FuturesTechs Blog

In this article we’re going to have a look at continuation patterns. These are in contrast to the reversal patterns we’ve already treated in a previous blog post here. My main source is the comprehensive Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets by John J. Murphy (purchase here in association with FuturesTechs).

As the name suggests, continuation patterns imply that the prevailing trend will be maintained, not reversed. They occur as relatively short phases of consolidation or uncertainty within a longer-term trend.

We’ll start by looking at triangles. These come in three varieties: symmetrical, ascending and descending.

The symmetrical triangle occurs in the situation when we can draw trendlines above and below the price action (connecting at least two, and preferably three points for each line). Its forecasting implication depends on the prior trend. Here’s an example during a major rally in Corn in 1996:

The prevailing uptrend ran into a little bit of resistance. We dropped back, proceeded to find some support, and then created a lower high and a higher low. This narrowing consolidation was resolved to the upside with a clean break through the down-sloping trendline, when the uptrend continued strongly. The pattern is complete and the prior trend has resumed.

Next up is the ascending triangle. This is when we have a flat trendline at the top of the pattern, but a rising trendline at the bottom. It shows that demand is getting firmer, causing shorter pull-backs, but with the same resistance level being tested at the top of the pattern. So buyers are gaining in strength sufficiently to produce higher lows, but sellers are failing to do likewise by producing lower highs.

This is psychologically bullish and thus gives the positive forecastings implications for the pattern. We generally see this pattern during bull markets, and expect it to be resolved to the upside. Here’s an ascending triangle for BAY:

Now let’s look at the descending triangle. As you might imagine, we’ve got a descending upper line and a flat lower line with this one, and bearish forecasting implications. We see it in a downtrend, and we expect the trend to be maintained, just as we should have with TWOD:

There are measuring targets with all of these, which are simple to calculate: find the vertical distance between the lines at the first high or low being used for a trendline (this is the length of the base) and project that distance up or down from the breakout point.

Note that none of the forecasting implications described here are cast-iron certainties, merely tendencies. Sometimes, a triangle will turn out to be a reversal and not a continuation pattern. We are only ever dealing in probabilities when we try to forecast using price patterns.

Next, let’s look at the flag. We’ll look at an example which occurred during a downtrend in Natural Gas:

The flag is generally a shorter-term pattern than the ones we’ve already mentioned. It is really just a “blip” within a long-term bull or bear market, when the price briefly trades in the opposite direction to the prevailing trend. In the above bear market, then, we see a series of sessions when the price showed a bit of strength. We get parallel trendlines above and below the price, and the pattern was resolved when we were seen conclusively through one of the lines (this should be the lower line in a bear market, or the upper line in a bull market).

Here’s a flag visible on the 180-minute chart of a bull market in Copper:

Finally, let’s look at the pennant, a closely related pattern.

This could be possibly be described as a “small symmetrical triangle”. Like the flag, it appears as a short period when the prevailing trend loses its vigour. However, instead of seeing highs and lows in an opposite direction to that prevailing trend, we see the range narrow with higher lows and lower highs. Here’s an example in the CAC:

Flags and pennants should occur during a strong up or down move, and these patterns should just be a minor pause in that move. One method of projecting targets is to measure the length of the prior move and to project that far from the breakout point (i.e. assuming that the pattern happened roughly halfway along a bull or bear run).

As far as volume considerations for all of these patterns are concerned, the general principle is that volume goes with the major trends: that means it should initially be at normal levels for bulls or bear markets, calm down as the market consolidates, and than increase again when the pattern is resolved. Within the pattern, we would be encouraged to see the volume relatively larger during the small movements aligned with the major trend.

That rounds up our discussion of continuation patterns. None of them are fool-proof, but they can help to map out short term corrections and sideways movements. For more detail, and for other patterns, I recommend Murphy’s book.

To read our daily technical analysis of the futures markets, please sign up for a free trial.

