Kirkpatrick's Investment and Trading Strategies


Book Description

Choosing Stocks and Timing Buy and Sell Decisions: Trend-Based, Evidence-Driven Strategies That Work What to do, how and when to do it, and why Specific advice backed by modern statistical tests that identify consistently successful combinations of indicators Techniques for identifying early weaknesses, maximizing gains, and protecting capital By Charles D. Kirkpatrick II, the world’s most influential technical analyst There’s only one way to successfully compete with Wall Street’s “big boys”: use algorithmic systems, just like they do. Fortunately, you can. Thanks to the wide availability of derivatives, cheap computing, and low-cost, high-speed trading platforms, you can run algorithmic systems that are proven statistically and can operate almost automatically. In this book, world-renowned technical analysis expert Charles D. Kirkpatrick II presents these systems and the evidence that supports them. Building on exhaustive research, Kirkpatrick shows why relative strength systems deliver consistent profits. Next, he drills down to identify the optimal elements of such systems, including lookback periods, ranks/ratios for portfolio changes, minimum trading volumes, and techniques for limiting the impact of market declines. Kirkpatrick’s final results are practical and robust. Based on easy-to-interpret ADX, forward line, and 3-bar reversal charts, they are easy enough for virtually any investor to use, with any size portfolio. At its foundation, technical analysis involves recognizing and analyzing trends and identifying the best investment strategy to take advantage of them. Most traders and investors who look for trends do so by analyzing a long list of charts on a continuing basis. In Kirkpatrick's Investment and Trading Strategies, world-renowned technical analysis researcher Charles D. Kirkpatrick II presents tested, pinpoint approaches to stock investing that are far more effective and efficient. Drawing on statistical testing of markets from 1990 to the present, Kirkpatrick identifies combinations of technical tests that have consistently delivered the best performance. Using them, he shows how to identify stocks that are now demonstrating the strongest relative and absolute strength. Next, he identifies specific trend following indicators most likely to identify the first signs of trend reversals--and, thus, the right time to sell. Throughout, Kirkpatrick offers detailed, practical, and example-rich guidance for using these indicators, providing all the detail you need to implement an investment strategy that is both profitable and risk-averse. Tested, trend-based indicators you can understand and rely on Choose the right stocks--and the right times to buy and sell them Protect your capital with DMI, ADX, and other key technical indicators Discover your true risk of loss and systematically protect against it Why Kirkpatrick’s relative strength system works so well Understand the statistics behind the system--in as much detail as you’d like Using the system after you’ve implemented it Realistic examples and step-by-step instructions




Technical Analysis


Book Description

Already the field's most comprehensive, reliable, and objective guidebook, Technical Analysis: The Complete Resource for Financial Market Technicians, Second Edition has been thoroughly updated to reflect the field's latest advances. Selected by the Market Technicians Association as the official companion to its prestigious Chartered Market Technician (CMT) program, this book systematically explains the theory of technical analysis, presenting academic evidence both for and against it. Using hundreds of fully updated illustrations, the authors explain the analysis of both markets and individual issues, and present complete investment systems and portfolio management plans. They present authoritative, up-to-date coverage of tested sentiment, momentum indicators, seasonal affects, flow of funds, testing systems, risk mitigation strategies, and many other topics. This edition thoroughly covers the latest advances in pattern recognition, market analysis, and systems management. The authors introduce new confidence tests; cover increasingly popular methods such as Kagi, Renko, Kase, Ichimoku, Clouds, and DeMark indicators; present innovations in exit stops, portfolio selection, and testing; and discuss the implications of behavioral bias for technical analysis. They also reassess old formulas and methods, such as intermarket relationships, identifying pitfalls that emerged during the recent market decline. For traders, researchers, and serious investors alike, this is the definitive book on technical analysis.




