Experiments in Technical Analysis

Originally Posted by karthikmarar

Praveen

The object of this thread is different. It is aimed at promoting learning and make people self sufficient in building their own apprach and system. regards

Originally Posted by roameri

Dear Madam/Sir:
Agree.
A small quotation:
"He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever. "
Chinese Proverb
QUESTION:
In the Share Quote if the number of Sellers is more than the number of Buyers is it indicative of a rising or falling price ?
Thanks in advance.
j.

Originally Posted by karthikmarar

Thanks Jaykiru for kick starting this thread. I will study and revert back to you again.


I was reading the earlier posts of thid series. I did not understand

""After some experimentation I decided to use just the 13 day EMA with a signal line of a 9 day EMA of the 13 day EMA.

So my setup was EMA(13) greater than 9 day EMA of EMA(13).""

Also didnot follow

Now let us take look at my very first workable trading system. Of course I have come a long way from there. This system though very simple did provide many profitable trades and I hope will help the beginners to get some insight and help them in their path towards their own profitable trading system. Step by step we will cover more advanced systems, Indicator etc. This system, which I fondly called MABIUTS (Moving Average Based Intermediate Uptrend System. Forgive my penchant for funny names) will be a good starting point for the thread. I will talk about the setup and entry only. I will not cover the position sizing and money management part here because each individual has his flavor of MM.

It was a time when I was trying the grasp the intricacies of Technical Analysis. I was looking at various Indicators without really getting the grasp of their working and drawbacks. The indicators gave conflicting signals leaving thoroughly exasperated.

Finally I decided to make a system, which will be a very simple one yet gives me reasonable profits. I started experimenting with simple moving average cross over systems, but was quite unhappy with the frequent whipsaws. Then I decided to approach the problem in an unconventional way different from the normal use of Moving averages. I listed the objective as follows

1. The system should be simple
2. Based on simple moving averages
3. It should be able to identify an Intermediate Up trend ( Ahh… I am a big Fan of Saint, you know) and latch on to the trend.
4. The Time frame should be medium.
5. Visual pointer like Bullish, bearish and neural (sideways) on the charts to make an easier understanding.

With these set of objective I set out to make my system. First step was to identify an Uptrend using Moving averages. That time I was very familiar with the 3-13-39 system from the great thread by Traderji. After some experimentation I decided to use just the 13 day EMA with a signal line of a 9 day EMA of the 13 day EMA.

So my setup was EMA(13) greater than 9 day EMA of EMA(13).

Now what about the entry? I wanted to enter on confirmation of starting of Intermediate Up trend. Now my Pivot Analysis studies (Some of you may be familiar with my thread on pivots) came to my aid. So the entry would be when the price crosses the previous High Pivot. (The previous peak)

I kept the exit also very simple. When the he EMA (13) cross below the signal line, I will exit the trade. (Trailing stops etc were a far cry for me those days)

It was a simple and elementary Trading system. But worked well during the bull market. It caught on most of the intermediate up trends and kept one on the right side most of the times. It also gave signals for entry or adding on pullbacks in an uptrend. It identified most sideways movements. It was good for safe, stress free positional trades.

Of course It had its share of drawbacks. Some entries were signaled at the top which proved to be loss making. The system also was unable to handle big drops.

Overall it was very satisfactory system in a bull market and of course in a bear market the system will fully keep one aside. The system with its simplicity may be a good one for beginners.

Let me reiterate the rules again.

Setup: EMA(13) of close > Signal Line
Entry: Close crossing the previous peak
Exit : EMA(13) crossing below the Signal Line

Signal Line : EMA(9) of EMA(13)

I had implemented the same in Metastock and has now recreated the same in Amibroker. It has the following features.

Buy and Sell indications – Arrow and “B/S” Texts. Amibroker is more flexible hence has the price also.
Chart Bars color coded with green for Bullish, Red for Bearish and blue during pullbacks and sideways movements. The blue indication puts one on alert.

Color-coded ribbons in Metastock for Bullish, Bearish and neutral zones.

I am enclosing the two charts for your reference (one from Metastock and the other from Amibroker).

Comments welcome. Also effort to improve could be thought of.

The Metastock Expert and Amibroker AFL will be posted in their respective sections (Just to avoid clutter here)

Warm regards

Karthik

The Metastock code and Amibroker AFL can be found at

http://www.traderji.com/52339-post21.html

For the related explorations please go to
http://www.traderji.com/52463-post43.html

Originally Posted by karthikmarar

Dear VPS

I do not know anything about Trade tiger. Can we build custom signals in Trade Tiger? Does it have inbuilt indicator functions?

If anwer to the above is no, then you cannot add any custome trade system to it. Then you have to depnd for some external software like amibroker or metastock with data feed.

Also if you can tell us what kind of trader are you it would help us advise better. Or you a day trader or apositional trader?

About the last part of your question..

Any trading system has essentially three steps or stages. The first one is called the "Setup". when the set up conditions occur we are ready to execute a trade. Here the 13 day exponential moving average of the close crossing above the signal line is the set up condition.

Next is the entry point. The entry point is an event on the occurance of which we actually enter into the trade. In this case the entry occurs when the last higher pivot is broken. This is one of the first system in the forum to implement saints pivot systems. Now more systems are available.

Finally at some point we have to exit the trade which we executed. The exit point is an event on the occurance of which we will exit our trade either book profit or loss. I am trying to put it in a simple manner. There is more to a Trading system like Money Management which play a very important role in the whole trading strategy.

The signal line we used here is a 9 day moving average of the 13 day exponential moving average.

I presume that you are quite new to Technical analysis. I suggest that you go through saint's thread " Teaching a Man to Fish.." which explains the basic framework of Technical Analysis ina simple and elegant way.

I do hope that I have been able to throw some light on your queries.

regards

Originally Posted by biggles

hi karthik,

if u see the charts for cipla and rcom u would find constriction on the bollinger bands. can u explain how to anticipate a breakout or breakdown in such a case. i havent been able to get it rght at all.

thanks