I like to run with the herd, much easier than running into it I'm with LL - 5/15 for me with a splash of 60. Purely preference of course, if it aint broke...
By "noise trading" it sounds like you're implying there is no logic to intraday movement and no money to be made. Surely you can't actually believe this. How do you respond to all of the guys making money without spending a dime overnight, the scalp traders on the 20 second charts, or the high frequency code wars providing much of the liquidity? There are great benefits to the marathon trading versus intraday, such as screen time and riding/competing with big money movers. Yes, most of the money to be made intraday is from the tiny, tiny scraps of trading left over from MM making mistakes or not being 100% efficient. With the leverage in derivatives and solid skill/discipline, this can be taken advantage of so someone can then move to the marathon MM style of trading like the rest of the world. Don't be so grossly stubborn in your opinion. None of us can be truly experts, even the senior executives fall into this category. You really shouldn't rule out intraday so early on... IMO.
I find that tick charts work very well for intraday trading. It allows you to take into account how active the market is. As the volume of trading goes up you can increase the number of ticks for each bar. It just seems that they work much better, at least for the futures markets
The only reason a particular bar time will work is because it is followed by a large number of traders and thus its edges become important. The old self(=lots of selves) fulfilling prophecy. Personally I think you have to study what you want to trade and the time of day you plan to trade to decide what works. In fx m5 might work quite well during the european opening when you get well behaved short timeframe trends. But the same timeframe won't often work in the same way during the asian session. I like m5 m15 h1 d1 w1 personally. Lots like h4 but I am discomforted by the wide range of start and end times for h4 so prefer to avoid it. Thats not to say I don't trade on charts with sub m5 bars ... but I find the patterns on m5 to be more meaningful so the lower timeframe is just about positioning my entry and exits.
What is the purpose of range bars? I understand how they work, but what benefit does this bring? With tick charts, you can focus based on movement... I suppose the same is true with bars?
Range Bars were conceived in 1995 by a Brazilian broker and trader - Vicente M. Nicolellis Jr. During 13 years running a trading desk in Sao Paulo, where local markets tend to be volatile, he wrestled with the problem of how to handle this volatility and its variability. Finally he concluded that the most promising approach would be to eliminate time from the equation, and just concentrate on price. After all it is price that you trade (rather than time, unless it is an options market). Essentially this reverts to the early days of Technical Analysis, and the use of Point an Figure Charts which just record price changes. By using a constant range, ex. 10, and opening a new bar once that range is covered, one can also apply modern concepts of indicators, which are bar based. In 1996 the concept was computerized, which meant that many more markets could be studied. Experience in the last 8 years has shown that Range Bars are particularly good at focusing on and clarifying movement. The way in which a long meandering, horizontal "congestion" is condensed into a bar or two, concentrates attention on the essential underlying price movement while eliminating unnecessary "clutter" and "noise". This also makes the use of Trendlines easier..." I took this "snippet" from a website as I am too lazy to write it myself.
Movement is overrated I trade off 5-min bars, cross ref 1-min for trend reversal signals and with-trend continuations, cross ref 60-min for letting winners run in strong trends. I definitely like running with the herd, they throw money all over the place for us peons