Graham Neary MSTA (graham@futurestechs.co.uk)

Weekly Roundup, 19^th to 23^rd October.

Last week was a fairly mixed affair, particularly in Equity markets. The FTSE’s range for the week was 5166- 5299, and Friday saw the top end of this retested just before the US Markets opened, which triggered some afternoon selling. Quite often Friday afternoon sees traders tidying up positions that they’ve been holding all week, so if the market is long then you see selling on Friday afternoon as some of these longs are trimmed.

As far as individual stocks are concerned Miners and Resource stocks are still amongst the leaders, whereas Bank Stocks have been having a much tougher time. The “strong” banks like HSBC and Standard Bank are the safest bets for longs. We are seeing Utility Stocks finding support and starting to turn now and this is something that often happens at tops, with the real money moving into safe havens. We suggested buying United Utilities and Shire Pharma to our clients last week, which gives a clue as to our thinking. We are starting to short consumer related stocks as their charts are starting to agree that we are still in recession and things aren’t really improving.

The Dow has, as we suspected, shown a complete disregard for 10000, but we do seem to be having trouble getting through 10110-120, where we topped out each and every day last week. We are happy with our current “cautiously bullish” stance, and we continue to advise our clients not to get too excited about the prospects for higher prices.

Gold continues to go sideways, frustrating all of those who have piled in And got long because we got through $1000. We always thought $1034 was more important, and we’re happy to be long of this while this important technical level is holding firm.

In last week’s round up we talked about the change in skew we’ve been forced into in Oil. We had been favouring the bears but then we got above $75 to change our stance. Sure enough this has continued higher, and we want to see $78 holding now to give us a launch pad for a move to $90 and beyond.

Finally can I remind you it’s the World Money Show at the end of the week and we’re going to be exhibiting. We are running a competition to win an Apple iPod 3G, so if you can make it please come along and say hello.

Click here to register for free.

To request a free trial, with no obligation, of FuturesTechs’ daily analysis service please click here.

Have a good week,

The FuturesTechs Team.

Every week we send out a weekly round up e-mail to our database, and we figured it would probably be useful to post it here as well, so here goes!

FuturesTechs Weekly Round up - 19th October.

Here is your latest roundup of price movements on the major asset classes in the Investment arena. As regular readers will know by now we at FuturesTechs only look at the price action to determine what trend an instrument is in, and where this suggests it can head in the future. Many technicians use Cycle analysis to make longer term calls, and this is what allowed us to make the “call” that we were near a bottom back in March for Equity markets like the FTSE and DAX. Currently our analysis suggests there is a pullback imminent, but so far each time the market has threatened this sort of move the buyers have stepped back in and bought into the dips. There was some price action towards the tail end of last week that was slightly worrying, but once again the bulls appear to have averted the threat.

The Dow may be above 10000 as we write, but it’s failing to convince and we prefer maintaining a cautious stance for now. I heard a great line on the financial news channels last week. Someone said they were “at the party, but dancing near the door”. That sums up how we feel about the present state of things.

So we’d warn against getting too complacent about this recent rise, and we’d warn against worrying that you’ve missed the boat. Generally tops are formed when people pile in thinking they’ve got to get in because they’ll miss out otherwise!! If our analysis is right there will be a pullback soon, and it could even be a deep one, and just when people think we’re heading back to those March lows is just the time you want to be buying!

Gold has been front and centre on people’s minds of late, and the amount of mainstream press it’s been getting (all bullish) worries us, as far as whether this rally can sustain itself is concerned. BUT it has held above some important technical support levels like the $1027 to $1034 region, so we are happy to stay with the trend and back it to keep heading higher for now.

Oil has been the one that has surprised us. We weren’t expecting to see $75 again in a hurry but we’re above here at present, so now there’s scope for higher prices and we’ve been forced to readjust our thinking.

