after reading everything i could find that was free and many that were not[free] , i have come around to 'seeing the trend' and if the market does not move reasonably quickly in my direction,then reverse the trade.
Reverse the trade sounds aggressive, I never do it. Surely you'll agree there are only a handful of things that price in an uptrend can do next and the least likely is for it to move instantly into a downtrend.
Don't use a guide. Reason it out in your head about whats going on. It will help to understand price structure better. Also you don't want other people to do YOUR work for you.
"Finding an edge" means finding something to exploit. It means finding the fishing hole that others have passed by, and sinking your line in there. That hole may be crowded tomorrow -- what are you going to do? If all of your lures/hardware are optimized to that particular hole, how well will they perform in others? So, "finding an edge" long-term means both 1) finding a market opportunity with sufficient reward-to-risk that it remains attractive, *before* the crowd comes in and sucks the opportunity dry, and 2) maintaining (your own) skills and hardware such that, when you come upon a subsequent untrammeled fishing hole, you will be equipped (with technique and tools) to fish it. Don't be thinking that any edge you have today will work just hunky for you in 2020."Always be learnin'..."
most of them do trend-follow.. when volatility is gone, they don't make money. first there were turtles; then came the turtle faders; then came the turtle fader faders; and so on - the market is saturated with technicians and nobody is making money.
Starting from a blank slate? Well, you need to know about the markets, and you need to develop your own skills. For the markets, put up 3 graphs: 4hr/1min 1wk/1hr 1yr/1day. With price candles and volume on the bottom. For skills? Compute a Simple Moving Average and an Exponential Moving Average, and work with them until you are solid on what makes them tick. Then, put them up on your three graphs. Move the parameters around and see if you can find a nice relationship that perhaps illuminates something about the price action that you didn't see before. Scope that [potential relationship] back and forth in time, perhaps posing, "If I had made an entry here {long or short}, would I have reliably made money?" WHERE WOULD MY EXITS BE? And now you're starting to fish. {BTW, ALL of the so-called "Technical Indicators" are nothing more than complications and extrapolations of SMAs and EMAs -- so start at the beginning and master those two, to find out who's putting lipstick on a pig. You'll end up with a better BBQ, without wading through the BS.}
To start reasoning out the development of price based on the market’s granularity, do the 5x5 matrix. Make five rows of five columns of 4-tick bars. There are only 25 forms a single bar can be. Organize in some logical manner that makes sense to you. Of these bars, they can be divided into 3 like-kind groups. What are those groups? Post your result. Edit: Trading is building on one concept at a time. Observe and deduce through direct experience the operation of the market through it’s smallest distinct variables - ohlcv. It’ll make assembling and reasoning through the larger bytes of information easier.