Whoa!
Charts have a voice if you learn to listen.
I said that out loud the first time I caught a divergence on a five-minute BTC chart and then sold too early (ugh).
My instinct said the move would continue, and honestly, sometimes it does—sometimes it doesn’t.
On one hand the pattern looked textbook; on the other hand the market was thin and news-driven, which is a messy combination that will teach you more than a month of quiet tape ever will.

Seriously?
Okay, so check this out—there’s a practical split between what I teach traders and what people want to hear.
Most guides obsess over fancy indicators.
But here’s what bugs me about that approach: indicators lag, and if you rely on them like scripture you’ll miss the nuance (and lose capital).
Initially I thought indicators would solve the guesswork, but then I realized price structure and volume often tell you earlier and cleaner signals.

Hmm…
Setups matter more than signals.
I build templates for crypto, for stocks, and for fast-moving intraday markets.
Each template has a hierarchy: price action first, volume profile second, and then the indicators I actually use to confirm bias—MACD for trend confirmation, RSI for divergence, VWAP for intraday reference (yes, VWAP still matters).
If you’re in the US and you trade earnings or weekend crypto moves, that hierarchy saves you from a lot of noise.

Wow!
Multi-timeframe context is a cheat code.
Look at the daily and the 1H before you pull the trigger on the 5m; that simple habit reduces false breakouts.
I used to ignore higher timeframes and then got run over by a macro swing; lesson learned the hard way.
Now I always sketch the broader trend first, even when I’m scalping, because the dominant timeframe biases the shorter ones.

Really?
Order flow and liquidity are under-discussed.
You can stare at candles forever and miss that whales are stacking bids just above the major support, which clues you in on where stops will run.
I’m biased, but Level II and DOM (or at least a good footprint/volume profile view) are tools most retail traders sleep on—people trade on price alone and wonder why somethin‘ abrupt happens.
If you can see where volume clusters are, you get fewer nasty surprises.

Here’s the thing.
Alerts are not set-and-forget.
I create context-aware alerts (price + volume conditions) and pair them with screenshots or quick notes so the alert is actionable.
An alert that says only „BTC $40k“ is useless; an alert that says „BTC touches weekly VWAP with rising volume“ is something I’ll act on.
Actually, wait—let me rephrase that: alerts should reduce cognitive load, not add to it, so be picky.

Check this out—

—and then come back to the setup.
Charting platforms matter.
I’ve used multiple tools (desktop apps, web services, broker charts).
TradingView is the one I recommend to a lot of people for its ecosystem of scripts and fast sharing features; if you want to download or try what I use, grab it here: https://sites.google.com/download-macos-windows.com/tradingview-download/.
That link has saved me time when I needed a clean install on a new machine—no, really, it’s convenient.

Hmm…
Templates should be opinionated.
I maintain three: Trend (swing focus), Momentum (short-term scalps), and Macro (position sizing and risk overlays).
Each template loads a specific set of indicators and visual guides, which reduces decision fatigue during fast markets.
On the Macro template I deliberately hide RSI oscillators to avoid over-trading, because sometimes less information equals better trades.
There’s a psychology layer to template design that traders under-appreciate.

Whoa!
Risk management is boring but non-negotiable.
Position sizing, stop placement, and the math of expectancy matter more than guessing the top.
I use a risk slider (0.5–2% typical) and I plan exits before I enter; that’s the practical piece that keeps compounding working in your favor.
On a related note, I still get sloppy when I’m tired—so I limit my trading hours and I put rules around weekend exposure (news kills overnight gaps sometimes, though actually it depends on the asset).

Really?
Journal like your account depends on it—because it does.
I log setups with screenshots, timeframe context, and a sentence about my feeling—“fear“, „greedy“, „calm“, whatever.
My working hypothesis evolved: patterns repeat, but your execution doesn’t unless you train it, which is where journaling helps.
I’m not 100% perfect; my journal is messy and sometimes I skip days, but the habit of reviewing mistakes is what turned small consistent wins into real edge.

Practical Tricks and Shortcuts

Wow!
Use keyboard shortcuts.
They save seconds, and seconds compound into better exits.
Build a quick list: toggle indicators, switch timeframes, place orders, and take a screenshot—all mapped to keys you can hit without thinking.
My slower self still loses trades because fingers hesitated; it helped a lot to drill shortcuts until they were reflexive.

Here’s what bugs me about overfitting indicators: too many lines = too many stories.
Keep visuals minimal and purposeful.
I prefer one volume tool, one trend tool, and clear horizontal levels; if the chart looks like a stained-glass window at first glance, simplify.
On the flip side, don’t strip too much—context matters, and sometimes a less-clean chart has the clues you need.