The Dollar’s weakness is the other big topic that many have had on their minds of late. We are keeping a particularly close eye on Dollar/Yen, actually, and want to see a move through 91.15 to take further pressure off the dollar.

Finally just a reminder that we are exhibiting at the World Money Show this year. It takes place at the QE2 Conference Centre in London (bang opposite Big Ben) on October 30^th and 31^st. Admission is free, so register and be sure to come along and say hello. Click here to register

If you wish to benefit from our analysis on a daily basis it is just £50 a month (+VAT). You can become a member by clicking here.

Have a good week,

The FuturesTechs Team.

With this article I will introduce Point and Figure charts: how to understand them, and how to recognise some simple patterns. My main source will be Jeremy du Plessis’ The Definitive Guide to Point and Figure, which you might be interested to purchase from the Global Investor Bookshop (in association with FuturesTechs).

Point and Figure is a very old method of charting price action, which originated when traders were simply recording the prices as they saw them happen: 14.50, 14.55, 14.60, 14.55, etc.

This gradually evolved to the point where traders were filling out boxes on a graph corresponding to price levels which the market had crossed, moving to the right each time that the price retraced over an old price level. Eventually, we got the modern Point and Figure chart.

Here’s the most recent NASDAQ chart:

As indicated, the X’s are drawn when the price has increased, while the O’s are drawn whenever the price has decreased.

In the example above the intervals used are just a point wide (the “box sixe”), meaning that we change from X to O (or O to X) and move to the next column whenever the price moves by just a point in the opposite direction to the previous move.

That makes this a very short-term chart, of course. With one-point reversals happening all the time, a couple of hours’ trading will quickly fill up the chart.

The two ways we can make it longer-term are:

• Increase the box size
• increase the reversal size

Increasing the box size should be obvious enough; instead of recording 1-point movements, we’ll record 10-point movements, for example. Here’s the first chart modified in this way:

These boxes stretch back a couple of weeks now, instead of a couple of hours.

Now let’s change the reversal size, the size of the reversal which needs to take place before we change between x’s and o’s and move into the next column. This is measured in terms of boxes, and is set to 3 in the below chart:

The above chart stretches back a couple of days. For a bigger picture view combining both changes, we could require 3-box reversals for 10-point boxes, i.e. requiring 30-points reversals before changing direction on the chart. The below chart represents the price action of a year:

One thing you might have noticed at this point is that we don’t really have a proper time axis. That’s true. While it’s true that time is progressing as we move from left to right on the chart, it’s not doing so on a constant basis. The chart only moves right when we get a sufficiently large change in direction (as defined by our parameters). The chart only changes when the price does. So, instead of being a traditional time vs. price chart, Point and Figure is instead an original way of drawing the price action.

We’re going to look at some patterns now, focusing on charts with 3-box reversal sizes. Any box reversal size can be used, and some care should generally be taken to choose the one that leads to the most favourable chart for the desired timeframe.

That said, we usually don’t like to use 1-box reversals. Charts look very different with 1-box reversals, being of a much shorter timeframe and with very different-looking patterns. Much of the difference is related to the fact that a 1-box reversal chart can have columns with just a single entry of , i.e. when we get two reversals in quick succession.

Check out the Difference between the CAC futures charts below. The top is a 10 x 1 (10 points, 1-box reversal) chart, while the bottom is 10 x 3.

Besides being of a much shorter timeframe in the same space, we can see that the one on the top does indeed have many columns with just a single X or O.

The advantage of sticking with reversal sizes of 2, 3 and more, is that we get to take advantage of the resulting asymmetric filter. The chart is biased to ignore movements in the opposite direction to the prevailing trend that do not satisfy the box size criterion. While a move of, say, 10 points in the prevailing trend will be charted, a move in the other direction won’t be plotted until it reached, say, 30 point.

So let’s have a look at some simple patterns.

