Trend lines are universally used by almost all traders. They are a common place for all traders to begin their technical analysis. The problem is that a trader becomes too subjective in their trend line drawing. Many traders will draw on separate occasions two totally different trend lines based on the identical information, depending on his inclination each time, thus consistency and uniformity are totally lacking. Not all trend lines are correct, in the end only one is. Throughout exhaustive research, I have arrived at an effective method to select the points essential to the proper construction of a trend line. Once learned and applied, trend line analysis is no longer subjective, it becomes completely mechanical. Trend line breakouts are precisely defined and price projections can easily be calculated.
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Larry Williams published a description of a short-term trading method in 1979, a valuable one that is based on a pattern observed often in markets. The methodology was presented in his book, How I Made One Million Dollars Trading Commodities. It is still used by many traders with varying adaptations. The OOPS signal is a gap trading method that fades the direction of the opening gap. It is named thus, according to Williams, because when a broker would report to his clients that they were stopped out, he would call them and say, “Oops, we lost.” Read the rest of this entry »
What Is Woodies CCI?
“Woodie” is a day trader of 25+ years experience, and is well known among traders of index futures such as the EMini S&P 500 and the EMini Nasdaq 100. His system is based on a number of patterns made by the Commodity Channel Index (CCI) indicator. It’s a little different to most indicator-based systems, and traders tend to either swear by it or swear at it, but there is no doubt that its creator trades very successfully with it day in day out.
The CCI itself is a momentum indicator. Such indicators all work in the same basic fashion - they plot the difference between a “fast” measure of price and a “slow” measure. The MACD for example, measures the difference between a fast and slow moving average. In the case of the CCI, the “fast” measure is the price itself, and the “slow” measure is a moving average. Thus when we look at the CCI, what we are actually seeing is measurement of the deviation of price from its moving average, normalised to fit on a scale of roughly -250 to +250.
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