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
Technical trading can take any number of forms. The trader who waits for multiple timeframe confirmations can claim just as much technical validity as the guy with the itchy trigger finger who can't bear to hold for even an hour.
The technical trader is the retired rocket scientist (we have two — Kaufman and Fitchen), the self-taught housewife, the cubicle programmer and the college student. You can't tell from looking at them which is the best technical trader. (Hint: It's often the least conventionally well-educated person.) The technical trader may be sane and reasonable or an outright crackpot, but both types are technical traders. We also have poseurs who claim technical expertise but really only know one or two things, and while those one or two things may work for them, they probably won't work for you. As for the academics with huge libraries and systems perpetually in test mode but never actually traded — they may be technical analysts, but they are not traders.
Until you put cold, hard cash down on your technical trading ideas, you are not a trader. You may be the smartest guy in ...
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