As I stated previously . . . I have yet to have anyone make a valid argument that purposely injecting a variable or chaos into a stable environment is a benefit to evaluating the outcomes created in that environment. Your comment doesn't give an answer to that statement.
It is true, minute charts are the worst to analyze price action for day trading. Buying and selling is what moves the price, not time. Depending of what a trader is looking to do tick, range and volume and more superior than fixes time fractals.
I'm working on a solution to improve the analysis of swing and position charts using volume bars too. Currently the problem is that all software forces the creation of a new bar at midnight or at market close artificially stopping the natural flow of the bars.
I could argue a stable environment is created by use of a daily bar or weekly bar which contains all the variables of time, ticks, volume, range & momentum.
Stability comes from consistency and balance. Daily and weekly bars are anything but stable. Each daily or weekly bar contains a vastly different volume weight. Red's point is valid and I don't know why traders have such a hard time with it but buying and selling is what moves the price, not time, transactions, range or momentum. Buying and selling is the key ingredient in all of those components. The buying and selling is of contracts or shares. Buying and selling is what creates momentum. Buying and selling is what creates ranges. Buying and selling creates transactions. Buying and selling happens in time. (all day long) Always solve problems using the least common denominator not a product of the parts.
What type of trading do you do, price action or indicator based? volume and some of the other non-time based charts show market action much better and cleaner. some traders tend to benefit from time based charts, they say it shows trading ranges, consolidation and trendlines better. imo, despite what art deco says, it is best for people starting out to stay away from super fast charts, give yourself time to think. boredom in trading is a good thing, but that is another subject. good luck.
So how do you quantify buying and selling that is sufficient to make a rational decesion say in ES that trades millions and Pork Bellies that trades 10?
Well, first off you don't trade pork bellies, no liquidity. You only trade instruments that give you enough liquidity & volatility to be able to see strength (up or down), price direction (up or down), consolidation (at a top) or consolidation (at a bottom). Once you can easily see those 6 specific areas of direction and strength you can easily make the decision to trade that chart on that particular day or find another instrument that IS easy to ready. The markets should be treated like a buffet, if something doesn't look good that day. . . eat something different. No one forces you to eat the same thing each time you go to the trough. My opinion is that the ES is just ok. There are a lot of other markets that are far easier to trade and offer far more in the way of consistent profitability. Examples: Light Sweet Crude Heating Oil Cotton Coffee Copper Sugar Gold Platinum S&P Midcap 400 Russell 2000 Australia Dollar Euro FX Swiss Franc
running a tick chart (lets say 50 tick ) next to a minute chart ( 1-5 minute ) will let you see whats taking place inside the bar. the same formations that you come to recognize on a daily chart reproduce themselves on a tick chart and they mean the same thing. that being said....you might want to run a 3 minute candle to get rid of the noise. will keep you from "overtrading" play around with #'s to find what works for you