Exactly. Charts just provide a point of reference of where the market has been. The next thing you realize is that if you're capable of watching the market unfold in real time, you really don't need the charts at all, given a certain time frame. The goal is to get the place where you are just focusing on making money. The confusion comes from the fact that this effectively means anticipating where the charts will go before they go there; however, success has very little to do with the study of the charts themselves.
I hope you sometimes listen to yourself chart study is ESSENTIAL, those who think it isn't are strange, how can a new guy start making money without chart study, am I the only dumb man here, am I surrounded by these new kids on the block who don't even look at charts Where am I????
But what is it that you learn while studying charts, repeating patterns? That's technical trading, I'm not too confortable with that stuff, the psychological stuff seems more grounded to me.
What's there to study about a friggin chart? If you sit there 12 hrs a day staring at the bid/ask/last all day, day in, day out, you don't need charts except as a refresher for action that you missed. All the important levels should already be in your head, along with all the pertinent details: how fast it got there, what news if any precipitated the move, how long we stayed at that price, how much volume printed relatively at that point, etc etc. All studying a plain chart will tell you is where the weak hands have put their stops, and you can figure that out in about 30 seconds.
yep, charts are highly misleadin'...u get a much more complete picture lookin' at bid/ask/last...all the info on charts is on L1 as well, only on much more depth and details. of course if u got a serious short term memory problem than charts may be the only hope u got.
Why do we get into this stupid et pissing contest. You don't need to do this because my way is better ... my dick is bigger, my sandbox is prettier. There are lots of ways to make money or lose your shirt in the market. What suits one person doesn't suit another. So, knowing that, lets put our dicks back in our pants and see if this thread could help new traders. Let the guy develop his way and lets see where it goes.
I really don't care if other people trade the way I trade; in fact I'd be pissing my pants if the majority started to think the way I did. But if I believe I can save others from some time and effort, after going through the same type of thinking for years and having to unlearn alot of bs, I can't help but try to give my opinion. Who knows, I may be misleading someone from finding their personal holy grail through chart patterns, but in this day and age where everyone can pull up a chart by punching a couple buttons, how much of an edge can there be relying on traditional "this means bullish" and "this means bearish" patterns? I'm not saying charts are worthless, just that one should really question why a certain movement in price would necessarily portend future movement up or down.
Let's use an analogy. I don't believe farmers can make money, because there is no edge in knowing that after spring there is summer coming and if you put seeds into the ground in the spring, they will grow to sellable plants by the end of summer. But since everybody knows this in this day and age, how much of an edge can there be?? If you don't understand charts, fine, just don't misslead people about them...