|  JUL 1993

Proactive Trading Thomas K. Lloyd

Proactive Trading Thomas K. Lloyd What does it take to trade successfully? Here are some guidelines for using technical analysis to pick stocks, focusing on bar charts. What is most important in order to trade successfully? Is it technical analysis, fundamental analysis, news access, discipline, dispassionate objectivity or a little of all of these? Probably a little of all. But at least one thing is certain. Whatever helps you to trade successfully encourages you to slip into a proactive mode, providing the tools you need to trade objectively, conscientiously and in an informed manner. Most trading losses stem from being in a reactive mode instead of following a set plan of action. How can you be proactive in your trading approach to the markets? It is really quite simple. The slogan is a familiar one: ""Be prepared. "" If technical analysis does anything, it prepares you for and sensitizes you to what is to come. It does so in a quantitative manner that reduces the role of emotion in decision-making. That is the key to successful trading. Proactive trading means anticipating a price movement based on a prepared analysis, not simply jumping in and hoping that a given indicator is right. Proactive trading means you have analyzed the stock, formulated an educated forecast and are prepared to act once you see that price movement you forecast unfold — and not before.

by Technical Analysis, Inc.