Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Use MACD in Foreign Exchange and Stock Trading

Before talking about MACD, let me tell you that I do not believe in using indicators. Most indicators (or all of them in fact) are lagging and they make false signals. Price chart is the best indicator and candlesticks are the only real time indicators we have.

MACD is one of the most delayed indicators indeed but it is different from all the other indicators. Since I discovered the power of MACD, I never removed it from my charts. MACD is a great indicator and if you consult with it in your trades, you make less mistakes.

What is the secret? The key secret is in "MACD delay". It is so delayed and in this case, the delay is something that helps you a lot. How?

Most traders lose because they enter too early. They want to hit the top and bottom of the trends and so they go against the forming and ongoing trend because they think that they have found a good reversal signal... the trend has been going for such a long time and it is time to reverse and... emotions like this...

These are all emotions. You go against the trend, while you think you have found a good reversal signal, whereas the trend keeps on moving on its own direction. You were wrong.

What MACD does, is that it tells you that the trend is still strong and you should ignore the reversal signals you see.

MACD also tells you that trend is getting exhausted and may reverse soon. Of course MACD or moving average convergence divergence also makes mistakes sometimes but as far as I have seen, it is the strongest indicator because it is calm and delayed. It is not excited and overwhelmed.

So try MACD on your charts and see the difference. Use the default setting: 12 26 9. Do not try to make MACD faster through changing its setting. It will not have the same power anymore.

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