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Just in an idle few minutes I thought I'd point outthe obvious to those who think it's a horse race and you have no idea what's going to happen.
I picked a ho-hum stock, for a fairly large company, which hasn't been doing well. It happens to be Macy's the big US department store.
You can get a good idea which stocks are likely to have been "doing well" buy looking at the "Sector" performance charts, which are available.
If you only want to buy rising stocks (ie no "shorting") then you'd have a better time in a doing-better sector, so Macy's would be a poor choice.
There are many many "indicators" you can apply to charts. You can become a "Chartered Chart Technician". Such people do very well indeed by analysing the charts. The clever individuals have 6 or 7 figure annual incomes, the very clever ones start companies and work towards becoming billionaires.
Even using one of the simplest indicators, you can do fine.
Here's Macy's chart, with an indicator line which is a simple moving average. It works on previous data, ie the yellow line doesn't move after it's drawn. So, in a sense it just draws what you can see for yourself. You can change the period of the moving average (ie averaged over 10, 30, 200 periods of whatever you choose) and use a few at once, to get a clearer picture.
The "Rule" with moving averages, simplified down, is to buy when the price turns up and goes through the moving average. You can wait until it drops through again to sell, but you're usually better off selling when the price is turning back to the MA, and has just peaked or has gone flat.
The blue line is the price, the yellow line is the 5 day moving average, and my red squiggles show what would have happened if you'd followed the rule. The red dots are where a bit of judgment would have improved the sell prices.
The whole period is 9 months, and the biggest rise, bang in the middle, is 16%. I guess the total would be +30% or so.
View attachment 317122
I picked a ho-hum stock, for a fairly large company, which hasn't been doing well. It happens to be Macy's the big US department store.
You can get a good idea which stocks are likely to have been "doing well" buy looking at the "Sector" performance charts, which are available.
If you only want to buy rising stocks (ie no "shorting") then you'd have a better time in a doing-better sector, so Macy's would be a poor choice.
There are many many "indicators" you can apply to charts. You can become a "Chartered Chart Technician". Such people do very well indeed by analysing the charts. The clever individuals have 6 or 7 figure annual incomes, the very clever ones start companies and work towards becoming billionaires.
Even using one of the simplest indicators, you can do fine.
Here's Macy's chart, with an indicator line which is a simple moving average. It works on previous data, ie the yellow line doesn't move after it's drawn. So, in a sense it just draws what you can see for yourself. You can change the period of the moving average (ie averaged over 10, 30, 200 periods of whatever you choose) and use a few at once, to get a clearer picture.
The "Rule" with moving averages, simplified down, is to buy when the price turns up and goes through the moving average. You can wait until it drops through again to sell, but you're usually better off selling when the price is turning back to the MA, and has just peaked or has gone flat.
The blue line is the price, the yellow line is the 5 day moving average, and my red squiggles show what would have happened if you'd followed the rule. The red dots are where a bit of judgment would have improved the sell prices.
The whole period is 9 months, and the biggest rise, bang in the middle, is 16%. I guess the total would be +30% or so.
View attachment 317122