Sudashan Sukhani, James Isilay, John Bollinger, Trevor Neil, Daryl Guppy discuss questions raised by the audience and from a survey prior to the Conference.

121013_2012 Conference - Panel Discussion

The constrained flow of information makes China markets particularly compatible with Technical Analysis. China markets show some unique behaviours which call for a different mix of technical indicators and charting analysis techniques. Daryl examines what works, and what doesn’t work in this market. This includes effective application of pattern based trading. He examines volatility based trade management methods initially developed for the China market. These trade identification and management methods are also compatible with Western markets.

The Hong Kong co-listed market for China stocks is a case study that confirms the primacy of Technical Analysis and reveals the role emotions play in price discovery independent of the fundamentals of a company in all markets. These markets provide proof that price is independent of fundamentals and is primarily emotionally based. Daryl shows how the application of technical analysis overcomes information deficiencies and improves trading returns in Greater China markets.

121013_2012 Conference - Guppy, Daryl

Ron specializes in key market timing strategies to help identify high-probability turning points. This unique trading style offers an important edge during volatile ‘mean reversion’ cycles. Successfully using Japanese Candle Pattern strategies within this approach can provide vital information about the market’s emotional condition and ultimately improve your trade profitability and risk profile.

121013_2012 Conference - William, Ron

121013_2012 Conference - Isilay, James

Many traditional indicators have been abandoned in favour of more sophisticated technical studies over the past few years. However, despite all this innovation, these new and powerful tools continue to focus solely on price, volume and Open Interest data. In this session, Gregg will discuss how to use traditional technical indicators on different data sets in order to provide new and interesting insights.

121012_2012 Conference - Tan, Gregg

Trends make money. The classical methods of defining a trend with breakouts/breakdowns often results in numerous whipsaws. This presentation will explain how trends can be identified using zero lag indicators. It is possible to identify end of trend with momentum divergences which allows traders to exit much earlier than the actual trend change. Entries and exits are implemented when volatility cycles are reaching a trough. All of these concepts are implemented for short term trading. Examples are given with Indian Nifty Futures and different stocks, but the concepts are valid for all freely traded markets.

121012_2012 Conference - Sukhani, Sudarshan

I came from a world where trades were done both electronically (over the dot system), by market makers and specialists. That was a world that did not include Google, Yahoo, or any search engines. You were lucky to have timely quotes and the availability of a quote machine at your desk. We had no charting packages and plotted our bars, candlesticks and point and figure by hand. Moving averages were all done by hand. We had a news machine in the front of the board room which rang when an important piece of news was issued. We had at least 20 minutes between the news item and the reaction of the market. I traded in the ring at the New York Board of Trade, which was purchased by the Intercontinental Exchange, and continue to enjoy membership and trading privileges on the COMEX division of the CME. As a ring trader, or floor broker, I traded for my own account, was an options market maker and executed customer orders. I also managed discretionary portfolios in both the stock and bond markets. Here, news was instantaneous and reactions equally as instantaneous. We made money finding inequities in the markets. I lived through the 1987 crash, the 90s mess, the tech bubble, and the most recent housing bubble and look forward to the next FED inspired bubble. We now live in an environment of instant moves, high frequency trading (HFT), algorithms, and other neural networks designed to find the inequities that we used to trade for profit. We can still scalp but our days are numbered. So what is the future to bring? The future will usher in a return to Technical Analysis for those who want to make money and trade efficiently.

121012_2012 Conference - Schwarz-Young, Jeanette

Since the Lehmann crisis, Commodity Trading (using Futures and Options etc.) has become one of the most successful alternative strategies. However, ‘start-up’ CTA managers have been facing large hurdles to raise new money. This is not only because of their small asset base under management and limited staff, but also because of less transparency due to their ‘black box’ type tools. Many employed fund managers are wishing and planning to become independent based on a ‘high performance’ successful track record. But they might not be fully and carefully considering the ‘investment strategy’ necessary to fill the supply and demand gap between managers and investors. Past track records might indicate future performance but may never guarantee the growth of the business. What is missing except performance? Let us verify the background of the current CTA boom and examine the investment processes developed by famous managers. An excellent track record is one of the key factors to raise the money, but the investment strategy is more important to grow the asset management business.

121012_2012 Conference - Niimi, Akihiro

Trevor Neil’s Sentiment Candles (TNSC) is an analysis and trading technique developed for modern markets and for the future. It is created to take advantage of new and changed market conditions. Classic Candlestick charting was developed specifically for a type of market which does not exist virtually anywhere now and will die out completely soon. In Classic Candlestick charting the position of the close is crucially important to the interpretation of the sentiment of a candlestick pattern. But today and increasingly tomorrow, markets have several official closes or no close at all. The basis for Classic Candlestick charting does not hold up for trading in modern times. TNSC reads the sentiment of the Candle in a different way which does reveal its meaning and can be turned into clear trading messages. TNSC has been developed for short and long term trading of modern markets which do not just have short exchange traded sessions. This is a new trader's tool for the new world and for the next decade.

121012_2012 Conference - Neil, Trevor

One issue faced by traders is inaccurate entries and exits and one likely cause is because the trader is looking at a single time frame chart. This presentation demonstrates how accuracy can be increased by filtering out noise using ‘multiple time frames’ charts. It also shows that when MTF is applied, most indicators work; some better than others. The ‘MTF Atom’ indicator has been created and it demonstrate its usefulness using Meta Trader 4.0. MTF is a method that can be applied to trade not only gold, silver, crude oil, forex, stock indices, stock, etc. MTF Atom is a mechanical trading system that trades on breakouts and stays aside in sideways markets. Mechanical system trading is likely to be the trend of this decade, set to overshadow subjective techniques like chart patterns analysis, candlesticks, etc. We see technical analysis evolving rapidly to be become more of a science than an art.

121011_2012 Conference - Tam, Fred

Asia has become the key dynamic in short and long term price trends and supply demand forecasting in all major commodities including food stuffs. As Asia’s demand and dependence on imported supplies grew regional powers, most, notably China, responded with nationalistic strategies to secure control over energy and commodity supplies overseas. China, India, and other countries in the region also became major energy investors in Iran, Sudan, Myanmar. The zero-sum energy and resource atmosphere in the region continues to feed geopolitical rivalries among China, the U.S., India, Japan, and Korea, and this competition is now extending to rare earth minerals, which have increasingly important defence and energy applications.

121011_2012 Conference - James, Tom

This lecture introduces a revolutionary way to find real volatility as candlestick charts provide more information on stock fluctuation than many non Japanese investors think. Volatility breakout is probably one of the best technical tools in measuring investment timing, as a lot of signals and systems have been developed based on the breakout. To get successful returns, you need to measure volatility as accurately as possible in the first place. However, historical volatility, which is commonly used, may not be an appropriate tool as it has critical problems in its definition. For example, the average historical volatility for the last 20 days is usually higher than that for the last 10 days. In short, the longer period, the higher the historic volatility. This does not make any sense. Candlestick chart volatility does not have such a shortcoming, as it has simpler and more legitimate logic. This presentation Candlestick Chart Volatility is based on the prize awarded treatise delivered at the Nippon Technical Analysts Association.

121011_2012 Conference - Hayashi, Nori

John Bollinger, CFA, CMT, will present his latest Bollinger Band indicators, address the idea of how to create indicators, and discuss the Swiss Army Knife of technical indicators, Stochastics. Finally, if time allows, John will talk a bit about indicator testing making use of synthetic data.

121011_2012 Conference - Bollinger, John