How Can You Identify Support and Resistance Indicators?

Support and resistance levels can be determined in many ways, including: round numbers in a stock's price, the volume of buy and sell orders, and historical highs and lows of stock price.

InvestHL Archives | Page 38 of 51

Aug

2023

Beginners Guide to Understanding Support and Resistance

By Inyoung Hwang | Growing Wealth, invest, Investing | Comments Off

Support and resistance are price levels that traders look at when they’re applying technical analysis to their investing. “Support” is where the price of an asset tends to stop falling and “resistance” is where the price tends to stop climbing.

While support and resistance levels are rarely the sole indicators used to determine when to buy or sell, they can provide helpful clues to estimating when a price trend may pause or reverse. That can be critical for investors to know and understand as they fine-tune their strategies.

What Is Support and Resistance?

As noted, support and resistance are price levels used by traders and investors. Specifically, they’re used as a part of what is called technical analysis, which involves looking at a number of technical indicators that describe how a stock is performing – and trying to determine what it may do in the future.

Specifically, support and resistance levels can be plotted on a stock chart to try and create a visual representation of a stock’s value range – it doesn’t tell a trader everything, but sort of gives a visual as to the “range” a stock’s value sits within. In short, at the higher end of the range a stock may hit “resistance,” while at the lower end, it may find “support.” That’s not to say that values don’t break out of that range – they can and do – but support and resistance act more as a general guideline for traders.

💡 Quick Tip: Before opening any investment account, consider what level of risk you are comfortable with. If you’re not sure, start with more conservative investments, and then adjust your portfolio as you learn more.

Technical Analysis 101

Technical analysis is a type of trading method that uses price patterns to forecast future movement. It differs from fundamental analysis, which is based on using a company’s financials, like its earnings and revenue. Professional technical analysts are called Chartered Market Technicians or CMTs.

A general rule of thumb in investing is that past performance never guarantees future results. However, technical analysts believe that because of market psychology and sentiments like fear and greed, history tends to repeat itself. For instance, if an asset falls a certain amount, buyers tend to swoop in.

In addition to price levels and their historical patterns, technical analysts may look at volume, oscillators – such as the Stochastic Oscillator, and momentum.

Another aspect of technical analysis is that it can be self-fulfilling. If many investors and traders believe a certain price is important, they may use stop-loss orders at certain levels. That, in turn, makes it likely those points will trigger a reversal or pause in an asset’s direction.

How Do You Identify Support and Resistance Indicators?

The support level is typically a price point at which investors or traders expect a downward price trend to pause or reverse. A resistance level is the price point at which an upward price trend is expected to pause or reverse.

Here are some different ways in which support and resistance levels can be determined.

1. Round Numbers

Round numbers like $100, $500 or $10,000 can be levels at which investors, traders and analysts believe a price trend will hit support or resistance.

For instance, in a hypothetical example in the stock market, a company’s shares may climb steadily and struggle to surpass the $100 level. This may be driven more by market sentiment, as the market doesn’t believe the stock can consistently trade above that $100 level.

There could also be a more fundamental reason, such as the $100 level pushing the valuation – something like the stock’s price-to-earnings ratio – to a level the market believes is too expensive.

2. Buy and Sell Orders

Technical analysts may come up with support and resistance points by studying where buy and sell orders are congregated. In other words, they’re determining support and resistance levels by the volume of trades.

Investors, traders and analysts may have access to actual buy or sell order books. They could study price targets that bank research analysts set. They may also scour sources like social-media platforms to get a sense of where investors believe the stock may find a floor or hit a ceiling.

3. Historical Highs and Lows

A previous high or low for an asset may be deemed a level at which there’s support or resistance.

For instance, let’s say Company Y stock had months ago climbed to hit a price level but then reversed. If Company Y stock nears that level again, investors may believe that’s a resistance point where the shares may struggle again.

