Damn Dude, you just gave me a chubby Kidding aside, OP you said your job is analyzing data. What tools/methods are you using to analyze such data. Think of the market as one gigantic random number generator. What kind of tools are available to deal with such a market? I have generated many random outputs that mimic stock market behavior and all that stuff like support, resistance, ascending triangles, pennants, etc. etc., is all in there. The markets are random and you need to use tools to analyze randomness. About 95% of ET will proclaim the markets are not random and that's largely a factor of their demise. They don't understant the behavior of the beast they are trying to slay.
In this post: http://www.stock-trading.me/2008/03/support-and-resistance-trading/ There are some rules, you indeed ask the right question: 1.) Once the support level is breached (broken) the price will continue to go down and then the previous support level will become the new resistance. 2.) Once the resistance is broken, the price will continue to go up and the previous resistance level will become a new support. Try to observe this in your test trading and often you will find those rules to be golden. I am using this in my trading and it is quite effective. If you will read link to the post I have provided earlier, you will find details regarding the "test of support" or "test of resistance" to determine whether the support or resistance is finally broken.
yawn yawn yawn - the modus operandi is always the same, just the phonetics are slightly variable. God, do I love it so.
From what I've read in the short time I've pursued this, I have chosen to avoid indicators as they appear to only be suited to the past and give little indication of what's happening NOW. The market in my observation seems far too abrupt to rely on an indicator that only measures what has happened in the past. This combined with the severe failure I read about traders having scares me away to even waste time with things like that. My current hypothesis tell me that real-time price movement and volume combined with support and resistance levels are the closest thing to real time indicators of what is happening and therefore has potential to increase probability to what could happen based on what has just happened in real time. After all, it doesn't seem to matter if an indicator (of any kind) does much good when no one knows what will happen next. You don't know if an institution will throw down thousands of contracts (currently studying eMini S&P 500) or if an individual investor loaded to the hilt will throw it down. If there is a way to see what type of volume is put into the market at any given moment, but more specifically how many lots in that moment, I think this has potential. Although I do agree with some of the posts on here about the market being random; it appears as though in this randomness there is also some control. I could be dead wrong, but from much of the manipulation in many if not all sectors of the FED, why on earth would they not dip their greasy hands in this market to show things "really are improving". I'm calling BS! I recently read that the DOW was around 14,000 ish just before the real estate crash in 2008. It's incredibly difficult for me to believe it should have been there when the true valuation of companies in that sector did not support it. More BS! So, if anyone has or knows of something you use or can access to look at price volume as it relates to orders showing how many contracts are thrown down in a specific 1 block order, I would appreciate you letting me know.
MORON! yeah go right ahead, shoot yourself in the foot in your infancy, don't even give yourself a chance to win. You have chosen to drop indicators because they are suited only to the past Ignore HISTORY and be enslaved by it. Whew! What a place, ET!!!
Pretty funny coming from a guy who's name is DEADBROKE! You are why people fail in trading. Your way of thinking is like everyone else who fails. Keep it up and keep failing and please keep trading. I need someone to take the other side of my trades