I thought about posting this since i had years struggling with indicators and then some years struggling with chart patterns, until i finally came to a conclusion. None performs better than the other. No matter how much people say that chart patterns are better than indicators, they are MARGINALLY better. I have found that WHERE you take a trade is important and the best performance is when you combine the two . Chart patterns are great for identifying a potential setup, but are whack IMHO for executing trades. Waiting for the ultimate confirmation costs you money. So the best thing is to combine chart patterns with indicators: You see a head and shoulders pattern at your resistance level. Great! You see a double top at your resistance level. Great! But do you wait for the "valley low" to be taken before entering a trade? That is too late! Usually, towards the end of reversal patterns, trend following indicators (faster ones) tend to shift, like the right shoulder or the second top usually are made with the MACD Histogram being negative. And that's when you can look for a TomDemark Trendline break south. So, we saw the pattern coming and then we timed our execution using indicators. This way, you have standardized your execution. Cheerios
Or how about wait for a close outside of a chart pattern and then use price action to get into the trade instead of indicators.
Sure, your supposed to combine them. Particularly if divergence is important to you, as a primary gauge of price action strength or weakness. There are some patterns that indicators cant tell you much about though, but it gets a bit esoteric beyond your basic ones.