ynot:" pourquoi pas ? "
>which indicators do you use with candles ?
200d EMA; that's exponential MA, closing basis.
50d EMA.
anywhere from 9 to 21 day EMA, depending upon "what fits".
anywhere from 9 to 21 day %K stochastics, (14d is my nominal starting point) "Slowing = 2", %D = 3, "Method = Time Series". These are my daily chart setups, ynot.
hand-drawn horizontal support lines, and...
...hand-drawn trend lines. I'll convert the chart over to a simple "line drawing" of closing prices, flip the price scale over to linear (rather than semi-log) and draw these magic lines. Then I'll flip the display back over to candlesticks, flip the price scale back over to semi-log.
hand-placed fibonacci lines. Usually I "fit" these thingys on a simple "line drawing" of closing prices, too. Sometimes I'll flip over to a weekly perspective and fit "big" fibonacci levels; then flip back to daily and fit more fib's in-between the spaces defined by the bigger fib patterns. If you draw the apparent horiz. supports first, the fibs almost always (somehow) fall "in sync" with them. After I draw the known "fibs", I'll (temporarily) extend the major and minor "fibs" up one level, place horiz. lines there, et voila ! that defines the near- and far-targets for any upside breakout.
on stock charts (not indices) I read volume.
momentum; I'll fiddle with this, overlay the sto display. Try placing vertical lines at places where you would have liked to BUY. Then fiddle with mo (like you would with sto) but, try longer durations, from 12 to ~72, until it bottoms out and reverses at those vertical line BUY dates - then delete the vertical lines.
ex-dividend dates = temporary vertical lines.
earnings release dates = temporary vertical lines.
>do you find candles useful for futures ?
yes. For indices - candlesticks reveal "mass psychology in pictures". In fact, they work better for indices than they do for individual component equities, imho.
>are you charting candles in realtime or with EOD software ?
both. For intra-day, I usually watch a major market and/or sector index in real-time with 3-minute candlesticks. Other time-slices I like are 13m, 39m and 78m.
Recently I have begun to look at 15/30/60-minute intra-day sto, because Berney and Paul have had a lot of success with it - but I can't read intra-day sto as well as they can.
A question you didn't ask, was what to chart (^_^)
chart the SPX-500, OEX-100, NDX-100 and DJX-30.
chart the JY99_ USD:YEN futures. Chart the TYX.X Bondz. Chart the CL99_ CrudeOil futures. Chart the VIX.X - Volatility Index.
chart these sectors: BKX.X - Banks; RLX.X - Retail; DRG.X - Drugz... and look up what their components are. You can find out where their index options are traded (like cboe.com, etc.) and they'll tell you what the components are. You can punch these stocks into a portfolio thingy (like MyYahoo! or, the really great one at the MSN investor site) and follow news and stuff that way.
TechStox, the NDX/QQQ is so close, but... I like to chart the SOX.X too. You like those big movers {grin} and they live in DOT.X, INX.X and IIX.X internet-land. I don't like the XLK chart. I prefer the TXX.X and IXS.X charts to MSH.X, fwiw.
bellwethers. The BigBoys are: GE IBM T/LU WMT MRK/AMGN C/MWD/AIG/AXP XON/BPA SLB/HAL DD AA/IP DUK... and the TechSpaetzles are: CSCO MSFT INTC/AMAT DELL/SUNW and AOL/YHOO.
...as my friend Berney says, "it doesn't matter what you trade - find a chart you can read ".
my deux centimes... happy trading !
-Steve |
