can you day trade without using TA?

can you day trade without using TA?

It seems to me that a huge percentage of people who claim to actually make money from trading, don't really use TA, although they are also rather secretive about what they do use, I imagine from fear of their 'edge' being diluted.

Most of these traders claim to trade a little longer term, but some claim to day trade.

I know anyone can claim to be profitable on the internet, but I like to think I can generally judge who is just blowing smoke based on post history and other things.

I am also aware of a handful of very good traders who DO only seem to use TA, and have verified this opinion from watching lots of real time trades called on various forums etc, although they are very much in the minority.

How else would one intraday trade if not using TA?

I've only ever really known TA/price action, and I have seen improvements over the years through practice, but im losing faith in whether it is actually possible without 'something else'....may another dimension or source of information to help with trade decisions.

Are you a successful intraday trader? DO you use TA? If you are successful and you DON'T use TA, can you shed any light as to possible avenues for me to explore?

thanks

 

There are two areas of trading price action for those that don't want to use technical indicators while day trading.

1) Using TA price patterns...sometimes called chart analysis. This is still TA even though no technical indicators being used.

2) Using Bid/Ask/Times&Sales Screens Only...sometimes called tape reading.

Therefore, to answer your question...many traders (retail or institutional) that have adequate Bid/Ask/Times&Sales information can day trade, swing trade or position trade without TA and without chart analysis. You can visit any institutional firm to personally see such from many of their traders and they do have other traders that rely on chart analysis too.

Mark

 

Basically I just watch the charts and make decisions based on experience and intuition. The charts are a technical tool but I don't do any technical analysis, couldn't define what a bollinger band is, don't know retracement points, etc. For me, the simplier the better.

 

When I was prop trading in 03-04 the best trader in the house used no charts at all. Only the open book (we traded mostly NYSE)

He consistently made more money than the rest of us.

 

the question begs the issue.

thats like saying , can you play horses without the Racing Form.

yeah , you probably can, and more importantly , 99% of those using the Form lose money.

 

I have charts up but use no TA whatsoever... all orderbook/time and sales.

 

It depends on what you mean by TA. I trade simply on news and other sort of intraday catalysts and I look at charts to make sure I'm not very late on the move but I don't use any of the ridiculous crap like RSI/MACD/Keltner/Crystal Ball/Astrology junk.

 

take a pair trading for example. one can make money using calculation of % spread between two correlated securities. just an example.

 

This is not totally true.

Paul Tudor Jones.
Eric Bolling.
And countless others.

But when you say TA you may be talking about a ton of indicators or something like that, and if so, then you may be right.

Yes, you can daytrade profitably without TA.
You can also daytrade/trade profitably with TA.

 

I don't believe Tudor or Bolling use stochs, macd's etc.. they trade on price action primarily which I don't think the original post is referring to.