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Price Action

How to Trade Without Any Indicators

Trading without indicators means working from a bare chart with things drawn and measured by hand: levels, trend lines, boxes and the crosshair. This paper shows you the four hand tools that take the place of indicators, a real chart worked on with them, the numbers a bare chart gives read straight off the candles, the same level on a closer timeframe, and the drawing toolbar that holds the whole kit on your platform.

Difficulty
Advanced
Reading time
5 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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What takes their place

Trading without indicators does not mean trading with nothing. Four things take their place, all drawn or measured by hand from the bars. A horizontal line at a high or low the price stopped at — a level. A trend line through two swing lows or highs. A box over a pause or a base. And the crosshair, for measuring a range or a distance in pips — a pip being the fourth decimal place, the smallest step most people count in. None of them has a formula; each is the price, marked.

A chart worked on by hand

Here is a real chart worked on that way, with only hand-drawn things on it. A horizontal line at the 27 January 2025 high. A trend line through the lows of 13 January and 28 February. A box over the three-day pause of 6 to 10 March. The candles — one per day — do the rest: on 4 March one closed above the level, and the days after the pause climbed on. Everything on the picture was put there by looking at where the price had stopped and turned.

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