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Welcome all Safety in the Market traders to this month’s dedicated newsletter. Firstly I’d like to say Happy New Year to you, I hope you got a chance to relax and enjoy some time with family and friends. Of course, the festivities are over and now it is time to get back to business. This month I’m going to set you a task to get you started on the right foot in 2010. Your mission is to set up a wall chart of AMP and then continue to update it by hand. To complete the task you will need to use ProfitSource.
The chart you are going to print is actually a version of a chart I use myself and also one I gave out copies of as a bonus at the last Brisbane Trading Tactics Workshop. The first thing you need to do is open up a chart of AMP in ProfitSource and make sure it is a ‘calendar day’ chart as that’s the best chart to keep as far as daily bar charts go.
When preparing a new chart the best place to start your chart is just prior to a significant high or low so that you have good picture of the current bull or bear cycle. In the case of AMP we are going to start the chart prior to the March 2009 low. That way we have a picture of the full bull market from that low and perhaps a little of what led into the low. Chart 1 gives you an idea of how much market action I’ve used – I have started from November 2008. I have also circled the little ‘C’ down the bottom right hand corner that you need choice to ensure your chart is for calendar days.
Chart 1 – AMP Daily Bar Chart for Printing
click chart to enlarge
Step One
The first step to starting the print set-up process is to access the ‘Wall Chart Wizard’. You do this by clicking on the ‘Action’ button which is centre of the screen just above the chart window. From the ‘Action’ drop down list select ‘Print Wall Charts’.
Chart 2 – Getting Started Printing a Wall Chart
click chart to enlarge
This will then bring up the ‘Print Wall Chart Wizard’ window and we begin the steps of defining the chart to be printed. I will show the exact settings I have used so you essentially end up with the same chart I have (without all the analysis on it now).
Diagram 1 – Step 1 of the Wall Chart Wizard
click chart to enlarge
Step Two
We are going to set up a new chart – so quite simply choose, ‘Use a New Print Setup’. You can save the set-up at the end in case you need to make only subtle adjustments and print the chart a second time without have to start all over again.
Next we are going to select the printer to use. Using the drop down arrow, select the printer you wish to use and whether you want your chart in colour or black and white. Remember you can place angles and Squares on the chart before printing and they will be printed on the chart for you. I am using the PDF creation software (about $100-$200 from Officeworks) you can use your home printer and A4 paper.
Diagram 2 – Printer Selection
click chart to enlarge
Step Three
The next step is to select the print layout and paper selection. I prefer to print them in landscape, but this is only a personal preference, not a requirement. If your printer can print on A3 sheets of paper, go for it. That way you cut down the sheets to stick together by half. Lately I have been using PDF creating software where I can save each page of the printed chart as an A3 PDF page. Then take/email the PDF files to the local copy service and have them printed down there for 20 cents per page. Your PDF software might be able to produce even larger sheets to print.
Diagram 3 – Paper Layout
click chart to enlarge
Step Four
The next step is to set your start and end dates. It always pays to start your wall chart just prior to a major turn to give you the best context. In this example we started on 5 November 2008 and therefore take into account the 21 November low and the final moves into the 10 March 2009 low and all the data to current. Also this chart won’t be too large to handle.
Diagram 4 – Date Range to Print
click chart to enlarge
Now we have set the date range to print, we now set the price range.
Step Five
I have used $3.36 as the bottom and $7.52 as the high.
One thing that you have to ensure is that you change the ‘point to every...’ to ‘Inches’ using the drop down arrow. That way it will match up with the Safety in the Market charting paper which is important as you will see later.
The setting is 8 bars per inch and 16 points to the each inch where 1 cent is considered a point. Therefore each 1/8th division covers 2 cents in price. That’s a size that is very easy to work with and something we can get away with on AMP as it trades at a relatively low price. Leave the decimal places as set to ‘2’ as that covers us for ‘cents’.
Diagram 5 – Price Scale Settings
click chart to enlarge
Step Six
Now it is time to set-up the grid lines in the background. I prefer to use ‘Medium’ style gridlines and display the series labels on one page only.
Leave the settings as the default of 1 Major Unit every 1 inch and 8 Minor Units for every Major Unit.
Diagram 6 – Grid Settings
click chart to enlarge
Step Seven
Now we are starting to get to the business end of things. We have set up our time frame and price scale. Now we just need to get set up for printing and chart construction. We do this by instructing ProfitSource to leave some overlap in both the price and time directions – this will make sticking the chart together easier later.
Diagram 7 – Page Layout – Overlapping for Construction
click chart to enlarge
Step Eight
This screen is almost the most important of them all. It will tell you how big the chart you have set-up is expected to be. In my case the chart will be 3 pages high, by 4 pages wide or a total of 12 sheets. That would take no time at all to stick together. Remember though I have set mine to print using PDF software in A3. If you are using your A4 printer at home then it will be about 24 sheets which still is not very much compared to charting over a years data by hand.
Diagram 8 – Complete – Confirm Chart Size
click chart to enlarge
Now you are at the end of the process. It will state how many pages your chart is going to take and if all looks in order click on ‘Ok’. You will be prompted in one last step with the question of whether you wish to save this print set-up. For now, it might be worthwhile.
Now you will have a pile of pages. They are numbered in terms of ‘Row’ and ‘Column’ number – for example you may have Row 2 and Column (page) 4.
I tend to find it easiest to stick the rows together completely and then attach the completed rows to each other to build the chart. On my chart I would have 3 rows to cut and glue, then glue those 3 rows together. You will be done in no time at all.
I suggest using a ‘Stanley’ knife and a cutting board/surface of some description for trimming up the side of the pages when sticking together, as it can get painful with scissors after hand cutting 20 sheets. This method is also much faster and in fact gets a neater finish.
The final step once you have put your chart together is to then attach some ‘orange & white’ Safety in the Market paper down the side of the chart into the future and continue to update the chart by hand each day. You will soon find out if you are slack and not updating your chart regularly – it will be behind. There’s accountability for you.
Remember David Bowden says you can only really deeply learn this ‘Gann’ stuff by spending some doing things by hand. AMP has proven to be a great Gann market and one worth following as it has excellent liquidity and high public interest. You are also going to need to construct a Swing Chart for this bar chart as well. It is more important than the bar chart, but of course we need the bar chart first.
What I’d like to hear at workshops throughout 2010 is to have you come up and tell me about your AMP chart and how you managed to bring it all together. Better still, bring it along with you.
Until next month...
Noel Campbell
Professional Derivatives Trader
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