Preface
I share my personal general view on indicators below; skip ahead to the Description below if you are not interested.
It is my personal conviction that most - if not all - indicators rely mainly on trader's belief that they work, and in a feedback system like free markets they might become a self-fulfilling prophecy as a result, if (!) a big part of the traders believes in it, because some famous trader releases an indicator, or such person's public statement goes viral.
One of those voodoo indicators is the famous "follow-through day". There is zero statistical evidence for its validity, beyond the validity of a statement like "If it's bright at day it's usually the sun shining". The uselessness was proven exactly on its inventor's YT channel, Investors Business Daily. According to the examiner, its inventor William J. O'Neil himself could not explain the values used for this indicator. It might have been an incidental observation at some point without general validity. A.k.a "curve fitting". Still, it's being used by many today.
Another one of those indicators is the three points reversal on the S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) which allegedly might potentially maybe indicate a possible shift in trend. Both indicators share an immediately problematic feature: They use absolute values. Nothing is ever absolute in a highly subjective and emotionally driven game like the markets where a lot of money can be made and lost.
Most indicators can not produce additional information since they can only re-pack price/volume action. Many times an interpretion of the distance between price and a moving average and/or the slope of a moving average deliver very similar - if not better - results than MACD, RSI etc., especially with standard settings, the origin of which are usually unknown (always a warning sign). Very few indicators can deliver information which is otherwise hard to quantify, e. g. market noise (Kaufman's Efficiency Ratio or Price Density) or volatility, standard deviation etc.
It is common knowledge that trading the markets is a game of probability. No indicator works all the time (or at all, see above). In order to make decisions based on any indicator, the probability for its validity and the conditions under which validity seemed to have occurred, must be known. Otherwise it is just coffee grounds reading under the illusion of adding to the edge, when in fact it is only adding to the trees, making it even harder to see the forest.
Description
A common belief is that whole or half-dollar prices tend to be attraction points in price action, so a number of traders include those into decision making. But are they really...?
Spoiler Alert:
Generally, it is safe to say that for the big majority of stocks there is very thin evidence for it. It depends vastly on the asset, the timeframe used and the market period (pre/post/main trading times). If at all, there seems to be an above random but still thin evidence for whole prices being significant attraction points. Interesting/surprising patterns are visible on many stocks/timeframes/session periods, though.
The screenshot shows TSLA, 30m timeframe, two heatmaps added. The top one shows pre/post-market data only, the bottom one main market data only. The cyan fields indicate the strongest occurrence, the dark blue fields indicate the weakest occurrence of open/high/low/close prices at the respective decimal. The red field indicates the current/last price decimal.
Clearly, TSLA displays a strong pre-market attraction for .00, followed by .33 and .67 and .50. This pattern of thirds seems to be a unique feature of TSLA. In the main trading session it is being diluted by a more random distribution.
Other interesting equities to examine:
I share my personal general view on indicators below; skip ahead to the Description below if you are not interested.
It is my personal conviction that most - if not all - indicators rely mainly on trader's belief that they work, and in a feedback system like free markets they might become a self-fulfilling prophecy as a result, if (!) a big part of the traders believes in it, because some famous trader releases an indicator, or such person's public statement goes viral.
One of those voodoo indicators is the famous "follow-through day". There is zero statistical evidence for its validity, beyond the validity of a statement like "If it's bright at day it's usually the sun shining". The uselessness was proven exactly on its inventor's YT channel, Investors Business Daily. According to the examiner, its inventor William J. O'Neil himself could not explain the values used for this indicator. It might have been an incidental observation at some point without general validity. A.k.a "curve fitting". Still, it's being used by many today.
Another one of those indicators is the three points reversal on the S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) which allegedly might potentially maybe indicate a possible shift in trend. Both indicators share an immediately problematic feature: They use absolute values. Nothing is ever absolute in a highly subjective and emotionally driven game like the markets where a lot of money can be made and lost.
Most indicators can not produce additional information since they can only re-pack price/volume action. Many times an interpretion of the distance between price and a moving average and/or the slope of a moving average deliver very similar - if not better - results than MACD, RSI etc., especially with standard settings, the origin of which are usually unknown (always a warning sign). Very few indicators can deliver information which is otherwise hard to quantify, e. g. market noise (Kaufman's Efficiency Ratio or Price Density) or volatility, standard deviation etc.
It is common knowledge that trading the markets is a game of probability. No indicator works all the time (or at all, see above). In order to make decisions based on any indicator, the probability for its validity and the conditions under which validity seemed to have occurred, must be known. Otherwise it is just coffee grounds reading under the illusion of adding to the edge, when in fact it is only adding to the trees, making it even harder to see the forest.
Description
A common belief is that whole or half-dollar prices tend to be attraction points in price action, so a number of traders include those into decision making. But are they really...?
Spoiler Alert:
Generally, it is safe to say that for the big majority of stocks there is very thin evidence for it. It depends vastly on the asset, the timeframe used and the market period (pre/post/main trading times). If at all, there seems to be an above random but still thin evidence for whole prices being significant attraction points. Interesting/surprising patterns are visible on many stocks/timeframes/session periods, though.
The screenshot shows TSLA, 30m timeframe, two heatmaps added. The top one shows pre/post-market data only, the bottom one main market data only. The cyan fields indicate the strongest occurrence, the dark blue fields indicate the weakest occurrence of open/high/low/close prices at the respective decimal. The red field indicates the current/last price decimal.
Clearly, TSLA displays a strong pre-market attraction for .00, followed by .33 and .67 and .50. This pattern of thirds seems to be a unique feature of TSLA. In the main trading session it is being diluted by a more random distribution.
Other interesting equities to examine:
- SPY: No significant pattern on any timeframe!
- META: Generally weak patterns on all timeframes, but interestingly on the 1D there is evidence for less randomness on O and H, more on L and most on C.
- AAPL: 1D, foggy attraction areas around .35 and .12. Whole price is no attraction area at all! Very weak attraction around .73.
- AMD: Strong pattern on D, W, M, attraction areas around 1/16th intervals. No patterns on lower timeframes.
- AMZN: Significant differences between pre/post and main session. Strong 1/16th pattern below D in pre/post.
- TAOP: Strong 1/5th pattern on all timeframes.
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