How to Trade Using Support and Resistance Levels

There are roughly four types of investors who may be using trade and resistance levels:

1. Investors who are long and waiting to buy at a support level,

2. Investors who are shorting a stock or asset and may close their position,

3. Investors on the sidelines and want to buy at a support price,

4. Investors on the sidelines and simply monitoring to learn more about the stock.

One common way investors and traders utilize support and resistance levels is through stop-loss orders. Stop-loss orders are in general popular when it comes to technical analysis trading. They involve placing an order with an investor’s brokerage account to buy or sell once an asset reaches a specific price.

Recommended: How to Open a Brokerage Account

Stop-loss orders are a way for investors to manage their portfolio without having to monitor their holdings every day.

For example, let’s say an investor believes $1,000 is a level of resistance for Company Z stock. They could set a stop-loss order to sell the stock at $1,000, which the brokerage firm will automatically execute once the shares hit that price.

💡 Quick Tip: When you’re actively investing in stocks, it’s important to ask what types of fees you might have to pay. For example, brokers may charge a flat fee for trading stocks, or require some commission for every trade. Taking the time to manage investment costs can be beneficial over the long term.

The Takeaway

Support and resistance levels are price points at which investors and traders in a market expect trends to reverse or take a pause. Individuals can think about support and resistance levels as the potential floors and ceilings for price moves in an asset.

While there’s no guarantee support and resistance levels come true, it can be a helpful way to try to time the market or have specific price points to monitor. They may also use these prices to gauge whether the velocity of a price movement will slow down, pick up or reverse course.

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Jul

2023

Investing in Gold and Silver: a Guide

By Samuel Becker | Growing Wealth, invest, Investing | Comments Off

Precious metals can be an important part of a diversified portfolio. Here’s what to know before you invest.

Jul

2023

Complete Guide to the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) indicator

What Is MACD?

By Colin Dodds | Financial Independence, Growing Wealth, invest, Investing | Comments Off

The moving average convergence divergence (MACD) is an indicator that shows the momentum in equity markets. It’s especially popular with traders, who use it to help them rapidly identify short-term momentum swings in a stock.

A moving average can help investors see past the noise of daily market movements to find securities trending up or down. The MACD offers another way to focus on such stocks, by showing the relationship between two moving averages.

Understanding the Moving Average

The moving average convergence divergence may sound complex, so it makes sense to start with the first part – the moving average (MA), also called the exponential moving average, or EMA. This is a very common metric with stocks, used to make sense of ever-fluctuating price data by replacing it with a regularly updated average price. This moving average can give investors a clearer idea of where a stock is trading than one that’s updated second by second.

Because the moving average reflects past prices, it is a lagging indicator. But how much the past prices factor in depends on the person setting the average. Most commonly, investors look at moving averages of 15, 20, 30, 50, 100, and 200 days, with the 50- and 200-day averages being the most widely used.

A moving average with a shorter time span will be more sensitive to price changes, while moving averages with longer time spans will fluctuate less dramatically. Generally, active traders with strategy focused on market timing favor shorter-duration moving averages.

To perform the MACD calculation, traders take the 26-day moving average of a stock and subtract it from that stock’s 12-day moving average. This calculation offers a quick temperature-check of a stock’s momentum.

While the 12-day and 26-day time spans are standard for the MACD, investors can also create their own custom MACD measurements with time spans that better fit their own particular trading tactics and investment strategies.

💡 Quick Tip: Before opening any investment account, consider what level of risk you are comfortable with. If you’re not sure, start with more conservative investments, and then adjust your portfolio as you learn more.

How to Read MACD

If a stock’s MACD is positive, that means its short-term average is higher than its long-term average, which could be a bullish indicator that stock is on an upswing. A higher MACD indicates more pronounced momentum in that upswing. On the other hand, a negative MACD indicates that a stock is trending downward.

If the positive or negative difference between the shorter-term and longer-term moving averages expands, that’s considered the MACD divergence, or the D in MACD. If they get closer, that’s considered a convergence, the C in MACD.

