Getting A Quick Glimpse
Before you look at the TV or the Internet, tell me what is going on with Google stock....what has it done today? Without knowing you would probably be a little nervous about making a trade. Perhaps you want to sell but it has fallen 10% today. Maybe you want to buy but it has gone up 10%. Either way, the up to date market news can help you make your final determination before you act.

Is it really important to check? The answer to that question lies in whether you want to make or lose money. If you have done your fundamental analysis and you are ready to buy Microsoft but you check the stock market quote and it has risen 5% for the day, you might wait until you can do some research to see if the trend will continue. If you are thinking about selling General Motors but it has dropped 5%, you might need to hit the Internet to see what is going on before you decide to sell. Stock market quotes will not change your investment philosophy but they can be that “sanity check” that you need to move ahead confidently.

How To Read A Stock Market Quote
The most basic stock market quotes are very easy to read. These are the ones that you see everyday on TV or on the business page covering Wall Street news. For these stock market quotes, you will have the name of the company or market, its last reported price, how much it has changed for the day, whether that change is up or down, and what percentage of change has occurred. Stock market quotes give you a snapshot, usually within minutes of real time, of the status of the market or a specific stock. Knowing how active and profitable stock trading is for a particular day can help you decide if you should get in, get out, or wait for another day.

Not A Substitute
A stock market quote is not a substitute for technical analysis or a trading plan. Let’s think about the test-drive analogy that I started with. Do you need to test drive a Ford Pinto from the early 1970s to decide whether to buy it? Probably not if you did any research....that fear of fire and explosion after a rear-impact would convince you it’s not a good purchase. Do you need to drive a Bentley if you know you can’t afford it? These are the kind of decisions that your analysis and plan make for you. The stock market quote is merely your way of knowing what is happening today and whether you should make a move right now.

Conclusion
Stock market quotes are not the most important part of your investment strategy. These little snapshots help you to take the pulse of the market before you exercise your investment options.

Market Direction: Candlestick signals and patterns circumvent the use of relative strength indicators. The instantaneous visual analysis of a price based upon what the rest of the market has done becomes clearly obvious. After a day in the market, such as Friday's 250 point drop in the Dow, relative strength can be derived by a quick glance. Observe the obvious! AOB is a chart pattern that can be easily discerned as a strong relative strength move. A bullish candle forming at a breakout area has significant meaning. That meaning becomes more intensified when the rest of the market was selling off dramatically. Simply stated, observing a bullish candle/pattern on a day when the markets are down big-time produces confirmation that the Bulls have a reason to get into this position.

AOB

A candlestick signal or a pattern is the result of the pressures from investor sentiment. Relative strength indicators are not required when identifying the construction of a candlestick formation. As illustrated in the AOB chart, bullish sentiment was present in a severely bearish day. Common sense dictates that the Bulls liked this position despite what the rest of the market was doing. That increases the probabilities that when the selling pressures of the market in general diminishes, the Bulls should still be a strong influence in better market conditions.

Many investors lose sight of what profitable investing involves. Profitable investing is positioning funds into situations that a probable outcome can be analyzed. Fundamental research involves finding the reasons for a price move to occur one way or the other. Technical analysis is the understanding of how previous price moves have occurred in the past. Candlestick analysis incorporates all that information. The analysis of candlestick signals and patterns is the accumulation of all the information being acted upon to make a price move. Candlestick signals are the results of everybody buying or selling a trading entity. It does not make a difference of why a price is moving. Candlestick analysis merely identifies when bullish and bearish influences are occurring. Private training sessions - A major advantage can be achieved when participating in one of Mr. Bigalow's private training sessions. A logical thought process can be applied when utilizing candlestick signals. Understanding why a price moves and being able to visually identify high probability price patterns permits an investor to manage their own portfolio profits with a much greater degree of accuracy. Most investors have problems emotional decision making. Candlestick signals dramatically reduce the emotions involved with investing. Learn how to improve your investing perceptions in a two-day informational training session. You will not be disappointed. Your investment process will become ingrained into your mental psyche based upon very simple visual evaluations when using candlestick charts. Private training sessions are limited to a very small number of participants. Take advantage of over 20 years of investment insights. Click here for more information on the private training sessions.

Although the Dow formed a doji on Monday, the other indexes did not show any change in their current down trend. The Dow has the possibility of creating a slow upward trend channel on a positive open and bullish day Tuesday. However, the stochastics and the other indexes diminish the possibility of the current down trend from being near a reversal point just yet. The fact that the NASDAQ gapped down through the 50 day moving average and the T-line with the stochastics coming out of the overbought area would still make the probabilities of the downtrend the predominant factor.

NAS

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Good investing,

The Candlestick Forum Team