Pop Quiz Answer: Symmetrical Triangle

Hey folks!

Earlier today, I gave AOT members a "Pop Quiz" ....

Two questions:

1: What is the technical name of this pattern seen in the BABA chart below?

2: And what are the price targets for this chart pattern?

The BABA chart shown in the POP QUIZ was actually from April to July of 2017.... 

I did that purposely so that I can show you what BABA did after it triggered and broke out...

And just for fun, I decided to also give my Twitter Followers the same POP QUIZ !!

First 5 correct answers will get a FREE gift from me!!

Thank you to all who participated in today's POP QUIZ and many of you did ! 

So here are the answers i was looking for: 

The chart pattern shown in the above BABA chart is technically called a: Symmetrical Triangle 

Here's what it looks like: 

..... and here's another example ... 

Symmetrical triangles generally are "neutral patterns with equally sloping lines on either side that converge into a triangle's APEX upon breakout time....

GENERALLY they break in the direction of the prevailing trend.... so in BABA's case, the prevailing trend was clearly UP so it was UP, UP and AWAY for BABA!!

It surely did not disappoint !  

So based on that symmetrical chart pattern highlighted in BABA, the ideal technical entry would be to go LONG on a breakout thru the apex of that symmetrical triangle(so at the $145 area). 

Two targets for this trade:

First target is: $153

Second target is: $160 

..... and here's how BABA did after that SYMMETRICAL TRIANGLE .....

As you can see from the above BABA chart, the $153 and $160 targets were fairly accurate for that particular trading pattern! Don't ya think?  

A few of you got it spot on so I'll contact you and email you your free Trading Ebook gift tomorrow morning! 

I hope this helps! 

As always, if you have any questions, comments or feedback, please let me know!! 

Happy trading! 

Join the 'ART OF TRADING' Today !

How To Calculate Price Targets

Hey folks, 

I got this question about once or twice a week !

It's actually quite simple however just like MANY things in trading, there's a lot more "art" to it than science.

So here's a quick educational post on how to calculate Price Targets for trading setups. 

Keep in mind, that Moving Averages such as 50 and 200 Day MAs, big volume Gaps such as Earnings Gaps, market strength(weakness), a stock's momentum and a stock's short interest also play a role in this but for simplicity's sake, I'll keep things as simple as possible for this educational post. 

First thing to do is:

Find and chart a setup as you'll see in the VECO chart below.... 

Take a look at the attached VECO chart below... You'll see an "Inverse Head and Shoulder" pattern...

I then calculate the difference between the top of the pattern(technical setup) to the bottom of the pattern(technical setup).... 

Then I add that number to the breakout number and you'll have a good first target to work with. 

And here's a more recent example in HD(bullish flag pattern), which was an 'AoT Top Pick' actually in June 2017....

...and this BABA "BULL FLAG" setup which was sent out a few weeks ago 

Of course, nothing in trading works 100% of the time but you'll be surprised how often price targets get hit when using the method I showed you above....  

I hope this helps! 

As always, if you have any questions, comments or feedback, please let me know!! 

Happy trading! 

Join the 'ART OF TRADING' Today !

Use Accumulation Volume To Find Big Winners

Hey folks, 

As promised to Art of Trading members in the private twitter stream on Friday, I'm doing a detailed educational post on "ACCUMULATION Volume" and why it's such a POWERFUL tool to have in your arsenal ! ...

"ACCUMULATION VOLUME" is also known as "Institutional Accumulation" or "Institutional Buying".  

Institutional investors are what's known as the "SMART MONEY". These are the the highly paid individuals who roll up their sleeves and do thorough research about the companies they're about to invest money in. Keep in mind, these people aren't investing few thousands bucks, they're investing millions and sometimes even billions in some of the companies they decide are worthy. So when they "click the buy button" their footsteps can be clearly seen via the VOLUME of shares traded on that specific day. The "Smart Money" know stuff most of us small fish don't. So when they are showing huge interest in a stock/company you better pay attention!! 

These big fish investors or "whales" as Bud Fox called Gordon Gekko in the famous movie "WALL STREET", are usually the big Hedge Funds, Mutual funds, Pension Funds, Warren Buffet types etc. When these people decide to BUY a stock, the stock will MOVE and usually move in a big way and Volume will surely increase in a dramatic way as they gobble up large portions of a company's outstanding shares and that automatically drives up the stock price, while simultaneously showing a heavy increase in volume traded. 

