Over the years I have done a lot of research. I love trying to understand how things work. Here’s how I operate these days.
Updated July, 2019
After years of research and trying different thing, I ended up writing my own analysis/back testing software. Basically I create hundreds of strategies using StrategyQuant. Then I run them through MT4 backtester (automated) and log each trade. My software then slices and dices the test strategies and the top ones I will trade on a permanent demo account.
From there the top EAs I will then trade live. This works well. However, this has taken a long time. Years. Now I need to work the software!
The other interesting tool I bought is the TradeMiner PRO. You can buy it for stocks, commodities and FOREX. I mostly use it for stocks. What they do is look at historical EOD prices and calculate “If you have trader XYZ on this day during the past 10 years you would have been profitable XX % of the time if you held the stock for X days.” I have done some back-testing and it works pretty well.
I am a lifetime member of Nial Fuller’s Learn to Trade The Market course and daily/weekly trade analysis emails. He has a great basic concept of “clean charts”. How to look at price action only. Very interesting and works really well. I will discuss this in some detail later.
I also have my own custom made software (I am a programmer by trade) that imports EOD stock/commodity prices and performs an analysis seeking a reversal point. This has worked pretty well and I am tweaking this software to become a main filter for possible daily trade opportunity. The app produces a list of possible reversals with a score. I then take that list and look it up on the analyst pages. Then I pop up the charts and make a final trading decision based on the technical situation at that time. I might have 8-10 possibles every day, and trade 1 or 2. (Except this week when I chased my losing trade the idiot I am).
Bottom line: Combine the research from these and other available tools and information to make a high probability trade. Then look at the chart for your short list and make the trade.
Ingvar.