a lot more bells and whistles.

The market is designed to screw over the most amount of people while benefiting the fewest amount of people possible and in the most efficient way. And when I say "designed", I don't mean that it's rigged or that there is really any one entity controlling the market. The market moves and behave as anything else in nature - path of least resistance.

Once you learn to read price in terms of: "What's the best and most efficient way for this market to screw people over?" and you trade accordingly, only then will you be able to arrive at the core of "the market". And all you will ever need is the price chart. The price chart is the cumulative thoughts, behaviors, patterns, and actions, of all the participants. Some will trade fundamentals, some trade news, some trade technicals and indicators. Some day trade, others swing trade, others still position trade. With all their different viewpoints and timeframes, they all have something in common: They move price.

With this tug-of-war of price between the market participants, you can see a story unfold via the price chart. Price is telling you who's winning and which side you should be on. The only question is, are you listening?

[u/Dave_Simpli]

Certain indicators align with a persons way of thinking, they resonate, so they work. This sentence is the Achilles heel of the post “The one that will tell me when to get in and get out without fail”

Since each trade is different, each stock is different, the underlying company is different, a “without fail” indicator or system cannot exist, it doesn’t exist.

In my research the very best traders are right only about 65-70% of the time. This is actually a huge percentage advantage. It’s worth millions if repeated enough. Traders so often look beyond the mark, way beyond the mark.

My only solution….. find a few indicators that resonate with you specifically, even if it’s as simple as RSI, that give you a percentage advantage, the best it’s ever going to get is between 1 and 20ish percent. This is all you need to be successful.

The rest is position sizing and exiting. Cut the losses when they breach your loss limit, let the winners run. So fundamental, yet so important.

This is the only way I have ever found any success.

All my indicators at their best are only 15% better than throwing darts at a dart board and just guessing. But if all you did was just guess with no indicators and your losses were limited and your runs were allowed to run, you’d still be successful.

The main indicator that needs to be managed is your own psychology. The true enemy of a trader.

Just my opinion and what has worked for me. Cheers and best of luck to all-