What are you charting? And what was the lot more you used other than price action? 2 trades are just that. 2 trades. But your answer would be interesting nonetheless.
The thread topic relates specifically to candlesticks only and nothing else, but it seems like the last pages are focused on price action - which may or may not involve candlesticks. What is price action? Simply price history reshaped however you like it, i.e., lookback period, bar type, bar interval, multi-time frame analysis, etc. Can you trade profitably using only this information? I certainly believe so. However, that doesn't mean it's not possible to trade better using other/more information which can't be derived from a chart alone. But saying you can't trade from a chart alone seems arrogant and un-informed to me.
I daytrade the ES and all I get is the price, size and time for each order that gets filled on the CME. That's all you need to build a strategy. I created myself a strategy with the information I needed by manipulating/calculating/selecting/filtering/combining... the information I got from the CME. I compare it with Excel. You get a blank spreadsheet and what you build is your own creation. The CME delivered the blank Excel. I filled the empty cells with math to get a strategy.
There are programs to calculate them. They are based on price, time and size of each order. So you already have them.
You don't need an indicator that knows what the future holds. It is enough if you have an indicator that has a high probability of knowing what the future holds (pattern recognition) . An indicator that knows what the future holds can only be developed by extremely smart people. And these people are smart enough not to communicate about that, in case they would/will ever find him. So by definition that indicator would/will never be known. Remark about lagging indicators: Lag is not always a problem, it all depends on the impact of the lag. How much of the trade do you miss, and what is still left on the table. If you daytrade and the lag is 15 sec, that might not be a problem at all. If you keep positions for several days even minutes ( or even hours) of lag might have no big impact. All my indicators lag, for the simple reason that I have no data from the future. But I still can make money.
Indicators are largely worthless. What counts is trend, range, volume and breakout chart patterns. One exception is, for swings it's helpful to know where the 200sma is on a 90d chart since other traders follow it.
Agreed. I run algos with 20 minute or more delayed data and it's not a problem. Live data is good, delayed data is also good. In actual fact, delays are good from this point of view, when the day starts its ok to let stocks run a while before committing to see how they behave, immediately rushing to trade is usually not always ideal. Today the ASX (especially gold) got caned hard but I had a strong day, bought (added to a position) and made off like a robber. The longer your trading time frames, the better it is for not needing instant signals.
If you’re using an algo or other systematic approach, you’re not trading price action even if the price is triggering your trades (just like it does for any price sensitive trader). You’re trading some type of risk premia you have identified and built a process around. I doubt any of you has a strategy that is based upon 1) eyeballing ONLY a chart and then 2) making a decision. Trading on lagging indicators isn’t bad as long as you have done the analysis that makes it work. Again, I doubt your analysis involved JUST eyeballing charts. You would have Everyone looks at a chart. The question is whether, if you hypothetically limited yourself to just the chart, you could be a successful trader and the answer to that is no. You can get lucky, sure, but that’s a different topic.