I get Google alerts on every MACD blog posting which is quite a lot. Most are not noteworthy and some are downright off base, but every once and awhile, a really good post on MACD comes along. That happened most recently when I came across a well-done video by Adam Hewison using MACD and MACD divergence. I liked it well enough to see what else he had to offer and now have some goodies to share with you. See the guest blog post below from Adam Hewison. You can sign up for his free email trading course by clicking here.  I’ve taken the first lesson so far and thought it a succinct and timeless lesson. 

First of all I want to thank you for having me as a guest today!

My name is Adam Hewison. You might want to Google Me to confirm what I am about to share with you.

There are plenty of people out there that create “exclusive email courses” with little or no credentials to actually backup their teachings. So, I think it’s right that I share a little bit about myself with you before we even start.

I was a former floor trader on the IMM, IOM, NYFE and LIFFE as well as a risk manager of a large, multinational corporation in Geneva, Switzerland. I also have written books on forex trading and trend following. In 1995, I founded INO.com and later co-founded MarketClub. I’ve been in the trading biz for over three decades and have seen it all. I created this course as a way to give back and share trading tips and techniques that I still use in my trading today.

Click here to begin.

In my Free Mini Email Course, I will show and explain the tools and strategies you need to increase your success rate in the marketplace.

(1) The importance of psychology in price movement

(2) How to spot mega trends

(3) Understanding of technical price objectives

(4) How to picture price objectives

(5) How to trade with moving averages

(6) How to use point and figure trading techniques

(7) How to use the RSI indicator

(8) How to correctly use stochastics in your trading

(9) How to use the ADX indicator to capture trends

(10) How to capitalize on natural market cycles.

Plus, you will you will learn all about fibonacci retracements, MACD, Bollinger Bands and much more.

Just fill out the form and we’ll get you started right away.

Click here to begin.

Every success,
Adam Hewison
President, INO.com & Co-Creator, MarketClub

Tags: free, strategy, trading

 Click Here to Watch Free ON-DEMAND Webcast from The MoneyShow

Tags: free, MACD, MoneyShow

See the press release at the link below for the full announcement:

http://www.prlog.org/10315826-backtesting-report-reveals-the-truth-about-macd-in-debut-at-the-moneyshow.html

Tags: MACD, MoneyShow

Trader Ed Seykota reveals his trend-following strategy with the help of a few friends:

Tags: Ed Seykota, strategy, whipsaw

 A replay of today’s conference call is now available on SelfDirectedInvestor.com .

On the call you’ll hear my take on backtesting, technical indicators, psychology as it applies to both trading and investing in a 30 min discussion with SelfDirectedInvestor Founder Scott Nystrom.

Tags: backtesting

 A replay of this conference call is now available on SelfDirectedInvestor.com  (updated 7/16/09)

Here’s the press release with call-in details:

Back Testing and Trading Expert Jackie Ann Patterson to be Interviewed by Self Directed Investor, Inc.

Self Directed Investor, Inc, a financial media company, today announced they will interview Jackie Patterson, Editor of the BackTesting Report, a must read newsletter for traders.  Ms. Patterson is a popular presenter at the Money Show and the International Traders Expo.
Jackie’s web site is at http://backtestingblog.com, a web-site with regular articles on back testing techniques that are useful for traders. The Back Testing web site provides several free offers including a complementary first issue of the Back Testing newsletter.

DATE: Thursday, July 16, 2009
TIME: 4:00pm ET
CALL-IN NUMBER: (712) 432-0075
PARTICIPANT CODE: 419479 

The public is invited to join the call and ask questions of Jackie Ann Patterson.
 
The weekly conference call will be available at:  http://www.selfdirectedinvestor.com/. The title of the call is “Back Testing to Manage Risk” The calls will be freely available to the public.

Ms. Patterson, said “The Back Testing Report provides solid data about the performance of objective technical indicators that helps traders pick their own winning strategy in less time, with less effort, and less risk than many other systems. I am pleased to have the chance to share the power of these indicators with listeners at the Self Directed Investor.”

 ”Jackie has a passion for trading and for helping others learn to be better traders.   I am looking forward to learning more about her back testing system for traders during the interview.” said Scott Nystrom, President and Editor of Self Directed Investor, Inc. 

The mission of the Self Directed Investor is to provide original analysis, timely commentary, and educational material to help inform personal investment strategies.  Topics covered at SelfDirectedInvestor.com include: trading stocks, FOREX trading, options trading, gold and energy sectors, ETFs, the economy, and income investing.

 About Self Directed Investor, Inc.

 Self Directed Investor is a financial media company, using audio, video and feature articles to empower investors through ideas and education on their web site, http://www.selfdirectedinvestor.com

 CONTACT: Self Directed Investor, Inc. 
Scott Nystrom, President 
Phone: 202-210-2101 
Email: svnystrom@selfdirectedinvestor.com 
 
SOURCE: Self Directed Investor, Inc.