Time the Markets


Book Description

In Time the Markets, award-winning technical analyst Charles D. Kirkpatrick applies technical analysis to key economic indicators and shows how to use them to identify market shifts, avoid loss, and become a more profitable long-term investor. Drawing on many years of publicly available data, Kirkpatrick demonstrates how to uncover powerful buy and sell signals and shows how to incorporate corporate, industry, monetary, sentiment, and market data into reliable timing indicators that can help you recognize impending stock and bond market dangers--and get out of the way. Relying primarily on proven technical analysis methods, Kirkpatrick incorporates trading system methods that have proven successful in market timing, including trend and momentum analysis, use of protective and trailing stops, and periodicity. Reflecting the latest insights into behavioral finance, he shares important new insight into measuring marketplace momentum and sentiment--helping long-term investors identify and evade the marketplace irrationalities that often cause capital loss.




Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets


Book Description

John J. Murphy has updated his landmark bestseller Technical Analysis of the Futures Markets, to include all of the financial markets. This outstanding reference has already taught thousands of traders the concepts of technical analysis and their application in the futures and stock markets. Covering the latest developments in computer technology, technical tools, and indicators, the second edition features new material on candlestick charting, intermarket relationships, stocks and stock rotation, plus state-of-the-art examples and figures. From how to read charts to understanding indicators and the crucial role technical analysis plays in investing, readers gain a thorough and accessible overview of the field of technical analysis, with a special emphasis on futures markets. Revised and expanded for the demands of today's financial world, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in tracking and analyzing market behavior.




Understanding Relative Price Strength


Book Description

The author presents current evidence of the success of using relative price strength as an investing strategy and gives specifics on when to buy or sell stocks based on its premises. Relative strength is a method of selecting favorable stocks, based on the observation that stocks tend to travel in price trends: upward, downward, or sideways. This predilection is often called “momentum.” The concept of investing with trends is counterintuitive to most investors. It suggests that, rather than looking for bargains, the investor should look for stocks that are rising and already trading at high valuations....




Investing with the Trend


Book Description

Investing with the Trend provides an abundance of evidence for adapting a rules-based approach to investing by offering something most avoid, and that is to answer the “why” one would do it this way. It explains the need to try to participate in the good markets and avoid the bad markets, with cash being considered an asset class. The book is in three primary sections and tries to leave no stone unturned in offering almost 40 years of experience in the markets. Part I – The focus is on much of the misinformation in modern finance, the inappropriate use of Gaussian statistics, the faulty assumptions with Modern Portfolio Theory, and a host of other examples. The author attempts to explain each and offer justification for his often strong opinions. Part II – After a lead chapter on the merits of technical analysis, the author offers detailed research into trend analysis, showing how to identify if a market is trending or not and how to measure it. Further research involves the concept of Drawdown, which the author adamantly states is a better measure of investor risk than the oft used and terribly wrong use of volatility as determined by standard deviation. Part III – This is where he puts it all together and shows the reader all of the steps and details on how to create a rules-based trend following investment strategy. A solid disciplined strategy consists of three parts, a measure of what the market is actually doing, a set of rules and guidelines to tell you how to invest based upon that measurement, and the discipline to follow the strategy




Technical Analysis


Book Description

Master technical analysis, step-by-step! Already the field's most comprehensive, reliable, and objective introduction, this guidebook has been thoroughly updated to reflect the field's latest advances. Selected by the Market Technicians Association as the official companion to its prestigious Chartered Market Technician (CMT) program, Technical Analysis, Third Edition systematically explains the theory of technical analysis, presenting academic evidence both for and against it. Using hundreds of fully updated illustrations and examples, the authors explain the analysis of both markets and individual issues, and present complete investment systems and portfolio management plans. They present authoritative, up-to-date coverage of tested sentiment, momentum indicators, seasonal effects, flow of funds, testing systems, risk mitigation strategies, and many other topics. Offering 30% new coverage, Technical Analysis, Third Edition thoroughly addresses recent advances in pattern recognition, market analysis, systems management, and confidence testing; Kagi, Renko, Kase, Ichimoku, Clouds, and DeMark indicators; innovations in exit stops, portfolio selection, and testing; implications of behavioral bias, and the recent performance of old formulas and methods. For traders, researchers, and serious investors alike, this is the definitive guide to profiting from technical analysis.




