My Favorite Indicator to Read Market Direction Nate Bear, Lead Technical Tactician, Monument Traders Alliance I could have been staring at some serious losses last week. After all, the market's sharp decline caught many off guard. Luckily, I was positioned correctly. But to be honest, it had nothing to do with luck. And it all had to do with one indicator that I want to introduce you to. Reading the market direction is crucial, but it doesn't have to be difficult. Yet, most traders never bother to try and learn how to determine where the market is going. They see it as unnecessary if they don't trade the broader market. But just because you don't trade the broader market doesn't mean you can't predict where its direction. And for my money, there's no better indicator than the NYSE Tick Chart. You may have heard of it before or even used it yourself. But today, I'm going to show you some tricks of the trade I picked up along the way to help you fine-tune your market prediction skills. Tick Chart In my opinion, the Tick chart is the most underappreciated tool in day trading. While there are several out there, I use the NYSE Tick chart. This index tracks the cumulative up minus downticks for the stocks on the NYSE. If you're not familiar with the NYSE listings, it includes around 2,200 stocks from heavyweights like Eli Lilly, Berkshire Hathaway, and Walmart to companies with market caps below $20 million. I like it because it provides a nice cross-section of the market. My setup uses a 2-minute chart with a 5-period simple moving average. However, I only look at it after the first 15-30 minutes of the main session have passed. You'll notice I have yellow lines in increments of 200 between -600 and +600, with a white line at zero. The light blue line is the 5-period moving average. I look at this chart to see how broad the strength is across the stocks on the NYSE. My main objectives are to determine if there is one of two things happening: - Extreme pressure in one direction or the other
- A divergence between the market and the Tick chart
So, what does extreme pressure look like? It starts with the Tick index going beyond -600 or +600. Any time the tick chart gets to -1,000 or +1,000, I'm going to sit up and pay attention. Then, I look to see where the moving average is. Once the 5-period moving average starts to dip below -600 or rise above +600, then I know there is a lot of broad-based selling or buying going on. |
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