Yeah it's silly to think that you're going to find a ruleset that easily. I've tested most of the ideas on the forum, including the ones you mentioned, and found them either too complicated to make crystal clear, or downright unprofitable.

It seems that there are two conventional wisdoms:

1. Trade rules rules rules.
2. Rules are impossible, use heuristics and learn to trade discretionary.

I lean towards the first camp, psychologically (and that's not some grievous character flaw, as conventional wisdom (2) tends to postulate), and see that others have been successful with that approach, so that's the direction I'm going in right now.

I'm actually studying with a trader right now. He's a little crazy (in my experience traders are pretty severe egotists who have an actual skill, and not buddhist monks who just happen to trade) but I internet-know two profitable traders who use his setups in a rule-based fashion, one of whom introduced me to trading, and his mission is to work with me as I use his approach to develop an objective ruleset. So far that work has been very promising.

I also have some other ideas of my own that I'm testing.

So we'll see where that all leads.

-RK142

Just want to add a discipline oriented item that is working well in my trading as of late. Currently using a "no touch" ATM strategy to manage my trades from start to finish. I pick the entries of course but NT does the rest. It is sometimes tempting to "interfere" but I resist the temptation. The discipline of managing my trades in this fashion is so far quite additive to my trading results. It was suggested to me by a trading psychologist and from reading some threads on NexusFi (formerly BMT). Great for new traders who are having trouble staying out of their own way. It took many months to submerge my ego to actually start doing this as a rule. Humility brings prosperity!