When the two moving averages converge, they meet at a place between the positive and negative MACD, called the zero line, or the centerline. For many traders, this MACD crossover is the sign they wait for to jump into a stock, which after losing value, is suddenly gaining value. Conversely, a stock crossing the zero line of the MACD is often taken to mean that the good times are over, leading many traders to sell at that point.

The MACD is a vital concept in technical analysis, a popular approach investors use to try to forecast the ways a stock might perform based on its current data and past movements. It involves a wide range of data and trend indicators, such as a stock’s price and trading volume, to locate opportunities and risks.

Technical analysis does not look at underlying companies, their industries, or any macroeconomic trends that might drive their success or failure. Rather, it solely analyzes the stock’s performance to find patterns and trends.

Recommended: The Pros and Cons of Momentum Trading

The MACD as a Trading Indicator

For traders, a rising MACD is a sign that a stock is being bid up. The MACD shows how quickly that’s happening.

As the short-term average rises above the longer-term average, and the two figures diverge more widely, the MACD expresses this in a simple number. When a stock is sinking, investors also want to know how fast it’s falling, as well as whether its decline is speeding up or slowing down, which they can find quickly by looking at the divergence.

A convergence is also a key indicator for many traders. As the long-term and short-term moving averages get closer to one another, it can be a sign that a given stock is either overbought or oversold for the moment. If they hold the stock, it may be time to sell the stock. But if they like the stock, and are waiting for a bargain-basement price at which to buy it, then the convergence of the two averages on the zero line may mean it’s time to start buying.

By using the MACD, traders can also compare a stock to competitors in its sector, and to the broader market, to decide whether its current price reflects its value and whether they should buy, sell, or short a stock. Because the MACD is priced out in dollars, many traders will use the percentage price oscillator, or PPO. It uses the same calculation as the MACD, but delivers its results in the form of a percentage difference between the shorter- and longer-term moving averages. As such, it allows for quicker, cleaner comparisons.

💡 Quick Tip: How to manage potential risk factors in a self directed investment account? Doing your research and employing strategies like dollar-cost averaging and diversification may help mitigate financial risk when trading stocks.

The Pros and Cons of the MACD

The MACD indicator has benefits for traders. It’s a convenient gauge of a stock’s momentum for an active, short-term trader. But it can also help a long-term investor who’s looking for the right moment to buy or sell a stock. Once an investor understands the MACD, it’s an easily interpreted data point to incorporate into their trading strategy.

But the MACD does have its drawbacks and does not account for certain types of investment risk. Because the MACD is a lagging indicator, it can lead to a trader staying too long in a position that’s since begun to swoon. Or, alternately, it can indicate a turnaround that’s already run the bulk of its course.

This is especially dangerous in volatile markets, when stocks can “whipsaw.” This term – named for the push-and-pull of the saw when it’s used to chop down a tree – describes the phenomenon of a stock whose price is moving in one direction, and suddenly goes sharply in the opposite direction. Whether that whipsaw movement is up or down, it can prove highly disruptive for a trader who relies too heavily on the MACD.

The Takeaway

The MACD can be a helpful metric for traders to understand and to use, in conjunction with other tools to help formulate their investing strategy.

The MACD indicator has benefits for traders. It’s a convenient gauge of a stock’s momentum for active traders. But it can also help long-term investors, too, determine when to buy and sell. It’s also a lagging indicator, which can make it tricky to use for inexperienced traders. As always, it’s best to consult with a financial professional if you’re feeling like you’re in over your head.

For a limited time, opening and funding an Active Invest account gives you the opportunity to get up to $1,000 in the stock of your choice.

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Jul

2023

What Is a Carry Trade in Currency Markets?

What Is A Currency Carry Trade in Forex Markets?

