When it comes to "Continuation Patterns", Triangles are one of the more common ones you'll see. In this video we're discussing, more specifically, the Symmetrical Triangle, and how markets tend to consolidate between two converging trendlines. This series of higher lows and lower highs ultimately reaches its apex, which forces a resolution.
Throughout this course, we discuss all kinds of patterns, both continuation and reversals. In Triangle Land, we often see Symmetrical Triangles, Ascending Triangles, Descending Triangles and Wedges that appear like Triangles and have similar implications.
There are no called strikes on Wall Street. In other words, we're not penalized for not swinging, like you are in baseball. We have the ability to be patient, to a certain extent at least, depending on your mandate. But most of us don't have mandates! Even one of the best hitters of all time struggled when he swung at bad pitches. In this video we compare Ted Williams' batting average when he swung at good pitches, vs when he swung at bad ones.
This is my favorite reminder that in trading & investing, we want to wait for OUR perfect pitch, and then swing, vs just swinging at anything.
This is a market of stocks, and not just a "stock market".
All of these Indexes, from the Dow Jones Industrial Average to the Russell2000 Small-caps, are made up of components. There are 30 stocks in the Dow and 2000 stocks in the Russell2K, for example.
Are more of them going up? Are more of them making new highs? Are more of them showing bullish momentum characteristics? Are fewer and fewer components doing these things as the indexes make new highs? What about in downtrends? Are more stocks confirming the new lows in the indexes or are fewer and fewer stocks making new lows and showing bearish momentum characteristics as the market makes new lows?
The answers to these types of questions is what we call, "Market Breadth Analysis". There are a lot of ways to do this on all sorts of different time horizons. In this lesson we go over all the methods we use to decipher market breadth, which can be used by both individual traders and the largest financial institutions in the world.
