For a new Technical Trader, recognizing a Bullish Flag Breakout is a good chart setup to trade. I think that best Flag setups occur at the early stage of a new uptrend. Attached is an example. For short positions, the Bearish Flag setup is used. Linda Bradford Raschke always has said that if you can recognize a flag formation on a chart, you can make a living at trading. Charles
You can also find these formations on weekly charts. Even boring Alcoa gave a good long position signal earlier this year. Charles
couple websites that may give you idea what to trade and how to trade and some explanation about all this stuff- http://www.marketscreen.com/report/index.asp?chp=trend http://www.incrediblecharts.com/technical/moving_average.htm also-check out wealth-lab.com-great software,free trial,you can run some systems right on website. take your time and dont buy any hot stock services.
Maggandre, I read through your thread. Very helpful. Have you any new observations more than six months later, I mean on your experience using any services, like good or bad? Any you would recommend? Charles, again thanks for those charts. You make it look so simple. You apparently are subscribed to StockCharts.com. Do you use their scanning to find those setups, or do you scan lots of charts manually looking for the setups? Bob111, thanks for those links. Another person had PMd earlier mentioning one of those. I do have a question on Wealth Lab. How long have you used Wealth Lab? And have you used any other software, just for comparison? I'm a technologically challenged person, and I shudder at the thought of trying to configure any software. I know I can do it, it is just a matter of taking the time. I assume for someone like myself there will be a major learning curve with Wealth Lab? Maybe it is no different than any other software. I know I need to spend some time learning, and I'm definitely doing that, even losing money once in awhile, , but that does concern me. Thanks again.
i did try tradestation(2000)and some other soft but there one thing that really impress me and save lot of time is portfolio backtesting. i have some programming knowledge and before WL i did program all my ideas in visual basic, collect data from yahoo etc..slow and very time consuming. i do believe that for swing stock trader WL is best tool available on market. if you know basic programing-should be no problem for you to learn, how to work with WL. IB account,WL and free Quotetracker-that all i personally need for swing. no fancy-shmansy $5K+ courses or seminars or subscriptions.hope this helps.
I use their scan daily. However, I also have a basket of stocks that I look at daily for setups. Charles
This might not be in line with the thread for swing trading, but could you comment on the idea of scanning a basket of stocks? I tried to search ET on this topic, but too much comes up in the search related to 'stocks'. Is it a personal preference to choose the stocks which make up your 'basket of stocks'? Are these stocks in a certain sector, multiple sectors, high volume and liquidity, price, etc., that you like to trade? Does your 'basket of stocks' change from time to time? I found this item: ** http://www.tickquest.com/NeoTicker/casestudy/SampleDailyReport.html Sample Daily Reporting on a Basket of Stocks Overview You are a trader who monitor a fixed basket of stocks for trading opportunities. You always do your homework every day after trading hours to locate your favorite setups. The background work of browsing through many charts every night is tedious. This case study describes how to generate a report on a basket of stocks using NeoTicker®. NeoTicker® applies filters and indicators on this basket to generate the report, making the reporting facility extremely useful for anyone who needs to perform repetitive tasks on multiple stocks. ** It looks like a time saver to have this kind of scan available on a basket of stocks. Is this what you are doing at StockCharts with the daily scan?
here how it works for me-i create some trading rules in WL, then run back test on WL simulator let say on all nasdaq stocks or stocks which meet your own criteria. report from WL give you idea, if it will be profitable system or not. then you program scan in WL for this setup, run it on EOD. it will give you list of stocks for tomorrow. if entry conditions meet-you just enter into trade.
By a basket of stocks, I mean that I have a group of stocks charts in each market sector that I look at each day. This can be something as simple as the most active in the NASDAQ 100, Dow 30 or a sample of the S&P 500. You can get an idea of what stocks to look at for individual sectors from this web site: http://www.bullsector.com/ This is one of the reasons that I use StockCharts.com. I can make lists of stock chart baskets and go through them quickly. With practice and knowing what to look for, I can scan 400 charts within 30 minutes. You say that it can be tedious to look at many charts each day. Yes, it can be. However, if you truly want to be successful in the trading business, then trading has to be an obsession. If you do not find trading enjoyable, you will not be successful. There are NO shortcuts to being a successful trader. NONE! If you are not willing to work at it everyday, find something else to do before you loose most of your money. Charles
Thanks Bill111 and Charles for sharing your thoughts on the scanning. I need to look into the software to try some of the backtesting you mention, and then go from there to find the stocks. Charles, just for clarification. You wrote: >You say that it can be tedious to look at many charts each day. I didn't say that, that is from the page at NeoTicker. They said it. I agree with you about working at trading. It will never be an obsession for me like it is for some, but I do plan to work at becoming a more skilled trader. I think also with practice I will get this down and know what I'm looking for, hopefully before I lose all of my money. This ET site has helped me immensely. Sometimes within a thread is a comment that really turns the lightbulb on for me and helps me to understand what is going on. I appreciate your posting the setups and sample charts, and the link for bullsector. Would you clarify one more item at the StockCharts.com site? Are you bombarded with ads on the pages where you are trying to work? I'm sick of ads on some of the web pages. Are you able to work without being distracted by other ads for their services? Thanks.