The double-top buy is seen when the price reverses off a high, then comes back and breaks through it on the second attempt. It’s an awkward name since the Double Top bearish reversal pattern in mainstream bar/candlestick analysis, but the context is usually clear enough. Here’s an example of it in an uptrend:

Equally, the double-bottom sell occurs when we get the creation of a lower low:

These can be reversal or continuation patterns, depending on the previous trend. As continuation patterns, they tend to be a little more reliable (in accordance with the general principle that trends have a universal tendency to continue!)

In a similar vein to the above, we can have triple-top buy and triple-bottom sell signals. Indeed, we can have any number of tests before the breakout, with all manner of compound patterns.

The first of these buy signals comes after a failed attempt by the bulls to break through the previous highs (indeed, the correction causes a failed reversal triple-bottom sell signal. Our bias is to trade with the prevailing trend, so hopefully we would not have seized on that false signal):

In our next post on this topic, I’ll cover a selection of more advanced patterns and have a look at the price targets we can derive from them.

For now, this has been an introduction to Point and Figure charting. If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. To subscribe to our daily technical analysis of the futures and FX markets, please sign up for a free trial.

Graham Neary MSTA (graham@futurestechs.co.uk)

One of the premises of tecnical analysis is that price patterns tend to repeat themselves. But what are these patterns? Today, we’re going to lookat reversal patterns, i.e. where a change of trend is indicated.

Perhaps the most famous of these is the Head and Shoulders pattern.

Here is the Dow weekly candlestick chart, showing how this topped out in 2007.

The general picture behind the Head and Shoulders is as follows: we start off with an uptrend, which proceeds as normal creating higher highs and higher lows.

The initial warning sign is a failure to create a higher high. This is the top of the “Right Shoulder” on the above chart.

Our technique then is to connect the two most recent lows. This isn’t a proper trendline (which should really connect three points) but instead is the “Neckline” of what is still only a potential Head and Shoulders pattern.

The Head and Shoulders pattern is completed by the break through the Neckline. Sometimes, the bulls will have a go at recapturing it, just as they did in the case of the Dow. What really strengthens the bear story, and is something you can look for, is if the broken Neckline then turns resistance. This happened with the Dow, making this a textbook case of the Head and Shoulders pattern.

Note that the Neckline was broken briefly on the retest; the danger of getting a false signal in this way is limited by placing certain conditions on what sort of a break is required. For example, demanding two consecutive closes above the Neckline (the “Two Day Rule”) would have prevented us from getting whipsawed by thinking that the Head and Shoulders pattern was being negated.

The above chart shows the standard method for constructing measuring targets with the Head and Shoulders pattern. Find the height of the head and then target that distance below the Neckline, measuring from where it broke (so we would target the red horizantal line in the above case).

The Inverse Head and Shoulders is based on the same idea, reversing a downtrend. Here’s Light Sweet Crude Oil changing direction in this way in 2007. Observe the broken Neckline providing support twice:

Now let’s look at Double Tops and Double Bottoms. The Double Top is formed when, in an uptrend, we run into resistance twice at the same level. We then fall through the intermediate low, completing the pattern and providing a sell signal. The broken Neckline can turn resistance, as it did with the DAX futures between 2007 and 2008; see the weekly candles chart below

Here’s an example of a Double Bottom, this time on a bar chart. It’s Vodafone at the bottom of the bear market in 2009, finding support at the same level twice, then beating the intermediate high and continuing the move.

In this case, our measuring target would be similarly calculated as with the Head and Shoulders patterns, i.e. the height of the pattern projected from the breakdown point. In this case, it’s 123.60 plus 12.40, i.e. 136.00.

Here’s an example of a Spike, or V-Reversal.

The Spike is really just the name for a market which reverses direction without giving any proper clue in tertms of hte preceding pattern that this was likely. This is the market turning “on a dime”, and the most difficult to trade.

The only clue at the top of the above chart that Wheat was turning was the “Harami Cross” candlestick pattern at the top (that’s the Doji contained within the range of the long green candle). When a Spike happens, our only recourse is to short-term signals such as candlesticks.

