An advance expert operates in the gunfighter's blindspot, where this knowing is effective and true. The 5min is the fastest comfortable place to trade sentiment shifts. All long-term trends can be identified to the 5min. A mis-interpretation of being on the right side of the market suffers the least amount of losses on the 5min. Trading the 5min during the 20min timeframe gives 3 more opportunities for feedback, for learning, for growth. Yes, there can be a string of these losses. More so when in certain zones and less so in other zones. This can all be observed. However the losses more than balance the reward one receives being on the early side of a successful BO. A bar-by-bar trader operates on a different timescale than other traders via frequent booking of trend segment profits (or losses). It's a different paradigm than set-target-stop-loss-game-mentality-probability trader. Some people can't see this due to focus on an incomplete dataset. Some people focus on a granularity of support and resistance that does not accurately define the timeframe they are trading. Some people never took the time to understand market structure and it's basic operation. This group of some people are the folks who come and go with the tide. I was in this group - not really understanding the language of the markets, nor willing to do the work required to do so. Hoping to find something to save me from drowning in overwhelm. If you are in this group. Stop trading. That's the first monkey/demon to free. The chain of pain continues until you stop recreating it. Reset, rest, rejuvenate,... Then in a better feeling place, activate your power of discernment. First with the quiet whispers of truth offered from within - when only we quiet our mind. It's only from a better feeling place that one attracts the ideas, concepts, and interactions that serve one's deepest desires. I speak gibberish to some, truth to others, and something in between to most.
Hope you're responding to the impossible part, because it damn well isn't easy. In fact it can cause severe mental problems, as is evidenced daily here. look at what it did to Jack Hershey.
The shorter the timeframe the more fake signals you will have. You will take most of the noise as a signal. Noise increases when shortening the timeframe you trade in. It is not important to take top/bottom. It is important that an open P/L never makes a adverse move bigger then the distance to your stop. This will increase the profits as you will not have to deduct all the losses generated by the fake signals, trying to pick the top/bottom. Remember the 7 in a row losses from Marketsurfer in the ES. He never was able to even recover the losses. The final result is profits in winning trades minus losses in losing trades. In your approach the profits will probably be bigger, but the losses too. So the final result might be worse then making smaller profitable trades and far less losing trades, as the noise can killed a lot of your trades. The specifics of your system will influence the results, so what is valid for A can be not valid for B. I did extensive tests and know what to do to optimize profits and reduce losses, while making only the trades that are needed. Average profit per winning trades should be as high as possible.
Is Daytrading difficult or impossible ? The trading on itself is in general not so difficult. Because you will have the knowledge already to do so. At least if you are sure about your system. But first getting there, have a consistent profitable system is the big problem. Reaching that goal is for some difficult and for most impossible. Years of researching, countless moments that you thought you found it, analyzing why in two similar looking situations the system gives totally different results, systems that suddenly stop to work, good backtestings but bad real results (find where the problem occurs, programming or logical error...), etc... The difficulty to find out if you should continue or stop. You will only know in hindsight if continuing was good or you should have stopped already years ago.Especially as many times you will think: now I found it! Making an evaluation if there is still progress or not is very difficult as some improvements or some failures can come unexpectedly or can be a lucky strike. All this can also have a big impact on your partner and/or rest of the family. Some will ruin their life in the chase to wealth. It can become an addiction or even an obsession. But it can also become the start of the life you were dreaming of.
The second paragraph qualifies the first. System B when grounded in an different paradigm transforms the first paragraph from true into it's opposite. In one's backtesting, for the first paragraph to be true. They are not quantifying volume as they do price as well as accurately defining the relationship between the two. I am agreeing with what you are saying,... and there's more when one explores how volume fits into the matrix of relationships. To an open mind, this is all observable. However, it's a forward testing process, not a backtesting one.