When Institutional investors BUY a stock, often times, the stock will rise and in some cases rise sharply over a sustained period of time.... and this phenomenon is also true on the SELL SIDE(aka 'Distribution Volume'). 

Today, we'll only discuss "ACCUMULATION VOLUME".... 

So what are we looking for?

What we wanna see is a big increase(at least double or triple average daily volume) in VOLUME traded as the stock price ramps up.... this is especially powerful thing when we see "accumulation volume" take place over a sustained period of time, like say over a few days, weeks or even months! 

I'm gonna show you a few examples of stocks, many of them are actually from the #PowerEarningsGap watchlist since the idea behind "Power Earnings Gaps" and "institutional buying" go hand in hand pretty much ! 

Let's get started !! 

In the above chart, AAOI, a small stock that almost nobody heard of, gapped up in August 2016 on HUGE volume(well above the average volume, at least 4-5 times average daily volume) as earnings exploded higher causing it to make the "power earnings gap" watchlist. Then watch what happens over the next few weeks.... VOLUME, VOLUME and more VOLUME started pouring into AAOI ! Institutional investors are starting to "circle the wagons" as they are sniffing something big coming for this company! 

Notice how AAOI Volume began to increase MORE AND MORE as we move into Jan, Feb and March of 2017 as AAOI continues to make back to back big "Power Earnings Gaps" .... the big volume started to really pour on UP DAYS while down days' volume was very minuscule compared to the HUGE volume up days...This is classic INSTITUTIONAL ACCUMULATION VOLUME and this stock demands our attention asap and has winner written all over it ! This is why it has remained on my #PowerEarningsGap watchlist for so long. 

I'm going to repeat because it's VERY important point..... ACCUMULATION VOLUME must take place over a sustained of time(as you see in the above AAOI chart) and also it must not see too many high volume selling days, the red(selling) days must be on super low volume as opposed the higher than average up days...... 

Here's another example in AMD where "ACCUMULATION VOLUME" appeared well before the stock went on a multi month rampage! 

IN the above BZUN example, the chart action is way more aggressive than the previous two charts but notice how the overall VOLUME started to ramp up big time after April and May of 2017 and notice how the "ACCUMULATION VOLUME" started to ramp up big time indicating a sudden huge interest in institutional support ! 

Here's another good more recent example of "ACCUMULATION VOLUME" I posted on twitter.... LL 

​CHGG, in above example, you can see how "ACCUMULATION VOLUME" started to kick well before the really big stock price increase started to happen but as i said earlier, a sustained period of "ACCUMULATION VOLUME" is what we want to see, accumulation that takes place over a period of many weeks or months! That BIG "Power Earnings Gap" in May 2017 was the "game changer" for CHGG ... that's what really put the stock into MOTION! 

"ACCUMULATION VOLUME" doesn't only happen in small stocks like AAOI, BZUN or CHGG ..... it also happens in big daddy stocks like MCD !! 

...or BAC !! 

​Look at this beauty of chart, RACE(Ferarri) !! 

"ACCUMULATION VOLUME" all over Ferrari Stock(RACE) and when you couple that with 1 or 2 "Power Earnings Gaps" you now have a KILLER Knock Out PUNCH for finding the Best Stocks in the stock market ! 

Here's one that hit my scans on Friday..... made a "Power Earnings Gap" and notice the steady eddy "ACCUMULATION VOLUME" over the last few months! 

This MX is a must watch from here..... 

I hope you found this post helpful ! 

As always, if you have any questions, please email me at:  TraderStewie@gmail.com  

Happy trading !

Join ART OF TRADING Today!!

How To Trade The "Holy Grail" Setup

Hey folks,

Long time ART OF TRADING blog followers probably know this "Holy Grail" setup well as I made numerous posts on it thru out the 9 years I've been posting on this blog!!  Can't believe its been 9 years ALREADY !!

Anyway, let's get straight to it!

The "HOLY GRAIL" setup, is a setup first mentioned by Linda Raschke in her famous trading book, "STREET SMARTS"....

The basic premise of this trading technique is that strongly trending(in this case bullish) stocks that make a first pullback to their 20 Day Moving Average and hold, will often bounce back and resume their uptrend. It's that simple and straight forward, just the way I like it... SIMPLE!!