Computational Finance


Book Description

The book covers a wide range of topics, yet essential, in Computational Finance (CF), understood as a mix of Finance, Computational Statistics, and Mathematics of Finance. In that regard it is unique in its kind, for it touches upon the basic principles of all three main components of CF, with hands-on examples for programming models in R. Thus, the first chapter gives an introduction to the Principles of Corporate Finance: the markets of stock and options, valuation and economic theory, framed within Computation and Information Theory (e.g. the famous Efficient Market Hypothesis is stated in terms of computational complexity, a new perspective). Chapters 2 and 3 give the necessary tools of Statistics for analyzing financial time series, it also goes in depth into the concepts of correlation, causality and clustering. Chapters 4 and 5 review the most important discrete and continuous models for financial time series. Each model is provided with an example program in R. Chapter 6 covers the essentials of Technical Analysis (TA) and Fundamental Analysis. This chapter is suitable for people outside academics and into the world of financial investments, as a primer in the methods of charting and analysis of value for stocks, as it is done in the financial industry. Moreover, a mathematical foundation to the seemly ad-hoc methods of TA is given, and this is new in a presentation of TA. Chapter 7 reviews the most important heuristics for optimization: simulated annealing, genetic programming, and ant colonies (swarm intelligence) which is material to feed the computer savvy readers. Chapter 8 gives the basic principles of portfolio management, through the mean-variance model, and optimization under different constraints which is a topic of current research in computation, due to its complexity. One important aspect of this chapter is that it teaches how to use the powerful tools for portfolio analysis from the RMetrics R-package. Chapter 9 is a natural continuation of chapter 8 into the new area of research of online portfolio selection. The basic model of the universal portfolio of Cover and approximate methods to compute are also described.




New Frontiers in Technical Analysis


Book Description

An essential guide to the most innovative technical trading tools and strategies available In today's investment arena, there is a growing demand to diversify investment strategies through numerous styles of contemporary market analysis, as well as a continuous search for increasing alpha. Paul Ciana, Bloomberg L.P.'s top liason to Technical Analysts worldwide, understands these challenges very well and that is why he has created New Frontiers in Technical Analysis. Paul, along with in-depth contributions from some of the worlds most accomplished market participants developed this reliable guide that contains some of the newest tools and strategies for analyzing today's markets. The methods discussed are based on the existing body of knowledge of technical analysis and have evolved to support, and appeal to technical, fundamental, and quantitative analysts alike. • It answers the question "What are other people using?" by quantifying the popularity of the universally accepted studies, and then explains how to use them • Includes thought provoking material on seasonality, sector rotation, and market distributions that can bolster portfolio performance • Presents ground-breaking tools and data visualizations that paint a vivid picture of the direction of trend by capitalizing on traditional indicators and eliminating many of their faults • And much more Engaging and informative, New Frontiers in Technical Analysis contains innovative insights that will sharpen your investments strategies and the way you view today's market.




Natural Computing in Computational Finance


Book Description

Natural Computing in Computational Finance is a innovative volume containing fifteen chapters which illustrate cutting-edge applications of natural computing or agent-based modeling in modern computational finance. Following an introductory chapter the book is organized into three sections. The first section deals with optimization applications of natural computing demonstrating the application of a broad range of algorithms including, genetic algorithms, differential evolution, evolution strategies, quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithms and bacterial foraging algorithms to multiple financial applications including portfolio optimization, fund allocation and asset pricing. The second section explores the use of natural computing methodologies such as genetic programming, neural network hybrids and fuzzy-evolutionary hybrids for model induction in order to construct market trading, credit scoring and market prediction systems. The final section illustrates a range of agent-based applications including the modeling of payment card and financial markets. Each chapter provides an introduction to the relevant natural computing methodology as well as providing a clear description of the financial application addressed. The book was written to be accessible to a wide audience and should be of interest to practitioners, academics and students, in the fields of both natural computing and finance.