By Samuel Becker | Growing Wealth, invest, Investing | Comments Off

Carry trade is a strategy used by some traders who invest in currency markets to take advantage of differences in interest rates. In a carry trade, an investor buys or borrows a security or asset at a low interest rate, and then uses it to invest in another security or asset that provides a higher rate of return.

Carry trades have some clear uses in the foreign exchange market, or “forex” market. Given that they can be used to drive returns, they can be important for investors of all stripes to understand.

What Is a Carry Trade?

In a carry trade, forex traders borrow money at a low interest rate in order to invest it in an asset with a higher rate of return. In the forex markets, the currency carry trade is a bet that one foreign currency will hold or increase its value relative to another currency.

Of course, this investing strategy hinges on whether or not interest rates and exchange rates are in the traders’ favor. The wider the exchange rate between two currencies, the better the potential returns for the investor.

Recommended: What Is Forex Trading?

Even so, a carry trade strategy can be a relatively simple way to increase an investor’s returns, assuming they understand the difference in interest rates. In that way, it’s similar to understanding “spread trading” as they relate to stocks.

💡 Quick Tip: The best stock trading app? That’s a personal preference, of course. Generally speaking, though, a great app is one with an intuitive interface and powerful features to help make trades quickly and easily.

How Do You Execute a Carry Trade?

Executing a carry trade can seem nebulous without an example. Here’s a runthrough.

Carry Trade Example

Imagine that the U.S. dollar has a 1% interest rate, but the British pound has a 2% interest rate. A trader could take 100 U.S. dollars, and then invest that 100 dollars into the equivalent number of pounds (according to the exchange rate), and earn a higher return in interest. The discrepancy in interest rates allows traders to take advantage and earn higher returns.

This is a rather simplistic carry trade example, professional traders and investors can engage in complex carry trade strategies, and even employ the use of a carry trade formula to help them figure out expected returns, and whether the strategy is worth pursuing in a given situation.

Rather than simply buying one currency with another, traders often execute a carry trade that involves borrowing money in one currency and using it to purchase assets in another currency. In this scenario, traders want to borrow the money at the lowest possible interest rate, and do so using a weak or declining currency.

That can create higher profits when they close the deal and pay back the borrowed money. In general, carry trade is a short-term strategy, rather than one focused on the long-term.

Recommended: Short-Term vs Long-Term Investments

Is a Carry Trade Risky?

The concept of a carry trade is simple, but in practice, it can involve investment risk.

Most notably, there’s the risk that the currency or asset a trader is investing in (the British pounds in our previous example) could lose value. That could put a damper on a trader’s expected returns, as it would eat away at the gains the difference in interest rates could provide. Currency prices tend to be very volatile, and something as mundane as a monthly jobs report released by a government can cause big price changes.

The greater the degree of leverage an investor uses to execute a carry trade, the higher the potential returns — and the larger the risk. In addition to currency risk, the carry trade is subject to interest rate risk. Given the risks, carry trades in the currency markets may not be the most appropriate strategy for investors with a low tolerance for risk.

💡 Quick Tip: When you’re actively investing in stocks, it’s important to ask what types of fees you might have to pay. For example, brokers may charge a flat fee for trading stocks, or require some commission for every trade. Taking the time to manage investment costs can be beneficial over the long term.

The Takeaway

Carry trades are one way for investors or traders to generate returns, although the approach involves some risks that aren’t present in other types of investment strategies. While the carry trade concept is straightforward, it can quickly get complex when institutional investors put it in place.

Carry trades can be advanced trading tools or strategies. For that reason, they may not be appropriate for all investors or traders. If you feel like you’re in over your head, it may be a good idea to speak with a financial professional for guidance, or to do some more homework to further your understanding.

For a limited time, opening and funding an Active Invest account gives you the opportunity to get up to $1,000 in the stock of your choice.

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Jul

2023

What’s the Reflation Trade?

