Sunday, April 10, 2011

Stock Charting Software for Beginners (and experienced traders too)

When I started my journey in trading, I was fortunate that I got some good advice regarding trading software. Back then, there weren’t that many high pitched sales companies with catchy ads when they come to town. With promises of get rich schemes subtly through people who claimed they were incredibly successful, it was a hard sell. Anything that is incredible is also unbelievable.

I still prefer Metastock as my software of choice. With the add-ons that are available, it is a powerful weapon in the war against market variability. I started with the end-of-day version of Metastock and if my memory serves me right, it was priced in the $399 range. Not sure where it is now but if you Google Metastock and hunt it down, it is easy to check that out. By the way, I don’t make money from Metastock sales.
Over the years, I have bought quite a few add-ons. They are like Nintendo games that you can use on a Nintendo machine. Each one is a unique trading set of rules; with expert trading systems, back-testing capability, indicators and explorations (scans) too... Unfortunately quite a few are not so good, so be careful. There are a few that suited me and I was able to learn to modify and create my own quite easily. I would prefer not to pitch specific add-ons here. Maybe sometime later I might; but no commitments on that. I learned some of the glitches in Metastock the hard way. Same goes for the software add-ons. With time, I learned to maneuver around the thorns. I would suggest starting slowly and learning the software and trading simulation accounts. Wish I had!

My second software of choice is TC2007 by the Worden Bros. Again, if interested just Google the above and you will find the link. I liked the commentary that you get each day on the Worden daily report. Although I have to admit I liked Don Worden’s daily commentaries a lot more than Peter’s. Forgive me for the harsh comment Peter but Don was always willing to look outward into the future based on what he saw happening in the present. Peter dwells on what happened in the past. I don’t need someone to summarize what happened during the day. TC2007 has some proprietary indicators such as BOP (Balance of Power), TSV (Time Segmented Volume) and MS (Money Stream). The software is an excellent scanning software. You can scan for stocks that meet your fundamental as well as Technical criteria.

I like to download data into TC2007 and import it into my Metastock end-of-day folders. That way I just pay for one data service.  Yes, I have to pay money for a data source to get the stock, mutual funds, ETF data end-of-day. I know there is other good software out there; but these are the ones I like to use.

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