Ichimoku Cloud (Kumo) charting

Celticheart Investor

A beginner's guide to trading and investing

The Ichimoku Cloud (Kumo) chart, also known as the Ichimoku Kinko Hyo; Ichimoku meaning “One Look” is a modern Japanese charting system that (as it says on the tin) shows a lot of information at a glance, without the need for any other technical indicator, something that candlestick charts cannot do alone, relying on multiple supporting tools as we have seen in previous chapters. 

As with other Technical Analysis indicators the purpose of this system is to help us determine changes in market direction and trading signals. This system was developed by Goichi Hosoda, a Japanese journalist, and was published in 1969.

At first glance the Ichimoku Cloud looks complicated but if you take a little time to study it the simplicity of the system soon becomes clear, as you would expect from an indicator that was created by a journalist not an analyst.

Ichimoku Cloud shows us, in one easily accessible chart, probable future support and resistance levels as well as momentum and trend directions. Some of the elements we are already familiar with such as the moving averages, Tenkan-sen (Conversion line) and Kijun-sen (Base line) to show bullish and bearish crossover points, similar to that of the EMA 20 and EMA 50 (See chapter Eleven, Moving Averages).

The "clouds" (kumo, in Japanese) are the areas formed between spans of the moving average of the Tenkan-sen (Conversion line) and Kijun-sen (Base line), which are plotted six months ahead Senkou (Leading) span B and of the midpoint of the 52-week high and low (Senkou span B) also plotted six months ahead.

        

Analysis tells us that we are in an uptrend when the prices are above the cloud, and in a downtrend down when prices are below the cloud. When prices are within the cloud itself the market is seen as flat or indecisive.

Senkou span A crossing above Senkou span B indicates a strong uptrend, and just like candlesticks, is shown as a green coloured cloud (Kumo). Conversely when Senkou span B crosses above Senkou span A the trend is downwards and is shown as a red coloured cloud (Kumo).

Because the Cloud is projected 26 days in advance it can, unusually, provide us with a glimpse of future support or resistance.

The Ichimoku Cloud consists of five basic plots as explained below:

Tenkan-sen (Conversion Line): This is the 9 day high + the 9 day low divided by 2. The default span for this is 9 trading periods but can of course be adjusted

Kijun-sen (Base Line): This is the 26 day high + the 26 day low divided by 2. The default span for this is 26 trading periods but can also be adjusted to suit your trading strategy.

Senkou Span A (Leading Span A) is the average of the conversion and base lines, calculated with 9 and 26 trading periods, Senkou Span A (green) moves faster than Senkou B (red) much as EMA20 moves faster than EMA50.

Senkou Span B (Leading Span B): is the 52 day high + the 52 day low divided by 2. This is the mid point of the 52 day high and low trading range. Although the default setting for this is 52 periods it can also be adjusted. This value is also plotted 26 periods ahead, which is why it is referred to as a leading span.

Chikou Span (Lagging Span): This is plotted 26 days behind the current trading. The default setting is 26 periods, but as with the Senkou Span (Leading span) this can be adjusted to suit. Because this value is plotted 26 periods behind it is referred to as a lagging or trailing span.

For a more in-depth look at the Ichimoku Cloud system go to:

http://www.ichimokutrader.com/

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/ichimokuchart.asp

http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?id=chart_school:technical_indicators:ichimoku_cloud

A cautionary note, trading and investing in shares carries a level of risk, these blogs are only meant as a basic guideline to investing and trading, always do your own research and base your decisions on what you can afford to lose. This blog is not intended to provide financial advice as I am not qualified to do so, it is simply designed to provide information about how the markets work that might be of some help to private investors like myself.

Charting, an overview

Celticheart Investor

A beginner's guide to trading and investing

I think it is worth clarifying at this point that it was not my intention to focus so heavily on technical analysis but as with all things once you follow a path it sometimes leads you in an unexpected direction.

So, before I continue on that journey which is as much a learning curve for me as my readers I would like to take this opportunity to look at things from a much wider perspective. There is nothing more damaging in my opinion than to become so blinkered by charts and graphs that you lose sight of the basic reasons that made you buy into the company in the first place.

What people often fail to see with charts is they are not some kind of oracle that can predict the future but are simply a way of allowing us to identify probable changes in trends and patterns earlier than we could otherwise do so. They are not infallible but if you combine them with the fundamentals and facts that you are already aware of they are a useful tool.

There is a huge difference in charting as used by short term traders to identify possible spikes and retracements and using charts simply as a means of monitoring market sentiment. I am not a trader, looking for short term profits but a mid to long term investor but I still use charting to monitor progress.
That is not to say I will not take opportunities to take profits or topslice (I will come back to that) along the way.

I will continue to look at other tools available for Technical Analysis because I believe the more you have at your disposal the more flexible you can be in your interpretation of share price movement.

Remember that a lot of the analysis tools we have been looking at are "lagging' in that they track movements that have already happened relying on those same repeating patterns to appear in the future to identify similar trend movements. They are not a prediction of the future and cannot see what is going to happen no matter what the most ardent chartists tell you.

