Articles

It is appreciated that Trade2Win is first and foremost a "technical analysis" site. Those that know of me from T2W may be aware that my methodology is one of "fundamental analysis". From this rather black and white perspective, what do I have to offer the committed technical analyst? I offer you the price/earnings ratio. The P/E ratio, as it is more commonly referred to, lends itself well to the non-financial analyst for a number of reasons. I shall suggest a methodology that is hybrid in nature, combining the P/E ratio (exclusive of any knowledge, or reference to, the financial statements) with a technical chart that acts as a filter for the P/E ratio, imbuing the P/E's calculation with a factor of safety. We shall end up with a...

The CFD market has expanded rapidly over the last few years and a number of innovative new products have resulted from the strong following that CFDs now have. One of those developments is CFD SIPPs. For those of you not familiar with SIPPs, they are Self Invested Personal Pension Plans which basically represent your pension fund, but instead of handing the management of those funds over to a pension fund company, you are able to manage it yourself. The range of investments available to you is very broad, including commercial property and of course stocks and shares. Recently the legislation has changed and you can now use CFDs as a means of trading equities within your SIPP. Now before I go any further, I hasten to add that I am not a...

Volume patterns are much harder to interpret than price patterns. The difficulty stems from the clandestine strategies of big market players. These folks tend to move slowly and cover their tracks within the broad noise of daily movement. While price bars tell many tales in a vacuum, volume has little or no meaning without underlying price movement. But don't abandon your volume study just yet. It still adds power to prediction when you apply it judiciously. The importance of volume depends on its location within the overall pattern. For example, heavy volume through a broken trend line suggests the start of a new trend, while the same activity after a long rally or decline predicts a reversal. This counterintuitive logic confuses...

Capturing Trend Days Trend days occur when there is an expansion in the daily trading range and the open and close are near opposite extremes. The first half-hour of trading often comprises less than 10% of the day's total range; there is usually very little intraday price retracement. Typically, price action picks up momentum going into the last hour -- and the trend accelerates. Classic Trend Day - A large opening gap created a vacuum on the buy side. The market opened at one extreme and closed on the other. Note how it made higher highs and higher lows all day. Also, volatility increased in the latter part of the day--another characteristic of trend days. A trend day can occur in either the same or the opposite direction to the...