I recently did a poll (another location) concerning retail traders (traders that trade from home)...most use a combo of news, fundamentals, TA and Intuition. Interesting...not one use one thing exclusively while completely ignoring everything else. Yet, the TA side was what they were mainly interested in talking about. However, when I specifically asked those putting emphasis on TA...many were using TA without a trading plan or using it while still trying to develop a trading plan. Mark
Yeah, unfortunately most of what goes under the name of TA is not developed into a methodology. It's as if TA is the methodology hence the poor trading plan application. Having said that, for me a trading plan is a straight jacket. It's a bit like trying to teach someone to compose music by using rules. But to start with you sure need a trading plan until you can flow with the market, and very few ever get to understand what that means.
I forgot to add in Tape Reading and Lev 2. Interesting that no one mentioned this. I'm surprised the TA vote is so high, including the Bot it's running around 70%.
Many thanks for the contributions, feel free to continue. Interesting that the news traders didn't arrive until the US session began. The world is a big village and I was incorporating news many years back when in Europe.