# # # #

Tags: backtesting

The July meeting of the Trade Station user group will be held at the Los Gatos High School’s community room on Saturday, July 11 at 10:00 am. Our speaker will be one of the members of our group, Jackie Ann Patterson.   Jackie is a stock trader and the editor of BackTesting Report.  She will give us a sneak preview of her Aug 2009 SF Money Show talk titled “The Truth About MACD”.  Drawing on her extensive backtesting of the MACD across 14 years of data on 7147 stocks, Jackie will highlight what worked and what didn’t, and reveal the top mistakes even the experts make when using MACD lines and histogram.   She will apply the lessons learned to several example charts, showing which buy/sell signals resulted in profits over 70% of the time plus how to do even better even with a lower win rate.    To take advantage of the most powerful MACD divergence signals, Jackie will demonstrate the semi-automatic process she uses to scan the markets for high-gain opportunities every evening.   We’ll do this with the latest end-of-day data so we can discuss whatever signals are active and current markets of interest to the audience.   

Hope you can attend this meeting.  Jim

Tags: MACD, MACD divergence, TradeStation

(StockFinder® screenshot of McClellan Summation Index in yellow plotted with S&P500 in green, red arrows mark important divergences between indicator and price.)

Tom McClellan’s hour at the LA Trader’s Expo started from a deep historical perspective and carried through to current market conditions.  Los Angeles was a fitting locale because it was actually reporting on local LA television stations that made popular the McClellan Oscillator and McClellan Summation Index.   These two indicators were developed by the speaker’s parents, Sherman and Marian McClellan respectively.   The McClellan Oscillator and Summation Index are market-wide indicators whose mission is to help traders and investors get an early sense of market trend, the strength of the trend, and impending changes.

Part of the talk focused on the construction of the McClellan Oscillator and the McClellan Summation Index.   Rather than repeat it here, you can find it at the McClellan website.  

One thing I want to highlight is that the McClellan Oscillator is the difference of two EMAs of the Advance/Decline line which means it is actually a MACD of the Advance/Declines.     Evidently both the McClellan Oscillator and the MACD were invented independently at about the same time.   What an interesting confluence of events!

Another somewhat geeky point is that the Advance/Decline data varies between vendors.   The Yahoo data includes ETFs while the Wall Street Journal Advance/Decline number does not include ETFs.    According to Tom McClellan, the difference in end results is not that large, but its nice to see that he is on top of data sources and using clean data for his calculations.

Tags: Advance/Decline, indicator, McClellan Oscillator, McClellan Summation Index, Traders Expo

 Engaging the audience at an early-morning session of the Trader’s Expo is not an easy thing but Dr. Brett Steenbarger showed up with the energy, good advice, and R-rated language to wake us up to the mportance of psychology in trading.  Dr. Steenbarger is an expert in “brief therapy” which is getting things done in a few minutes rather than years on the couch.   He’s applied his skills to helping professional traders improve their craft.  Institutional/hedge fund traders only - attending an Expo session or reading his book is the only way us private traders can take advantage of his work.   However, after his talk, the good doctor did stay for another hour answering questions and helping people with their particular issues.  A trader himself, Dr. Steenbarger’s blog packs as much if not more info about trading the markets than about psychology.

Key take-aways from the LA Trader’s Expo session:

Trading is a performance art (like music or athletics) and we can improve by building on our strengths as well as interrupting and reprogramming our patterns of problem behavior (impulsiveness, not adapting to conditions, acting on anxiety, etc).

Five Best Practices

1. Break trading into components and work one at a time, e.g. getting good entry prices.

2. Evaluate performance with metrics

3. Identify strengths and weaknesses, especially find strengths.

4. Set realistic goals for development.  2 per day: one strength to enhance, one weakness to curb

5. Institute mechanisms for review

Especially emphasized the role of our personal strengths and positive emotions.    A brief quiz showed us that we need a ratio of 2:1 positive to negative emotional states to achieve high performance.    (positive: joy, contentment, energy, affection.   negative: anxiety, depression, guilt, anger)

In short to improve:

• Find things that went well and do more of that.  
• Train self to follow sensible rules.  
• Stay in the zone.

Tags: goals, psychology, Traders Expo, trading

I spent a few days last week at the Trader’s Expo in LA.    I don’t think the show is designed to be as big as the main event in Las Vegas in November, but it drew a fair crowd and some excellent presentations.  Certainly there were no shortage of people coming to see John Carter of Trade the Markets fame give his latest prognostications on how to make money swing trading.  As always I enjoyed catching up with friends I know and meeting new traders.   Too bad this event’s evening party kind of fizzled out because it was on the same night as the big LA Lakers basketball play-off game.   Still, lots of good education for traders and investors.  Amazing that conference attendence and most sessions are offered free of charge  — its a great value.  In the next couple articles, I’ll post my notes from a couple good sessions.  

Trader’s Expo is posting video’s of selected sessions, starting Thurs Jun 10. Click Here for Videos

For the next event in San Francisco, click here

Tags: Money Show, Traders Expo