While it does carry over to other markets as well, when it comes to Forex trading in particular, the technical analysis we use here at No Nonsense Forex is unparalleled.

 

Below, I will explain why.

 

Warning: This is a long blog post, and does not give you any tools you can go out and use right now.  Feel free to abort now if this is what you were looking for.  No harm done.  Come back anytime.

 

The Way It Was

 

For the life of me, I still to this day cannot understand how and why technical analysis has refused to evolve the way literally everything else in this world has over the past fifty years.  It’s downright bizarre.

 

Even today, some of the brightest minds in finance will post a technical chart up on the screen from time to time, and it will be an absolute calamity.  If they only knew.

 

Spot Forex went “mainstream” I suppose in 1996, when traders now had the ability to trade over their home computers.  Naturally, technical analysis plays a large part in trading, so traders were eager to find ways to use charts and be able to plot charting tools to help them determine which way a currency pair was heading.

 

Which tools to use?  Well, most traders only knew of about 5-15 different options at the time.  These tools had been around for a very long time because the majority were created in the 1970s and 1980s for stock trading.

 

Little did anyone (literally anyone) know, there were many, MANY other options available.  Options created by skilled computer programmers, who were programming at exponential levels in terms of skill and experience compared to decades past.

 

Modern technology was out there, but nobody had the base minimum level of curiosity to discover it.

 

What’s even more appalling is how almost 25 years later, modern technology itself has multiplied in ways never before seen, yet the vast majority of technical traders are still blind to it.

 

Most of today’s technical traders are still only aware of the same 5-15 tools as before.

 

What?

 

It was crazy back in the early 2010’s.  I would wake up every day and feel like I was on some kind of paranormal TV show where only I could see the other 10,000 tools, like they weren’t actually there in real life.

 

Yet here we are, today, with all the technology we have in social media and in technical trading, and it’s no different than it was before.

 

I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone sometimes.

 

“I Think It’s Strange You Never Knew”

 

Even today, most traders have no idea these other tools exist.  No Nonsense Forex traders do of course, so it seems like that number should be higher, but we continue to be a drop in the bucket of traders worldwide.

 

On my Dirty Dozen video where I tell traders to avoid 12 of the most commonly used charting tools available, there is a question in the comments section I keep getting over and over.

 

“So what am I supposed to use then?”

 

I have to laugh.  The blindness is real.  So real, out of the 10,000+ tools available, I erase twelve of them, and these people have absolutely no other recourse.  They really do think there are none left remaining because I took them all away.

 

This is Forex education’s fault.  Day after day showing the same tired charts with the same 12-15 tools on them, to the point where our muscle memory sees this as the only available options after a while.

 

Hell, maybe I’m being too hard on the educators.  Maybe they didn’t know either.

 

It is funny to me though.  It’s like being thirty-years-old and not knowing there were more ice cream flavors available on this planet beyond vanilla and chocolate.  If you met somebody of that age who wasn’t aware of any other flavors, you would have lots of questions, I’m sure.  Yet this is the norm in Forex.

 

Failure To Adjust

 

Just how fast is it technology growing?  90% of the world’s data has been created in just the past two years.

 

Every industry on the planet has caught up, at least somewhat to all of this new technology.  They have no choice.  Their competition would take them down tomorrow if they did not.

 

Every industry of course, except for technical analysis.

 

To this day, I still cannot wrap my head around it.  Thousands of great technical indicators, many of which were developed in this millennium, go completely undiscovered by millions of traders who have been programmed and conditioned not to search them out somehow.

 

People are using rotary phones, on purpose.  And what’s more, they’re strangely proud of it!

 

 

It’s so prevalent, that many traders balk at the idea of doing anything else.  Like a child who spent their whole lives on a cult compound, they spew pre-packaged lines of defiance towards my channel and anyone who dares to seek out superior and modern options.

 

“You need to study price action”.

 

“Indicators are for lazy traders”.

 

“You’ll never know where the market is going with out support and resistance lines”.

 

NPCs, all out frolicking on holiday.  You can tell these people are parroting lines from other online instructors.  Not an original or curious bone in their bodies.

