Let’s take a quick look at the base statistics for overnight gaps and fills for the month of February. I used the DIA (Dow Jones ETF) for the basis of the study, though the SPY gives near identical results in terms of percentages. Of the 20 trading days in the month of February, 2008, an…
Thank you so much to readers of the Afraid to Trade blog! I owe so much to you for reading, linking to, and sharing the blog and the analysis/commentary/education I share with you. I wanted to provide the traffic statistics provided by my webhosting service to show you how rapidly the blog has grown, and…
Let’s take a quick visual overview of some key market indexes and where they stand as of now. First, the US Dow Jones Index (daily): Classic technical analysis would be forecasting prices beneath 11,800 due to the perceived bear flag which has formed and has resolved halfway, but it seems like this hypothesis is currently…
Thanks to reader Dave Butcher, who recently worked with me to enhance the blogsite, you will now be able to print directly from the blog in a more professional format. When you enjoy an article and want to print the article for your archives, simply print as normal and your page will be populated only…
In his book Technical Analysis and Stock Market Profits, Richard Schabacker – also known as “The Father of Technical Analysis†– wrote parting comments to naturally conservative or risk averse investors that I wanted to share. Keep in mind, these words were written in the 1920s. He states that most market students need words of…
I wanted to highlight an article by guest columnist Adam Hewison, president of INO.com, an educational service that has been catering to traders for over 14 years. As a member of INO.com, I have benefited greatly from their educational seminars and archives and wanted to share a column from the president highlighting some of the…
When you take a signal, do you consider why you are taking that signal? When you exit, do you know why you do so? On the surface, you might say “I enter when I perceive prices moving a certain direction, and I want to flow in that direction†and “I exit when I feel the…
How great did your mutual fund do this year? Mine underperformed. I try not to look at the performance of my long-term retirement/mutual funds because I want to trade them I get very angry I wish I were invested elsewhere The same cycle is true again this year, and this may be the death knell…
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, along with the broader S&P 500, is hovering dangerously close to full-bear technical territory. The daily chart is in a confirmed downtrend (as defined by moving average orientation and series of lower highs and lower lows), and is threatening to test the lows made in August which carved out a…
E*Trade Financial Corporation (ETFC) plummeted 50% today after it reported that “deterioration in the value of its mortgage-backed securities has fallen significantly.” The stock had been in a recent downtrend on the daily charts (since August, 2007) and a fresh downtrend after a lengthy consolidation period on the weekly charts. From a 2007 high of…