I am open to discussion about heatmaps though. You've said yourself, watching order flow is important to determine if the support/resistance will hold. I might be biased but heatmaps have proved itself very useful in this regard (for me). Support and resistance is so easily visible from order book heatmap and the overall ratio of trading history heatmap can determine trend strenght better than ADx or whatever momentum indicators I tried to use.
It's true I am not a professional trader so I would appreciate some pointers to sources about pro trading and better trading methods based on your trading experience.
P.S. Heikin Ashi/ Renko are to my knowledge based on OHLCV data, Heatmaps on the other hand rely on trading history and order book snapshots. Am I missing something?
That's Ok, I wasn't thinking you selling anything. I have experience from many years in investment banks and know some professional traders in prop shops. Every single one of them trades purely from a Depth of Market. That shows bids, asks, volume at price and cumulative trades at the current price. They only use charts to make a note of possible support and resistance areas first thing in the morning before they start.
Heatmaps are just the latest in a long line of snake oil being sold to retail traders. How can knowing where there were some orders that got pulled previously were help you? The only thing that matters is what is happening right now. Are orders getting filled or being pulled, are there icebergs producing orders as fast as the ones you are seeing being filled. These are the only things that will tell you what is happening now so you can make a good guess what will happen next.
If you want to see how pro traders do it I think you can find youtube videos by a guy called John Grady who is about the only trading educator I know of with prop trading experience and who is an actually profitable trader. (I'm not recommending any of his services, I haven't tried them, I'm just pointing out the videos show what a pro is actually looking at).
Also if you want to have a go yourself you can sign up for a free demo account at Trading Technologies (trade.tt). It's the software the vast majority use. The demo is 10 minute delayed data from the CME and CBOT, but you can pretend it's live.