Here is something I worked up for a guy a while back. If you think it could be useful, you are welcome to it.
I'll work up a little program for you. It should not take a great deal of time, maybe a few weekends. If you have an interest in the stock market, it will be time well spent. Most TA is basically voodoo BS, but since almost everyone follows it, it can be a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Part One
Leave this message up on a browser, and open a new browser so you can cut and paste the URLs and track where you go and come back to this message.
I assume you understand things like earnings projections and so forth. Let's take CUBE as an example, since you own it. That's a good company overall.
The first part is to understand some basics about TA (Technical Analysis). Not scary for us smart people, don't worry.
Read the following:
1) equis.com
2) equis.com
3) equis.com
Use a dictionary to define any words you don't understand. You now know more than most people about Technical Analysis. The tricky part is what nobody tells you, which is how to interpret what you are looking at. (BTW, some of what you just read is BS. Take it all with a grain of salt. For example, the "buyer's remorse" crap is nonsense. That is not TA, that is some guy's guess about why the chart did what it did. In TA, you don't give a rat's ass about why the chart did what it did. Not to say that is not important, just to say that we are just learning "pure TA" here.)
Next, go here AND BOOKMARK THIS PAGE:
dailystocks.com
Look this page over. You will see that on this one page, you can find every dang thing about CUBE that you want to know, from Edgar filings to the company's home page. If you want a different stock, just type in the ticker, and there you are. This page is the best page on the ‘net for investors that I have ever found.
Go down on the left to "More Sophisticated Charts" and click on it.
Now click on "6 Months,Bar,50-100-200 day Moving Average, RSI"
and print that chart out.
Now for the lab!
Notice that each "bar" is one day. The open is the little tit on the left, the close is the one on the right, and the line itself is the high and low of the day. The first day in November, the stock opened at its low and closed at its high.
See the bottoms (dips in the chart with one line lower than the rest) in late November and late Dec.? Take a real pencil and a real ruler, and connect them with a line; bottom of bar to bottom of bar. That's an uptrend. Uptrends are drawn using bottoms. There is no real downtrend to draw on this chart, but if there were, you would connect descending tops.
The other colored lines you see there are "Moving Averages", the average of the cumulative price for different periods of time. They are not part of this, so ignore them.
Underneath the price chart is RSI, (Relative Strength Index) a complex formula which gives clues about the stock's strength relative to itself in the past. The RSI for a single stock can be much different than the Dow Jones Industrial Average, for example. This is a "filter". There are thousands. This is the one you want to pay attention to. Reason: you learn one thing at a time, you learn it cold, and then you move on. RSI gives good long term buy and sell signals. I'll show you the one on this chart. Notice the two tops on the RSI in November. Notice that they are both above 70 on the RSI scale. Now draw a line between those two tops. It descends. Now, notice the corresponding price tops on the bar chart. Draw a line between them, and note that they are ascending. This is my primary sell signal on the RSI filter, I call it the "double hump". (I like to see the period between the humps come back towards the middle.)
Logically, you see that the price looks stronger, but the strength of the stock is actually weaker. A short on that signal was within 2 points of the high. Notice that in early Dec. the signal was confirmed, slightly higher price, less strength. Both tops must be above 70. (Buy signal is the reverse, under 30, lower price with better strength, so there is no buy signal in late Jan - early March.)
OK, let's test the theory. Go down on the page and type in XYLN, and print the chart. Connect the bottoms mid Nov - Dec 1. That's an uptrend line. Look on the RSI and you will see a sell signal. See it? See the resistance at 22 ½? Draw a horizontal line at 22 ½ and you will see it. That's one reason why the day traders went long at the end of February. See that?
One more, type in INTC and print that chart. You see the uptrend, it's obvious. Draw it. Now notice where the uptrend is violated, and look what happened that day. This is why TA can be useful, because traders pay attention to it. One other thing, there is a RSI sell signal that didn't work. See it? Does this signal work every time? No. Does a stock change trends without the signal? Sure. Is there a better signal? Maybe. Let me know if you find one.
Part Two
Now we get to the fun stuff. Go to this site (Warning: it takes a while to load. If your computer can't handle it, the lesson is over.)
fast.quote.com
This lesson is simple. Totally familiarize yourself with this page. There are tons of things you can do with it. For example, if you want to see a daily bar of the NASDAQ COMP (the Composite Index) with the RSI, you do this:
1) Click on the "Top 10" menu and select "US Stock Market Watch" and you will see a box appear to the right of the chart.
2) Click on "$COMPX" and you will see the chart.
3) Click on the "Chart" menu and select "Bar".
4) Click on the "Time" menu and select "D" (day).
5) Lower left, click on the menu that says "none" and select RSI.
6) Go back to the "Chart" menu and select "Print"
Presto! You have the daily bar chart of the comp with the RSI! (See the sell signal on Feb 2? That's how I called it!) The Dow is "$INDU", and the S&P futures is "$SPX". And here is the best part, this is a live streaming quote feed with a 15 minute delay. This is the closest you will get to a live bar chart for free. Go back to the "Top 10" and look at the selections! You get these on a 15 minute delay just by clicking! With RT quotes, and this delay chart, you might be able to successfully day trade, since you can tell if the signal is working in real time with the quotes. I would start with the 5 minute bar (each individual bar takes 5 minutes to form) for day trading.
So take a few minutes right now and fool around with that page. The only thing to stay away from is the menu where you selected RSI. That has a bunch of stuff that you don't need to pay attention to.
Now, use what you have learned to form your own opinions, and pay attention to what works.
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