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Strategies & Market Trends : Point and Figure Charting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ms. X who wrote (329)	2/4/1998 12:30:00 PM
From: Ben Antanaitis	Respond to of 34816

Yes, doing your first couple of charts by hand is a way to learn the mechanical 'accounting' that goes into the chart building. But once you are exposed to that, it is a waste of brain power and time to ever do it again. Re: ..I still think getting charts by Dorsey's site and knowing they are in tuned with the rest of the market is a comforting feeling That is called a cheap shot. If you are going to follow a lot of charts, and industry groups, etc, and never going to vary from Tom's P&F methodology, then paying $/month to see them may be worth it to you. But if you are following your own personal portfolio and have the price data and may want to experiment with your own plotting criteria, as well as being able to produce the 'traditional' P&F charts... then you might want to think about using one or both options at hand. Put it to the test, compare charts plotted by EZ-PnF in 'traditional' scaling, 3 box reversal, daily high/low mode with those on Tom's web site. See if they are the same pattern. If they compare, then no foul, no error. If they don't compare, then one of us either has a bad piece of data or there is a bug in one of the charting programs. What you get with EZ-PnF is the ability to also look at the data in ways that are different than Tom's method eg 2, 4, or 5 box reversal, or logarithmic scaling, or using the daily average or closing price. Is this heresy? I think not... there is a lot of good history and a fine track record in the work Tom D. does, and he is one of the acknowledged guru's in the world of P&F. I have his book and have read it many times and think it is a defining work. But time and technology and the dynamics of the market and the rules of supply and demand evolve with every passing second. New and different ways of looking at data may present exciting new contexts with which to see things not noticed before or patterns overlooked or not obvious due to a methodology mechanically followed. For example, a day trader may find that using a percentage based scaling might mean more than a fixed dollar amount scaling OR that swings of 5% or 17.25% mean something to his trading success. And yes, you can always select the 'traditional' scaling, 3 box reversal with daily high/low price options of EZ-PnF and get back into the warm fuzzy territory we are all familiar with... JMHO, Ben A.