Chapter 18
Ten Secrets of the Top Technical Traders
In This Chapter
Putting your faith in the chart rather than the “experts”
Getting to know the virtues and drawbacks of technical indicators
An old saying has it that “money is how we keep score,” but trading is about more than making money. We trade for many other reasons — to keep busy or to get the adrenaline rush of trading. If you trade for a living, keeping your sanity isn’t a bad goal, either. In this chapter, I point out ten issues that you must confront to succeed in technical trading.
You can trade technically in any number of equally valid ways. In fact, technical traders come in all stripes (and some are plaid). At any technical analysis conference or online chat room, you meet people ranging from the geeky math whiz to the benchmark-oriented fund manager to the retired schoolteacher. You can’t tell from appearance or vocation what technical methods they use. Some are quick-trade artists who make rapid-fire trades lasting less than an hour every day. Other technical traders immerse themselves in charts for hours every day but hardly ever make a trade. Another kind of technical trader is always in the market, long and short, and willing to take big losses for the chance to make spectacular gains. They’re all genuine technical traders.
Whatever their styles, successful technical traders all have one thing in common — they’ve each built a trading plan that uses the technical tools that suit their personality and appetite ...
