Really don't bother, the difference from a hanging man on a M1 chart to a close at low then close at high is seconds, my fxcm demo and ipad charts differ by about 20seconds, totally different candles. Worthless imho
In so far as I can, in a forum-post ... I try to be careful, when answering questions like this, not to make it "sound easy", which of course it isn't, really. I've had loads of trading education and thousands of hours of screen-time, and it gets easier only after that. I trade "basic price action", using support and resistance, on quite fast charts. I use techniques I've learned (and gradually adapted/adjusted a little) from the books of Al Brooks, Bob Volman, Joe Ross and others. I don't really do anything difficult or complicated: I just do simple, straightforward things well and very consistently and with endless patience and discipline, after researching them methodically and systematically. I use plenty of TA, but not indicators. At the moment I do about 150 trades per month (that's gradually crept up from just under 100 as I've gained confidence and experience). My trades are open anywhere from 5 minutes to about 6 hours, though the average is much closer to the 5 minute end and I very, very rarely have more than one trade open at a time. I usually scale out of positions, sometimes letting my last lots/contracts run after locking in profit. I'm entirely mathematically/statistically/probabilistically-oriented, and not at all emotionally attached to individual results (I'm quite Aspergerish, so that's all I could do anyway: fortunately I've found a way of making a living for which some degree of Asperger's is actually advantageous). In December 2015 I had a "big switchover" (on the repeated and insistent advice of institutional and ex-institutional trader friends who knew roughly how I trade) from trading spot forex to futures only. This was mostly so that I could trade from constant-volume bars instead of from time-based charts, and has actually made a favourably significant difference to my overall results from doing basically the same things, so I've ended up wishing I'd taken this advice when it had originally been offered, a couple of years earlier, instead of adopting my stubborn "if it's not broken, don't try to fix it" approach for so long. I'm not easy to teach, because I'm a real skepchick who questions everything and has to analyse it in detail for myself, before accepting it. From my perspective, Bob Volman and Al Brooks (and Joe Ross, in places) were the authors whose teaching reliably stood up to that, so they were the ones who influenced me the most.
Sure you can, merely from the way the candle sticks move and consolidate. I would be happy to demonstrate haha, why don't you post on this thread or a new thread a 15 minute candlestick chart over the full 24 hrs going back least 14 days, squash the bars up to fit more data in. Pick a past period in a liquid 24hr futures contract ( don't need to know the contract, date, time axis or price axis, just snip the bars and I will guess the future for you . I normally start from the higher time frames like the daily and work down. You can play this game yourself, when you see a decisive move, cover up the right side of the chart and mark on the left side of the chart every single piece of Price action that you think may have indicated the impending move going back days / weeks. The underlying premise being that past price action is indicative of future price action. Do this over a huge sample and then try to look for similar patterns. Price is king, you dont need anything else, When I say that it is true, however with my experience when I look at a price chart I can visually map the volume profile to the chart and apply Market profile concepts etc.
Broadly, this is what I am looking at doing as well I am having trouble finding a suitable platform for practicing with "fast charts" though. I have a day job, so can't look at live data feeds. I have not been able to find a place where I could get intraday (or even EOD) data to be replayed tick by tick (or even at 5min or larger intervals). The ones I found just dump the whole intraday chart at you all at once which sort of defeats the purpose for me completely - I have already seen where the price is going to go. The only thing I have found so far is at chartgame and am exploring it, but it seems obviously limited. If anyone has any suggestions on this I would appreciate it. I do have a programming background, and could whip up something of my own if I really have to, but would obviously want to avoid it if I can.
Even though I gave up after 6 years of failing (full time), I like to think it IS possible! Just not for me I tried all of the price action / candlestiicks/support+resistance/trendlines/Al brooks stuff etc. In fairness i've only ever seen one person in that time who I KNOW can make money consistently daytrading, although I don't know anything of his 'methods'. Good luck with it!
Yeah, unsurprisingly, you're not the first to make that comment! I very much regret choosing this username!
IMO, I believe you could but only on daily or weekly timeframes, candlesticks intraday are meaningless for the most part as the close of the candlestick isn't a real close. Here's a great game to test your daily candlestick trading abilties. http://chartgame.com Anyone wanna play against me?
%% rland87; Excellent comment, not that i would play a game without the time labeled,LOL. I did accidently, [strangely this week] , print a candle chart without volume.LOL BUT i penned in some volume numbers by hand+ know volume/+ from previous charts.....