I have been using Heikin Ashi ever since I started looking at charts since one of my mentors told me it was much better than regular candle sticks. I have recently read that regular candle sticks are better to determine price action and better for candlestick formations which I am focusing on lately. I have not tested out the difference myself yet but I was wondering if you guys can tell me if regular candles are better for price action and candlestick formation trading?
for about 10 years i'm not using any charts at all...no tv. no 10+ monitors all over the place..no news...just simple math calculations combined with some stats....point is-use whatever the f**k works for you. i'm comfortable with pure numbers..such as basic win/loss ratio,average PnL and so on.. Good luck!
Have a look at the way Heikin Ashi is calculated and ask yourself 'what market behavior is this modelling'? If you can't answer the question then it's probably no good.
I would suggest going to Renko charts. They are good for visualizing price action without all the noise. Renkos are good for clear identification of higher pivot lows and lower pivot highs on most all time frames. HA charts are useful for advanced styles of trading but they are not the best to get to the basics of price action trading.
I became curious so I put Heiken Ashi bars up and compared them to a Hull Moving Average of closing prices, length 9. They agree a lot..
ha is more like histogram of diff of 2 MAs than regular price bars http://www.tradingsystemforex.com/img/heiken ashi.gif
Heikin Ashi indicator was designed to be used with standard candlestick charts. The purpose was for it to "identify trend" and you would then use standard Japanese Candlestick patterns to time your entry into the trend. Simply, if you're using it correctly, your standard candlestick charts are either overlay with Heiken Ashi or a sub-graph is made. Yet, like all things that are designed...users eventually use it differently than the way it was initially designed.