Best advice so far in the thread. Most retail traders fail. But for those who don't - I wonder what's the minimum time a lone successful retail trader spent before achieving success? I don't imagine anyone doing it in less than 3 years and that's a minimum. If you have a mentor or are hired by a firm - it's a different matter.
Stay away from automated trading. If the biggest banks and largest hedge funds are still looking (and failing) to consistently beat the market, you're unlikely to succeed. Rather than blindly following indicators and decision rules, take a step back and perform "stage analysis" on the stock. Ask yourself: is it trading in a range, expanding or declining? Some indicators and strategies work better in some stages, than in others. Also take time to read and educate yourself. I recently read Stan Weinstein's "Secrets for Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets", and would recommend it. He explains "stage analysis" in detail. But there are plenty of other excellent books, many of which are available for free: https://trustedbrokers.com/uk/books/
A couple things to keep in mind. Price moves the indicators. Indicators don't move the price. All an indicator does is manipulate price data to make it visually pleasing. Look into how an indicator is formulated. Use the formula and plot the indicator by hand for a while and you will soon be able to tell where the indicator is going by what the price does. When multiple different indicators confirm that price is going up, it is because price is going up. There is no guarantee that it will continue in that direction. Trading is a probabilities game. You won't be right all the time. The trick is to make more money when you are right than you lose when you are wrong.
Where would you suggest a beginner to focus his/her attentions on, considering the vast assortment of indicators? Let me rephrase it, what would you (and other posters here) consider the bare minimum set of indicators to reliably provide you a baseline of information about a trade, its probability/ies?
Trend is the key pattern in trading. Most of the time price is either in an uptrend, a downtrend or not trending, and each scenario offers trade opportunities. Its important to know when there is no trend and to be able to gauge trends against each other, they're not all equal. Many traders don't use any indicators for spotting trends but a moving average is really helpful and offers its use as a mile-stone or index for price action.
On my charts I have a couple moving averages. I watch how price moves in relation to those MAs I move between a 6 month daily chart , a one year daily chart and a 5 year weekly chart. I pay particular attention to where price moved in the past. Also to risk management. If you have a charting program that can go back a few years and advance one day at a time, spend some time with random charts where you don't know the outcome and watch how price acts. YouTube contributor Jack Corsellis has some interesting videos.
Thank you @tomorton, @deaddog . You mention you use 6 month daily chart, 1 year daily, 5 year weekly. That's somewhat similar to the Elder "Triple Screen", multiple timeframe analysis, with the shorter/smaller timeframe for entry/exit positioning. I'm wondering what would be a suitable type of indicators if, after due diligence, you decide to invest in a stock with a view to holding it for a couple of years, minimum one year. Am i correct in assuming from your view that the moving averages are more important in longer investment timeframes? Just exponential moving averages, or moving averages more sensitive to recent moves, i.e, Hull moving average for example, or a weighted moving average with a custom weight? I was thinking a SMA200 to provide a long timeframe trend orientation, not very sensitive, plus a SMA100 to provide an initial support for a long timeframe, could be coupled with shorter more sensitive MAs, i.e, EMA52, EMA22, EMA13, to give some idea of dynamic support and resistance. Regarding a charting program, i've been doing some jupyter notebooks, but i didn't cross my mind to get the historical data and replay it. Thank you for your suggestions.
Why would you set a time limit? If a stock doesn't do what you want it to do why would you hold it for a year?
@deaddog well, you have a point. Usually i only invest after considerable amount of time studying the company financials, determining if it's, at least based on public information, a business with revenue, profit, not a lot of liabilities, growth potential. I never really considering holding a stock for shorter. On a long term this somewhat detached policy has been paying off, but my entries and exits could be a lot lot better, hence the desire to dive deeper into technical analysis. But you're right, it's part of my improvement plan.