The currency of chartists is probability not certainty, if it was the latter there would be no poor chartists around. Ultimately your best friend in investing is your own judgement and research. I cannot stress that enough, if there is one certainty it is that you cannot do enough research, not just into the company but to the political climate it functions in, global affairs and even the environment; something which future investors in oil plays north of the arctic circle are going to have to take very seriously indeed.

Next time I will get back to looking at more specific elements but I thought it worth taking the time out to look at the bigger picture, something we all lose sight of from time to time.


Next time:  Invest in people

A cautionary note, trading and investing in shares carries a level of risk, these blogs are only meant as a basic guideline to investing and trading, always do your own research and base your decisions on what you can afford to lose. This blog is not intended to provide financial advice as I am not qualified to do so, it is simply designed to provide information about how the markets work that might be of some help to private investors like myself.

Fibonacci Numbers

Celticheart Investor

A beginner's guide to trading and investing

Now this is one of my own personal favourite topics, not just because of its use as a technical analysis tool but because it absolutely fascinates me in the way that it appears so frequently in the natural world, such as in the branching of trees, the arrangement of leaves on a stem, the petals on a flower or the arrangement of a pine cone.

That of course is another blog altogether, so for now we will stick to its relevance in aiding us as a technical analysis tool.

Some think that Leonardo of Pisa (also known as Fibonacci) was the most talented western mathematician of the Middle Ages. Fibonacci is best known to us for spreading the ancient Hindu–Arabic numerical system in Europe, primarily through its publication in 1202 in his book Liber Abaci (Book of Calculation). You might want to think about why it is that, to this day, we still work mathematically from right to left in the Arabic manner. Without which we would have none of the mathematical tools available to us today, including computers which are so reliant on sequencing.

So lets look at the number sequence named after him the "Fibonacci numbers", (Also called Fib Numbers) which he did not in fact discover but simply used as an illustrative example in his book. The number sequence we now associate with Fibonacci was known to Indian mathematicians as long ago as the 6th century.

In the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, each number is the sum of the previous two numbers, starting with 0 and 1. This sequence begins 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987 and so forth.
 
The higher up in the sequence, the sum of the division of two consecutive numbers becomes closer to what Fibonacci called the Golden ratio which is approximately (1 : 1.618 or 0.618 : 1). 

e.g. 233/144 = 1.6180555 and 987/610 = 1.618033

The relevance to its use in technical analysis is that you will often find that a bullish rise will often retrace to a key Fib number and also the reverse is true,
a downtrend might correct itself and  rise to a key Fib number (not necessarily the next one in the sequence).

These are just some examples of how Fibonacci retracements in an uptrend look on the candlestick charts, along with the subsequent rises.
As with all things in charting the figures very rarely stop exactly on the fib numbers for reasons already mentioned above. The higher the number sequence the more accurate the golden ratio. 

Fibonacci numbers above all else seem to polarise opinion, with some people swearing by them and others dismissing them as nonsense. I would certainly not advocate using them as your sole means of measuring trends and directional change but, the frequency with which they appear makes me tend to take them seriously, at least as another useful technical analysis tool in your arsenal.

For a more detailed look at Fibonacci numbers check out the links below: 

http://www.tradingfives.com/articles/fibonacci_retracements.htm

http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-sites/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibmaths.html

http://www.mi.sanu.ac.rs/vismath/lends/ch2.htm

Next Time: Parabolic SAR

A cautionary note, trading and investing in shares carries a level of risk, these blogs are only meant as a basic guideline to investing and trading, always do your own research and base your decisions on what you can afford to lose. This blog is not intended to provide financial advice as I am not qualified to do so, it is simply designed to provide information about how the markets work that might be of some help to private investors like myself.

Patterns

Celticheart Investor

A beginner's guide to trading and investing

Understanding how individual candlesticks are formed is  one thing but how do we go about understanding their significance in the greater scheme of things?

Well the secret is quite simple really, like a lot of oriental based knowledge, it is all about recognising repeating patterns and their associated actions. By that I mean that if certain patterns are usually (not always) followed by certain market reactions then we can use those "triggers" to our advantage.

Charting patterns can, as I have previously explained fall into one of three categories, Bullish (buyers dominant), Bearish (sellers dominant) or Neutral (neither buyers nor sellers dominant). The problem is the strength of those signals vary in certainty from a weak signal (there might be a directional change) to a strong signal (there will almost certainly be a directional change). 
I say almost certainly because in the world of investing, especially in small caps there is no such thing as certainty, no matter who tells you there is.

Forgive me if I re-visit elements that I have already talked about but seeing them in isolation is not the same as seeing them in the context of a chart. 
So let's look at some examples of charts showing these repeating patterns:

This is an example of a candlestick chart for the Footsie 100, as you can see 
the change in direction is preceded by a spinning top or a hammer but the important thing to notice is the next bar which gives a confirmation of that change in direction. Interestingly enough the colour of the bar is less important than the formation of that candlestick.

