Technical Analysis
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
TECHNICAL ANALYSIS 1 All rights reserved. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system in part or in whole without the express written permission of The Stop Hunter Ltd; except where permitted by law. Commentaries, information and other materials contained in any part of this document are purely educational in nature and are not intended to amount to advice on which reliance should be placed. They should not be relied upon for the purpose of effecting securities transactions or other investing strategies, nor should they be construed as an offer or solicitation of an offer to sell or buy any security. We therefore disclaim all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any information displayed in this document (including without limitation liability and responsibility for any investment decision made), or by anyone who may be informed of any of its contents. Trading and investing involves a very high degree of risk. Past results are not indicative of future returns and financial instruments can go down as well as up resulting in you receiving less than you invested. Do not assume that any recommendations, insights, charts, theories, or philosophies will ensure profitable investment. 2 CONTENTS Technical Analysis (TA) What Is Technical Analysis (TA)? .7 Making Money Using TA? .10 TA, BA Or FA? .12 TA Philosophy .13 TA History Time Line .14 Learning TA .15 Task 1: Basic 101 TA .16 So What Exactly Is A Chart? .19 TA Timeframe Rules .20 Chart Types .22 Line Chart .23 Candlestick .24 Price Analysis .25 Candlestick Tips .37 Pros And Cons .38 Trends .39 Support And Resistance .48 3 CONTENTS Continuation And Reverse Patterns .57 Tools On Price .73 Pivots .74 Fibonacci .79 Moving Averages .82 Donchian Bands .89 Bollinger Bands .91 Ichimoku .94 Confirmation Tools .99 TA: INDICATORS MATRIX .107 Stochastics .110 CCI .111 DMI .114 ATR .117 RSI .119 Divergence .122 4 CONTENTS Sentiment TA .125 Seasonality / Cycles .126 Open Interest .134 COT .136 Other: OBV, Breadth, VIX .143 Putting Indicators Together .151 5 TECHNICAL ANALYSIS (TA) Technical Analysis “The study of market action (price/volume/open interest) primarily through the use of charts for the purpose of forecasting / anticipating future price trends” 6 What Is Technical Analysis (TA)? • Can involve examining charts of historical prices / records of trading volumes / open interest / various statistical methods etc. to attempt to gauge market sentiment. • Will use historical price data and volume to forecast the market: as well as also using trend / momentum indicators to provide a more objective measure of the market. • The end result: forecasts of the price level that the market is heading to next with logical levels of risk for the trade. 7 • It is primarily a tool to make and save YOU money!! • Becoming more widely used and popular as technology and access to technology improves. • Most traders I have worked with are a bit of a mix of methods(TA/FA/BA) but some have fallen solely into one specific camp. • With technological advances the development of “black box”, high frequency, systematic, quantitative trading systems based off of TA have become more prevalent. 8 • To succeed as a trader in today’s trading environment you must understand TA. Why you should use TA: • It will make and save you money! • It will save you lots of time. • It will help you deal with the psychological aspects of trading better. • It is great for creating discipline. • It is simple to understand and apply. • It can aid your trading further by: • Creating forecasting / targeting objectives • Timing / entry/ exit of trades • Sizing / risk-reward of trades • Strategy design / enhancement 9 Making Money Using TA? 3 simple principles and goals: 1. Determining when to trade the trend 2. Controlling risk and holding on to your money 3. Money management and circumventing ruin Combine methodologies for added strength in decision making! • Put TA + BA + FA together to enhance your decision making. Liquidity is important for the assets you chose to trade using TA: • Greater liquidity = greater predictability 10 Liquidity: • The degree to which an asset or security can be bought or sold in the market without affecting the asset’s price. • Liquidity is characterized by a high level of trading activity. • Assets that can be easily bought or sold are known as liquid. • Look for a market that is heavily traded – far safer betting on this sort of market. Less liquid markets can leave you caught out if you need to get out of a trade in a hurry! • More liquidity = less price gaps. • Creates more fluid / predictable chart (Technical Analysis) analysis i.e. liquidity can often mean that it creates easily identifiable