How would i go about posting my own stock charts by hand? What paper is used? I here there are many benefits in doing so. Are there different ways? Thanks
Creating Stock Charts
- Thread starter CollegeTrader
- Start date
You can bet your boots that there is value in doing charts by hand, especially if charts are new to you or if you have yet to discover their usefulness.
40 years ago when there weren't even printed daily charts where I was I would sit in my broker's office for 2 hours or so after the market closed plotting the day's OHLC for hundreds of charts. Then when I started trading options and futures in 1990
I was in the broker's office all day plotting 10 minute bar charts for futures contracts. Believe me, you learn to 'feel' price movement, which really adds the icing to your cake of TA knowledge.
I'm guessing that you are considering plotting daily charts for stocks. But would that be for learning, or to use for trading? For
trading, that would require quite a number of charts. The exact number depends on your trading style. If you're looking to learn,
just plotting is not going to do the trick. But studying from books etc. accompanied with hand done charts can be a winning combination.
For longer term charts and for volatile stocks, logarithmic chart paper is beneficial, so that the share price doesn't run off the chart.
It's too hard to give you any real suggestions as I don't really know your situation in detail. However, you might want to start out with just a few charts (10?) and see if you can really maintain the daily routine. Because if you can't for whatever reason, and miss a few day's, going back and plotting say 4 or 5 days for 100 charts is the pits!!
It's good that you are interested in doing charts by hand. I guess very few traders do so today. And while not bragging in the least,
I do know that I truly benefited from my early years of doing charts by hand that I feel gives me an edge over those today who have grown up on the screens.
I wish you success,
learner
Nothing beats watching the screen as price dances around in real time when you have a trade on.
I did hand charts also back in the day. I think what i learned from that was how to waste time doing charts when it was more fun playing games with the adventuress gals that hit the lounge after the mkt closed and the gals stopped in for a few after getting off the train from downtown to the burbs.
Truth be known drawing charts and or reading charts is a waste of time because the real learning is from watching the bars on a chart develope in real time and how it is working relative to the trade. I mean reading charts should be nothing more than wet your whistle to better understand what you are reading (reviewing). A MAJOR flaw of most if not all new folks in this industry is they are always looking at a chart and assuming there are just spots to get in a trade and just spots to get out of a trade...........................that's just to easy , DUH!!!!!
What matters most and actually is the gist of the entire game is how the trader performs BETWEEN entry and EXIT. That particular skill set can only be developed from real live price action when the bullets are flying. Yes, sim trading helps in the beginning. Watching your trade develope by watching the bars go up and down is what gets you all tied up in a knot with fear or is nothing more than normal stuff to give you clues to what your trade is doing relative to the trades goal is what makes or breaks a trader. The winning trader is the one that can reevaluate the trade as it developes AFTER filled.
Yes, computers made the charts easy these days to copy but it is still a individual developed skillset in reading the live action itself.
Get in the mix and see what you are made of.
PS: with all that in mind...........can anyone imagine why looking at or screening a shitload of stocks etc is a waste of time? You need to know the individual item you are trading.............not pretending all stuff trades alike in real time. LESS IS MORE!!!!
PSS: Learner is right, posting over a few charts nightly was a real chore.............thats another reason why i changed from stocks to futures,................. much less to watch, then narrowed that down as time progressed.
I did hand charts also back in the day. I think what i learned from that was how to waste time doing charts when it was more fun playing games with the adventuress gals that hit the lounge after the mkt closed and the gals stopped in for a few after getting off the train from downtown to the burbs.
Truth be known drawing charts and or reading charts is a waste of time because the real learning is from watching the bars on a chart develope in real time and how it is working relative to the trade. I mean reading charts should be nothing more than wet your whistle to better understand what you are reading (reviewing). A MAJOR flaw of most if not all new folks in this industry is they are always looking at a chart and assuming there are just spots to get in a trade and just spots to get out of a trade...........................that's just to easy , DUH!!!!!
What matters most and actually is the gist of the entire game is how the trader performs BETWEEN entry and EXIT. That particular skill set can only be developed from real live price action when the bullets are flying. Yes, sim trading helps in the beginning. Watching your trade develope by watching the bars go up and down is what gets you all tied up in a knot with fear or is nothing more than normal stuff to give you clues to what your trade is doing relative to the trades goal is what makes or breaks a trader. The winning trader is the one that can reevaluate the trade as it developes AFTER filled.
Yes, computers made the charts easy these days to copy but it is still a individual developed skillset in reading the live action itself.
Get in the mix and see what you are made of.
PS: with all that in mind...........can anyone imagine why looking at or screening a shitload of stocks etc is a waste of time? You need to know the individual item you are trading.............not pretending all stuff trades alike in real time. LESS IS MORE!!!!
PSS: Learner is right, posting over a few charts nightly was a real chore.............thats another reason why i changed from stocks to futures,................. much less to watch, then narrowed that down as time progressed.
You can go to any office supply store or art store and buy graphing paper of any size, thickness et cetera.
Another option is just open your spreadsheet and just make your own chart template with any horizontal and vertical axis you want...
Next, you just print out the chart template and then hand input your data on the graph any way you want.
Therefore, I recommend starting with one trading instrument because hand drawn charts is a difficult thing to do for any extended periods of time...especially if you're trying to get a benefit from such.
My point is that you will not see any benefits from doing charts by hand if you plan on doing it just for a few days or weeks because the real purpose for charts by hand is to develope an understanding of the price action...an understanding that takes any successful trader years to achieve. In reality, that's not going to happen via charts by hand if you fail to input other information on your charts like key market events that occurred that particular trading day.
Price Action you see on a chart...it's a price that's reacting to something (economic news, economic speeches, government policy changes, political events, breaking news that causes changes in supply/demand) that has enormous impact on trade decisions.
Simply, you can't study price without knowing why price does what it does which is why most price action only traders fail at trading because they concentrate only on price itself while ignoring what was the key market events behind the price movement. Yep, I'm implying you may be better off in documenting key market events every trading day in comparison to charts drawn by hand because they do go hand to hand (pun intended).
Mark
Jesse Livermore??? I thought you were dead!
Just kidding.
Good trading to all.
I used to get graph paper from an art supply store to post my charts in pre-internet days. Not only that, I would hand draw an MACD under the chart as well. I got my historical data from microfiche at the library, and then kept the newspaper stock tables after that to update my charts daily.