I don't even know how to respond to that. You disproved yourself. You suggest indicators work and then say the majority of traders using them don't make money. The majority of dvd players work. You put a dvd in and do as the directions say and it plays. The majority of fingernail clippers work. You put them on your fingernail and do as the directions say and it trims. The majority of indicators do not work. You add them to your charts and do as the directions say and you don't make money.
If you are comparing using an indicator to succesfully make money long term in the financial markets with using a dvd player perhaps this is the reason you are failing. Answer me this then, can everyone play professional basketball in the NBA if they wanted to? If not, does this mean it is impossible to play in the NBA?
True enough, but there are far fewer ways of using fingernail clippers than is so with indicators, and this reality's actually pretty significant, in context. It depends on what you mean by "work". If that's what you mean by "work", I don't disagree much with what you're saying, there. I'd word it slightly differently (but that may be partly just me being pedantic): I'd say "If you add them to your charts and just do as the widespread, generally accepted directions say, you won't make money from that alone". This much, I'd agree, is pretty unarguable. But I'd also want to add two other things ... First, we already know that most things to do with trading methodology don't "work" in that sense, because that's what most aspiring traders generally do (more or less) and most aspiring traders fail (I think we can agree this much without adducing evidence of it?), so it's not really much of a criticism of indicators, per se, to point out that they don't "make most people profitable", because nothing else does, either. Secondly (and I'd contend this is similarly "factual" though I'm less confident that you'll agree with this point), that doesn't necessarily mean there aren't other ways, i.e. non-standard, non-routine, non-orthodox, non-"directed" ways, of using them that might actually "work" pretty well. My colleagues say there are, and I believe them.
Damn, I knew your nick sounded familiar. I mentioned this in another thread I think, but it is not exactly matching your nick hehe... Your analogy above is just as flawed as those analogies you also claim to be flawed, I think. The majority of DVD players work. So do the majority of VCRs. You plug in your VCR and you cannot figure out how the hell to program its clock. This was a funny meme back in the 1980s. NOBODY could figure out how to make the VCR clock work, because they did not read the directions. Those that did had no problems. Those who did not cried havoc upon technology. The difference between trading indicators and consumer electronics is that the VCR/DVD player is designed to do one thing...Do what it is designed to do. There is no misinterpretation of it. When it comes to a trading indicator, it is also designed/programmed to do what it is designed to do...Indicate when conditions are met. What the trader does with that indication is open to interpretation and judgement. With a DVD/VCR there is no grey area, because you cannot do other than what it is designed to do. If the VCR says that you have to push button B to complete the clock-programming cycle, then you do it and the task is done. If you do nothing, nothing happens. With a trading indicator, if it indicates that a condition has presented itself, then it is up to you to act upon it. There is no simple on/off here. The indicator is not telling you to do something. It is simply presenting what it has been programmed to present. Yes?
The reason most people fail to make money with indicators is that they put too much emphasis on the entry portion of their trading, while neglecting the, arguably, more important parts like risk management, position sizing and exit strategies. If you define indicators 'not working' as not making money then you must realize there are far more important components to trading that result in making money other than using an indicator for entries.
Very true. (I think there are probably also other trading-related nouns you could put into that sentence, each as a substitute for the word "indicators", of which it would be equally true. Many people seem to imagine that "entry methods" and "trading systems" are more or less synonymous terms. )
I completely agree. Just as you shouldn't imagine that entry logic, however good, is in itself going to be enough to become profitable without also having a decent understanding of both risk management and trade management, and all that each entails. In general, if you'll excuse me for stating the obvious, one of the realities of trading is that you have to get quite a few different things right simultanously to become steadily profitable over the long term, and a deficiency of any one of them can all too easily turn overall profit into overall loss. But more specifically, looking around at most online conversations/websites/videos/courses about "trading systems" gives me the impression that many aspiring traders imagine that if they simply have good entry logic "everything else will, somehow, perhaps magically, sort itself out without troubling them too much". And that's a really deeply misguided approach.