Stock Technical Analysis: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

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StockTA.com FAQ

Analysis FAQs
1.	What are the timeframes for "Short", "Intermediate" and "Long" Term used on the analysis page?
2.	How is the technical analysis performed? What do the numbers and colors on the screen and analysis page mean?
3.	What does "conf" mean next to the support and resistance levels. Why are the support and resistance lines different weight and color on the stock charts?
4.	When is your stock data updated?
5.	What is the TDD and how is it calculated
Screen FAQs
6.	How are symbols added to the stock screener
7.	What are the screening criteria for the predifined screens on the default screening page
8.	What do the various alerts mean
General FAQs
9.	What member services are available?
10.	I'm getting an error message while viewing a stock?.
11.	This site is great! How can I show my support?
12.	How do we contact you for ideas, issues or concerns?

Analysis FAQ

1. What are the timeframes for "Short", "Intermediate" and "Long" Term used on the analysis page?
Stock analysis is performed over 30 (Short), 60 (Inter) and 120 days (Long) and then analyzed to come up with an overall analysis of the stock.

2. How is the technical analysis performed. What do the numbers and colors on the screen and analysis page mean?
A number of indicators are analyzed (EMA,MACD,RSI,etc.) to provide a normalized ranking for the indicators (+/- 1 where +1 is very bullish[Bold Green] and -1 is very bearish[Bold red]). These conditions can be viewed by clicking on the analysis links ( EMA, MACD,etc.)on the "chart indicators" table which is the second table down on the left of the page. StockTA tests a number of common and confidential conditions to provide weightings for each indicator covered. Alerts are generated when technically significant events are discovered (i.e Long term trend channel exists or has been broken, MACD crossover at 0, etc.).

The short, intermediate, long and overall analysis is the weighted averages of the indicators analyzed. It can be inferred that these weightings do correlate with success as stocks will continue to trend until the trend is broken. Strongly trending stocks will be near the extremes of +1 and -1, and our analytical tools allows us to find these trends early. The trend is your friend but watch out for fundamentals as they always rule the trade!

The support and resistance levels have confluence numbers (conf) to weigh the strength of each level. The higher the confluence the more significant as it shows the number of technical indicators pointing to the specific level as support/resistance. A good long entry point is one where the stock is in a very bullish pattern and retests support with a high confluence (>5+) and very little resistance above. These give high risk to reward trades and allows for excellent stops to be placed below the resistance levels.

3. What does "conf" mean next to the support and resistance levels. Why are the support and resistance lines different weight and color on the stock charts?
Conf. is short for confluence and refers to the strength of the support/resistance level. Further explanation of confluence can be found on the Fibonacci page

4. When is stock data updated?
Quotes are updated M-F from 5-7 PM. We are currently working on means of gathering intraday data for the site

5. What is the TDD and how is it calculated?
TDD is the three day displaced moving average. It is the three day moving average three days ago. Usually used as a trailing stop on winning trades and an excellent short term indicator (i.e is this a top?)

Screen FAQ

6. How are symbols added to the stock screener
When a user analyzes a symbol the results of the analysis are stored in our screen database. Our screen database gets dumped M-F at 4:45PM EST. By 7:30 PM EST the database usually contains >2000 symbols So screens run early after the trading session will have limited results. The more visitors StockTA.com receives the larger our screening database becomes. We are currently working on implementing a screen update script that will populate the screening database automatically.

7. What are the screening criteria for the predefined screens on the default screening page
Click on the any of the screen and the screening criteria will be displayed above the results.

