A common question that I get asked is “Do I have to spend hours reading stock charts to learn how to trade?” This is one of the great misconceptions of would-be traders.
They think that they have to spend hours analyzing charts and other data, trying to decipher trends and patterns in the markets, in the HOPE that they will guess right on the next movement in the stock market. And quite often, they are DEAD WRONG.
This is called “technical analysis”. Technical analysis is a form of security analysis discipline for forecasting the future direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume. In its purest form, technical analysis considers only the actual price and volume behavior of the market or instrument. Technical analysts may employ models and trading rules based on price and volume transformations, such as the relative strength index, moving averages, regressions, inter-market and intra-market price correlations, cycles or, classically, through recognition of chart patterns.
To most new traders, the various terms, rules, methods, and strategies employed by technical analysts are very confusing, intimidating, and amount to little more than foretune telling.
I can see why people would think this. You are trying to predict the future by looking at the past. Many people would equate this to trying to determine the next spin of the Roulette wheel by the previous spins. Or trying to tell someone’s future by reading their palm.
While this isn’t entirely accurate, it is easy to see why people who want to learn how to trade futures, e-minis, commodities, or other contracts would shy away from trading after digging into technical analysis.
So back to the question – “Do I have to spend hours reading stock charts to learn how to trade”? The answer is: It depends.
This may sound like a cop-out, but it’s not. It depends on whether or not you want to learn technical analysis. If the answer is “yes”, then yes, you need to spend hours and hours (and hours and hours) learning to read stock charts, learning to decipher patterns and trends, drawing lines, hoping that what you think you see is really what is going on, etc.
If you are NOT specifically looking to learn technical analysis, then NO, you do NOT need to spend any time reading charts.
In fact, I have learned a successful method of trading that requires only the very basics of chart analysis – meaning I can look at a chart for 5 seconds as I get ready to enter a trade, and I’ve seen all that I need to see. No time spent analyzing market movement. No lines drawn. No trying to calculate formulas that would make Einstein choke. And no guessing which way the market is going to move.
In fact, I don’t CARE which way the market moves. Because I make money no matter which direction it goes.
And I don’t need to spend hours sitting in front of a computer, making hundreds of trades. I know EXACTLY when the market is going to move. And I also know about how much movement to expect. And I also know how to capitalize on that movement, no matter which direction the market goes.
And you can learn the same. To discover how you can learn to trade successfully WITHOUT spending hours analyzing charts, making only a few trades a week, spending literally just a few minutes a day trading (if that), simply enter your name and email address into the following form, and we will email you a FREE copy of the ebook The Guerrilla Trader – Classified Insider Report.
