Day trading or swing trading isn’t about charts. It’s not the charts that make profitable traders; it’s risk management and the ability to forecast price trends and movements in stocks accurately.
With that said, charts are the most effective tool for carrying out these two essential skills.
All profitable trading strategies take advantage of predictable human psychology. Whether they know it or not, successful traders are full-time practitioners of behavioral finance.
Stock charts happen to be the most efficient way to plot the market’s irrational trading behavior in real-time.
And of course, without proper risk management, even the most skilled traders will go broke. Some traders, to their detriment, use static stop loss levels to manage their risk. This means they will use the same 1% stop loss on each day trade they take, instead of managing their risk dynamically, based on established price levels and volatility.