wa1 Chart, page-2141

I've been using technical analysis since I first learned about it a few months before the '87 crash, and accumulated hundreds of books about charts/ charting/ TA over the decade or so after that.

For those interested, most people use charts in completely the wrong way, expecting them to predict something. That's not how they work at all.

They only show the past and from the past we can work out what is likely to happen, pretty much statistically for certain types movements. However I've come across plenty of examples (probably hundreds) over the last few years where stocks set up really great patterns, then do the exact opposite after breaking out in the 'correct' direction (from all the books perspective).

I increasingly expect this to happen as institutions, aware that all this information about charting exists, and lots of more rookie 'players' use them, they deliberately 'paint the picture' with their 'bots' trading back and forward amongst themselves.

For this reason, I bought another 500 shares here last week at $10.93, right when the chart, according to normal expectations was telling chartists to sell. I use Bollinger bands, a statistical measure of where the price currently is to help in my decisions to buy or sell.

Well above top BB, time to sell if you are thinking of selling at all (I'm not in this case) but around an area where the bots are most likely to sell more than buy, whereas breaking the lower BB is always a good place to buy if bullish, as that's the point the bots are more likely to be buying statistically.

Charts are really useful, just not in the way used by most...