Hey,All! Out of curiosity, how do you think guys, which period out of the many retail platforms indicators most widely used?Is it 14 or 20, or whatever you think it is?
Anyone who takes a pre-bottled 'technical analysis' moving average look-back parameter [what you are terming 'period', if I follow your question] and uses it without change or examination, as to whether it works for the target market underlying, time frame, and even, contemporaneous overall conditions, is due to lose money. You should always tailor, and continuously check your conclusions. Every market, every day. Period. {so to speak.} There is nothing holy about the technical analysis tools as they're delivered to your platform. {and further...} Every year or so, I go through every technical "study" offered by IB, and see how it performs, and whether I can tune it to do better. One after the other, I put them up against the market, and against themselves, and check (and dispose) until I have one measure for trend, price-oscillator, and volatility. It has been the same 3 (actually 4 -- I double the price/turns indicators with a price and a price+volume), for 11 years of active trading. Main graph is a 4h(1min), then a 1_or_2week(1hr), then a 6m or 1y(1day).
I favor a lookback length of 1. I.E. the currentbar. Sometimes the currentbar mimics the qualities of the preceding bar or bars. Some of those cases are worthy of setting up shop and studying them further, without distraction. specializing in them until all the logical branches have been exhausted and the optimal length and fuzzy parts are reduced to code.
I have been day trading futures for years. To me, all indicators are useless and worthless. I only use zig zig line. Learn to read trend from candles, chart patterns, the way price move.
Yes... I use rather different period numbers for different time frames for the same indicator. I'd be surprised if most people don't. I left reading candles behind by charting 1 second data. A lot more intuitive to read and easier to learn a "feel" for the price movement for the item you're trading.
%% 20 is better than 14; 50 is better than 20, as far as saving exspences. BUT just remember; everything changes in a bear market. Nice bull market, now, wisdom is profitable to direct, not a prediction
If you go to trading house where traders pay rental for the use of office space and internet, you can see many traders don't even use charts ! They just look at tens of ladders. Obviously there is no indicator.
I use RSI 14 period and RSI 200 period. I ‘d tried all the different indicator(including expansive indicators) with a different time period, but RSI 14(14 days worth of moving average,daily chart) works really well for day trading to swing trading and 200 period would work well for the longer term trading. I am currently testing TAS indicator it seems working ok so far.