First, I'll start off by saying that I believe discussing TA and shorter-term trading strategies is the only use I can get out of this forum. If FA is the only way to go, then that is not something I believe this forum could help with. To illustrate why, you could read my other post about George Soros and how he looks at the global macroeconomy in detail and then manages to find over- or under-valuations that all the other major investors and financial institutions managed to miss. Or a lot of his currency bets I read about were where on currency was artificially pegged to another in some form and he made money by seeing through that artificial situation. Obviously, that's a vast oversimplification and I'm not even going to pretend to understand the intricacies of what he sees or does. So that is what it takes to place real trades based on fundamentals, with hold periods of perhaps 18-24 months. Now for shorter-term trading. Where is the best place to start? I have a basic grasp of the different kinds of technical indicators. I've also heard that it's best to combine indicators. I know I can just Google this stuff like "what's the best technical indicators," but I would get 1000 answers that all conflict with each other. So which ones do you use? And how do you use them? And if you're going to tell me to just go with my instincts, that's not a good answer because that's just the same as guessing. I would definitely be willing to back-test any answers that I get.
Easiest to my eyes would be a trend channel. Especially like what we have had these past couple days in NQ (and I assume the ES also) You get stuck in a range of a few points for a day...You plan for the breakout. OCO the breakout. Will it be false? Mmmm, perhaps now, because of our ATH issue. But it is a worthy strategy.
Trend channels are drawn by your own perceptions and can differ from person to person. Correct? What is the correct timeframe for a trend channel?
The market is always in a trend. That is, it is always in a channel (which is a type of trend), and always in a range. Each cycle requires different tactics. Pick your time frame to trade. Determine the cycle it is in. Use the appropriate tactics for the cycle.
Since the invention of computers (which let's you plot those useless indicators ), this question has been asked millions of times. I started with hundreds of indicators because I was taught by trading coaches ( who earned money by teaching & not trading ). some stupid hopeless coach even said that when this and that indicators are congruent, it is a very high probability trade. My goodness!!! what garbage nonsense is that !! It took me very very long to finally believe indicators are bunch of useless nonsense. and finally I had the courage & determination & confidence to delete those indicators. Now my charts are just candlesticks and nothing else. Occassionally I might draw some lines and that's it. Why indicators are useless? Simply because market moves in various manner, fashion, pattern, speed. So learn to recognize various types of market movement. focus on the macro pictures and trade based on that. eg now we have trade war. So focus on trade war things like index futures, gold, bonds.
Correct on the perceptions part of your response. My advice on that is don’t worry about others perceived perceptions just work to be consistent with how you draw all of your channels regardless of asset or timeframe. As far as “correct timeframe” it depends on your trading horizon. In your OP you mention 18-24 months so if that’s your trading horizon larger timeframes clearly. Your looking at trading timeframes of daily or weekly levels to trade off of. shorter time horizons could be anywhere less than daily timeframes for intraday trades.
Is that a picture of your car? Or is it a car you wish you had? The first time I bet any large amount of money was this September. I looked at what I thought I knew and all the other economists seemed to agree with me... That a recession was imminent. I bought a 3x leveraged gold fund, and a 3x leveraged bond fund. Since then, the gold went down 33% and the bond fund 20%.
18-24 months was for FA speculating. Short-term trades would maybe be 1 week max? If that's even enough time to have a coherent strategy.
I had a red sports car. I sold it because I don't really need it as I am trading from home. Also I hate cleaning car.