do candle and bar charts provide too much information

forker

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i thought i would start a different kind of discussion, something that perhaps hasn't been debated or thought about. Can OHLC type charts distort or mislead traders into a false outcome. For clarity let me make it clear i am not talking about bar patterns such as pin bars or engulfing .etc I am talking about each data point in each bar in these charts (open, high, low, close). To get the discussion rolling let me kick off with saying that i think a trader can have a clearer view of the market with a simple line chart based on the close.
 
I mostly use ohlc because i am just looking for price patterns so candlesticks really dont matter to me. I just use price and volume.
 
Interesting question. It depends how easily the analyst can filter out stuff that is not important depending on how he trades.

I use a daily chart to determine the trend, banging down a couple of trendlines as appropriate. I like to see candlesticks at that point. Makes it easier to draw TLs, I find.

To enter, this is what I look at:


Zoom out of M5 until you cannot make out the candles.
 
Actually, that's not very impressive, is it? It doesn't look very clever or professional.

Here we go:


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i don't think they do... high low close open is only 4 figures, hell a simple balance sheet contains like 40 items.

if your with CMC you can set chart to "invisible" and trade without seeing any price info :p (my EMAS look cooler on invisible charts)
 
I don't think they do either. Lot of times when you back test based off OHLC for several bars, you may be able to track down some significant patterns. For is example, on Thursdays at the open of the Australian Forex market. When the close is greater than the open, you will find that the EurUsd will close lower on the next hourly bar approximately 70% of the time. So, from my perspective and in what I just said. There are two applications for having this information.

1. To back test and find strategies
2. Once you have discovered a potential strategy, you would need OHLC information in order to execute it.

I am only a Forex trader right now, but someday I hope to get into futures.

anyway, that's my two cents.

Cheers!
 
I can understand why many of you feel this isn't the case. Perhaps through experience and perhaps by cause of inexperience. I too used to believe that those additional data points provide a wealth of information. However, about 3 months ago I was partaking in my usual play sessions that rarely, but have historically, yielded profitable strategies. I accidentally clicked the line chart button that is based on the close.

Some background about my trading:
I only trade off S&R and my charts are very bare. I have a handful of setups that I found though many years of failure. Perhaps by chance I noticed something when I clicked that line chart button. For one thing I noticed that the simplified chart are even more clear and setups easier to spot. All i can say is that I have since enjoyed higher quality trades and fewer losers.
 
Problem with line charts is you don't see the range of movement, which is what I want to see. :)
 
Yes and I do flip between them for that very reason although only to confirm a setup. I find they provide better clarity for S&R. I have also found that when bar\candle charts show a congestion range for example a 100 points, a line chart shows more clearly the balance between the buy and sell side and the breakout probabilities. I am not by my pc now but I'll post a few examples of this.
 
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