Answer: The kind of indicators that deal specifically with each of the five decisions a trader could be called upon to make. I suspect that the most used indicators corrolate with the most used decision. If you are doing a study, then you may want to go into detail on what kind of trader is making what kind of decision. And, then, how frequently they use signals form a given indicator. If you are familiar with how people construct their decision making indicators, you will find that this is helpful in determining the use of indicators. In another thread a person was discussing his deprivation. I regard him as an average person and I can understand how he gets in various states. He wants to see a number of trades in a day that result in 3 times the daily range. He is going to make a zig zag chart of them as he takes each trade in turn. He will be using one indicator only, a leading indicator of the instrument I will choose to trade that day. He will be trading 50 contracts and he will put up a print of the account holding the 50 contracts. Probably he will carry out about 40 trades, none less than a couple of points. He does not want to know anything about trading so he will not be doing decisions. Indicators are important because they give decision making information for all five of the kinds of decisions a person can be making as a trader. Since this guy is an average guy, he may not even know this. If I told him the signals from indicators for other than one type of decision, I think he would get mixed up as time passed. For example, redneck asked for a leading indicator to stay in the markets all the time and just take profit for each move of the market. I gave him an indicator in the form of (A-B) - C where C was an absolute value. The indicator was a scalar value projected from a 0 horizontal axis each minute (all based upon OTR values). The leading indicator signals were from velocity and acceleration of the scalar. Redneck didn't grasp any of this apparently. So, for this different average person, I have to simplify and just give him the trades, as far enough in advance as he needs, to be able to trade 50 contracts about 40 times a day to makes more than 2 points per trade. Say about a quarter of a million dollars on one day using one indicator signal. If he wished I could do the same thing with 10 to 12 other indicators that are similar "in kind" (leading what is being traded). Most trader signals that take the market's offer do not come from the source you use to get your lists. The trader signals I speak of come from what is called "logic" instrad. Futher, these kinds of indicator signals are related to, specifically, the five kinds of decisions active traders are called upon to make. To ramp up an average person to trading 50 contracts 40 times a day to make over 2 points a trade, has to begin with letting him execute when told on just one indicator signal that he is not seeing. He stays at 50 contracts and makes only a quarter of a million a day at the beginning. Slowly he is allowed to look at the indicator and see just one signal. He learns to do this by using his vision to look at a screen and see an indicator signal, react to the signal a little later according to his required execution time. He has to do something on an account platform. Occasionally he will screw that up as we know. You are spending 2 to 4 months doing indicators. you can see that this average person starts and spends time being told only the time to trade at first. say this kind of thing lasts five days. He is a millionaire by then. He may be ready to look at a display of a leading indicator on a screen. As he looks he is told when to trade as before. He keeps making a 1/4 mil a day AND he is looking at a screen with an indicator. He IS told what to look for too. redneck was told, for example. Redneck could have seen the indicator and the signals from the indicator and made 1/4 mil daily doing 40 trades with 50 contracts. He didn't, though. Lets say ovr 2 to 4 months a person is given a set of indicators and he is trained to see them and to see their signals. further, he is olf enough to "put the peices together". Then he is able to "polish" using the pieces he put together. The dissappointing thing is that he still only makes 1/4mil a day doing RTH for each instrument with 50 contracts. There are about 80 instruments to chose from or to run in parallel or on staggered RTH's. So making a list of common indicators isn't where the opportunity lies. Common indicators are not useful for making money. Logic based indicators are what are useful. these lgic based indicators have specific applications to the five specific decisions traders are called upon to make. An average person finds what I say here to be unbelievable and not doable. That is how an average person is defined it turns out. You have a lot to do to get ready to begin what you decided to do. It will take you a lot more than 4 months. If you want to do a good read on a guy who failed to do it, read Lo of MIT. You can also read The Predictors" by Bass. this is a humorous novel about some quants who have their pants taken off at the same time every day. Another novel is worth the read, too. It is about markets along an "eight year hazardous journey"; the novel is Trend Following" and it was culled from others' actual experiences by Covel. As you see it takes a long time to get nowhere.
http://www.trade2win.com/traderpedia/Technical_Analysis#Common_technical_patterns_and_indicators You're looking for indicators that include price and volume? Also realize that there are many ways to calculate MA and MACD... SMA, EMA, TMA. Then there are many ways to use MA as an indicator... crossover, overbought, oversold, convergence, divergence.
I have had religious experiences reading Jack "Don't Call Me Jimmy' Hersheys" postulations and imperatives. The major failing is that his incomprehensible exclamations are impossible to fathom and resemble the detritus found on a lonely highway.
Maybe that was my mistake. I should view his words like those of the crazy nun I had in 11th grade -- who surely was locked up in a special padded place as she aged.
50 period sma is probably as elegant as anything else, not too many predictive indicators out there, that study is for the big boys, us simpletons should ride the trend.