Finally, here’s a Saucer Bottom in Corn futures (the Saucer Top is the equivalent reversal of an uptrend). This is the opposite to the Spike, the price very gradually changing direction.

As technicians we much prefer to see a Saucer Bottom or Top than a V Reversal, with the slow move giving us lots of time to change skew.

Volume

One thing we haven’t mentioned much so far in this article is the role of volume in all of these patterns. Volume - the level of trading activity taking place over any period - is an essential component of technical analysis and an important part of pattern recognition.

The general principle is that volume accompanies movements with the trend. In terms of trend reversals, then, we should see the volume faltering during those final movements with the old trend, and eventually picking up as the new trend takes over.

In the case of the Head and Shoulders pattern, for example, volume should be weakest during the Third Shoulder, as enthusiasm for the dying bull market begins to evaporate.

A distinction can be made here between tops and bottoms. It is generally recognised that volume is not so important for tops as it for bottoms: at tops, market can “fall of their own weight” with buyers simply failing to show up, and volume not increasing.

Bottoms, on the other hand, generally involve mass participation, with active buyer enthusiasm being the main driving force behind the move.

Variations

There are several variations on the patterns mentioned here, in particular the Complex Head and Shoulders, the Triple Top and Triple Bottom. The Triple Top and Triple Bottom are fairly self-explanatory, while the Complex Head and Shoulders generally involves multiple shoulders on one or both sides of the Head.

The principles of volume analysis and the measuring techniques for these patterns are much the same as for the patterns already described here.

Conclusion

These patterns, without being infallible, help us to map out major changes in trend. They are generally medium and long-term patterns, with their significance and measuring targets in proportion to their size.

We incorporate these patterns into our daily analysis of the futures and FX markets. If you would like to sign up for a trial of our services, click here. For a free trial, click here.

Graham Neary MSTA (graham@futurestechs.co.uk)

Whether you are Spread Betting, trading CFD’s, or trading DMA Futures, you need an edge.

Trading is tough, and managing your emotions is one of the toughest things you will have to learn in order to make a success of trading for a living.

The human brain is wired up all wrong for trading, in fact.

By nature we will take a profit too early (GREED kicks in and we snaffle up the winnings on the table), whereas if a trade goes into the red we won’t get out. Instead we’ll start to cross our fingers and hope that it comes back. As the trade goes further into the red pride gets in the way even more, and we allow the situation to get even worse. We FEAR booking a loss, and seeing that loss crystallise on our account, so we sit tight even more (or even worse we add to the losing position), waiting for it to come back (actually HOPING it will come back), except it probably won’t.

“The first cut is the cheapest” is a phrase commonly used by Professional Traders. When I go into my professional clients’ trading rooms I see stickers on traders’ screens with phrases like “get out of bad trades” and “run the winners”.

To become a successful trader you need to rewire your brain almost, and teach yourself to have the DISCIPLINE to get out of bad trades early on, and run the good trades as long as possible.

How can you do this? By using the charts.

You can use Technical Analysis to:

• Trade in the direction of the trend.
• Look for buying or selling opportunities
• Set clear targets and stops, preferably with a decent risk/reward (ie put on trades knowing where you’re going to get out, and knowing that the possible loss will always be much less than the potential profit)
• Trade at the important technical levels, and not in “no mans land”.

All of this will help you to manage your emotions. Only the very best traders in the world can ELIMINATE emotion. Most of us will have to content ourselves with finding a way of REDUCING the emotional side of things in order to help us make better trading decisions.

If you’re a novice at trading and/or technical analysis you will need some help with this, and FuturesTechs can provide you with the levels to trade around, as well as offering market leading guidance and analysis on a daily basis.

Professional Traders have been using our service for years as an essential part of their daily routine.

YOU now have the chance to enjoy the same advice on a daily basis.

