It's important to remember that you can make money trading in any format you choose: swing, position, day; what's important is that you choose a time frame that works for you. Knowing that will determine how much you're risking on a trade, how long you're in, and what kind fo charts you'll need.

Regarding the plug-ins, the guys at Gecko will kill me for saying this, but "no", you don't need them. All the plug-ins do is try to give you an edge. If you're interested in knowing a market's seasonal tendencies, then there's a plug-in for that. If you're interested in seeing who's long and who's short, then the Commitment of Traders plug-in will show you that.

I'm from the old school where less is more. I use indicators in my trading, but nothing fancy. Moving averages to determine trend and help highlight important support and resistance levels, something to measure momentum like MACD or Momentum and something to measure overbought/oversold market conditions like RSI, CCI or Stochastics; that's all I use. As you can see you can get those in any basic charting package.

The "trick" to trading is to take your signal when you get it and then react to what the market is doing. If you've got a profit, take it. If the market's moving against you, have a definite line in the sand where you pull the trade. Yes, I know it sounds too easy, but that's really all there is to it.

Hope that helps a bit,

Erich