We Analyzed 2,235 YouTube Trading Strategies: The Indicators Traders Actually Use (2026)
Original data from 2,235 decoded YouTube strategies: RSI leads with 134, moving averages dominate as a family, and ICT concepts hit the mainstream.
Strategy Decoder Editorial ·
Data from the Strategy Decoder database, July 2026. Updated as new strategies are decoded daily.
Every day, traders publish strategy videos on YouTube. We decode them into explicit, backtestable rules and Pine Script. After processing 2,235 strategies, the aggregated data answers a question nobody could answer before: which indicators do YouTube trading strategies actually rely on?
The top 15 indicators by usage
| Rank | Indicator | Strategies | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | RSI | 134 | 6.0% |
| 2 | Moving Average | 75 | 3.4% |
| 3 | ATR | 67 | 3.0% |
| 4 | EMA | 64 | 2.9% |
| 5 | Price Action | 60 | 2.7% |
| 6 | Fair Value Gap (FVG) | 56 | 2.5% |
| 7 | Bollinger Bands | 53 | 2.4% |
| 8 | MACD | 47 | 2.1% |
| 9 | ADX | 37 | 1.7% |
| 10 | Order Block | 35 | 1.6% |
| 11 | Volume | 34 | 1.5% |
| 12 | SMA | 32 | 1.4% |
| 13 | Stochastic Oscillator | 24 | 1.1% |
| 14 | Fibonacci Retracement | 21 | 0.9% |
| 15 | VWAP | 18 | 0.8% |
Five takeaways from the data
1. RSI is still king — by a wide margin. With 134 strategies (6% of the entire database), the Relative Strength Index appears in nearly twice as many strategies as any other single indicator. Most use the classic 14-period setting, either as an overbought/oversold trigger or as a momentum filter above/below the 50 line.
2. Moving averages dominate as a family. Counted together, Moving Average + EMA + SMA appear in 171 strategies — more than RSI. They are rarely the star of the strategy: in most rule sets they act as the trend filter that decides whether longs or shorts are allowed.
3. Smart Money Concepts have gone mainstream. Fair Value Gaps (56) plus Order Blocks (35) give ICT-style concepts 91 strategies — rivaling Bollinger Bands and MACD. Five years ago these terms barely existed outside private forums; today they are the fastest-growing methodology in YouTube trading content.
4. ATR is the silent workhorse. 67 strategies use the Average True Range — almost never for entries. It shows up in stop-loss placement and position sizing, which says something encouraging: a meaningful share of YouTube strategies do define risk management explicitly.
5. Classic oscillators are fading. Stochastic (24) and Fibonacci retracement (21) — staples of 2010s trading education — now trail far behind price-action and SMC approaches in new content.
About the data
Strategy Decoder extracts entry rules, exit rules, indicators and risk parameters from YouTube trading videos using AI, scores each extraction for confidence (database average: 0.75), and generates TradingView Pine Script for backtesting. Explore the full database at strategydecoder.app/explore or browse strategies by indicator at strategydecoder.app/indicators.