Click here to subscribe (your maximum commitment only has to be 1 month, or £57.50)

Or if you’ve never seen our service before, click here to request a no obligation Free Trial.

Have a good week,

Yours,

The FuturesTechs Team

Ichimoku Charts are a tool many traders swear by, and which we may occasionally use as an ingredient in our daily analysis. This article explains the basics.

The main source I’m using will be “Ichimoku Charts” by Nicole Elliott, an excellent book which you can purchase from the Global Investor Bookshop by clicking here.

Part I: Construction

We start with the humble Japanese candlestick chart, the type that you will see on our reports every day. Replete with patterns, it is the building block of Ichimoku. Note that we generally only use daily charts for Ichimoku, although that’s more a product of convention than for any other reason.

Next, we add some special moving averages, with periods nine and twenty-six. These don’t use the close, as would normally be used in the West, but the “mid-price”, i.e. the price halfway between the high and the low of the period in question.

This mid-price is used to calculate each of the Ichimoku lines (except one) and is a convention passed on by the Japanese.  Similarly, the choice of 26 for the longer moving average is based on the length of the standard Japanese business month.

Now for some terminology: the nine-day moving average is called Tenkan-sen (the “Conversion Line”) while the twenty-six-day moving average is Kijun-sen (the “Base Line”). We can use these like we would any other pair of moving averages (see the previous blog tutorial).

Next, we add the defining feature of Ichimoku charts: the cloud. Here’s the complete picture:

The pink line at the top of the shaded cloud area in the centre of this chart is called Senkou Span A (”Leading Span A”), and is calculated as the average of the two special moving averages we had already added to the chart. As the average of two moving averages, it is thus a kind of weighted moving average, giving greater emphasis to the recent prices.

The other line forming the cloud is called Senkou Span B and is the average of the highest price of the last 52 days and the lowest price of the last 52 days. Since we aren’t necessarily expanding the 52-period range all the time, this regularly stays constant day-to-day (you can see how it has flat periods in the above chart).

Both of these lines are plotted 26 days ahead of the market. This means that for the current day, the positions of these lines are calculated using the data available 26 days ago. In other words, the current price is compared with what the weighted moving average and the longer-period range were 26 days ago, not what they are now.

Note also that the prices used here are the Japanese “midpoint” prices, not the close as might be expected in Western technical analysis.

The observant will notice that apart from the moving averages and the cloud lines, there is another line included in the chart above. This is the brown line (colours may vary) which is at the top of the chart during the middle of the pictured timeframe, and is the Chikou Span (”Lagging Span”). It is simply the daily close, plotted at a delay of 26 periods - hence why it “lags”. Each candle’s close, therefore, is plotted against the candle 26 days previously. Note that the Chikou Span is the only line in the Ichimoku chart which uses the closing price in its calculation.

Part II: Analysis

We can take Ichimoku Analysis to almost any level of depth, but the key ideas are as follows:

A. Moving Averages

These are used like the ordinary moving averages are used in traditional Western analysis: as support and resistance levels, getting a bullish message if the price is above the moving averages, or bearish if it is below. Also check for bullish/bearish crossover signals as the averages change position (see the previous blog article). A bullish crossover signal is stronger if it is seen above the cloud, while a bearish crossover signal is stronger if it happens below.

B. Ichimoku Cloud

We are bullish when the price is above the cloud, bearish when it is below.

We also use the cloud lines (Senkou Spans A and B)  as support/resistance levels, getting reversal signals when they are broken.

The width of the cloud doesn’t really matter, except insofar as a thicker cloud means that it will take longer for us to reverse skew by a breakout through the opposite side.

On a related note, the colour of the cloud doesn’t really matter either - it just tells us which line of the cloud is on top. In the above chart, red means that Senkou Span A is on top, while blue means that Senkou Span B is on top.

