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Of course, the Fantasy portfolio is based on paper gains....I have yet to see a Fantasy portfolio that is based on real money.
This is not Simulated other than the fact the the orders I place in this portfolio are not ACTUALLY executed. I gave my rules to Mike as far as how I decide if a trade was executed. Sometimes I make real purchases of varying size in my REAL portfolio's based on of the stocks that I mention here. The size of such purchases may be bigger or smaller depending on my REAL needs.
I doubt anyone on this website (I cannot see your journal so have no comment on your approach) lays out exactly every trade in the detail I do, and explain why they make such trades at least the day before they are executed.
The object of this journal: Is to display the fact that it IS possible to be a long term trader in today's stock market... the Bank of Toronto in this fantasy portfolio has been there since Feb/14...I have no desire to sell it .... in reality and in this fantasy portfolio...in fact if anything I would add to this solid stock.
the secondary objective is to show HOW I use Technical Analysis combined with how I also use my Limited understanding of Fundamental analysis to make long term investments and swings trades.
Third objective is to discuss the new approach to TA that I have researched and are now bringing to a useful stage.
As can be seen by the twice weekly updates on this as-real-as-possible fantasy portfolio, I am not frightened of blowing an account. I don't use Stop-Loss or Limited Stop-Loss orders UNLESS I want to sell a stock...not to protect myself after buying one. I use those orders strictly to give a stock a chance to make more money (even losers that I give up on) and then I trail (manually) such orders until they are filled.
As can be seen by my twice weekly updates I have made no attempt to camouflage or hide my losses during the last 9 months....this fantasy portfolio is as close to real trading as possible.
One thing that annoys me to no end is in the past when I have been poked repeatedly about my lack of money management or targets. I am not a frightened day trader (no offense to experienced day-traders intended) who have little technical skills and are paranoid about losing their account because they leave their trades active overnight.
I have no targets for my purchases because in a stock held for months/years it is impossible to predict how high a stock price will rise or fall. I may have resistance/support levels that I pay attention too but those are not necessarily targets.
This journal is about mainly TA and how I use it. I am discussing as clearly as possible what I do and it is a lot more than drawing trend lines (trend lines are fine but there is a lot more information available to make decisions).
I welcome questions and discussion of what I do regarding TA. But I will not have this journal hijacked as it was in the past with subjects that have no interest to me.....my journal.....my rules.
I hope this is clear now..... 'nough said on this subject.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
My portfolio(s) in reality are a lot higher than $100,000. This is a trivial amount for me .... you cannot live 10 years with no other income on a poke of $100,000 and live a reasonable lifestyle.... if you disagree with that you live on a side income and not solely on income from stocks.
For the FINAL TIME , this is a fantasy portfolio....I have never hidden this fact at all....the trades made in this portfolio are as close to real as I can make it. Often they are made based on my real decisions though the volumes may be different.
I am tired of this conversation...If my content and style of this journal is a problem...I will leave for good....this is not a satisfying conversation for me, obviously...
Ok....now that we have that out of the way...let us discuss something productive.
Those of you that seriously want to understand how I read a chart and how I use indicators will get a lot out of the following discussions.
My goal here is to:
1. Get you to think critically about how a chart/overlay/indicator works
2. Decide whether or not there is information from one indicator that adds to the information of another indicator, thereby making a situation easier to understand
3. (for my benefit) field a discussion each post, that furthers the understanding of the topic. This is done by questions/comments from you, that you want me to comment on. They can be something you see in the charts that might be meaningful or a question where you have found an example that runs contrary to what I am suggesting.
This is positive dialog, I learn as well as you since the best way to really learn something is to teach it.
Another goal is to try to hammer out rules that I can use with my new chart form. As I have said, the purpose of this new chart with the modified Trigger chart and Quad analysis is to be a mega watch list.... something that will draw my attention to a stock or index or commodity... any interesting vehicle that has data consisting of volume/open/hi/lo/close data.... When I am alerted I will do my normal 3-4 full meal chart analysis to arrive at a final decision.
Our first discussion will be on the use of BBWidth indicator. Why is this indicator important? For me it is the trigger for many events. But rather than just give you a grocery list of features, I want you to see the thought process that you might use to evaluate charts. This will probably be the only discussion on charting that is not limited to having you memorizing patterns... rather you will hopefully be able to understand patterns.
