Thursday, February 21, 2013

Information Management

Well the pullback seems to be starting so buying into anything right now probably isn't the best. Instead I'll talk about a basic principle of charting; information management. There is a limit to the amount of information that you can take in. Putting too many indicators onto your chart is just going to make noise that distracts you from the important stuff. Personally, I like to use the 34 period MA river and the 100 period MA. I think that provides a good balance of information and noise. Some people like to use indicators like the MACD or stochs or whatever, that's fine too. What I don't like to see is people using multiple MAs, an ichimoku cloud, MACD, and stochs. See the chart below for what that looks like.

www.freestockcharts.com

Personally, that chart is painful to read. I can barely see the price action and the MAs are all obscuring each other. On top of all of that I need to pay attention to the indicators on the bottom. The amount of information being portrayed is excessive and a waste of time. MACD and stochs go well together if you like using those but they don't need an ichimoku cloud or five MAs. The ichimoku cloud is a stand-alone indicator, it shouldn't be used with other MAs. I see people using, and I'm not exaggerating, 10+ MAs and more than three indicators (usually RSI, MACD, and stochs). It simply isn't legible.
The best thing to do is find some indicators that work well together, I already mentioned MACD and stochs, and get well versed in reading those. It might help if you imagine each indicator as its own language. Get good at reading one or two and stick with those.

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