By Matthew Zeitlin | Growing Wealth, invest, Investing | Comments Off

The reflation trade is a bet that certain sectors of the market perform well immediately after a recession or economic crisis. Essentially, it’s a bet on cyclical stocks at the beginning of a market recovery.

Reflation is the inflation that typically comes immediately after a low-point in the economic cycle — often after economic stimulus, and the reflation trade is the purchase of specific stocks or sectors believed to outperform in that type of environment.

Reflation vs Inflation

While both reflation and inflation are characterized by rising prices, they are not the same thing.

Reflation is a recovery of prices lost during an economic downturn along with employment growth, and many economists see reflation as a healthy sign of an improving economy. It often accompanies economic stimulus, and may reflect monetary policy designed to stimulate spending and halt deflation.

Inflation, on the other hand, does not look at employment or any other economic factors. It is the rise in prices beyond their “normal” range, and poses a threat to economic recovery, since it can reduce the purchasing power of consumers and make it more expensive to borrow money.

Reflation is also different from what happens during stagflation, in which prices go up but wages don’t follow.

💡 Quick Tip: If you’re opening a brokerage account for the first time, consider starting with an amount of money you’re prepared to lose. Investing always includes the risk of loss, and until you’ve gained some experience, it’s probably wise to start small.

Understanding Reflation Trade Opportunities

Reflation doesn’t just mean that the market as a whole will rise as economic activity returns to normal or even higher levels. Instead there’s a focus on certain sectors as they reflate after a decline.

For example, some investors might see reflationary dynamics in sectors like hospitality or dining during a pandemic, along with travel and tourism. It may also be noticeable, under those circumstances, in more indirectly affected sectors like energy and materials.

Again, assuming an economy suffers a pandemic, part of the reflation trade could be a switch from purchases of goods to services, as people go out more, whether it’s movie theaters, restaurant meals, theme parks and hotels. These are the sectors that would perform well if the reflation thesis turned out to be true.

Investors interested in the reflation trade can invest in individual stocks, or get more diversified exposure by investing in sector-specific exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or index funds.

Reflation Trade Sectors

While hospitality stocks might make sense for investors considering a reflation trade, there are other sectors that typically perform well in most deflationary environments. Here’s a look at a few of them:

Financial Stocks

Banks and other financial institutions tend to do well after an economic recession, since they can benefit from both higher interest rates and ramped up consumer spending.

Value Investing

Companies that deliver steady, long-term growth often get undervalued during economic downtimes, meaning that they’re poised for better performance as the market begins to improve. That’s the logic behind value investing.

Bonds

When interest rates are rising–in either the short- or the long-term — investing in bonds may benefit from a reflationary market.

Commodities

Since commodities tend to perform well during both periods of inflation and periods of economic growth, they’re a favored investment among those looking for a reflationary trade. As such, commodities trading could be an attractive area in a reflationary market.

Small Cap Stocks

Investments in small cap stocks tend to increase in value after recessions or during periods of growth, making them another asset that investors might consider in a reflationary market.

💡 Quick Tip: It’s smart to invest in a range of assets so that you’re not overly reliant on any one company or market to do well. For example, by investing in different sectors you can add diversification to your portfolio, which may help mitigate some risk factors over time.

The Takeaway

The reflationary trade is a bet on specific sectors of the economy or certain types of asset classes in the aftermath of an economic downturn. If you’re interested in incorporating the reflation trade into your portfolio, you could do so either via individual stocks or by buying sector-specific exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or mutual funds.

But note that the economy is a complicated thing, and that there are cycles it naturally takes, but it’s also susceptible to all sorts of other events. That includes natural disasters, political changes, or even pandemics and other global crises. With that in mind, it can be difficult to be sure of what sort of environment the economy is in, exactly, at any given time.

For a limited time, opening and funding an Active Invest account gives you the opportunity to get up to $1,000 in the stock of your choice.

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Beginners Guide to Understanding Support and Resistance

What Is Support and Resistance?

Technical Analysis 101