8. What do the various alerts mean

Indicator	Alert	Description
EMA	5-13 EMA Crossover	The 5 day EMA has crossed above the 13 day EMA within the last two trading sessions-->short term bullish
EMA	5-20 EMA Crossover	The 5 day EMA has crossed above the 20 day EMA within the last two trading sessions-->short term bullish
EMA	5-50 EMA Crossover	The 5 day EMA has crossed above the 50 day EMA within the last two trading sessions-->short term bullish
EMA	13-20 EMA Crossover	The 13 day EMA has crossed above the 20 day EMA within the last two trading sessions-->mid term bullish
EMA	13-50 EMA Crossover	The 13 day EMA has crossed above the 50 day EMA within the last two trading sessions-->mid term bullish
EMA	20-50 EMA Crossover	The 20 day EMA has crossed above the 50 day EMA within the last two trading sessions-->long term bullish
EMA	13-5 EMA Crossover	The 5 day EMA has crossed below the 13 day EMA within the last two trading sessions-->short term bearish
EMA	20-5 EMA Crossover	The 5 day EMA has crossed below the 20 day EMA within the last two trading sessions-->short term bearish
EMA	50-5 EMA Crossover	The 5 day EMA has crossed below the 50 day EMA within the last two trading sessions-->short term bearish
EMA	20-13 EMA Crossover	The 20 day EMA has crossed below the 13 day EMA within the last two trading sessions-->mid term bearish
EMA	50-13 EMA Crossover	The 50 day EMA has crossed below the 13 day EMA within the last two trading sessions-->mid term bearish
EMA	50-20 EMA Crossover	The 50 day EMA has crossed below the 20 day EMA within the last two trading sessions-->long term bearish
MACD	Top Bearish Divergence	Increasing highs but decreasing MACD for last two tops->short term bearish
MACD	top Bullish Divergence	Decreasing highs but increasing MACD for last two tops->short term bullish
MACD	Bottom Bullish Divergence	Decreasing lows but increasing MACD for last two bottoms->short term bullish
MACD	Bottom Bearish Divergence	Increasing lows but decreasing MACD for last two bottoms->short term bearish
MACD	Bullish MACD Crossover at Center	The MACD fastline has crossed over the MACD smoothed line at center->short term very bullish
MACD	Bearish MACD Crossover at Center	The MACD fastline has crossed below the MACD smoothed line at center->short term very bearish
MACD	Bullish MACD Crossover	The MACD fastline has crossed over the MACD smoothed line ->short term bullish
MACD	Bearish MACD Crossover at Center	The MACD fastline has crossed below the MACD smoothed line ->short term bearish
RSI	RSI Bullish Crossover	RSI has crossed over 50 ->short term bullish
RSI	RSI Bearish Crossover	RSI has crossed below 50->short term bearish
RSI	RSI Over Bought Buried	The RSI has been above 70 for a minimum of 3 trading sessions->short term bullish
RSI	RSI Over Sold Buried	The RSI has been below 30 for a minimum of 3 trading sessions->short term bearish
RSI	RSI Over Sold	The RSI is above 65 but not buried->short term bearish
RSI	RSI Over Bought	The RSI is below 25 but not buried->short term bullish
Stoch	Stochastic OverBought Buried	The fast stochastic is above 80 and has averaged above 80 for the past 5 trading sessions->short term bullish
Stoch	Stochastic Oversold Buried	The fast stochastic is below 20 and has averaged below 20 for the past 5 trading sessions->short term bearish
Stoch	Stochastic Overbought Reversal	The stochastic has fallen below 80 after being buried ->short term bearish
Stoch	Stochastic Oversold Reversal	The stochastic has crossed above 20 after being buried ->short term bullish
Trend	Long Term Upward Sloping Trading Channel	A long term (6 months) upward sloping trading channel exists with the highs and lows ->long term very bullish
Trend	Intermediate Term Upward Sloping Trading Channel	A mid term (3 months) upward sloping trading channel exists with the highs and lows ->mid term very bullish
Trend	Short Term Upward Sloping Trading Channel	A short term (1 month) upward sloping trading channel exists with the highs and lows ->short term very bullish
Trend	Long Term Downward Sloping Trading Channel	A long term (6 months) downward sloping trading channel exists with the highs and lows ->long term very bearish
Trend	Intermediate Term Downward Sloping Trading Channel	A mid term (3 months) downward sloping trading channel exists with the highs and lows ->mid term very bearish
Trend	Short Term Downward Sloping Trading Channel	A short term (1 month) downward sloping trading channel exists with the highs and lows ->short term very bearish
Trend	Long Term Bullish Breakout	A long term (6 months) downward trend in the highs has been broken->Long term bullish
Trend	Intermediate Term Bullish Breakout	A mid term (3 months) downward trend in the highs has been broken->Mid term bullish
Trend	Short Term Bullish Breakout	A mid term (1 month) downward trend in the highs hasbeen broken->Short term bullish
Trend	Long Term Bearish Breakout	A long term (6 months) upward trend in the lows has been broken->Long term very bearish
Trend	Intermediate Term Bearish Breakout	A mid term (3 months) upward trend in the lows has been broken->Mid term very bearish
Trend	Short Term Bearish Breakout	A short term (1 month) upward trend in the lows has been broken->Short term very bearish

General FAQ

9.What member services are available.
StockTA is totally free and we don't have any member services. You will be asked to sign up for a username/password combo to add stock picks to the site or to customize your viewing experience.

10.I'm getting an error message while viewing your site.
We have rebuilt our database on a SQL server when we moved the site to a dedicated server and database errors have decreased dramatically. If you do find an error we would love to hear about it, but we also frequently check our error logs to exterminate them. When you do report an error please provide the symbol and the page visited. Copying and pasting the url (https://www.stockta.com/cgi-bin/..) is extremely helpful to resolve these errors.

11. This site is great! How can I show my support
There is nothing more powerful than word of mouth on the internet! If you find StockTA.com to be a valuable (or not so valuable) tool then we encourage you to tell your friends and post honest (not spamfull) links to our site or contribute to online commentaries and web catalogs.

StockTA.com relies on our affiliates for current maintenance and future growth. Affiliates look for sites where visitors periodically evaluate and/or purchase their services. If a banner looks interesting, click it and check out/buy their services. StockTA.com draws advertising from some of the best stock websites on the web who don't mind paying for quality visitors.

12. How do we contact you for ideas, issues or concerns?
You can always contact us by sending an email to webmaster (at) stockta.com. We are also on social networks Twitter and Facebook and sometimes we will use these outlets to provide site updates and news.