glittering prospects - smh 13/11 - fml 17 cent, page-18

morning ed,

something I though about a couple of days back re. your thoughts on charting - you may have thought about this already.

There are people in the world who can interpret charts (a graphical display of numbers) - but who haven't got a clue what the actual numbers say.
Also there are the opposite - people who can read the actual numbers - but charts leave them for dead - they haven't got a clue about patterns etc.

Is it possible that you are one of the latter??

For all interested - have a look at the history of the ticker tape.

There were people who could 'read the ticker' - ie. they could guage the sentiment and emotion of the market by how the ticker read -- they literally could 'read the ticker'.

Charts are similar - there are people who can read them and people who can't.

As far as numbers go I believe it can be done - but it is much harder as you would have to look at reams of paper full of course of sales -- these days there would be so many trades - well, it would be very difficult.

Just to give an example - I was involved in a settlement a few years back between 2 partners.

The male in the partnership could not in any way get a grip on the settlement figures - he argued and went on and on about the terms of settlement -- which were more than fair, but he couldn't see it.

I had a lightbulb idea that he might be able to see it if it was presented graphically -- so some pie charts were sent off to him.

He agreed within 2 hours of getting the charts ---- why? Because he could see the picture.

Same deal in shares imo. f&b sees things in the charts I don't see -- I am very basic - but when I see really tried and proven stuff like - long term trendline breaks - to me it at least means that the antennae should be up.

Just after our markets hit their highs before the gfc - I had talked to a bloke called Simon Blair - he does (or used to do) presentations for Stockdoctor - teaching people some tricks to do with the data.

The long term trend line of many years of the all ords had been broken - and although Simon is a pretty bright guy - we differed on what it meant --------- I thought it was a very big deal and signaled that technically the trend was over - finished and that it was really 'telling' us something.
He disregarded it - conditions were apparently so good - and indeed so they were - companies were looking good, profits good etc etc --------------------- BUT, the chart was right - the result is as you see it now and has been since then - we have never yet regained that high.

Anyway ed, - if you hadn't thought about it - maybe have a play with it and let us know - if you indeed are one of those who can see the numbers but are blind to a chart - that is valuable information.

have a great morning

Pinto

ps - I can't read a ticker -- but I can pick highs and lows from alarm sets ----- I used to use medved when I traded and I could pick when the tops and bottoms were by how quickly I had to reset the alarms. I had a high hit rate - in the 90's - sometimes they were too quick to trade - but I had a high success rate when I had time to get the trades on.

I don't trade now and I use bullcharts for live - I could probably still do it - but it's too much fartin around.