trends. • Usually the more liquid markets = lower costs (spread) 11 TA, BA or FA? Q. Does one method work better than the other? A. Very difficult to quantify and easy to argue for all methods. • BA although a separate science is normally married to TA in its application (and is often a subset of TA) not so with FA. So the real challenge is between FA and BA – what should you use? • Usage comes down to personal preference / trading style and a host of other variables. There is no right answer. You can be one, both or a blend and use different approaches for different markets. • Both have goals for the optimal selection of an investment and to make money. They just go about it in different ways. • FA does suit the longer term investor and markets such as Bonds and Equities (and some overlap with Commodities), whilst TA is well suited to the Futures, FX, Equities and Bonds markets and shorter term trading. 12 TA Philosophy • Built all on just 3 premises: ➢ Market action discounts everything (supply & demand already built in) ➢ Prices move in trends ➢ History repeats itself 13 TA History Time Line: 1600’s • Popular in Japan as far back as the 1600’s using a technique called “Candlestick charting” (Rosuku-ese) 1800’s + • Homma a 17th century trading guru realised that trading was based around supply and demand and psychology (human emotion) and revolutionised Candlestick charting with the trading of Rice futures. • The Europeans / West as their economies boomed used a ‘tracking’ price method (unaware of Far-Eastern methods). The Wests method was known as Point and Figure charting (PnF), pre-dating the Bar Chart method by a decade or so (which is more commonly used today) • Biggest contributor to Western TA development: Charles Dow (1851-1902) aka “the daddy of TA”! 14 Learning TA: • We are going to break TA down into 2 learning tasks: • Task 1: Learning the basics of TA you need to know to let you comfortably move to Task 2 and allow you to develop as a technical trader/ analyst…... • Task 2: Most crucially on the 2 day course, you will learn in detail more advanced technical analysis methods and charting such as: Kagi, Renko, Line Break, Heikin Ashi and the 4 key set ups you will use to start your trading. 15 TASK 1: BASIC 101 TA 16 BASIC 101 TA: PART 1… Charts Basic Rules Candlesticks Chart Types Confirmation Price Analysis Tools on Price Tools Bars Pivots Stochastics Bar Patterns Fibonacci CCI Trends Moving Averages DMI Support & Donchian ATR Resistance Bands C&R Patterns Bollinger RSI Bands Time frames Ichimoku 17 BASIC 101 TA: PART 1… Charts Basic Rules Sentiment TA Chart Types Candlesticks Seasonality/ Cycles Heikin Ashi Open Interest COT Learnt 3 Line Break on the 2 Other day Renko course Kagi 18 SO WHAT EXACTLY IS A CHART? • A chart is the visual tool (a graphical representation) to allow you to analyse the price of (series of prices of) any stock, commodity, future etc. over a given time period. Basic Rules Time frames • In trading the chart can be represented from as little as a minute of price action to a month+. • Anything less than a day is called ‘intraday’. Some popular timeframes: • 1min, 5min, 15min, 30min, 1hr, 4hr • Other popular non-intraday (end of day) time series: (don’t go lower than the ‘daily’ chart for end of day analysis) • Daily, Weekly, Monthly 19 TECHNICAL ANALYSIS (TA): TIMEFRAME RULES Timeframe table: Shorter Your Trading Longer Longer Timeframe Timeframe Timeframe 1 Timeframe 2 1 minute 5 minute 30 minute 240 minute 5 minute 15 minute 60 minute 240 minute 15 minute 30 minute 240 minute Daily 30 minute 60 minute 240 minute Daily 60 minute 240 minute Daily Weekly 240 minute Daily Weekly Monthly Daily Weekly Monthly Yearly 20 • Price scales: • Can be represented either Linearly or Logarithmically (better for the longer term). • Price Axis: • Time is normally represented on the X axis in whatever increments you select. • Price is normally represented on the Y axis in whatever increments you select. 21 Chart Types • 5 main chart types • Line • Bar • Candlestick • Point and Figure • Market Profile • Another category: ‘specialist charts’ • Equivolume, Renko, Kagi, 3 Line Break, Heikin Ashi We are interested and will concentrate on: Candlesticks, Point and Figure (PnF), Renko, 3 Line Break and Heikin Ashi 22 THE LINE CHART: You may be familiar with. Find in most publications / newspapers as it is simple to use and understand. But for the trader it hides a lot of the secrets around price action that can be used to our advantage….. FTSE100 Daily Line Chart: • Plotted line marks only the closing price of a particular asset. • Closing prices added together create a line. • Restricts analysis & trading potential. • Can’t build a lot of the TA add-on’s like oscillators due to lack of inputs e.g.