"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself."
--Galileo Galilei, Physicist, Mathematician, Astronomer and Philosopher.
As I turn to the charts I begin to see the ebb and flow of the markets - the periods when it's fashionable to be buying in the market or selling in the market. Once buying or selling starts it seems to continue until the market runs out of buyers or sellers and it starts to level off as the number of buyers and sellers equalize. At that point the market tends to reverses and volume starts to increase as fear or greed begins to set in.
In the chart above, the RSI is telling me when fear and greed are getting overdone by moving below the 30 level or moving above the 70 line. The RSI is a great tip-off to the trader that things have moved to an extreme level. A second indicator, the MACD, is telling me several simultaneous things and is my favorite momentum indicator. The MACD Histogram portion provides me with an the early warning signal about the chart's changing directions. The Moving Average crossing the Signal Line portion becomes the first visual confirmation of this directional change. Finally the Moving Average and the Signal Line crossing the zero line is the final confirmation that the stock has reversed direction and is well on it's way. This final confirmation warns me that the trade is well under way and if I'm not in this trade already, I'm already too late to get in. Instead I should start watching the MACD Histogram in anticipation of a subsequent reversal. The third indicator, the ADX at the bottom of the chart, tells me where the pressure is on pricing. The green line reflects buying pressure while the red line reflects selling pressure. By noticing which line is on top I can determine if there is more buying or selling pressure on the stock. The black line doesn't measure buying or selling pressure but instead measures the intensity or fervor of the buying or selling pressure. It helps me understand the amount of "force" that is pushing the stock up or down. And finally, I will, at times, add a Stochastics indicator to the above chart if the market or stock seems to be simply drifting without direction (the Stochastics Indicator is best used in a stagnant market so for me it has a very specialized use).
These are the three (four) indicators I tend to use on a fairly consistent basis to support my trading. There are certainly dozens of indicators available for the average trader to use but these are the ones I personally feel give me the most confidence to trade. Every trader needs to understand all of the momentum indicators and oscillators available to them in order to become a better trader. Eventually each and every trader will settle on the ones that work best for them.