stock market trading software

Paul d said:
He also recently opened a position on the FTSE. I'm new to this lark but thought the FTSE had already been rising for a number of years and may be due some level of a drop?
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You're right, it has been rising steadily for about 4 1/2 years. Before that though, it had a near 50% drop between Jan 2000 and Jan 2003. It's still not quite back up to its Jan 2000 peak.

Is it due a drop now? I've no idea - watch the trend
 
Thanks for clarifications. I've been tracking the NY Mini gold (YG, CBOT) at www.futures.tradingcharts.com. Great charts, monthly, daily, historical
so you can get a good grasp on a trend. This particular stock peaked in May 06, dropped a fair bit and has been moving sideways since then. Probably a good long term bet...(I thought there was only one nifty fifty index Gonk, seems India are catching up... )
 
That's a good link, thanks.
My reading of the gold chart is that the daily chart is showing a downtrend, characterised by a series of lower highs and lower lows.
The weekly chart is just about holding an uptrend.
But the interesting thing is the volume is increasing on the daily chart downtrend and volume is decreasing in the weekly chart uptrend. This would indicate to me that the uptrend is running out of steam(lack of interest), for the moment anyway.
This ties up with the idea about the commodity speculators moving to crops such as corn but they could move back to gold.
 
I'm just a swivel chair trend follower at the moment. Just bought Trend Following by M. Covel. Interesting to see how gold will move over coming months. Oil has risen again due to Nigerian violence, whats that all about.
I'm seriously thinking of investing in GSCI (Goldman sachs comm. index)
which is made up of about 70% oil. Its called the matrix funds, (www.eaglestarlife.ie) they charge 1%. Min. investment is 5000, and you can split it (I think) between any one of their 10 funds, i.e. 5 star global, 5 star asia pacific, eurozone equity, (I wouldn't touch irish) Japan index etc... They all seem like strong performing funds. I enjoy trend following its putting it into practice, thats the tricky bit. Although on futures.tradingcharts they advertise a trading software called Venture, cud be worth a look, but I'd say its expensive. I've still a way to go in understanding the technical details but I think part of trend following is also intuitive.
 

I use a variety of methods. I tend to follow trend lines a lot, looking for entry points based on prior highs or lows. Moving averages are useful too but only as a general guide along with the RSI and MACD indicators. I tend to ignore volume as well because price action rules at the end of the day.
I'd look for longer term trends based on 1 & 2 year charts mostly (no day trading). As a secondary method, I'd look at double top/bottom patterns, rising/falling flags. You do see the odd head and shoulders pattern now and again which can also be useful. Patterns seem to be hyped up a lot by technical analysis gurus and I've never found them to be of primary importance when spreadbetting/trading.

I've never used Delta tbh, I wonder what their range of indices/shares would be compared to the UK firms.
 
Just set up the IG Index account.
Question for the fellow IG Indexers -
I'm wondering if anyone has had success registering an Irish Laser card with them? Tried to set it up over the phone but they couldnt do it.
Obviously i'd prefer the laser than credit cards cos there is no charge, and i have to put other stuff on the CC.
They told me to check with my bank but i've used the card for ages with no problem(as recently as Saturday) and its loaded with cash.
 
Croker,

Also in the process of setting up an Ig account. Spoke to a guy on the phone there this morning about transferring money and he said that they have an account in A.I.B. in Dublin so you should be able to set it up to transfer money on line to that account and not need to use your laser card?

Are you planning to use their Tradesense programme? If you do would be interested in your thoughts.

Have been using the Delta index simulator and its a disaster. e.g. stops did not kick in when they were supposed to, the option to amend orders is not coming up anymore etc. It appears potential customers are working as debugging technicians. Not very inspiring.

Cheers
 
Thanks Paul d, i got the AIB account details for a bank transfer.
That'll do for now anyway.

No wont be doing the tradesense thing, i've already used DeltaIndex for about a year so i'm well up on how it works. Took me a while to get into it but i've found a style that works for me now so i'm sticking to it.

First impressions of IG Index are very good. There is a huge range of products to trade which was my main gripe with DeltaIndex. Never really had any problems DI to be fair but if IG are up to the mark i'll stick with them.

I hope you got a feel for how it works anyway in the Simulator even if it wasnt that good - that's the main thing, try it out without risking your money.
 
Cheers Croker,

Will do. Think you can start off with 10p bets, so yeah will try and crawl before I walk.
What areas do you trade yourself ?
Would be interested in any insight you can share on the setting stop losses?
 
 
Hi -- in my opinion the best book by far on TA is John J Murphy's 'TA of the Financial Markets' , study guide can accompany same which is essential if you're serious about investing! It's expensive but you won't need any other TA book -- you can borrow mine if you like. The Digitallook website is excellent for checking all fundamentals AND for examining charts -- they're also very helpful if you have any queries. Good luck!
Der
 
Hi Der

Thanks for that - I will buy it today. There is a massive amount of material out there so it is great to get a recommendation. I have read through a lot of online material about TA. Thanks also for the offer of borrowing your copy, very kind.