The Dow chart above would have had us thinking bear thoughts first of all as the price dipped below the cloud. Since it didn’t manage to get a close below it, however, we probably wouldn’t have sided with the bulls outright, still waiting for a clean move away from it. When the price soon rallied back above it, we could then have taken an outright bullish skew.

Hopefully, this skew would have been maintained for most of the period shown above. Of course, the candlesticks did give bearish reversal warnings at various points, and there were a couple of short-term corrections. The solution might be to use the candlestick patterns for specific short-term entry and exit points, while using Ichimoku for an insight into the big picture. For those who are investing for the medium to long term, they might ignore the short-term candlestick patterns completely, or use them merely to make small adjustments to their positions or as a minor piece of evidence relative to the longer-term Ichimoku cloud.

The lessons from this are familiar: use more than one indicator, be flexible, and always act appropriately with respect to your investment or trading timeframe.

C. Chikou Span

This last piece of the jigsaw is simply the close mapped 26 days previously. With this, we can check if the recent close is above or below the candle of 26 days ago, and use that as another piece of evidence.

The Chilkou Span is quite easily recognisable, no matter what colour it is on your chart, since it is just the line chart at a lag. We can see it spike upwards in the above when this market broke to the upside in September. It’s not complicated, of course, but simply knowing where you are in relation to the price last month is a useful piece of the jigsaw. It’s bullish if the Chikou Span is above the candle of 26 days ago, or bearish if it’s below the candle 26 days ago, and we get bullish and bearish signals as they change position.

Part III: Conclusion

We’ve explained Ichimoku charts in a nutshell. The cloud is the most important, and the most unique feature, with two lines: Senkou Span A, a moving average which gives greater weight to the more recent prices, and Senkou Span B, the midpoint of a long-term range. We’ll tend to be bullish above the cloud, and bearish below it. We’ll also monitor the action of two special moving averages and the lagged closing price (Chikou Span). There are a host of signals to watch out for, and our conviction to buy or sell is strongest when all of the signals are aligned.

For a more detailed exposition of Ichimoku Charts, see “Ichimoku Charts” by Nicole Elliott. To read the daily technical analysis we produce at FuturesTechs, sign up for a free trial.

Graham Neary MSTA (graham@futurestechs.co.uk)

Here is Clive’s latest appearance:

Clive has recently started a weekly slot on CNBC, where he’ll be explaining concepts in technical analysis and reviewing the current state of play in the markets. Tune in on Thursdays from around 6:30am, or check our archives.

Here is today’s appearance, discussing Marabuzo lines in the context of what’s been happening recently with the FTSE, S&P 500, Bund and Brent.

The FTSE has been making some noises to the downside of late, finally coming to the party on our pullback skew.

Our regular readers will know that ever since we found resistance around 4500 over most of May we have been mooting the idea of a pullback. Will this take us back to or even through the March lows? You need to subscribe to FuturesTechs to have access to our views on questions like this. As a taster for those of you who, for some strange reason, don’t subscribe,  here’s today’s FTSE Futures commentary and chart.

To get this sort of thing every day you need to become a FuturesTechs member. We offer generous discounts for 6 or 12 month memberships. Click here to join up.

Clients are enjoying the extra levels we now provide on our levels sheets, which have padded out the offering for all asset classes; Commodities, leading UK Stocks, and Forex now enjoy extra coverage for FuturesTechs members.

Clive recently spoke at the SII “Risk Forum” on a pnel discussion on the outlook for the next 6-12 months. Again our clients had access to the slides for this presentation, giving bigger picture insight on the technical outlook for Equities, Commodities and Bonds.

Clive was recently asked to do an interview by Malcolm Prior, author of several best selling books on Spread Betting. Malcolm published this interview on his website, Spread Betting Central. Click here to read this.

We are also considering rolling out Twitter updates for FuturesTechs members so they can get updates on anything new, either in the markets, or on the website. Please let us know your thoughts on this by clicking here.