What signals do you use to trade?

togs said:

Hi all,

I'm pretty much a trading greenhorn, been plugging away at it for about six months, not doing too badly -- most days I'm in front! My issue is that I can only attribute this to 90% blind luck and 10% to ASF; not a good statistic.

Anyway, in about two years I would like to trade full-time.

I know:

• why I want to trade -- as a stepping stone in an overall 'passive income' strategy
• how I want to trade -- systematic/mechanical technical analysis, most probably in a custom developed piece of software, but always with a human pushing the Buy/Sell buttons.

Where I am falling down is what! Generally, let's say my weapon of choice will be Australian shares.

A few people on ASF have mentioned that they trade based on signals that their system gives them; often the only thing they know about the company is the stock symbol. What are some of the signals that people are using to indicate that of the thousands of stocks available, these ones over here are worth digging into?

Thanks for your time!
togs

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Boggo said:

Hi Snake

See the first pic (MCR), on the left of each window is the indicator name.

On the second pic (MIN) is the commentary window, it just shows all of the items that can generate a signal and which one(s) generated the signal in question.

I can post the Metastock formula's if you wish. You can easily create something similiar though, find a chart pattern that works and then place a few indicators on there, modify them so that they cross within a day or so of one another and place the lot in an explorer and scan away.
Some days only one crosses, other times three or four cross on the same day.
(see the two vertical columns on the first pic for examples)

There are other factors such as volume,where the close is in relation to open, high, low on any bar etc and signals are inhibited on each indicator when that indicator is over what is considered overbought on that indicator.

Its just a method of scanning, you still need to eyeball the results.

(click to enlarge)

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