The FTSE remains at a significant point

Waiting for the market to make its move can feel like forever. But don't be hasty, says John C Burford. Stick to your trading system at all times.

As a trader, waiting for something to happen is sometimes agony. Whereas value investors are not the least concerned with day-to-day wriggles in the price, swing traders have to scrutinise every short-term move. And when the market is doing very little, traders tend to become impatient.

But impatience can lead to mistakes. Consider, for example, the FTSE, which has been trading between my tramlines on the hourly chart for almost a month. On Friday, I showed that this range-bound trading has been characterised by deeply overlapping waves a sign of a counter-trend consolidation, rather than a change of trend.

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John is is a British-born lapsed PhD physicist, who previously worked for Nasa on the Mars exploration team. He is a former commodity trading advisor with the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and worked in a boutique futures house in California in the 1980s.

 

He was a partner in one of the first futures newsletter advisory services, based in Washington DC, specialising in pork bellies and currencies. John is primarily a chart-reading trader, having cut his trading teeth in the days before PCs.

 

As well as his work in the financial world, he has launched, run and sold several 'real' businesses producing 'real' products.