This sounds like some nice candlestick analysis 101, I was wondering if anyone actually incorporates candlestick analysis in their trades? Id be interested to see what kind of system you employ.

On my side, I happen to use some market voodoo (no idea why it works, it just works!) particularly to optimize my entries : my top voodoo includes (not sorted nor exhaustive list) pivot points, Fibonacci, and candlestick analysis.
Back to candlesticks, in my opinion, they take into account fairly well some part of the market sentiment as hesitation, strength , stop gunning, reversal, ....

A few years ago, Sylvain Duport aka Dioup, a French amateur stock day trader gained a bit of celebrity in France as he won 3 years in a row a famous French contest (capital.fr) with each time an outstanding 6-month performance, Year 1 : x10, Year 2 : x37 and Year 3 : x84
It looks like candlestick analysis had a huge role in his trading system : so might be worth to investigate a little further no ?

Ah well I always feel its worth investigating anything even if its astrological forecasting methods. To be honest, I believe trading is a very personal thing ( just look at all the variety and styles we see).


Though what may work for one person, may not always work for a different person. There is only so much one can express with words about their "whole" trading style. It will be very difficult to incorporate another person method to your own as it maybe conflicting or out of synch.

But you always take what works and what is good, which is discovered through expirmentation and back testing etc...

But I do agree, I certainly would like to consider more candlestick analysis as it can be quite power in many respects...

Hi Snapman, on this I can only agree with you. You need to build your own trading system and see by yourself what fits you and what doesn't. No other way than give it a try (and I would add, lose some money with ).
Once your system is set up the only mistakes you'll make is when you don't follow it.
Of course, the difficult part is to build the system that fits you... and then stick to it.

A good book for building a system I can recommend (and a classic) is definitely Van Tharp's "Trade your way to financial freedom"

When I was training to be a good trading wizard, I was taught by my head technical wizard master of charts, that it is ok to read books on systems and technical analysis for very basic things, but only way to learn is to go practice lots of charting and trading. Trade trade trade. Learning by doing as economist would say. Though this of course may entail lots of lost as you mentioned.

Then again it never hurt to see how other people are trading, im actually reading a book by kathy lien on currency trading. She brings up interesting points.

The latest at the of this week I should be up and trading on a new platform! Ill be posting what systems I come up with. Looking forward to get responses.

To not get to far of topic, maybe ill try some candle stick analysis ;-)

Your Head technical wizard master of charts seems to be a Wise man!

By the way, you can find a few set-up suggested by Kathy Lien on investopedia. To be frank, I never tried them but it can give ideas

Yea he was chief technical analyst for the fund, he lived on charts basically in all asset classes. He didn't even bother reading news or getting too deep in fundamentals. He was a pure technician, pretty hard core (though he knew a profound amount on fundamentals still, like any good technician would).

investopedia is good for basic and stuff but I wouldn't' use it for serious trading ;-)