[GlobalCitizen]

Any books you recommend on market breadth? There are so many sources, I'd like to get the best.

One of the best ones for me was the 2007 edition of Point and Figure Charting: The Essential Application for Forecasting and Tracking Market Prices https://www.amazon.co.uk/Point-Figure-Ch...066&sr=1-4 which you can get a used copy of for less than £10 on Amazon. It introduced a lot of market breadth tools and ways of looking at relative performance that are relevant to Stage Analysis. It's heavy on the sales pitch to try and get you to sign up for their services, but if you ignore that, then it's excellent book for learning some essential tools for analysing market breadth using point and figure.

Thank you. Will look it up! There is so much info out there, sometimes you don't know which one to go with.

[kero]

Thank you Isatrader. You're a real goldmine. (can we say that in english ?)

[isatrader]

Thank you Isatrader. You're a real goldmine. (can we say that in english ?)

Yep, that's a saying in English too

[pcabc]

Any books you recommend on market breadth? There are so many sources, I'd like to get the best.

One of the best ones for me was the 2007 edition of Point and Figure Charting: The Essential Application for Forecasting and Tracking Market Prices https://www.amazon.co.uk/Point-Figure-Ch...066&sr=1-4 which you can get a used copy of for less than £10 on Amazon. It introduced a lot of market breadth tools and ways of looking at relative performance that are relevant to Stage Analysis. It's heavy on the sales pitch to try and get you to sign up for their services, but if you ignore that, then it's excellent book for learning some essential tools for analysing market breadth using point and figure.

Thank you. Will look it up! There is so much info out there, sometimes you don't know which one to go with.

Thank you for the pointer as well.  I don't really 'get' point and figure, so this could be a good book to get.  The 2007 is good value used, I ordered one for £5.99 from the US, free postage - have to see if that works.  There was a copy for £0.01 plus £5.98 postage, but that seemed a bit odd.

[pcabc]

Just to jump in and ask a few questions myself...

They are different variations of the MACD of the AD line. I've attached the settings and turned on the legends so that you can reference them with the settings below.

The most useful indicator on the chart is the 10 and 30 week exponential MAs of the cumulative line imo, as it's signals are very useful, and I think they were talked about in the "Technically Speaking" interview if I remember correctly. But they all give a different perspective that helps with the weight of evidence.

Those averages mirror the price MAs.  I've been plotting the cumulative advance / decline and cumulative advance / decline volume lines (well, very close to) but I've used 50, 200 and 260 days, with the latter representing about a year.  Switching one to 150 to mirror the price MA seems logical.  In the shorter turn I'm getting the impression 200 days may be a little slow, it confirms what has already started or was recently finishing.

Regarding the MACD, I've recently started plotting the MACDs of these two lines, with the most commonly used periods.  I'm wondering whether the '1,200,1' MACD really is a MACD.  Effectively it is just a plot of the price minus the 200 day MA.  So surely it is some form of momentum indicator?

[isatrader]

Those averages mirror the price MAs.  I've been plotting the cumulative advance / decline and cumulative advance / decline volume lines (well, very close to) but I've used 50, 200 and 260 days, with the latter representing about a year.  Switching one to 150 to mirror the price MA seems logical.  In the shorter turn I'm getting the impression 200 days may be a little slow, it confirms what has already started or was recently finishing.

Regarding the MACD, I've recently started plotting the MACDs of these two lines, with the most commonly used periods.  I'm wondering whether the '1,200,1' MACD really is a MACD.  Effectively it is just a plot of the price minus the 200 day MA.  So surely it is some form of momentum indicator?

I use the 200 day plot the same way as the Momentum Index, in that crosses below the zero line or a break down from an established long term range towards the zero line are things to take note of, as it is a long term indicator. So yes, is also used for confirmation purposes as it is often one of the last things to break down.

The standard (12,26,9) MACD line chart is the 12-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) less the 26-day EMA, with a 9 signal line. So the '1,200,1' MACD is the 1 day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) less the 200-day EMA. So it is a little different than the plot of the price minus the 200 day MA, as that uses a simple day MA and not the Exponential Moving Average. But the difference is fairly minor, so could probably lose it.

[gbarbs]

I read SA some time after the 2009 bottom and since then, I don't recall the Chapter 8 indicators being so decidedly negative.  Looks like nearly all boxes are checked and it's time to tighten things up and look for shorts.  The MI has not crossed 0 yet but is headed there and has a strong divergence.  The Dow feels like its about to fall off a cliff, if it already hasn't.

[isatrader]

I read SA some time after the 2009 bottom and since then, I don't recall the Chapter 8 indicators being so decidedly negative.  Looks like nearly all boxes are checked and it's time to tighten things up and look for shorts.  The MI has not crossed 0 yet but is headed there and has a strong divergence.  The Dow feels like its about to fall off a cliff, if it already hasn't.

Not seeing any panic yet, so think that might start to set in and we could get the flush for a short term bottom, and then a volatile relief rally, before the market makes any firm decisions on the general trend direction it wants to take. Personally, I've been waiting for this for ages, as the best time to buy is always when all the time scales of the market breadth indicators are recovering from the bottom zones, which they are only just reaching, and that generally only happens once every 2 or 3 years or so. So I'm going to be watching the breadth closely, but doubt I'll be doing any shorting personally, as I've never been able to well. So if start saying I'm going to then that's definitely a sign that it's a bottom!