Technical Analysis Important Facts

Day trading in stocks is risky, more so if you are untrained. However, if you have an eye for spotting market trends, you can make a neat pile in quick intra-day deals. There was a time not long ago when trading was a simple game of buying and selling stocks based on one's conviction. Now, technical analysis- a science of predicting future prices from historical price data-has given investors new tools. Technical analysis increases the probability of your call being right. But, we reiterate what we mentioned in our report,

How it works

Technical analysis is done on the basis of historical price movement plotted on a two-dimensional chart. One reason it has become popular is that anybody can look at the chart and see how prices have moved.
For example, in the chart, Easy Reading, you can see open, high, low and closing prices of the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex on July 7, 2011. 

How to pick a stock

• Good volume and volatility are a must to gain from trading. While volume should ideally be at least 500,000 shares, the stock should have a high beta, or volatility. This means if the index rises 1%, the stock should rise by more than 1%. Those who don't understand the concept should see to it that the difference between intra-day high and intra-day low prices of a stock is at least Rs 10.

• Identifying the right stock and fixing a stop-loss level is a must. One must stick to the stop-loss. Generally, stop-loss is fixed at 1.5-2%, which means the stock is sold if it falls 1.5-2% below the purchase price. Big traders generally fix stop-loss at about one-third of the expected profit. For example, if they expect a stock to rise 10% in three days, they set a stop-loss at a point the price falls by 3%.

• Once you zero in on the stock, look at its volumes and price trends. Generally, higher volumes with higher price rise indicate an uptrend, but it should not be considered a thumb rule. "Volume is misread by a lot of people," says John Barrett, an instructor at Online Trading Academy, which teaches stock trading. Big volumes and large moves sometimes throw up big tops and bottoms, says Barrett. This means if both volumes and prices are increasing, it may be the last leg of the rally. 

Stock Trends

Identifying trends is important. But how do you spot a trend? It's difficult, as the market never moves in a straight line. A stock will never fall continuously on a given day and rise on another. Generally, higher highs and higher lows indicate an uptrend, whereas lower highs and lower lows mean a downtrend,

Analysts and market experts take the help of various parameters to confirm if a stock is a trade pick. The most used are available in any technical analysis software. These include 200-day moving average, relative strength index, moving average convergence divergence, or MACD, Fibonacci retracement and candle stick price chart. The terms may sound daunting, but software available nowadays makes technical analysis easy. 


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