Trading Strategies.....

Well, I have only been looking at TA for about 6 months now, and am still getting acquainted. Up until now, I have primarily looked at indicators of various types, and have not really taken much notice of patterns etc (except support and resistance).

However, recent postings by Darth have made me question this approach, so I was wondering what other members think.....shall we have a poll to find out? Ok, go on then!

Which do members find most useful (and I am deliberately leaving out "all of them", as I know in truth thats what we all think!!)

Mark,

it's nice to see that somebody reads my posts!

There is of course some overlap between the approaches you mention eg. breakouts on volume occur from chart patterns, candlesticks are visual representations of momentum and it is a small step from ma's to macd and momentum oscillators.

However I will still find the results of the poll interesting.

Moreover I would add that the market changes and what works now won't necessarily work next week (there are a lot of breakouts at the moment) and the more I find out about TA the more I see it as a whole with complementary pieces of the jigsaw fitting together to show the "big picture".

One trick I'm still having problems with is reading patterns in tea leaves. If anybody can do this let me know...

I read your posts with keen interest.

Recently I acquired Japanese Candlesticks Charting Techniques by Steve Nison and serioulsy believe that if properly used and understood it could pay dividends.

I have found that the old saying KISS applies to TA. Short and medium term support & resistance levels, as well as trend channels (same thing really) work best for me.

Sometimes think that indicators can confuse the issue (ever had the experience of letting a trade go because the RSI/MACD/Time of the month was not quite right ?)

You have a point there. I acquired AIQ software in January thinking it was going to be my Holy Grail.
I use Candlestick Charting and very simple indicators like RSI, Stochastic, TCI, Parabolics and ATR. Did I say simple?

Support/Resistance levels,Candlesticks and Chart patterns for me.
Chart patterns to identify possible breakouts ( up and down) Support Resistance to plan entry and exit points and Candlesticks as pointing out warning signs, especially if things are not going to go to plan...

Zippy. I think AIQ is the grail, but only as an anlysis tool. It will never make you rich trying to use it as an automated stock selection system. It's fabulous for "let's try this and see what turns up" and you may have seen I'm using it as my own market sentiment indicator. Each dayI plot the total number of stocks that have risen by more than 5%, fallen by more than 5%, closed within 1% of their intraday high, and closed within 1% of their intraday low.

Recently I have been studying the effect of Stochastic indicator when it reaches 100 backed up with TCI, I have found that usually it tends to be a "short."