 

Look, most people in this world have a “Just tell me what to do” mentality.  One quick glance at the comments on my YouTube channel shows this all too well.  It’s as if a cut-and-paste approach was the key to unlocking success in a 3-6 trillion dollar a day market this whole time.

 

As a result of this crippling dumbassery, an online instructor or self-proclaimed guru simply tells them what to do, they go do it, and then they fail.  Over and over.

 

The crazy part however, is how despite this often instant failure, they will still defend these methods to the death.  They’ve already died on the hill they tried to defend — and their corpse still wants to argue.

 

But again, I get it.  I know why people are so resistant to try our way.

 

Sunk Cost

 

Trading with trend lines, fibonacci, support and resistance takes a lot of trial-and-error to finally settle on a method you can use over and over again.

 

And because there is so little certainty to the signals these tools give you, this whole trail-and-error process can take a very, very long time.

 

So after you’ve done all the frustrating legwork, frustrating because no matter how proficient you get with these tools, it’s never enough, you want me to shut it all down and dive into a sea of 10,000+ indicators?  No fucking way.

 

Again, I totally get it.  You will resist getting started in this new approach as hard as you can, coming up with any excuse you can think of.

 

You’ve sunk too much cost into an inferior way of trading, and you’re too scared to learn if this was in fact the case.  And let’s be honest, the results are already telling you this.  But you don’t want to let go.

 

To you, I don’t have much to say except for, “Just do it anyway”.

 

You owe it to yourself to discover the most optimal way to use technical analysis, regardless of how long it takes.

 

How awful would be to go through life knowing there were far more effective options available, but you purposely chose to ignore them and scoff at them out of your own sloth?

 

Starting over and doing things a completely different way is hard, and time-consuming, and you don’t have what it takes to do those things.

 

Thankfully, some people do.  And they’re the ones who made it.

 

“But The Pros Use These Tools”

 

Yes, they do.  No Nonsense Forex has only been around since 2018, most people who have found the material didn’t do so until 2019, and the vast, vast majority of traders out there still don’t know we exist.

 

Yet, there were still professional technical traders making money in their professions before 2018, and they continue to exist today, doing consistently well with things like support and resistance and the RSI.

 

The most popular forex technical trading sites on the internet, all still use some combination of the ancient tools of stock trading’s past.

 

And I’m going to sit here and tell you it’s inferior?  But it’s “worked” for so long!

 

Absolutely.  But you’re purposely not thinking this through.

 

It’s possible to still win with inferior tools.  I did a whole podcast on this, but I can sum it up right here.

 

We have established already how trading psychology is the #1 most important aspect of trading.

 

Money management was second.

 

Technical analysis was third.

 

I will guarantee you every real professional Forex trader who was ever to sustain a successful career for more than five years had top-level trading psychology and money management.  All of the professional traders I know have it locked down with the best of them.

 

What great technical analysis does is up our odds (another podcast ep), making our win rate higher, therefore making our results even better than we would with inferior tools or flipping coins.

 

But even without top level TA, it is certainly possible to prosper and have a long professional trading career based on your charts.  Possible, absolutely, there is living proof out there for sure.

 

But probable?  You’ve got to be kidding me.

 

Out of millions of people trading the markets, you could probably count the number of pros you are personally aware of on one hand, and the amount of pros using technical analysis as their primary guide on one finger.

 

Divide that into millions of active traders.  Does this seem probable to you?

 

Typical weak-ass, Naxalt Fallacy nonsense.

 

 

The percentage of pro traders in an ocean of non-pros is sooo slim.  You simply cannot afford to utilize every possible advantage you can.  And if you’re purposely avoiding 10,000+ other possibilities, you’re also purposely doing things in a sub-optimal way.

 

The chances of you going pro are small, but thanks to your inability to adjust, they have now gotten much, much smaller.

 

“But I Have Had Success With These Tools”

 

Have you really though?  Or are we lying to ourselves.

 

More importantly, how long did this “success” last?

