On what timeframe does this happen? I have plotted sales at the bid vs. sales at the ask and it really doesn't tell you what is going to happen, only what currently just happened. It ends up being very similar to if you just plotted a moving average. Up trends will be mostly green, down trends will be mostly red. Plenty of chop and random reversals. It's just like a moving average. Up trends will have an upward slope, downtrends will have a downward slope, and there will be plenty of chop and reversals where following the slope would result in losses. It's interesting how pretty much all indicators tell you the same things even if you construct them from different data.
Oh, none of them are useful. I don't have any on my chart anymore. If you could predict trend/chop, however, nearly every indicator would be useful. Even MACD.
I get the impression that indicators were the "in thing" back in 2005 and there abouts. I see a lot of old threads on various forums where people shared their indicator-based trading systems and answer questions from newbs. I don't know what happened to any of those people, or if any of them are still making money, or if they were ever making any money in the first place. Back then it was indicators and candlestick patterns that everyone was talking about. But not anymore. In recent years the hot buzzword has become "price action", and to a lesser extent volume profile. Now that is what everyone is talking about. When I read newb journals on various sites it seems almost all are trading "price action". Very few are using any indicators. It seems everybody knows that it's really uncool to use indicators.
Indicators never worked. They only work if the underlying price action happens to match up with the settings of that particular indicator. For example, take an MACD. It doesn't work and you get chopped out. Change the parameters to make it faster or slower or whatever and it might be profitable over that same period of time. The problem, of course, is that you never know ahead of time how to set the indicator. That would be the holy grail. Following the slope of a 30 period MA might be unprofitable. Following the slope of a 55 period MA might be profitable. It depends if price is moving in a way that makes a 55 period MA profitable or not. That is why (price based) indicators don't work. There might be some non-price based ones that work. I've never seen them, but they might be out there somewhere. I programmed some but they didn't consistently make money. And really, all price based indicators do is tell you what price is doing now relative to a certain number of bars ago. In fact, once you spend enough time looking at them, you can look at a chart and draw what the different indicators would look like in the space below the chart.
I remember when I thought indicator divergences (MACD, etc) were "it". But like you said, after a while I could look a chart and tell when there would be a divergence or not. I think the people who start all those indicator and price action threads should post some blotters or in PNL threads.... At least then there would be some credibility to what they're teaching. But most people seem to get offended at the idea.
" Price action trading can take different forms and includes several types of techniques. However, one thing all of these methods have in common is that the primary focus is kept on both the historical and current movement of price up and down, or in other words, price action. " There are of course somewhat different definitions but that one is as good as any.