I am very new to charts. I have never used anything but candles, so I never had to unlearn anything. My background is in grains where the open and close is very important, so candles came natural to me. But using them on intraday es charts requires some filtering, hence the jokes.
hindsight, Just divide your time frame by three and you will see the chronological order. For instance, if you are using 15 min candles and it bugs you because you don't know which came first, the egg bottom or the chicken top, just switch to 5 min charts and you will see it. But my guess is, then you will start wondering on the five minute chart which came first.
tech, set a tick chart with an sma of one and you can stay right on top of things. When the chart starts pointing up, it is a good indicator that all other trend indicators are about to turn bullish.
Seriously, I prefer the 5-minute candles. I figure if a trend develops and can be sustained by (3) 5-minute bars it usually holds for a while. Filters out all the noise of the market. Also if a perceived trend reversal is really a false move it often dies out before that 3rd candle is printed, thus preventing me from getting in and getting whipsawed out on the next print. I'm more of a slow day trader; Instead of scalping in and out of positions I'll just try to capitalize on those .50 - 1.00 point moves that develop over several candles.
The minimum sma I find useful is a 5 period. Anything less and as aphex says you're just connecting the dots. A 5-day ma on a daily or a 5-period on a 5-minute (which makes it a 25-minute quasi ma) is useful to confirm trends.