Thanks DB lots of good advice, I took this: What is far more important is an observation phase during which you just watch price without any thought of where to enter or exit or what "setup" you might develop that will provide you with an entree into trading. If you spend insufficient time at this or skip it entirely, you'll never get it. Used a 1min line chart and watched price today in replay. I was surprised by how I noticed when price would take off like bat out of hell at different times. When clearly the pace had changed I had always seen it on bar charts before, but it did not jump out at me like the line chart did. Here is chart of when I could recognize these changes
There's been some talk about the need for having a well tested methodology/plan etc. We're also reminded that this is not a mechanical, green light/red light 'system'. So how does one go about 'testing' the process and gaining confidence? If something can be coded, we can easily run a backtest across thousands of trades and various instruments, but what about when that's not possible? How best to thoroughly 'test' the concepts in threads such as this? Is it just a matter of lots of market replays? (I don't actually use the ideas in this thread at the moment. There's WAY too much confusion for my little brain, but i'm asking in general, as I have my own methodology that i'm working on that I also don't think can be coded, and thus backtested)