this is all such great advice. I'm 72 and have long ago given up the idea that I'm going to do it all. when I first started trading and doing ta in the mid-90s I thought complexity was what it was all about and that if I just got complex enough I would find the holy Grail. the only holy Grail there is is between your ears because we as individuals are responsible ultimately for everything that happens to us. one of the best things I've ever read about all of these tools is for you to forget about the idea that any of them or any group of them are ever going to tell you exactly what to do. I no longer believe there is any such thing as a buy and sell signal only a buy and sell heads up. I am fortunate enough to have a seven screen layout right now. I'm able to keep my simple training chart in front of me and load spare charts that are new to me that I can follow while trading. slowly but surely I'll figure out which ones I like more but they are all just tools. they all just support the decision that we will ultimately have to make based on what we perceive they are all telling us. I'm one of them. I day trade with the scanner scanning a 0.25 to 2.50. price filter it gives me a group of tickers everyday that are the most volatile but also the most profitable tickers you can buy and sell in a day. for that reason over time simplicity has paved the way for my trading... I have a volume overlay on my main chart that simply has vwap and the 9-day moving average. I've tried all the lower sections and the one I have found most comfortable is the RSI/ADX crossover on a 5-minute chart and use the same on a one minute chart as a heads up chart. I'm not good enough and just too much happens in 5 minutes for me to rely on that alone. What I find innerrestin it's how that crossover is the backbone for some of these studies...taken to a much higher level of course. I don't think they'll ever come up with anything that can tell the future but any tool that can tell me what is happening right now faster than any other tool would help identify the few short seconds it takes to exit a position before it's too late to exit the position and you end up with half a dozen partial fills while Thelma and Louise go off the cliff. I've had more daggers stuck in my back than Caesar. code away folks. what you do is priceless and I'm in awe of the intellect it takes to figure all that stuff out. it's all my brain can do to shut the alarm off at 4:00 in the morning and to sit at my computer all day and marvel at what you all have done. I figure it this way, all these tools are like the light switch in every room of your house. when you walk into that room and flip the switch all you care about is if the light comes on or not. you don't need to know how to set power polls or string wire or know how to tune a turbine inside Hoover dam you just want the lights to work. I kind of feel the same way about code. I don't need to read it I don't need to write it and thanks to ai I may never have to learn it I just have to know that whatever it does works. more important than how complex a tool is is how deep your trust in it is and that can only come with time. I don't believe in paper trading. it is not only a huge waste of time but it builds false confidence that can only cost you money as a new trader. I'll save the story of my daughter touching the hot stove till later but until you actually touch a hot stove you never realize how hot it is or what it can do to you. true learning for me has always come from experience. until you bleed a little bit you can never appreciate how sharp the knife is. instead of paper trading I tell people trying to learn to trade with real money because losing real money is painful... painful lessons are not soon lost to time. I tell people instead to go ahead and trade but to only trade one share at a time or even a few shares that might add up to a dinner out on the town. if you stay home and hungry for a few weekends and you either learn or you find another job, but you get to that point of epiphany much sooner in the real world than any imagined artificial one no matter how well intentioned. thanks again for the great replies. my backup alarm just went off so I guess it's time to put my nose back on the grindstone. happy trading all...