To start, I will present 4 BBWidth charts. I won't identify them yet. What I want you to do is study them and think of these questions:
1. Can you figure out which stocks are cheap/expensive???
2. Is there significant differences between them that give you a clue as to which country the company is based?
3. Most of all, what are the interesting features common to all charts that you think are worth investigating further?
4. Can you suggest which chart indicates a stock undergoing a major event? Is it Bullish or Bearish
Here are the charts:
Chart 1
Chart 2
Chart 3
Chart 4
You can just think of those questions if you want, comments are welcome too.
I will not make another post here until the evening....about 12 hours from now. Aside from answering any questions, I will be making one or two posts on just these charts...you will see how I have evolved in looking at charts
Thank you for the challange, and lessons. Great stuff, please keep that in mind I am totally newbie. So here is my observation:
1. Can you figure out which stocks are cheap/expensive???
No way that I can guess. If I have to do it because there is a gun at my hand, I would say, all the stocks are cheap, if the BB width expension is great.:
- Chart 1 aug. I guess it is cheap, november getting very expensive
- Chart 2 mar. Cheap, than getting expensive
- Chart 3 mar. Cheap, than slow trend up with peaks
- Chart 4 big drop at march, than goes up
2. Is there significant differences between them that give you a clue as to which country the company is based?
- No way man I would say It could be guessable based on peak levels. There should be significant news, or data. In chart 3 there is 4 peak, meaning for me it could be the states, with GDP data... but really no experience on this
3. Most of all, what are the interesting features common to all charts that you think are worth investigating further?
- Chart 4 is not nice and steady for me
- Chart 3 giving a lots of decision point, to enter
- Chart 1 after a big correction I guess, and it should be developing now slowly, meaning ranging, so it could be
- Chart 2 I like it it is smooth
For my, chart 2, and chart 3
4. Can you suggest which chart indicates a stock undergoing a major event? Is it Bullish or Bearish
- Chart 1 bullish
- Chart 3 bearish
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Please dont kill me on sight if it is totally stupidness...
I will start with your last statement first. Mate...I applaud your bravery. Your answer and comments are exactly what I had hoped for. You bring up points that I had not considered and you and others reading this will be the benefactors.
You are correct on several observations and clearly you are a beginner at understanding Technical Analysis... but if you continue doing this and studying my comments your learning curve will be quite short.
Let's look at your answers, the bolding is mine for emphasis
You are absolutely correct with your first statement. It is impossible to judge a stock's worth from this indicator.
That is good news...it means that the patterns we will ferret out will apply to all stocks, no matter how expensive. In this group there is a stock in the $1-$5 range and another over $1000 per share... the patterns are the same.
What you did wrong... is that you then placed a gun to your head and took pure guesses. Never do that. It is not that we don't make a guess at the end of an analysis.... But we make an "EDUCATED" guess. We apply out knowledge of past performance to make a decision. Such patterns do repeat...sometimes the are "head-fakes" a sports idiom where a ball carrier looks one way to confuse a tackler and runs in another direction... the same thing happens in Stock prices... indicators don't always give good information but there are ways to decide good information from the bad and ugly.... NEVER DEPEND ON A SINGLE INDICATOR or Chart OVERLAY. I believe this is why many traders dislike indicators. I hope to change that opinion here eventually.
Again you are correct. It does not matter what country the company has its chart in.
these examples that I posted include: an American stock, A Canadian Stock, a European Stock and a metal commodity.
Bollinger Band Width (BBWidth) applies to any data set that has an equal time period and a value that changes with time...it does not have to be price, it can be anything... a stock from any country, a commodity intra-day or EOD price even FOREX
No you are incorrect here. It is not an easy question to answer, however I will discuss this question in more detail in a few minutes
Actually you are correct in that Chart 3 is probably currently undergoing a major event right now.... However BBwidth cannot tell us whether it is a bullish or bearish event.... we need more information to decide that. BUT, just knowing that there is a major change that might take place would be very useful from a watch point of view.
WHAT ARE BOLLINGER BANDS?? and how do they relate to their companion indicator Bollinger Band width (BBWidth)
this is a quote showing how Bollinger Bands are calculatedBollinger Bands.
