Before reading anything in depth, you have to decide what are you planning to trade and in what manner. This would depend on your background. A CS major would be more suitable to algo/medium frequency stuff, an economics major might be more suitable for global macro, a math/stats major would be more suitable for options or stat arb. Btw, talking of "good mentor is hard to find" - about 2 years ago (end of 09) I thought of opening my own shop. In the end I decided against it because of health reasons, but it was surprisingly difficult to find an apprentice of any sort and I did look for a while.
From my experience it is completely the opposite.Indicators are leading and cause the price to move.And with the proper settings it will show you exactly when the price takes off and when retraces or reverses.You don't need the price.It is a big step not to look at the price display and as everything needs practice.
The OP maybe unable to monitor the price and indicators altogether ,but the price action per se will weepsaw him,no doubt about it.I only saw PA traders on the online forums like ET and such,not in real life.I'd start with indicators first.
Some good info in this thread.. I'd recommend Trading and Exchanges Market Microstructure by Larry Harris for a good understanding of the inner workings of the markets. Also don't be fooled by the name of this site, most people here are also failing traders. And be wary of snake oil salesmen in this field.
If you have indicator(s) with proper settings that show exactly when price takes off and when it reverses, can we assume you are unimaginably wealthy and now surf ET looking to pay it forward by telling aspiring that indicators (which by their very nature lag price because they require price to move prior to updating themselves) are leading and cause price to move?
As an intermediate beginner trader you should know by now that in order to be unimaginably wealthy it takes some time,even with the proper tools set.Events cause the price to move,in the global scheem of things,but locally ,the price is always at the mercy of indicators.And yes,I have indicators with the proper settings that let me see the very moment of the take off and I use volume on my second shelf and no,I'm not an unimaginably wealthy trader and thats not my priority.
From personal experience, I disagree with you. The shortcut, for me was systematically (and unknowlingly at the time) building my mind as I made profits. I am much older than William J. O;Niel but we did have the same essential initial experience. So did Darvas, a contemporary of mine. You got to your views in the absence of having to work on learning about how markets work. The three of us that I mentioned did not follow your path in any way whatsoever. What was our common bridge? The bridge is my symbol as it turns out. We all took the came shortcut bridge. In modern times, this shortcut is being explained very thoroughly in the field of neuroscience. I am so glad this confirmation has finally appeared. Look back into your past and find out what you missed doing to have employed the shortcut. It is a simple fact that you did not do purposeful drills. The only reason I did was, in fact ,serendipity. for me I had to do sharts by had on a blank chart I inked on vellum and copied as brownlines using a freee blueprint machine. I habded out brownlines of my plots so others could take over the plotting as we build our three Beta Universe of active stocks to trade. So you did it the CW way. And you mind is still not differeniated at all. Too bad. Drills create inference. The mind ordganizes the inference into a differiated spectrum. as the spectrum forms, the mind raises questions requiring drills to answer. finally a simple set of finite sets is built where there is a one to one correspondence of elements form finite set to finite set. It is a system just like reading and arithmatic and driving a car or skiing of playing tennis are mental systems of finite sets. you have some of those BUT you messed up the opportunity to build your mind and now the oppotunity has been withdrawn because of the clutter you continue to struggle in. test yourself to find out this is true in your case. just go in the market and examine your emotions. for you, having learned failure, your emotions are anxiety, fear and anger. For me and O'Niel and Davas, our emotion set is support, comfort and confidence. In fact, if I feel a tinge of your emotiion set, then I know I do not know at that moment. I journal the time of the moment and review my logic in order to add, if necessary, a sub fractal nuance. this process plays out as iterative refinement of my mind and the logic of trading using just one pattern.
I would never ask a trader to divulge his/her secret sauce recipe, but I am so amazed by the statement that price is always at the mercy of indicators that I respectfully ask if you would be so kind as to post a couple live calls here tomorrow demonstrating this. Something along the lines of "The indicator(s) indicate a long position at price X, with a stop loss at price Y and a profit target zone of price Z." (This is similar to how I called my price action trades in Skype, and since indicators lead price, I'm assuming you can do the same.)