Thursday, January 04, 2007

Tides, waves & ripples

Share prices are comparable to the movements of the sea. In the sea, we have the tides, the waves and the ripples. In stocks, we have the primary trend, the secondary trend and the minor intraday trend.

A long- term investor is not concerned with the intraday movements. But a trader is different. He tries to benefit from the minor moves. Intraday trends, like the ripples of the sea, are extremely unreliable and hard to follow. As a general rule of thumb, weekly charts are more reliable than daily charts and daily charts are more reliable than hourly charts.

With modern technology, we are now able to have half- hourly charts or even quarter-hourly charts. These charts are created to encourage more speculation activities and business for the broker firms. How many have made money using these charts? I think for every successful man, there may well be over a hundred failures.

No matter how good a system is, if you can’t win from it, quit using it. I have yet to come across someone who can consistently make money out of trading. If you think you can, think again.

Good luck.