For my strategy, I use the basic idea of Linda's "Holy Grail" strategy which is I want to buy strongly uptrending stocks on their first(or second) pullbacks to their 20 Day MAs.

I use the 20 day EMA(20 day MA will work just fine as well).

I want to focus on stocks from my #PowerEarningsGap watchlist(I created this special hasthtag for AoT members as well as my twitter followers to follow along and learn more about my Power Earnings Gaps strategy) since these will be the leading stocks that already reported STRONG earnings and chances are they are already rallying or at least in overall uptrend.

So I track my "Power Earnings Gap" plays on a separate watchlist, this list has around 25 to 30 names and I update it(add or delete) every earnings season... Its a great way to discover NEW and HOT names that are reporting strong, powerful earnings and the stocks are moving strongly higher as a result. The cool thing about the "Power Earnings Gaps" strategy is I don't have to gamble and hold stocks into earnings.....
I simply wait until AFTER earnings are reported and so now my main job is to track and see which ones are the STRONGEST, LEADING names... I simply wait for these powerful stocks to SETUP properly in tradeable technical patterns, i.e. BULL FLAGS, wedges, pennants, or hammer reversals off key moving averages or support levels ...

In today's blog post, I'm discussing the "HOLY GRAIL" setup.

I track the 'Power Earnings Gappers'(PEG) closely and I wait to see a stock pullback, ideally I wanna see it in what I like to call a "SMART PULLBACK"... in other words, a slow and steady low volume, multi day pullback to test the 20 Day MA(has to be the first or second time it tests the 20 Day MA post the 'Power Earnings Gap' day). That's important because we don't want to buy the 3rd, 4th or 5th retest of the 20 DAY MA because the odds of it bouncing every single time off the 20 Day MA if very rare! So keep in mind, we wanna focus on buying the FIRST or SECOND test of the 20 day MA! I then wanna see the stock pullback, TEST and HOLD the 20 day MA. If they stock breaks briefly below the 20 Day MA and then recoups to form a reversal candle of some sort such as a HAMMER CANDLE(which is my personal favorite reversal candle: it looks something like this:

Look at the WYN chart below, it's a perfect example of the type of "SMART PULLBACK" to test the 20 Day MA I prefer to see in stocks I want to trade using the "Holy Grail" technique:

Take XLNX for example: This was a stock from the #PowerEarningsGap , XLNX was on FIRE and running strong as you can clearly see from the chart below.... On Tuesday morning, an Analyst downgraded XLNX based on "valuations", XLNX gapped down and sold off about 5% and pulled back to its 20 Day Moving Average.... once I started to see it reverse a bit off the intra day lows and form a "HAMMER CANDLE" on daily charts. I alerted ART OF TRADING members(All trade alerts are Emailed, Tweeted and SMSed to members in a timely manner) to go long XLNX.

Here's what the original Trade Alert looks like:  

Art of Trading‏ @AOTtrades  May 23

Long XLNX at 63.70  stop loss at 62.80

Target: $67 to $68

And here's what it looked like and my rational while watching the intra day charts...

We've held XLNX for 3 days now(raising stops along the way) and it's already up +$2.00/share from where we got in on Tuesday..... as you can see once the hammer candle was printed off the 20 Day MA... XLNX started to turn back up and rally quite nicely.....

Now, while the pullback in XLNX was not the "SMART" pullback I want to see in my "Power Earnings Gappers" ... I made an exception for this XLNX trade because:

1: It pulled back due to an analyst's "valuation" downgrade(rarely take these seriously) and not any company related news event.
2: The SMH(Semis sector) has been and is still is ON FIRE, so that gave me extra comfort into taking this XLNX
3: Keep in mind, XLNX has made a big run up since its PEG day, so profit taking should be expected.
4: The overall market was in rally mode, so when a strong stock, in a strong sector like XLNX offers you a "gift", you must take it! Don't over-think it!



Like I mentioned earlier, all my trade alerts are very timely, clear and concise!

This gives ART OF TRADING members plenty of time to trade the alerts if they choose to and have confidence that they are trading some of the strongest stocks in the stock market universe.

Here's an email I got today from a NEW ART OF TRADING member who joined this week !!

Hope you found this post helpful !!!

Happy trading !