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Is It Possible To Be Successful With A Chart Or Is Order Flow The Only Way?
Charts and associated tools can help you extrapolate what you think you see in order flow (order flow is only really a total of assumptions anyway), but straightforward math can to the same. It's your call really.
I will say there was a reason why many of the old hands made money off of simply looking at a ticker tape, in the moment.
Mark Minervini, David Ryan, William O'Neil are all Market Wizards using charts (I have missed many more just recalling those I am 100% sure using charts) and are still putting in market-beating performance (very sure on all of them, except for O'Neil).
No form of trading is easy, but individual equities tend to offer eye-popping returns if you can catch the best stocks. Moves of 1,000% are not that uncommon and 10,000% or 20,000% is also achievable if you can hold a stock for several years. With an initial risk of 10%, these type of trades offer tremendous reward to risk ratios.
The simplest way I know of to answer this type of question is to follow some of the trading journals on nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) and see how different traders succeed, fail, or gain experience and learn.
Probably you would find that few traders use only order flow, but that does not mean that it is not useful, nor that you couldn't succeed with it. There really is no "only way." It is a totally individual thing and you have to find your own way. But others can help.
The best trade-by-trade, nearly real-time journal I have ever read is @Big Mike's thread, where he gives the trades he is taking and his reasoning, almost as he takes them:
Well this is a thread I've been meaning to create for a long time. It's not a journal of my trades. It's just a collection of thoughts.
If you don't like them, then don't read them :) But the intention in posting to this thread …
You will not see order flow there, however. Mike is consistently successful and has been over the long haul. That may help to answer your question.
As he says, start reading at the end (current entries), not the beginning, because his trading ideas have changed radically over time. Note that no one can be successful by just copying another trader -- however, you can learn from another and it can help you in finding your own way.
Unfortunately for you, this is an Elite-member only thread. One of the many reasons to take the plunge and risk the hundred bucks for a (lifetime) elite membership. Just saying....
Or, you could sample the main spoos (S&P 500 futures) thread,
Both Fed Chairman Bernanke’s remarks yesterday and President Obama’s speech last night about his jobs plan; combined, failed to reassure the market that a solution to the country’s economic woes was at hand, and the …
. This is not Elite (yet). Start with a current post and follow along. Expect to be overwhelmed at first by the content and the differences of opinion; these are active traders showing their trades as they are doing them, and some are extremely successful.
I do agree with what someone wrote about, essentially, why are you creating all these threads.... jump into the resources that are available and learn from what people are putting out for you to share in, if you will just take advantage of them....
Good luck, but this is hard work. Try some of this and see.
This post has been pretty heavily edited to try and comply with futures.io (formerly BMT)'s vendor policy.
Your reaction is exactly the same as my initial reaction. Unfortunately his charts are cherry-picked and show no proper exit points. There is also no way to determine performance from those charts.
The OP wanted to know whether it is possible to make money using charts, and he and the other traders I mentioned all use charts and by all accounts are some of the better traders out there. All of these traders have had public trading records at some time and all of them outperformed the markets significantly during this time. The only one I struggle to find info on is O'Neil, but Jack Schwager regarded him as good enough for inclusion in Market Wizards.
Therefore, is it possible to make money using charts? I would say so, but it should be remembered that charts are only part of the equation and there is a lot more that is required for success.
I think it depends on what time frame you trade on. If you scalp, an understanding of order flow (conscious or not) is pretty much a must. If you trade longer time frames, it is helpful for getting the most out of entries and exits, but your overall focus must be price. A chart isn't necessary either way - it's only a means of visualizing historical data.