How I Setup My Charts

I’ve received a few questions from some of the new guys about how I setup my charts. I like to keep a simple setup that shows me clear charts so that I can focus on price action solely.  There are over 500 indicators that one can use; many of them will be quite useful and some won’t. But indicators are just derivatives of price, and they often lag price action, giving you delayed signals. For the Bulls style of trading, we never use indicators to tell us when to buy or sell. We use indicators  to CONFIRM what we see from the price action.

Think of every trade as a 50/50 chance.  There is a buyer/seller. Winner/loser.  Your job as a trader is much like a lawyer.  You have to build a case on a stock.  You have to compile enough evidence in your favor to tip the scales in your favor beyond just a 50/50 shot.  That’s where price patterns, volume patterns, and indicators can come in.  As you slowly layer on one thing after another your goal is to take that 50/50 trade and slowly turn it into a 70/30 trade by confirming price, volume, support/resistance, overbought/oversold etc.

Here is what I use:

6 month daily charts –  This is what you use for your idea generation. It will show you which stocks to trade and when you scan this is what your looking at

10 day 30 minute charts – This is the intermediate time frame and will help you identify key levels of support/resistance and trend.

3 day 5 minute chart – This is the shortest time frame and what we use to pick our exact entries and time our stocks.

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For the charts we use these indicators:

20, 50, 200 SMA
Volume + 50 MA
Full Stochastics (5,3,3)  Many use a 14 period instead of a 5 period.  But we are short term traders; to have a 14 period, which is almost 3 weeks, will give us delayed signals. 5 days is just perfect.