This is a great example of how charting patterns repeat themselves, note the similarity in the MACD, the relative positions of the EMA20 dn EMA 50 and also 
the closing together of the Bollinger bands just prior to an uptrend.

Looking at individual reversal signals though is less effective than some of the patterns we have looked at previously. Learn to identify at least some these combinations for more accurate interpretation of the charts. This is just a sampling there are many more patterns to become aware of as you progress.
 

  


Apart from what we have already looked at here another pattern which we should look at, and are often regarded as being the most positive of reversal signals, so much so that you don't even have to wait for a confirmation signal
(if you are brave enough), they are called kickers and appear in both Bullish 
and Bearish variants.

In the bullish version, after three successive days of seller dominance the trend reverses on the fourth day with such a positive shift that it often forcing short sellers to close their positions with spectacular effect, the reverse happens in the bearish version of this strong signal.

One pattern that is well worth looking at is the "Bearish Tri Star Pattern", which is a very rare but significant top reversal pattern. It is formed by three Dojis. with the centre Doji being above the other two (called a Doji star).

For this signal to be valid the market has to be in an uptrend, the Dojis have to appear on three consecutive days. The second day Doji has to have a gap above the first and third Dojis.

The explanation for why this is so significant is that the fiest Doji indicates that the uptrend has stalled, the second shows that the market has lost direction and the third confirms indecision leading to a reversal.

To be sure that this is in act a reversal you should look for the fourth day as a confirmation signal, a black or red candlestick, a gap down or a lower close.


Next time: Confirmation

A cautionary note, trading and investing in shares carries a level of risk, these blogs are only meant as a basic guideline to investing and trading, always do your own research and base your decisions on what you can afford to lose. This blog is not intended to provide financial advice as I am not qualified to do so, it is simply designed to provide information about how the markets work that might be of some help to private investors like myself.

Technical Analysis

Celticheart Investor

A beginner's guide to trading and investing

As I mentioned in my last blog technical analysis is the name  given to a whole host of analytical tools that can be used to examine and identify buying and selling trends in a company's share.


We do not appreciate just how lucky we are, having so many tools available to us on line, often free of charge. Although these tools lend themselves best to traders who are looking to buy and sell shares on a relatively short term basis 
it is my view that there is also a lot of valuable information that can be learned by the mid to long term investor too.

The logical place to start looking at these tools is with charts, these can be linear or candlestick depending on your preference. For me the candlestick charts are infinitely easier to interpret which is why I lean towards them.

Before I go any further I would like to stress that I am not an expert in charting, simply an enthusiastic user of charts who is, as they say, "learning as I go".

My intention with, what will be through necessity, a series of blogs, is to show you the tools that are available to you, explain what it is they are capable of showing and point you in the right direction to get more in depth tuition.

Hopefully, by taking this approach I too will learn through the process, to start with I would like to give you an overview on candlestick charts.

Candlestick Charts

The origin of these charts goes back to the 17th century, in contrast similar charts did not appear in the United States until the 19th century. They were originally used in the trading of rice, the most important commodity in Japan 
at the time but ultimately became used in establishing trading patterns for Gold, Silver and other commodities.

Strangely enough, the main factor that these charts track is not profit or loss but simply market sentiment or emotional responses to the markets.

Amazingly the Western world did not really embrace these "Candlestick" charts until the 1980's when the spread of PCs really started to take off and made access to information so much more readily available.

The principles of Candlestick charts are pretty much the same as bar charts 
and are relatively simple to understand. Every bar has 3 key elements, the real body (solid or open), the top shadow / wick and the bottom shadow / wick. 

Increments can be set as minutes, hours, days or months but for now we will just look at them on a daily basis.


The real body represents the bulk of the day's trading with the top shadow being the highest price of the day and   the bottom shadow representing the lowest price.

If the day closes up on the day's opening share price then the body will be open, but if the sp closes down the body will be solid. These days the bars are frequently shown as red (down) and green or blue (up) but the principle is the same.

The next thing to understand is the size of the body which represents volume   of trades, in a way the colour of the bar tells us less than the size of the bar because if the bar is very small it shows that there was no real dominance between buys and sells and if the bar is replaced by a single line (A Doji) this shows complete indecision in the market which can indicate a change of direction.


Doji comes in several types, including, 3rd from left,
the distinctive "Dragonfly Doji" and 4th from left, the Gravestone Doji"

We will deal with the significance of each of these doji in future blogs but for now will leave you with  a word of advice, don't get emotionally attached to doji, they are fickle little creatures at the best of times.
 

There are many books around about Candlestick charting but for me one of the best books I have found which will give you an, easy to understand, introduction to charting is "Candlestick Charts by Clive Lambert.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Candlestick-Charts-introduction-candlestick-charts/dp/1905641745/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352029161&sr=8-1 

Next time:  Recognising patterns

A cautionary note, trading and investing in shares carries a level of risk, these blogs are only meant as a basic guideline to investing and trading, always do your own research and base your decisions on what you can afford to lose. This blog is not intended to provide financial advice as I am not qualified to do so, it is simply designed to provide information about how the markets work that might be of some help to private investors like myself.