no disrespect to the OP.....
2c worth on this
theory threads always interest me mostly cause theyre about confidence, mostly m/a's and similar ideas are about confidence to take transactions and with less work, a kinda short-cut.......they tend to say upfront, i dont know what's going on so i'll use something external to price, afterall, all the information you need is always going to exist in price, price doesnt lag anything, doesnt present itself in guise unless the traders at that time decide to trade to set-up a scene for the weaker trader or to attract stronger trade flow in their direction and sometimes trade is just flowing......you can call all those things; volatility, consolidation and trend.....
think about this; if you use a m/a or a m/a xover to enter and then refer to the price bars and then use the same or different m/a to exit what was the point in looking at the bars in between? then, inversely, you could simply use the bars to enter and to exit, , the extraneous nature of m/a's is aloof to the information within the bars because theyre historic......and we know that m/a's get proven in hindsight because of the changing game in price even if the instrument is the same, new liquidity (sell or buy) changes the personality of pricing leading to statistical black spots which is another reason traders attempt to box price discovery with an ideal m/a or m/a xover to get less triggers and smoother results and what they get is a watered down version of business.... business is limited to (and eroded by) looking adrift to a m/a and not finding the cause of price movement
there's nothing wrong with using m/a xovers as such if youre willing to settle for much less of a positive result and you are prepared to be totally disciplined to the message within the regime of m/a's......it's a lot of hard work for lesser results........youre also giving permission to extraneous stuff to distract from what's really going on in the price.....m/a's do not ask you to think of who is present in the trade as it is happening and serve to leave feeling educated and confident you can be hit with minimal downside and abundant upside - that is, until they dont and then the trader goes full circle figuring out which m/a's are going to work in which phase of play and to know which phase of play you have to watch ......price
at the end of the conversation this one thing must be true and is a good stepping stone to education, anything outside of price that attempts to summarise and give a cause and effect way to trigger is also an avoidance of finding the knowledge required to transact price in the present with understanding
m/a's and m/a's xovers are clearly about loose ideas of likelyhood.....they do not tell a trader when liquidity has changed hence multiple crosses erode capital and i suspect a lot more times this has happened than people let on because far more often i read the same sentences such as "i once used" or "i used to use" which implies the m/a's or xovers have been abandoned even if it's only due to the frustrating work involved for the limited upside outcome......
the thing is; you cannot imperically say in the present that a m/a xover is going to work at the time you decide to pull the trigger......there cannot be any proof because you and price are in the present and the m/a is not
if there were a solid EA based, on a m/a xover, that could be used and not have to be jigged for every phase of play, then you'd know by now because someone would advertise the equity curve and you could test it
back to the confidence thing; if your business gets eroded by elusive m/a's or xovers then how do you go from that to a stage of understanding what's going on inside price itself......
this is a newbie thread so i hope this pos makes a difference in how you might approach the whole gambit....very rarely could you make a case that a m/a or xover effects price, so, if that's true wouldnt you gain more by thinking about what is effecting price right now and proceed from that pov?
edit
price is always present and m/a's are always lagging, that must imply that you, the trader, is the forward looking indicator......you need to be one-step ahead in the planning stage, you are trading the next price level, you are not trading the last price level......even if price retreats to a previous level, wherever price goes to, you are trading that level and within that thinking resides the information you need, at least, there is information available for you to use that a m/a cannot give you and you retain control of the decision to trigger a trade rather than be imprisoned by the lack of information within a m/a