Also, trading with IG index gives you access to a variety of research / news / analysis resources. Has anybody been using / looking at tradingcentral.com. Provides daily technical analysis on indices, forex, individual shares etc. If people have used this resource how have they found it? I have mixed feelings but would be interested to hear if people find any aspect of it worthwhile. Well worth a look for those of you who haven't seen it (access is free through igindex, otherwise i think it is subscription)

Thanks

Dave
 
What areas do you trade yourself ?
Would be interested in any insight you can share on the setting stop losses?
Click to expand...

I've come full circle cos i started first with US stocks before i knew anything about TA and lost money on them. Then moved to commodities and Indices. Now i've researched all about TA and gone back to US stocks cos i find they work best.

One of my main strategies is buying stocks as they bounce off the moving averages.
In this case I just put the stop a little below the MA and when the stock moves up, move the stop up to protect profits(like a trailing stop with a broker).
If the price falls through the MA it hits the stop for a small loss.
(I try and have the spread+stop distance equal to a small percentage of my total cash, say 2-5%)
What i'm banking on here is that the probability that the price will move up
from the MA is higher than the probability that it will go below the MA. I've checked this using backtesting software and it works well in up-trending markets. The other thing i am banking on is that when it does move
up it moves up by a good few percent, i.e. a real bounce. So even if the number of losers is greater than the number of winners, the gains for the wins are much greater than the losses for the losers.

IG Index has some backtesting software but i'm having some problems using it and it wont save any backtest code i write. Anyone used it?

Has anybody been using / looking at tradingcentral.com.
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Will take a look at it. Don't really know what to make of it at the moment.
 
Croker,

Thanks for the reply. Its that bit where you say you put the stop a little below the moving average that I am interested in.
For example would half the daily range of the share price in say the last 10 days plus say another 10 or 20% down from the buy price of the spread make sense?
I know this will be personal to every trader but is there a general 'rule of thumb' for where to set your stop loss such that you dont lose too much if the trade moves against you while trying not be stopped out of the market by normal price fluctuations??

Also from any of you guys, would be interested to know your opinions on the one or two of the best technical indicators from the long list available that there is about to be a change in the price of a share.

Going back to Mark Shipman book and his use of moving averages. They are a lagging indiactor and you could have lost a lot of potential profit if you exit by solely using moving averages?
 
Paul d said:
Going back to Mark Shipman book and his use of moving averages. They are a lagging indiactor and you could have lost a lot of potential profit if you exit by solely using moving averages?
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He does advise this himself in his book, but he is a bit vague about how you do judge where to exit - a fair bit of waffle about reading the papers and asking your postman if he's invested in commodities yet.

That said, his advice not to remain invested in a market where price has gone below the 40 week moving average is what convinced me to get out of the ISEQ 20 ETF last week. Certainly glad I did - it's down a further 10% since. I reckon I've made a 25,000% return on investment on the price of the book!
 
For example would half the daily range of the share price in say the last 10 days plus say another 10 or 20% down from the buy price of the spread make sense?
I know this will be personal to every trader but is there a general 'rule of thumb' for where to set your stop loss such that you dont lose too much if the trade moves against you while trying not be stopped out of the market by normal price fluctuations??

IMHO, it doesn't make much sense to use percentage stops. Better to place your stop under an area of expected technical support and then decide your bet size. For example - let's say you don't want to lose more than 300 euro on any one trade. You want to buy a stock at, say, $19.90. You notice that there is notable chart support at $19 (eg, moving average, etc), so you place your stop under here ($18.90 approx). Your max loss is 300 euro, the distance between your purchase price and your stop is 100 cents, therefore you bet 3 euro per point. If the distance was 50 cents, you could bet up to 6 euro per point, and so on. You'll find that you will get stopped out much more frequently if you use percentage stops rather than stops based on the chart.

Also from any of you guys, would be interested to know your opinions on the one or two of the best technical indicators from the long list available

Moving averages on a nice candlestick chart. Simple but effective. I agree very much with what Croker said regarding MAs on trending issues. Volume is important. Retracements areas are important. I would not get hung up on specific indicators - price (support/resistance) will tell you more any day. An overbought/oversold indicator (eg, stochastics/cci/rsi) can be useful, although they have their drawbacks. I would pick one rather than studying them all in detail - not a huge difference really.

Going back to Mark Shipman book and his use of moving averages. They are a lagging indiactor and you could have lost a lot of potential profit if you exit by solely using moving averages?

Have not read the book although I know his time frame is much longer than mine. If you use a long term MA (eg, 200 day) to decide your exit, yes, you'll end up losing a lot of your profits. For example, despite today's carnage on Wall Street, the 200-MA remains 600 points or so away. If I had bought the Dow back in March, I would have brought my stop up to the 50-day ma rather than the 200-ma (would have been stopped out today). It depends on your time frame although you just have to accept that you will never get out at an exact top - no indicator will tell you that.
 
Hi guys,

have found all the discussion here quite interesting. not many such discussions on AAM. Can anybody recommend a site / forum where TA is discussed and perhaps people share some of their thoughts?
 
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