I believe self imposed trading rule-sets and methodology are very much personality dependent and that there is no generic one size fits all. Trying to emulate someone else is often just smashing a square peg into a round hole.
While I hate definitions, in this case it is likely important as it ‘frames’ the rule-set.
I started out as a scalp* trader on a 5 minute chart in a bear market (which should likely be considered a form of masochism). I never ventured anywhere near the longer time frames, I had this puritan belief that 5 minute scalping was the only path and having cut my teeth here I was loathed to stray from what I knew (that the violence of the shorter time frames can become a comfort zone is quite weird)
*literally it was the word ‘scalp’ that appealed to me. With an inflated sense of self, a (not always metaphorical) tomahawk in hand, this trading ideology was going to be my tactic come hell or high water. (of course this meant I got wrapped up my in my own dogma and ended up not being able to see the forest for the trees…)
I consider myself more of a (well rounded) trader now, in so far as these sorts of wordy explanations matter. I now appreciate the longer time frames and my trades now vary from the infinitesimally short to (occasionally) multiple days in duration. My workspace however is still very boring. (I think on the shorter time frames oscillators are a mostly a waste of time) I use Bollinger bands, a 20 period moving average and at the bottom of the screen I have the MACD (with the default (12, 26, 9) settings. Yawn.
