You don't want to "think" while trading. You want to recognize and act. If indicators help that recognition, use them, if they impair, don't use them. "Thinking" is for analysis and development.
I don't use any indicators and might be instinctively biased against them. I've done an enormous amount of research on them, and I used to use them successfully. I have two friends both of whom are ex-institutional, now-independent traders who routinely use indicators every day, and both make a very good living. It's "horses for courses", really (or do I mean "courses for horses"?). One thing I do feel sure of, though: many retail traders misguidedly attribute to various indicator-combinations "predictive" powers that they simply don't have. I agree unreservedly - and by saying that, so succinctly and sensibly, you've also saved everyone from me offering one of my rambling, loquacious, 12-paragraph posts that would only really have boiled down to saying exactly that, anyway. On behalf of the community, I thank you.
Indicators have tremendous predictive capabiities. What I have found is that folks who tell you that they don't, do not understand how to use them.
Predictive power of price patterns is just as powerful. I dont mean the usual patterns that everyone and their dog looks at. I specifically look for signs of exhaustion to either enter a trade reversal or to get out of a trade. Signs of accumulation or distribution according to Wyckoff are immensely powerful! Im not saying that indicators are wrong, each to their own, all Im saying is that they confuse me more than they help me.
So very true! Quite a few years ago an up and coming trader I knew, who was the Einstein type, had a problem with hesitating to enter/exit trades due to his 'thinking'. He asked me how to avoid this 'thinking' problem, but as I had never faced such myself, I couldn't come up with an answer other than to try image training and the like. If you have a second, what would you have advised him to try? Or maybe the Einstein types just can't overcome it. Thank you.
It's a matter of having a trade plan with clearly defined signals and trade management rules. If you can't recognize a signal within a second or two, it's too complicated IMO. For a day trader, there should be no analyzing....there is a signal or there isn't....if there is, take it and manage the trade according to the trade plan.
You should post more of them, and someday put all of them together in what I'm sure would be a best selling trading book!