How do you read technical indicators and oscillators?

Trend indicators offer traders like me valuable insights into price movements. Moving averages, dynamic guides, smooth out fluctuations, unveiling trend directions through comparisons. Trend lines, bridging price highs and lows, visually depict trend strength and shifts. Channels, like railway tracks, enclose price swings, revealing boundaries and movement dynamics. These indicators serve as compasses in the market's complexity, aiding in identifying trends, anticipating shifts, and making informed decisions. Through them, I've gained confidence in navigating the ever-changing market landscape.

The most simpliest indicator is the moving average for a certain period e.g 20 days, 50 days or 200 days. The movibg averages follow the development of prices but it takes some time. Often also the crossing of moving averages of differnt periods could be a sign. In day-trading you coukd use e.g 1 minute vs. 5 minute moving averages and buy if 1 minute crosses 5 minutes upwards and sell vice versa. The disadvantage of trend indicators is in range markets or if the is no movement at all - then you loose with such a system money. A help could be other trend indicators like ADX or chart analysis or sentimental analysis to give an orientation if there exists a trend market or a range market. A look to volatility could also help sometimes.

Momentum indicators enrich my trading insights, decoding price dynamics. Tools like the RSI, on a 0-100 scale, spotlight market conditions—overbought or oversold—shielding from pitfalls. The stochastic oscillator, oscillating between 0-100, gauges price within a range, guiding trend anticipation. The MACD, with dual lines, unveils momentum through moving averages, aiding trend shifts prediction. These indicators, my allies, decode market subtleties. Reading RSI, using the stochastic oscillator, and understanding MACD, I've mastered momentum assessment, navigating market currents.

Volatility is usually backwards looking and hence does, in my opinion, contain little information about the future. The short end of the volatility term structure reacts more quickly and violently to changes in observed volatility, while the long end is more anchored, moves more slowly and will less amplitude. In the long run, volatility is mean-reversing, which can offer interesting trading opportunities.

Volatility could be a good part of a trading but you should it not use alone but in combination with sentimental or chart analysis. Generally volatility could be used as a counter indicator. In bull markets volatility often is low and is getting lower as stock prices are climbing on a wall of fear. If sentiment is vefy bullish or greedy, this coukd be a sign to sell or short sell assets. In bear markets it is often vice versa with increasing and high volatility indicating fear and bearish sentiment indicating panic anfüd that everyone sells - then you should buy or cover your short sellings. Also using options you should always have a look to volatility, because with liw volatililty options are cheaper than with high volatility.

If I have learned something during my career regarding the use of technical analyses and its variety of different indicators providing "signals" it is whenever possible to "validate" them with the strenght of that signal aka the volume traded.

Finding the right balance or choice between trend and mean reversion is probably the essence of technical analysis. The time horizon plays a crucial role. A general framework could be that valuations are mean reverting over several years, prices are trending over 6-12 months and fluctuate (=mean revert) over 1-2 months. But different setups are possible, e.g. for intraday traders. The ideal setup is highly dependent on the personal preferences and objectives.

Some ideas: - Write about potential limitations because no tool is foolproof, and being aware of potential pitfalls can help traders use them more effectively. - Add further resources because it's a broad topic that's summarized here