With so many charts showing ‘euphoric’ gap patterns (often based on earnings releases/momentum), I couldn’t pass up posting today’s action in Amazon (AMZN) which increased 27% in one day!

By the way, the Nasdaq made a fresh 6 year high and the Dow closed comfortably above 13,000, making yet another all-time closing high. Headlines and […]

I must admit I am impressed with the strength of the recent rally, especially in the market leading Dow Jones Index (which is still just comprised of 30 large-cap stocks). The Dow came within 10 points of touching the psychological 13,000 mark today, and it appears likely we will test this high soon.
What people […]

Here are three charts that show past opportunities and some possibilities for the futures. All charts are for educational purposes and have minimal annotation.
US Dollar Index - Weekly

Comments:

Downtrending and may make new price lows
Potential support at the 2005 low - if broken, few levels of support below
Head and Shoulders pattern led to dramatic […]

Lauriston at the Lauriston Letter recently polled readers to send in their responses regarding what would be the top ten fundamental (or core) trading rules to follow.
The responses are compiled here (at this link) and include not only critical insights into the highest probability activities, but insights from traders helping other traders.
The Lauriston Letter always […]

TraderGav (Gavin) posted an excellent resource regarding Risk/Reward and Accuracy.
His post describes why it is essential to have an edge in trading, but of particular interest, he provides an Excel Sheet which allows you to input your risk/reward average and play around and see what accuracy rates net what results, given risk/reward.
Download the file, read […]

Dr. Steenbarger recently issued a call for submission for readers to describe their personal methods for overcoming fears and performance anxiety in trading, and they responded with some wonderful responses.  Dr. Brett has arranged these responses in two posts (so far):
First Post on Reader Reviews on Performance Anxiety
Second Post on Reader Reviews on Performance Anxiety
He […]

How is it that a company reports higher profits, yet its stock price declines intraday?
This phenomenon is quite common, where what a new investor expects (or even common sense expects) to happen does not materialize, and in fact, the opposite occurs.
Consider two examples from Friday, April 20th, where the Dow set new highs and rallied […]