Hand-draw charts

Concept:

slow down, engage other parts of your brain

Inspired by The Blog of Adam H Grimes

I have found great value in keeping price charts by hand. In fact, it is the single most useful practice I know of to help a trader really learn how to read and understand price charts.

More here

1) it slows you down and makes you look deeply. Computers and easy access to charts, scanning and screening tools—all these things give us breadth and the ability to see many things. This exercise makes you go deeply into one thing.

2) It engages a different part of your brain. It encourages rhythm, whether that is every 5 minutes or every day; simply writing down current prices keeps you engaged and focused on markets. Looking at a chart is very passive/receptive. Drawing charts by hand (and/or writing down prices) is also active/creative. You will see differently.

3) It works. I’ve experienced it in my trading, and so have many other traders. The naysayers are generally struggling, developing traders who, and I say this with all respect, might not know what is a good thing to do and might not know where to focus their time. I have not had one, single experienced trader do this exercise and tell me it was a waste of time.

I have further developed an Excel tool HandDraw

General
 
The appoach is optimized for a standard European DIN A4 mm paper sheet
Such sheet has 280 vertical lines. Each bar is separated by 2 lines from its previous. Makes 140 bars/sheet
The sheet has 180 horizontal lines, the highest shall be 110, the lowest 92
All real data is scaled by a factor so that until bar 120 the highest value is < 110 and the lowest > 92
The “decisive” pullback from the screens is at around bar 120, thereafter the scaled price may be > 120 or < 92
 
Get Quandl Add-in
 
Get Data
 
Option A – Using list of ~4k screened pullback candidates
Go to sheet “screen”
Hit “Reset” button
Go to menu-tab “Quandl” and hit “Refresh Workbook”
Hit F9
 
Option B – Use any equity at any date of your choice
Go to sheet “Quandl”
Enter Ticker+Date in cells B5+B6
Go to sheet “Screen”
Enter “1” in cell A3
Go to menu-tab “Quandl” and hit “Refresh Workbook”
Hit F9
 
 
Get Output
 
On Paper
Go to sheet “Paper” and print
 
On Screen
Go to sheet “Screen”
Hit “Increment”