 

There are really people out there who think I’m up here saying that every time you use a trend line to trade, you’re going to lose money.  And then they wonder why I don’t respond to their comment.

 

Moments where these tools work will certainly occur, sometimes often.  The number you’re really looking for is yearly ROI.  This long-term view really reveals the truth behind your success.

 

These “moments” of periodic success are dangerous to your bottom line, because they re-inject hope into your veins right as you’re about to give up on what is certainly a failed long-term approach.

 

Just like a deadbeat sports bettor who’s broke and owes a loan shark $30,000.  He will hit one 4-team parlay, win $1000, and use that as justification for why he should continue to be in the betting game.

 

Seriously, it’s no different.  Same diseased mentality.

 

And let’s say I’m wrong, and you actually do win with these tools.  I would sincerely say “congratulations” to you for defying nearly insurmountable odds.  You must certainly have top-level money management and trade psychology to pull this off.

 

But you could still do so much better.  You do know that, right?

 

Wouldn’t you want to do even better than you’ve been doing?

 

How could this answer be anything but a loud and enthusiastic “YES”?

 

But it’s not.  People who put in a lot of effort before when they learned about these older tools, seem to feel like they’re all done with the work and don’t want to put in any more of it.  I guarantee this is a main reason for so many people’s objections.

 

After all, why would you not want to improve what you have and get better?

 

NNFX traders realize that the work never stops, and improvement is a GOOD thing.

 

Certainty Matters

 

Apart from several of my YouTube videos, we have also debated price action vs indicators on the podcast as well.

 

One of the main things it really comes down to however, is how one side gives you a definitive signal to go long, go short, or do nothing — and the other side does not.

 

Unless you’re somebody who really over-thinks everything, there is no ambiguity to Forex indicators.  They clearly tell you to go long, go short, or do nothing.

 

There can be different ways to use a single indicator, but once you have chosen the method you want to abide by, it’s as clear and easy as it gets.

 

Support and resistance lines?  Not so much.

 

Even people who have been using support and resistance lines for years will still have a bit of lingering doubt every time they enter a trade.

 

“Is this a breakout or a reversal?”

 

“Am I on the right timeframe?”

 

“Is this line still valid even though it’s already been broken?”

 

“There seems to be a stronger line a bit higher up.  Should I wait for it instead?”

 

To an experienced price action trader, these questions may seem a bit silly, but believe you me — out of all the potential possibilities, you can bet your bottom dollar Forex Twitter is going to be right there, after the fact, showing off the one line that mattered.

 

And that line may have even been a trend line or a fib level instead!  Forex Twitter doesn’t care.  Once you have the luxury of hindsight, you can choose whichever line fits your narrative the best.

 

There is never a definitive trade when it comes to price action trading.

 

And that can be very frustrating.  We’ve spoken ad nauseum about how trading psychology is the #1 most important concept in all of trading.

 

There is no better way to add an extra dose of self-doubt to the equation, than to trade price action, and to never know if you indeed took the most optimal trade available.

 

To all the price action traders out there, I’m not trying to make it look like you have 16 lines to pick from at any given time, and you have no idea which one to choose.  Many of you are far more skilled than this.

 

What I am saying is that at any given time, there are multiple approaches available on the board, one of them will likely be the best option, and it’s tough to know which one it’s going to be.  Not a lot of certainty there.

 

You just have to give it your best educated guess.  And “giving it your best educated guess” is not a winning strategy, in any arena.

 

Indicators Are Easy To Test

 

Management guru Peter Drucker said it best.  “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”.

 

This is not good news for price action traders.

 

Could you imagine trying to backtest a support and resistance strategy?  What a mess!  You could maybe try to automate it, but achieving accurate results there would be even more difficult.

 

Chart patterns and such are a bit easier, but can yield very few signals and be a lot more difficult to see after they have already developed, increasing the margin of error.  They’re not even all that accurate anyway as we’ve discussed before.

 

And trend lines, forget it.  Especially considering how there is no consistency whatsoever as to how they are drawn.

