Hi @SunTrader and @glennts,

Both sides of the moving average discussion/debate/disagreement can be interesting, and it is certainly worth pursuing. Just not here.

It is off topic here in this thread if it goes on too long, and in any event, things are starting to heat up a little more than they ought to on both sides of the question.

Please tone it down and show appropriate regard for other members and for forum rules regarding civility. Any disparaging remarks are going to end up being deleted as a moderator action.

If, for instance, you use a given timeframe because you think its moving average tells you something you need to know, that is relevant because it's part of why you use that timeframe. If you don't use moving averages, that is fine too, for the same reason. If you get into an argument, either way, about whether moving averages are any good, you're starting to veer off-track. If it gets personal, it oversteps a line.

Please keep it on-topic and respectful.

Thanks.

Bob.

I use 1min for intraday. I'd like to try tick charts but tradingview doesn't have em.

IMO, your bar size (aka time frame or volume or range setting) should be based on what your active/dominant scale is for whatever session you're trading. IOW, whatever bar size makes a chart that has enough amplitude for you to trade, not too much and not too little, you just pick the most optimal bar size you can. There's an active scale of what most of the volume is trading, and then there's your scale of what amount of amplitude you trade. They may be the same or different.

IMO, I abhor time charts because time is irrelevant to how price moves. Volume or tick charts are much better than time, but I still don't like those because price can move on high or low volume. Volume is a sneaky thing in that regard, so IMO it's not really as useful as most people seem to think.

Price-based charts are my favorite, and I believe are the only true mathematically/logically correct way to plot data. By "price-based" I mean range charts, renko charts, and point & figure charts. All three of those are basically the same thing, albeit with differing amounts of bars. They're all based on a reversal amount which determines when to make a new bar, which IMO is the best way to plot data.

All software as far as I can tell has coded renko charts wrong... for the most part it's correct, but at every reversal/swing/pivot it may be a little bit off. It should give you the exact same swings/pivots as a range chart of the same exact reversal amount. But it doesn't because it's coded wrong, because the software companies don't understand how data analysis works. So, for myself, I just use range charts because they're 100% accurate. Some software starts the range bar at the closing price of the prior range bar, and some software starts one tick further away... but that's okay, it just varies the amount of bars on the chart, but the swings/pivots will all still be 99.9% identical.

BTW, I think tick charts are a silly concept -- why would you care about how many transactions went into a bar? Do you care about the small retail traders -- no. You care about the big traders because they have the majority of volume and they're the ones that move the market/price. It's the volume that matters, so volume charts makes more sense than tick charts. BUT, it just so happens, since the big players use relatively small volume transactions most of the time, that tick charts ends up about the same as an equivalent volume chart. But it's just kind of silly that noone seems to understand that a volume chart is actually what they're trying to accomplish with their tick charts.

BTW, if you like drawing trendlines, I'd suggest using point & figure charts for that, because the less bars you have per swing/pivot, the more accurate your trendlines will be. But this is another discussion lol... it's a discussion about how everyone is actually drawing trendlines wrong... it's a sneaky thing about how graphs/data and scales work.

In all my years of trading, and posting online (both 20+) I'd have to say unscientifically of course most traders say they don't like time charts.

If that is the case (?), I'm glad I am in the minority.

Daily makes sense to me.

I have daily weekly and 30 minutes on my screen.

Charts are pretty crappy tools in general, but at least you can take in a lot of stuff with a glance.

NO one mentioned trading on Orderflow, Marketprofile, Volumeprofile, DOM. Sometimes i think these offered tools are more vodoo than useful.

I trade on 5m chart. I don’t like charts weighing on my mind for weeks on ends, and personally prefer to take quick regular profits (and recently, mostly losses too).
I recently held a losing trade due to a bad decision for 3 nights straight and couldn’t sleep properly.

That said I’ve found the old adage that daily responds better to chatting to be accurate and all my best trades have occurred on it, but that’s another story.

It´s really frustating watching NQ´s 30 min chart from 01. February to 03. February. The NQ made 858 points without a real setback !
Holding NQ over night would have been a gain of $ 17,160. In hindsight it´s easy to say why haven´t i bought one contract? But who has the nerves and is so cool holding NQ for two days over night? The risk is immense.

Antares66 

It´s really frustating watching NQ´s 30 min chart from 01. February to 03. February. The NQ made 858 points without a real setback ! But who has the nerves and is so cool holding NQ for two days over night? The risk is immense.

Never ever I'd go for this kind of trades, NQ can (and will!) be a killer market (especially for your account!).

I'm very happy with my tiny but consistent profits every single day which usually can 'easily' be achieved in less than one minute per trade, and mostly within only a few seconds.

I'm trading NQ for almost 10 years now, and I've learned my lessons the hard way....so just take what the market offers to you and run.

Just my $0.002.

Daytrader999 

Never ever I'd go for this kind of trades, NQ can (and will!) be a killer market (especially for your account!). I'm very happy with my tiny but consistent profits every single day which usually can 'easy' be achieved in less than one minute per trade, and mostly within only a few seconds. I'm trading NQ for almost 10 years now, and I learned my lessons the hard way....so just take what the market offers to you. Just my $0.002.

Thank´s for your advice. Although being experienced in stock trading i´m a greenhorn in trading futures. I own a motivewave order flow edition but with IB´s datafeed tick charts aren´t possible. I also tested Quantower and Sierra but i´m not quite sure which one will be my future trading platform in the future. I have access to Thinkorswim which offers tickcharts and renko for the last three days. I would like to use renko charts, maybe order flow tools, but for that i must have an additional datafeed. I could connect motivewave to IQ but this is quite expensive. Sierra with denali would be an alternative, or Ninja with kinetick.
Why do you prefer Ninja and what are your prefered tools? Hope i´m not too curious At this time i´m trading MNQ to get a feeling for the future market and to reduce risk.
Schöne Grüße