I got some enquiries about my post #10, yesterday. What new traders have to decide is whether you want to trade short term or long. How many hours you are willing to trade per session. What timeframe you like. We are all different in character and have our favourite methods.
There are a lot of threads here by many good posters, many of whom advocate the use of indicators. I use averages to give me an idea of how the price is trending and whether the price is overbought or sold in relation to the average that I use. I also use a Bollinger band for that. But I have, for a long time, come to the conclusion that indicators, the ones that are underneath the chart, are of no use to me. They are late in their signals because they are based on averages. Therefore, you might as well use the averages, themselves. Nevertheless, I use these averages only for trend direction and I work, mainly, on the price bars and the patterns that come out of them, i.e.pullbacks and the breakouts.
The most successful traders do not let a trade run into a serious loss. More money is lost that way because new traders say "I'll just give it another couple of points". Not everyone agrees with me about my stops. I keep them tight. This morning, for instance I lost 10 points on the first trade and made 20 on the second. Not a great session but I netted 10 because I refused to lose more than 10 points on the first trade, so I have more in my account for tomorrow and yesterday's very good trading session was not spoiled by losing today. The other piece of advice I would give is to try not to spot the turn of a new trend. It is far more constructive to allow the trend to take place and wait for a pullback, then trade the continuing breakout.
Read threads by BSD , Mr Charts and others. The Dentist gives excellent point and figure charts. Be consistent in what you do. Don't get fed up too quickly and try something new before the method that you are using has been disproved.
There is so much to learn and I am not a great teacher. Others write better explanations than I but if you look me up around the threads I will always try to help out.
Good luck.