Successful trading is about helping yourself and putting the ‘odds’ on your side. In part 23 we looked at strategy, design and implementation. This week, we’re going to take a brief look at an often forgotten and overlooked use of technical analysis: Risk & Trade Management. If you are a raw fundamentalist, or don’t want to use technical analysis to make trading execution decisions, that’s fine, but I think you’re being foolish if you don’t consider using technical analysis to improve your risk & trade management processes. [Read more…]
Technical Analysis (Part 15) – Direct Price Analysis (DPA): Ichimoku
Part 14 showed us how useful and effective Pivots could be, especially for intraday trading. Part 15 introduces us to a very individual concept in technical analysis. Ichimoku is a unique trading tool for analysing any asset in any timeframe. To the outside observer, at first glance it looks a complete mess. Untangle it though and you have a straightforward and very powerful all round trading system that can seriously boost your trading results. This blog presents a simple overview of this system, building up the tools of Ichimoku using the S&P 500 Stock Indices as the base example, hopefully giving you an initial starting point on your journey into a unique part of technical analysis. [Read more…]
Technical Analysis (Part 13) – Direct Price Analysis (DPA): Fibonacci
In the last article we looked at how to determine whether markets were trending or ranging. In Part 13, we look at a very interesting method used to calculate support and resistance and capture the behaviour and psychology in any given market: Fibonacci. Fibonacci has become an extremely popular tool amongst technical analysts. [Read more…]
Technical Analysis (Part 2): Rules you need to know
Last week I began our blog series with a look at the history, theory and philosophy of technical analysis. This week we move on to look at 20 rules that you should build into your technical analysis. It is by no means an exhaustive list; there are many more technical analysis rules than this and there will also be rules that you create yourself. However, those presented here are a good foundation that you can apply to your analysis and build on. Some rules may appear, at this possibly early stage in your interaction with the subject, as both peculiar and confusing. Stick with it though, because during the remainder of this blog series, the use of these rules will become a lot more apparent and understandable. [Read more…]
Technical Analysis (Part 1): History, theory and philosophy
Welcome to a new Technical Analysis blog series. This series will comprise 25 introductory articles covering all aspects of technical analysis, from the very basics through to some more advanced theory. Hopefully, these articles will whet your appetite for the subject and inspire you to take up technical analysis (if you haven’t already) and use it in your trading and investing. My aim is to enhance your existing knowledge and give you an insight into how technical analysis can be used as an effective trading tool, both to make and save you money and give you new roads to follow. This is a vast, often misunderstood subject, so the aim of this blog series is to make it more accessible by breaking down a few of those boundaries.
In this first article we explore the roots of technical analysis. It is vitally important for you to understand where technical analysis has come from and the thinking behind it, if you’re ever going to successfully use it in practice. [Read more…]