(Note: I will now call Bollinger Bands by their nicknames BB's or Bollies)
I strongly recommend reading StockCharts.com Chart School articles... In my opinion this is one of the strongest charting service on the internet.... their free service is excellent and can be enhanced through membership.
Here is an example of a Bollie overlay
You can see the dotted blue 20daySMA (simple moving average) and the solid blue lines above and below the dotted line.... each line is 2 standard deviation units from the 20 daySMA. They represent an envelope where one expects about 90% of the numbers used to construct the should lie within those boundries... if the price goes above or below those blue lines this is VERY significant...but we will discuss this further in coming posts.
BBWidth is related to the BB's by means of this calculation:
BBWidth = (UpperBB -LowerBB)/ 20daySMA x 100
So in words BBWidth equals the difference between the upper and lower BB's divided by the 20daySMA (sometimes called "the middle band) and multiplied by 100 to convert the number as a percentage.
SO... the BBwidth is related to the width of the BB's...dividing this number by the 20 daySMA and multiplying it by 100 normalizes the result between 0 - 100%
As the BBwidth gets larger....the bb's are spreading further apart. As the BBwidth gets smaller the bands are getting more narrow.
The Bollies are a measure of price volatility... the further apart the bb's are the more volatile the stock prices... the closer they are the more stable those prices have become.
We will talk about this in further detail later
WHAT ARE THE INTERESTING patterns in the BBWidth charts that I showed you.???? I will show WHAT I see in such a chart, that I would want to investigate further. There are many things to look at. I will use a different chart for each feature but you will see similar features in all the charts.
If I was presented with this type of chart for the first time this is what would go through my mind as I looked at them
Chart #1
This is VERY interesting. See how the chart tends to fall back to the same region before it zooms up again....sometimes it stays at this low level for a while...What is going on here? If you look at the other charts they all basically act in a similar manner...some more reproducible than others....can predictions be made on this pattern.
Maybe...maybe know....but this is worth checking out.
Chart #2
What do these sudden rises mean? Can I use this knowledge?
Chart #3
What is going on during these up and down slopes???
Chart #4
What is happening when the tops are rounded like this? Is it bullish or bearish?
As you can see there are 4 major formations that jump out at me....What do they mean? and are they significant? Can I make decisions or draw inference from these observations.
I would then MATE these BBwidth charts to their corresponding main charts. Interesting observations to follow
Conclusion:
This may seem silly to many of you. However it is only by observation of patterns and then investigating what they mean can you really understand what an indicator can do for you.
Thank you for your kind words. I will do the study today, but quick markup from my side. My biggest issue with trading is to wait. So I am grabing every moment and opportunity to teach myself to better to wait, instead of jump in. Every indication, every little piece of advice which is teaching me patient, is helping me to improve. Just a little example. Chart 1 BBWidth testing back all the time the same level. Great observation. Great stuff, and pattern, which is good to observe. Great NOGO decion on that stock till I dont see the stuff what She likes to do.
And overall ofc always good thing to learn, but the purpose the way, how you are selecting, how you are analyzing, and waiting for a perfect moment like a predator, is amazed me! So this is my extra takeaway from this forum! Thank you
Chart 1: More down, bigger the explosion. Thus, if we are right with the explosion direction, than we can hold the trade as long as we didnt get a peak. Meaning no need to move the SL, just w8 the outcome...
Chart 2: sudden rise = breakout. It could be fake, this will never tell you it is a fake or not, or the first direction is good or not. Just that it is doing something. Thus we could get better entry if the breakout starting with a fake breakout - pullback...
Chart 3: consolidation will come. Market will not move, tired. Also it could be a good hint: take care after a big trend always a correction is coming. If you dont want to sit through the correction you trend lover bastard, it is a time to scale out
Chart 4: Hey I am doing nothing here just a usual stuff. Most probably slowly trending up or trending down, after a big move. I will not give you great pullback to enter, just small ones. If you looking for an entry here, most probably I will kick you out during the next move... go fish to somewhere else!
Really interesting work on the Bollinger width. I've used it before, but it's been a while, and I'll have to come back to this post when I can read it in more detail. This is a very interesting post. Thanks for it.