Eddiemorra, lets get to this meat of your problem first. What do you think is the reason why you are still struggling ? Also, what is your trading instrument. Do not blame charts. Charts are just a means of displaying data. How you interpret the data from the charts is what is important.
Trading is a flip of the coin and all dumb luck most of the time. The fact is you can't predict the future. And black swans occur. You just need to ignore the blatant cases of shilling that goes on here e.g. ppl encouraging others to open futures accounts with $3K etc. The reality is a lot of people in the industry make money providing a service as the middle man to earn an 'honest' salary. E.g. market makers that are position neutral. E.g. Broker/dealers that facilitate orders for you and help you achieve the risk exposure you desire. E.g. Analysts who through all good intentions offers an opinion but have no skin in the game. E.g. hedge fund managers that charge 2-20 fees and take a cut of principle and performance so are salaried no matter what. E.g. investment advisers who take kick backs. The list goes on. Lots of middle man taking cuts. Everybody else that is left are the speculators. I don't care if its long term or short term day trading. Everyone else is a speculator because you are betting on something you have no control over and you can't see the future. Speculators can make a lot of money when they bet correctly and the world agrees with them. Or they can lose a lot if wrong. But speculators are just betters and gamblers. You must accept that if you want to continue in this line of business. You are a professional gambler. Now that you have accepted you are a gambler no matter whether you are a 'buy and hold' or 'day trader'. That said, there are still strategies to gambling. Having a strategy is better than going blind. There are better setups than bad setups. E.g. the market has an upward bias due to money flow and central banking manipulation, vested interests and the encouragement they have to the upside of markets (due to pension fund liabilities); government bailouts of failed companies in our "free market". So, clearly betting on the long side has a better chance of winning than the short side right off the bat, statistically speaking, though the rate of rise is slower than rate of fall. So if your strategy is based on playing on the short side, the odds are stacked against you already. So, with a strategy at hand, whatever it is, and add in good risk control (limiting loss of capital), you at least have better odds of making it than a gambler going in blind. Just to keep sane about what you're doing, I think traders should never be complacent or think of this as anything other than glorified gambling because investing is speculation, and speculation is just gambling at the heart of it.
The market only goes in the direction that my analysis anticipates it will go, about 50% of the time. Combined with a pesky spread and commissions, and it starts to look bleak. Bascially lack of 'edge' I've traded just about every instrument under the sun. Demo and live. At the moment i'm mainly trading NQ.
About 9 years in here, not very full time at all, some years not a single trade for instance, but the last year I've been hitting it hard and been semi profitable for 9months area, quite profitable at the moment, but anything can happen. So basically don't give up, 99% of people are trying to over complicate it, it's really not that hard, work on a chop system, then extend that to trading chop only with TREND and hey presto instant money come chop or trend Scalping ish is where it's at for a consistent wage, not taking 2 pips and out, what ever it gives you, sometimes 5 sometimes 50 if it gets a good run and if your in enough you'll get good runs Also it's not so much about the entry cause you can't accurately predict what will happen, it's what you do, with what happens after your in, if it starts moving against you, exit, starts going your way, let it!! DAX is the best to trade currently, Forex well I've given up on that, to variable, YM next best if you can't trade dax. Keep it simple!!
NQ is the worst that's part of your issue, don't even bother to watch that currently, range is to small, spread is to high DAX trust me, especially from a chop perspective, YM / ES is pretty good, NQ is just flat. DAX had a 250pip move on the break down Friday, YM 170, DAX 250 and I pay 1/2 the spread on DAX.
Been trading since 2000. The longer you trader the more you will move away from day trading and build a portfolio. Much easier and less stressful. Trade smaller but more positions to spread your risk.
1) You need a plan for EACH TIME PERIOD in the market day.......930-10:00est behaves differently than 10est-1200p and differently from 130-330pm. Targets, stops, reasons for entry, reasons to avoid entry, etc are all different depending on time period. 930-1000 is best traded on 89 tick or 1 min time frames IMO. 10am-12pm is best on 3-5 min TF's, and 130-330 best on 15min - 60 min, in my own experience. 2) Market behaves differently depending if the hourly / daily is uptrending, downtrending, pulling back from an uptrend, pulling up from a downtrend, ranging, reversing, etc. Price has a distinct feel to how it moves depending on if it trending or ranging in regards to high time frame charts. You need to study this. 3) Volatility. Watch what makes price increase or decrease in volatility. A market that goes up 6 days in a row will have contracted volatility b/c price is becoming more in equilibrium. A market that shows a temporary reversal, and begins downtrending will have expanded volatility. Each of these market contexts will have VASTLY different opportunity and your system must be modified to trade this. This is why trading just chart patterns is not an edge by itself. 4) Indicators. A market like the ES is mean reverting. Having indicators like an oscillator and a moving average (range or trending market) serve a purpose. That purpose is usually when NOT to take certain trades that your eye won't see with just a plain chart. This will increase your win %. 5) Know when NOT to trade (similar to part4). If I suspect a day is going to be unfavorable for my trading system, Ill normallly get confirmation of this within the first 15-20 mins of the day. With that being said, I'll modify my plan to walk away after getting a MUCH SMALLER PROFIT TARGET than usual. Sometimes, thats just 1 trade and 1 ES point. There's much more, but those are just some helpful ideas to get u moving in the right direction.
Daytrading almost never works unless you have a read edge that doesn't rely on directional bets to make money, also TA applied to the lower time frames (1min, 5min, 10min, etc) almost never works because there is just too much noise in those time frames. Trend following still works when there is a clearly defined trend on the higher time frames, just never ever try to fade the trend (going short when you see successive HHs and HLs) or predict a trend reversal before you see one. Those trades rarely work out, the payout is rarely worth it even if they do work for you.
This is bad information. The shortest intervals in fact offer the highest probabilities. Transaction costs are the challenge to profitability here. FS
you are probably the only person in the world who thinks its easier to spot a trend on the lower time frames.