 

When you have clear and defined signals like you do with indicators, testing is a breeze.  Signals are very easy to locate, and once you have your money management parameters plugged in, you know exactly what to do, and know exactly if that trade was a winner or not.

 

Simple, accurate testing.  Testing which most importantly, can be improved upon over time.

 

Sir, Your Boner Is In The Way

 

I don’t think we need to spend any more time on price action.  If you still feel like prehistoric tools are the way to go in a market full of modern technology readily available to you, you and I are just not the same.

 

I hope you achieve your dreams someday.  Keep chasing that dragon!

 

On to the indicators themselves.  Now we have a whole new debate going on, and it’s every bit as bone-headed as the price action debate, and I would argue even moreso.

 

How many indicators are available to everyone with an internet connection and a laptop?  More than 10,000.

 

How many indicators do most non-NNFX traders know about?  Let’s count them.

 

RSI

CCI

Stochastics

Ichimoku

SMA/EMA

Bollinger Bands

Parabolic SAR

 

That’s probably about it.

 

Most traders aren’t even aware of the majority of indicators which come standard on MT4.  They simply have no desire to know about them.  This list is about it.  And me adding Parabolic SAR may have been stretching it.

 

Indicators are easy to fall in love with.  They take the painful guesswork out of trading, you can (usually) adjust them to your liking, and this can give traders their own identities.

 

That last part was important, especially for male traders, and I think this accurately explains why people get a lot more mad at me when I trash certain indicators compared to my videos on price action tools.  As silly as it may sound, people take their indicators very personally.

 

Often at times, male traders who in the past have felt how they have had low status or no true identity their entire lives, now have something to finally hang their hats on when they discover how to use a particular indicator.  It’s a really big deal.  Egos are particularly enormous in Forex trading.  I should know.

 

Traders will not only attach themselves to this identity, they will spend hours upon hours going as deep as they can into all of the little intricacies their favorite indicator can provide.

 

Problem is, they’re going deep on inferior tools.  It was a waste of time, and the last thing they want is somebody like me coming in and exposing this.  The reactions will not be kind.

 

Imagine thinking those listed indicators were your only choices — then wasting all that time on them.  This is the norm, believe it or not.

 

As we mentioned before, all of the previously listed indicators were developed way before spot Forex became a mainstream thing in 1996.

 

And instead of advancing with the times like literally everything else does — somebody thought it was a good idea to carry these dinosaurs over to the modern trading world.

 

 

Realizing there was a whole new, modern world out there this whole time, and you have spent the last five years of your life missing out on it and squandering all of your time learning how to use an abacus is a real kick in the balls.  I get it.

 

But you need to shake it off and step into this century.  Or even the most novice of traders are going to start passing you up tomorrow.  No time for ego here.  No time for petty arguments either.

 

Oh but the petty arguments will come.  If you have never seen me address these before, allow me to do it right now, for the purposes of linking this blog post to anyone in the future who wants to argue minutiae with a guy who doesn’t feel the need to argue back.

 

And I really don’t care, everyone has opinions, but what I’m trying to avoid is to have a newbie trader come in and see these half-baked arguments and actually think they have any bearing whatsoever, because they don’t.

 

The Boofus Files

 

Any time I do a video or podcast on a concept which I think is an ultimate failure, there is resistance.

 

You’ve gotta remember, up until NNFX came around, many of these old, inferior tools were being called out by absolutely nobody.  So bizarre.

 

As much as I don’t engage with YouTube commenters, I actually would from time to time if these counter-arguments had some real validity to them.  But they don’t.

 

You may have some of these arguments floating around in your head as well.  Over the years of doing this, I’ve had the chance to see a lot of them.  Let’s go ahead and address the most common ones now.

 

I wrangle all of these arguments up into one, and have created a character over time who embodies these objections quite well I think.  I have named him Boofus, and he has made a number of appearances on my channel and blog.

 

Boofus is nowhere near as popular as NNFX regulars Marco and Frida, I’m probably the only one who gets a kick out of him, but he’s essential to understanding where this channel is coming from in regards to my dismissal of many of the most popular Forex trading tools.

