Senin, 09 Juli 2012

Project Freedom (6): Back to Basics

About 5 years ago, I came across an old and experience trader in a forum...  In asking for advice, he said that "All you need to read and understand about trading is in a few classical theories already exist about a century ago: 
(1).  The market waves in Dow Theory, 
(2).  The Vibration Energy by WD Gann, and
(3).  The philosophy of riding the Leaders by Richard Wyckoff or Jesse Livermore.
All the modern books are more of repeating and re-phrasing what had been said."

That's very true.
And, I find that to add in another guru would be more complete:
(4).  The trading psychology aspect by Mark Douglas.

The following charts are used to illustrate the implementation for these gurus' theories.

(1).  On Dow Theory.
Dow Theory is the grandfather of all Technical Analysis.  It consists of a set of 12 "Basic Tenets" (ref: Technical Analysis of Stock Trends - Edwards & Magee).  
Over here, the follow charts just focus on the implementation on one of the Basic Tenets - "The Three Trends in the Market".

Here is the definition cut and paste from wikipedia on this particular tenet:
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The market has three movements
(1) The "main movement", primary movement or major trend may last from less than a year to several years. It can be bullish or bearish. (2) The "medium swing", secondary reaction or intermediate reaction may last from ten days to three months and generally retraces from 33% to 66% of the primary price change since the previous medium swing or start of the main movement. (3) The "short swing" or minor movement (momentum)varies with opinion from hours to a month or more. The three movements may be simultaneous, for instance, a daily minor movement in a bearish secondary reaction in a bullish primary movement.
-----------------------------------------8<-----------------------------------
Now let see how to apply these theories on the following chart.  This is China Shanghai Stock Exchange Index.







On the following diagram, when Zoom in, it can see that there are three indicators below the price chart.  Which are (1.) Momentum, (2.) Medium Swing, and (3) Trend.  These are corresponding to the 3 movements (waves) in the market.

At any one time, these 3 three indicators may run into different direction (up or down), and when the 3 movement are in sync into one direction (either up or down), then usually there will be significant movement on the price.
As shown in the price chart area, it is labeled with green when color when all the three movements are up.  Red when all the three movements are down.  And, yellow when there are moving in different direction - usually at the stage of consolidation or pull back.

If one were to use some kind of multiple moving averages such as, 25,100, 200 to determine buy or sell, then he is also using this theory.  Just that normal MA, EMA are having too much lag that will not produce good result.  It got to be dynamically mapped. (Inspired from reading "Holophany - a New Philosophy and Logic" by Clara Szalai.)

The Multiple-Time-Frame concept using daily and weekly chart is another form of waves analysis.
The JM Hurst Cycle Analysis aims to find the synchronization of shorter cycles within longer cycles is also another form of wave analysis.

Their COMMON goal of these analysesis to LONG when all the waves are moving in the up direction while SHORT when all the waves are moving in the down direction.


(2). On Vibration Energy.
The Law of Vibration in the stock market was introduced by W.D. Gann.  Gann's work is hard to understand as it involves astrology, ancient geometry and mathematics.  But, nevertheless, if one were to study and think about them long enough, he may get something out of it...  Just that if a group of ten persons doing the same research, they might get twenty versions of the interpretation.   And, this is merely my personal interpretation...

If the stock is in its steady state of vibration towards up and down direction, it would has certain amount of vibration energy level pointing in the same direction.  If it is on the sideway, it is pretty much random and will cancel themselves.  Therefore an adaptive filter can designed to capture such energy.  As compare to the previous diagram, the price chart is now built-in a filter to detect the state of trend (up, sideway, and down trend).  Also just below the price chart, there is an Adaptive  Vibration Energy Indicator to indicate the worthwhile trend. 

Adding this filter to the Dow Theory would very much reduce the trading frequency as its goal is to eliminate trading when the stock in it consolidation state.








(3). On the Philosophy of Always Riding the Leading Sectors/Stocks
In reading Richard Wyckoff and Livermore books, one can find that they put emphasis on trading the leading stocks in the leading sectors.  This philosophy itself has the following important implication:

1)  Benchmarking the stocks with their Relative Strength.
In order to find the Relative Strength of a stock among all the other stocks in the market, the indicators used MUST NOT be range-bound to certain value.  For example, many popular indicators are swinging between a certain ranges, such as 0 to 100, -100 to 100, etc.   When one compare APPLE COMPUTER to bond market, these range-bound indicators can't differentiate which is stronger in relative sense. 

2) Rotational Trading.
In rotational trading philosophy, it recommends jump to the faster running horse when it find one (of course, one need to set the period of doing so, say one week or so...  And, very much depends on individual perference time-frame of operation.)

One simple way to achieve these two KEY POINTS is to insert a reference ticker inside the current monitoring stock indicator.  For example, in the following diagram, the Momentum, MediumSwing and Trend indicators are inserted with the SPY (S&P500) as reference ticker. 

Note that there are some circles highlighted in these indicators.  Without the reference, the indicators would have give green signals when they are above "Zero Line", and give red signals when it is below "Zero Line".  Now, with such reference line, they must be greater than both the reference strength and the zero line in order to generate a green signals...  Same idea applies to the downside.  Or it would just generate a yellow signal.

One can use this idea to find the stronger sectors in the market using SPY as reference strength, then find the stronger stocks using that particular sector as reference strength.









To further illustrate the point on Relative Strength Benchmarking....  Below is diagram showing the Strait Time Index (STI) and its 30 components. 
Most Benchmarking methodology is to compare the percent price movement over a period of time.  This could be useful most of the time.  BUT during the transition of changing trend, it would produce a great lag that is not acceptable.
Instead, one can compare their indicators strength in the same pane and rank it... It would definitely produce much timely result.

(4). The Trading Psychology
There are quite some materials on Trading Psychology in the market today.  Recommend to go through the material by Mark Douglas as they are very helpful.  Especially when he talks about the Probability and Edge.   Here has a snapshot:->
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"Our most valuable possessions are those
which can be shared without lessening;
those which when shared multiply."
I DARE YOU - William H. Danforth


To be continue with  ->The Galaxy Chart.<-

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