Been a chartist from day one but when home PC came out then get data through satellite dish, it opened up ability to view live charts and simple indicators, I have tried most of everything, but 90% of my automation based on Bollinger bands, RSI and both chart and indicator patterns. I don't use the indicators as written, but like charting patterns of resistance/support and doing the same with indicators can fine tune outcomes of reducing losses. I am more interested in "speed" and "angle" of the indicator than what price is doing compared to the indicator. Like a stochastic, when stochastic goes from very low to very high, I would stay away from this pattern, and yet when "Sto" has soft small angled bottoms/tops, it more likely continuation to scalp few ticks, it like a divergence of indicator reversing softer and yet price continues in trend. I often use indicators as making comparisons as well for reversion to the mean, deep retracements while in higher timeframe the trend is your friend. I believe much of the indicators in 80/90s were unreliable because higher volume traders and companies traded manually, and now so many are going to automation, indicators are much easier to program than charting patterns, so volume pushes the markets. In the 80/90s we saw an image of what happened after price was made like a fairy tale, but too often then trying to use same patterns of what backtested well, didn't work into the future. Where as now that bigger shops can be using, more follow through. I suspect in 20/30 years, charting will be a lost art, like trading tulips in Dutch markets of 1600's, T-Bills in 1980s, when concepts no longer are studied or traded, they fade away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania I went to see him in 1990's for one on one seminar, wasted more money, he had someone else teach me for a day and next day he drove me around showing me his real estate holdings. I kept waiting for something juicy about the indicator, it never came and seminar taught, I knew more about the indicator.
Some of us could teach a primer on "how we use indicators". Stands to reason then... they actually work well enough that we spend some effort on them... and not, "they are useless".
Well I suppose it is typical trading, the majority would use an indicator incorrectly or in the wrong context and thereby experience failure. Anyhow I'm not a fan of standard use indicators, but do use the maths behind a couple of standard indicators in an algo to supply information on market/stock behaviour, rather than buy/sell signals. For example my thoughts on RSI are that it is a useless indicator in it's standard application, but using the maths of RSI in an algo I can use it for other purposes namely how things are behaving, little bit like sentiment.
The concepts are not my own. Years go as a struggling trader, I learned from successful and generous traders. I had to make adaptations, filters, trade management rules etc. according to my own cognition and personal characteristics, we all do as we are all different. The markets always do the same things...go up, go down or go sideways (in our own time frames, what is "sideways in one tf is trending in another) if there comes a time when they don't then there is no market. There are no two identical trade plans which is why there are no easy ways to trading competence. You can't buy it nor can you simply copy someone...you have to do the work.
VWAP, y-H/L Close onh,onl everyone knows these levels and lots of people trade these levels and because of that I think they can be considered a leading indicator
I mostly use the most popular ones as sentiment indicators. I like Advancers/Decliners and TICK indicators - they don't lie. VWAP around the open. I like to know what others use as these often become self fullfilling prophecies. Out of context no indicator is useful, in context they all have their place(mostly redundant). Understanding context is the differentiator. For automated systems, I think they can be useful filters.