 

 

Let’s knock out four of the most major objections I get.

 

1 – “You’re not using it the right way”

 

First off, I’m going to stop you right there.  There is no definitive “right” and “wrong” ways to use trading tools.

 

There are certainly optimal and sub-optimal ways, but those are, and will forever be up for debate.  So stop speaking in absolutes.  As steadfast as I am in my opinions, at the end of the day, they’re still no more than mere opinions.

 

Second, I’m a content creator.  When researching how people use these tools, I need to focus on the most common way they are being used, and address that.  I will not needle-pick every single method I can think of when it comes to something like support and resistance lines for example.

 

I will do my best to state the fundamental flaws, then move on.  Elimination is one of the main focuses on my channel, and I do my best to get these concepts out there so you can see them for what they are in a traditional sense, and prepare to move on to something better.

 

Looking at YouTube, Twitter, and IG, you can easily see how most people are approaching a certain technical tool.  It’s not hard.  The most common usage is usually very, very common.  Like 95%+ territory.

 

But people get maaaad.

 

“You’re not supposed to use S&R as lines, but as zones, stupid!”

 

Funny that, because most people don’t use it that way.  And how big should these zones be?  Do they vary per currency pair?  Do they vary based on volatility?  They should, but I’ll bet on your chart they don’t.

 

“You neglected to mention how you can use the RSI as a trend indicator when it passes the 50 line.”

 

Yeah, and that was on purpose.  Very few people use it that way, and there are way better zero/midline cross indicators out there.

 

Look Boofus, I’m sorry I neglected to address your super special way of using trend lines on my video.  I value other people’s time too much I suppose.  It’s not always about you.

 

Above all this, my main counter-argument to this logic, or lack thereof, has yet to be spoken about.  I’m going to save it until the end.  But moving on….

 

2 – “You always tell us what NOT to use, instead of telling us what TO use”

 

I don’t have any time or patience for shit like this.  People who say things like that have watched three out of 165 videos, and now think they know exactly what my channel is about.  You see variations of this all the time.

 

If that wasn’t dumb enough, they’ve exposed themselves as the type of people who are just sitting there like a baby bird waiting for me to spit something into their mouths.  Losers, and proud of it.

 

Next.

 

3 – “You just haven’t gone deep enough into it.  That’s your biggest problem.”

 

First off, as I said before, almost nobody goes deep into the CCI indicator for chrissakes, and my videos are for the majority of traders — not the tiny minority of people who do things like read books about the CCI.

 

Second, if you only thought 7 indicators existed, going deep on one of them wouldn’t be a terrible idea.

 

If you were aware of the fact there are over 10,000 however — going deep on any of them would be a pretty big waste of time.

 

But this argument does come.  “VP, if you would have taken the time to read this book written back in 1983, you would see….”

 

I would see a book written about an old indicator created for stock trading.  I’m not interested, and neither are most modern-day traders.

 

Guys, I get the frustration.  People think I’m misguiding others by not being a completionist and spending hours tackling every possible angle on these tools.

 

Then again, my channel is pretty darn successful, as are many of the people who follow it, so I’m going to say my approach was likely the correct one.

 

4 – “I’m doing really well with <insert old trading tool here>”

 

There are days when I see comments like this, and I immediately want to reply with, “Way to go!  Everybody cheer for <whatever his screen name is>!”

 

And then have 20 people reply with “Yaaaaaayyyyy!”

 

So I have three rebuttals to this.

 

First off, I’m going to play the odds and say you’re not doing THAT well with it.  People who do really well in Forex trading are rarely compelled to go and shitpost on other people’s channels.  It’s just not in their DNA.

 

Second, if this were actually true, then great!  You have defied the odds.

 

……you would have still done better with superior tools though.  There’s still time.

 

Third, let us not forget this:

 

 

Then there are the people who say they “know of” somebody who makes millions using these tools, or something to the effect of “the pros make millions with these tools, who are you to tell us not to use them?”

 

By now you should know the answer, but I would certainly question the part about you “knowing a guy” making millions.  Does he also have a signal service?  It was a lucky guess.

