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20 EMA slope on M1 as a trend filter, how I read it without overcomplicating

I use the 20 EMA on M1 as a quick filter and I only care about its slope, not crossovers. If it's clearly angled up and price is staying above it, I'm only looking at longs. If it's angled down and price is below, only shorts. If it's flat and price is crossing it back and forth, I don't trade that pair at that moment.

The flat condition is the big one. Most of my bad scalps came in ranging conditions, where every entry looked fine in isolation but price just kept going sideways. A flat average is a simple visual that tells me it's one of those moments.

Entries are pullbacks toward the average with a rejection candle, and the stop goes beyond the pullback low or high. I don't buy when price is far from the line, because the stop would be too large and the move is already extended.

It's not a magic indicator. It lags, so you'll enter later than you want, but I would rather be late and trading with the flow than early and wrong. I check the M5 direction too, and if they disagree I stay out.

How I judge flat versus angled without overthinking it. I zoom so that about two hours of M1 candles fill the screen, then look at the line. If I need to tilt my head to decide whether it is sloping, it is flat. Clear slopes are obvious at a glance. I tried using an angle indicator to put a number on it, but it kept changing with the zoom level and the pair, and it ended up being more complicated than just looking.

On the M5 agreement point, I put the same 20 EMA on M5 and only take the M1 signal when both are sloping the same way. When M1 is up and M5 is down, I usually find M1 is just a pullback inside the bigger move, and those long entries tend to fail right where the M5 average is sitting. It cuts the number of trades quite a bit, but most of the ones it removes were the frustrating sideways ones anyway.