Quote from trainee2006:
Hi Acronym:
quick question from a newbie...
What's a ABC pattern? If this is discussed in a book or web site, can you give me the title?
Thanks and happy holiday.
B
Thats actually tougher than it sounds, everyone interpret's stuff differently.
It's normally used in "swing" trading, where, you take the definable start of a move, call it A, name a retracement that does NOT take out the original support B-an abc is normally a continuation, the general approach is to find good value in the B down move, for the expected C wave / move, going in the original direction of A. Generally, one might use an "on stop" order, and its best end of day as a rule, i gather many use it ok intraday.
So its not just a "breakout" approach, entering on the strength of a previous high, as such, most trend following methods rely on some variety of it.
The nomenclature is possibly derived from elliot wave theory, but who knows these days.
It's discussed everywhere, just dont pay money for it, it's standard stuff, and easy to learn-people tend to diss it, but they forget it's intended to be used where more than a few time frames are in the same direction, preferably as many as you can jam into your computer/brain.
Ok, that was the worst explanation i've ever heard, but there it is.
Now, just for fun, lets examine an instance where "swing trading" , on an end of day basis, could burn you bad, even following a basic swing system;
http://charts3.barchart.com/chart.a...divd=Y&evnt=adv&grid=Y&code=BSTK&org=stk&fix=
See the area, between roughly the 6th of September, and about the 12th of oct?
THAT, is a classic ABC up pattern, and the kind of thing i was referring to in coffee or cocoa. If you have good historical charts, there's heaps of these sort of moves, i dont know why.
It appears, the caffeine did pick up, next trading day-are they that determined to take out weak longs?
Yikes.