 

Regardless of these foolish little nitpicks, my main response to all of this is pretty straight-forward.

 

The Smoking Gun

 

If you think by now I have exhausted my ability to go on and on about this stuff, think again.  But it’s time to wrap all of this up in a nice little bow.

 

Regardless of your stance on old tools vs new ones, you simply do not have a valid argument against the NNFX approach to technical analysis until you have fairly tested both methods out to see which one gives you the best results.

 

Saying one thing works better than the other, even though you’ve only tried one of them, is all kinds of ridiculous.

 

I have a childhood friend back where I grew up who never wants to go anywhere or do anything.  Years ago, I invited him to come out west so we could drive to California and spend the week there.

 

His response was “I don’t like the people in California.  Too fake.”

 

My response was “But you’ve never been.  How would you know?”

 

Most Californians I meet are intellectually curious, vibrant, outgoing, awesome people despite the goofy stereotypes, and I think my friend would agree.  But he’ll never get to find out.  Seriously, that guy is going to have a lot of regrets on his deathbed when the time comes.  He’s been to a total of 3 US states and 0 foreign countries.

 

Just like my friend, the people who want to poo-poo something they’ve never experienced themselves are either too lazy or scared to try anything new, and this is a mistake you just cannot afford to make.

 

If you don’t like this method, or you don’t like me, or you have felt like you’ve sunk way too much time and effort into what you have, just understand one thing.

 

The penalty for not testing one against the other is a lifetime knowing that the right answer was probably out there, but you somehow couldn’t allow yourself to at least try it.

 

I do get the occasional “I tried it and it didn’t work” comment from a guy who only found the channel three months prior.  So funny.  Three months isn’t even enough to do a proper forward test on one algorithm, much less the research time involved prior.

 

And this is why the naysayers don’t bother me.  I know I’m dealing with people who lack the base level ambition to try both, and the bone-headedness to tell me one is better than the other, even though they’ve clearly only done things one way their whole lives.  These people are not worth my time nor anyone else’s.

 

I just don’t want people new to the channel to think this reasoning is valid, so I have to step in sometimes.  Newer traders are very impressionable.

 

As they progress through the material, they’ll learn all of this on their own, I just want to make sure these silly objections don’t prevent them from doing so.  A lot of times people are timid when it comes to trying new things, and are just looking for a way out.

 

Well, What Is This Method You Speak Of?

 

Sooooo, you want me to explain it in one paragraph or something?  It’s not that simple.  This is a 3-6 trillion dollar a day market don’t forget.  The process cannot be written on a dinner napkin.

 

Just go to this site’s homepage and do what it says if you’re interested.

 

It requires you to search out your own indicators, put them together, and do a lot of testing to determine the best entries and exits.

 

We also spend more time on money management and trade psychology than any other site does as well, since those concepts are even more important to your success.

 

Putting it all together is where the magic happens.  But a lot of this isn’t even a possibility until I get some of the old toxic sludge out of your thinking first, hence the need for the negative stuff.

 

But be ready to put in some time.  If this is too big of an ask, then you’re probably better off not trading this market at all.  Seriously, the ones who put in the work, and put it in the right places, are the ones who get to defy the odds and make a living out of this.

 

Conclusion

 

Damn, I didn’t even talk about the daily chart and how great that is!  But I’ve written plenty about it in the past, and no need to write more at this point.

 

Thanks for reading this long-ass blog post.  Many of you already know our stance on these concepts already.  It’s never a bad thing to reaffirm them from time to time.

 

I was cocky about my technical analysis before I started No Nonsense Forex, and I have only gotten cockier as I’ve seen so many of you discover this new and highly advantageous way to charting, and are using it to live out your Forex dreams.

 

We up our odds here.  We understand the supreme importance of money management and trading psychology, but we bolster it with technical analysis which takes advantage of modern technology, gives us definitive signals, and a system we can thoroughly test before we use it in real time.

 

If you have a problem with it, don’t worry — we already know why.

 

 

— VP