The price is the price... an Index is calculated from the prices of the underlying aggregate basket of stocks... which move on the basis of supply and demand. So yes, the Index moves on supply and demand, buyers and sellers. And for 1 min or 5 min or hourly bars... it tells you where the price now sits compared to the past time frame. And then the 1 min turns green or red before the longer timed bars... So, your friend is right basically. @comagnum, it totally depends on the trader and which time frame he has for a trade. No point looking at a weekly bar if your a daytrader. I look at 2 and 5 min and hourly... and a bit of daily when looking at long term trend. To me a 60 min chart is pointless since there are only 8 bars in active trading session...
There's only timeframe. one minute chart shows a trend in fast market. however, it cannot catch a big trend.
I agree that everything is fractal so if you were to take away the X/Y axis and show a 1m chart (one with some action) and then a weekly chart nobody would be able to work out which is which. The problem I have with 5m/20m/60m+ charts is that good signals don't happen that much, probably 1-2 a day on the 5m, 1 if you're lucky on the 20m and maybe 1-2 a week on the 60m. But on the 1m chart, you'll get 5-10 good setups a day. There are 500+ bars a day on the 1m yet only 250 bars a year on the day charts. So if you want to be a good longer term trader, train yourself on the 1m then shift over to the day chart when you're ready.
This is a good point. 1 min is useful if you trade futures. Because futures are crowded with good scalpers, HFT, robots... and they make their living at the expense of classic day traders. So even if you are a good day trader, sometimes you will be forced to get out of a good trade because of the noise. Wrong. The longer the timeframe, the stronger the lead. And different timeframes usually give opposite/contrary signals. For example, in a bear market, you can have a rebound and during this rebound, you stay during 1/2 hours in a small trading range, get a negative signal because 5 min / 15 min graphs are toppish, and a confirmation to short with a 1 min graph. What makes the game difficult is to understand that graphs are inside graphs that are inside other graphs... Work hard, analyze prices / supports / resistances and how they interact with different timeframes and you will master the game. CM
Thanks for your input, that is very much what I am doing including the use of support and resistance in multiple timeframes to try to build a framework to trade by.
Hey Chris... that post you made in response to my question in that other thread.... worked like a champ for me on SWFT Friday. That stock made your case perfectly. Thank you. Dinner and beer on me brotha.
Example of what I'm looking at on gbpusd today. 4 hour and 1 hour momentum down. 15 min downtrend pulling back. Cci pullback and very small doji bounce from 100 and 200 smas on one minute. No brainer short would have made 30 pips in 5 mins and if you were just watching 1 min I doubt you would have seen it. Didn't take it as I'm on holiday in Majorca but saw it well enough as it was setting up. Told my wife about it and she was impressed anyway so that's my only reward from that one but that will do ;-) . Was this morning by the way, not watched it since, having beer and olives.
Excellent point, patterns within patterns within patterns. And you're 100% correct, this is why the game is hard. One man's trading range on the 240m is another man's big bull move on the 1m. What I've found is you can't really analyse too many time periods as there's normally always something in one of the time periods that may stop you taking the trade. More is not better, less for most people is better. I like a time period (for signals) and then go 4 times higher, perhaps 1m/4m or 60m/240m etc. You could even use three so 60/240 and then perhaps the 20 for fine tuning. But if you look at everything the brain can get confused and you need mental CLARITY in this game. I used to look at everything but got consumed by everything as well. All I got was no clarity and no results.
Best not place bets on a vacation and have a bad trade, but from a quick observation from my point of view. A short trade when the daily is in a bottom range channel and its Histogram is green+1mn above the 200? Could list more to support against the short but that's enough for me to lay back down and place it on the short ignore list.