I am sure you are familiar with the term "Hard Right Edge". It is a bitch!
I have traded in virtually every market over the last 25-30 years, seen many bull and bear markets, and even worse, sideways markets! What I have found after using TA for the same amount of time, that indicators are typically slow and have very little predictive power.
Only one thing is right: Price (at any given time :))
hehe that's why I use question marks. Although I'm more familiarized with the term "last candle fog" which means the same.
And yes, 100% of indicators are laggards since it's not possible to get data from things that didn't happened yet (when you think about it it's dense though). As you said, price is the only reliable indicator.
Can I ask how old are you sir?
I'm just 29 and your trading experience covers my whole lifetime.
I am 48. Started trading JPY at 16 :)
Started with currency then slowly other things. Now only \es futures that too rarely. Don’t need to trade anymore :) :)