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Analysis paralysis

Being unable to act because too many indicators, timeframes, or opinions produce conflicting signals.

More information does not mean more clarity. Twelve indicators will always disagree, and waiting for all of them to agree means never trading, or trading only after the move is over.

A trading-plan with a small number of criteria and a single timeframe for decisions is the fix. confluence is useful; consensus among everything is impossible.

Example: a trader watches a setup on the 5-minute chart, checks the hourly, the daily, RSI, MACD, and three social feeds, and enters 40 minutes after the original signal at a worse price with a wider stop.

Related: trading-plan, confluence, timeframe, overtrading

See it drawn

Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.

One daily candle broken into four six-hour candlesA tall daily candle on the left and the four six-hour candles that make it up on the right, with dashed lines linking the day's open to the first candle and the day's close to the last.ONE DAILY CANDLEFOUR 6-HOUR CANDLEScloseopenhighlow=00:0006:0012:0018:00one dayThe same trading, summed up in one bar or spelled out in four.
How timeframes stack up. A daily candle is not different data, only coarser data: it opens where the first six-hour candle opened, closes where the last one closed, and its wicks reach the highest and lowest prices any of the four touched.

Educational only, not advice. Spotted an error? Post in Site Feedback.