I use MACD and stochs on a refined setting but the key component of my work is a theory I am developing myself combining elliot wave and ADX. It's a powerful conbination. As a caveat, I will say that there is not a method, person, or technique that will ever produce 100% accurate results in market prediction, but my own methodology does raise the odds for success in practice.
I will also state now that there is no one correct way to trade. You mention getting nervous after the first hour, but that doesn't bother my the way I do things. You have to find what works for you.
The crux of today's trades was based on the fact that I am looing at a pattern near complete. When you first start a pattern, you'll always make a lot of mistakes because you have little to go on with structure development. However, by the end of a pattern, you can usually have it nailed and can significantly raise the level of success. This is where the bulk of profits come from for me.
Essentially I came into today having a pretty good idea of what to expect and the indicator set as well as time frame set I was using (I use multiple time frame analysis for validation) suggested a low this morning. I was a little early but stayed because the signals were coming and I new downside was likely limited. I did bail early but the pattern I was looking at was an a=c pattern and I hit my target. We extended to a c = 1.62a instead which was fine, but you can't always rely on that. Taking the a=c profit target was fine.
The pattern off the low was probably a 'c' wave in development with the latter stage late in the day and that suggested the index would bounce around between 1150 and 1152 into the end of the day which was still over an hour and a half away at the time. I basically traded the mini range back and forth a few times until time ran out. Nothing was really chased, but rather I was probing for an optimal entry based on activity and the plan was to take about 1.5 points profit on each little swing. A break of the range would have gotten me out and cause me to step aside.
The number of contracts I play is a percentage of capital though I may modify that depending on how aggressive I want to be. Regarding better entries...it's all about experience, timing and patience. When you do have trouble reading the market, my best advice is stay out and step aside. Tomorrow is always another day and it is better to wait for a good set up than guess on something just because you feel the need to trade. There are times I have gone a few days without making a single trade if the market patterns look crappy.
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