Everyone's got their favourite charting methods and I am by no means a tech/a. My suggestion based on reading this thread over recent months, however, is to consider using longer term price charts. Like most real-world systems, the stock market is fractal. The same patterns generally play out at different time scales from 1 minute to 1 month to 10 years. Sometimes it pays to zoom out to the bigger picture.
There is a risk of paralysis by analysis with technical analysis and charting. I reckon its best to keep it simple. Is the stock going up, down or sideways? Is it in accumulation or distribution? For me technical analysis is only a timing tool. I wouldn't be hanging out on the PNV boards if I was not long term bullish PNV.
The point of my thoughts below is to encourage people to use the weekly and even monthly chart. If your time frame is not daily (ie, you are not a short term swing trader) then I argue below that the daily is not necessarily the most useful chart to use.
Personally, my go to chart is a weekly onto which I plot a golden cross (10 and 40 week moving averages). Some people prefer to use EMV but plain old MA does for me. I also use these same time periods extrapolated onto the daily chart (50 day MA and 200 day MA). If I am looking to enter a stock or top up, I like to see if the candlestick patterns on the daily and weekly are in convergence or divergence. It just gives you the same picture but at different granularity.
Technical analysts will generally look at one of two other things: fibonacci retracements and extensions (perhaps in relation to Elliot Wave Theory) and/or Volume Spread Analysis. Even if you don't know VSA (which I only crudley understand) it is worth looking at volume when looking at the daily and weekly chart for an idea on the strength of a price thrust and signs of exhaustion of a price move.
Finally, I like to also look at a monthly chart. I don't put any MAs on the monthly chart and don't bother with volume on the monthly but instead I have the Coppock Indicator (aka Oscillator) as on a monthly chart it can help identify broader changes in sentiment. The caveat with a monthly chart is that often it extends way back in time into irrelevant time periods (that predate reverse take-overs especially for stocks like miners and biotechs and other start-ups, paradigm shifts in a companies management and purpose).
These work for me because my investment approach is that ideally I want to hold a stock for the long term, but I'm always looking for the next opportunity too so always tinkering around accumulating, taking profit, etc.
Here are the three charts I describe above for PNV along with some of my thoughts (for what they are worth - I'm a very crude technical analyst)
What a stellar run up to December 2020. It's been volatile since. Bulls and bears and general market volatility have pulled this share every which way. Some people are bearish the stock and can't see it justifying such a high price and PE. Others are bullish. Everyone is having a go at this stock now, traders, true believer die hard longs, shorts. Note that the Coppock indicator turned negative in early 2020 indicating that long-term momentum was no longer behind the price. Opportunities here for shorters and traders to make a buck and for astute longs to accumulate and perhaps also trade the ups and downs.
A closer look, now at the weekly. As I pointed out in these flora a couple of months ago we have a classic head and shoulders pattern playing out here. I sold half my holding in the 2.60s and have bought it back at around 2.20 and will buy more if we drop down to around the 1.90 to 2.00 mark. We don't know if we are at the bottom of the head and shoulders yet or if the bears will be successful in driving the price down further. Everyday is a tussle between bulls and bears. That's the game.
For me, personally, the daily chart doesn't really tell me much. Except that I notice that there is a gap in early April just between $1.81 and $1.82. If you follow gap theory that will be of interest as gap theory tells you that gaps are more likely to be filled than left unfilled.
My final thought is that the stock market moves in waves. In quantum physics we can measure an electron's spin or its position but we can't know both. We can observe light as discrete particles of photons or as waves of energy. The charts won't tell you where the price will be. They only give you some insight based on observation of past patterns. Like photons you can try and look for the patterns in the waves but you will never know where the price will be at any moment. The chart gives you four measurements of the price (the open, high, low and close) and you need to evaluate the trend and the pattern from that. They can help you predict what might be. That is, help you assess probability with a low margin of confidence! At the end of the day its all about assessing probability and risk.
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