One of several major keys to intra day price analysis, usually for the purpose of daytrading\scalping, is to be able to decide as consistently as possible whether price movement is rising or falling in the live moment, and if and when it seems to be about to stop rising or falling or reversing. Whilst "investing" is a thinking process, daytrading is a visual process in which, to be able to buy, sell, short or exit, we are only interested in trading what we see not what we think.

It must therefore follow that successful intra day trading must largely depend on trading in the same direction as that in which price is travelling, though this is only one element of an overall trading methodology, others include financial management and usually a set of trading rules finely tuned to the particular instrument in play, together always with the development of those personal skills needed to implement all that with considerable discipline and repetition.

When there is a methodology to accomplish this, computerisation of the process can arrive at such a decision faster and more frequently than can the human brain, and more accurately than can the human eye. There is therefore no attempt here to "predict" anything, merely an attempt to analyse what is actually happening now in the above described terms. What this means is that on a macro time frame, the "intentions" of price are constantly being revealed by the price action and our visual process is that of seeing what those intentions apprear to be. For example, is the price rising or falling, is the rise or fall running out of gas, is a price turn a turnabout or just a mark up inside a downmove etc.,

This in house computerised chart analysis program is currently in re-development of its umpteenth incarnation due to trying to keep up with technological changes without the same budget as Microsoft, and is an attempt to prove that very short time intervals, in this instance of 2 minutes duration, can be read in a similar manner to reading sheet music, a score - with each group of adjacent bars being the equivalent of a series of notes and their syncopation. When reading music we are reading a sequence of notes as they occur, so that the fingers know what to actually play, i.e the direction of the music is given to us from the written notes, together with how loud or soft each part is, hopefully producing a good performance. In music we are not predicting anything but reading what is occurring now and what should happen next. Our ability to read those notes accurately or otherwise dictate the success or failure or our efforts.

Musical composition and notation follow an orderly, regulated and artihmetical structure, and once the first part of a tune is known, the next part of that same tune can be reliably anticipated most of the time, and most music contains parts and patterns which repeat. However, in addition to the tune, there is also the accompaniment which, for example in the case of a piano piece, will contain a treble clef for the tune and a bass clef for the accompaniment, with mainly the top part being played by the right hand and the bottom part being played by the left hand.

The belief underlying this experiment is therefore that, like music, short term price action also follows an orderly, regulated and arithmetical structure. On a chart of an Index, the price bars represent the musical equivalent of a treble clef, and the volume bars the bass clef.

A bar in a high area of a chart (of a predetermined size) is analagous to a high musical note, or a note in a higher octave. Conversely, a bar in a low area of a chart is analagous to a low musical note, or a note in a lower octave. This, if you like is the range.

The most important element of playing any music that is being read is timing, the most important element of intra day trading of a chart being read is also timing.

This program therefore attempts to find the arithmetical correlations in short term price movement, i.e. it is not interested in interpreting underlying factors, such as supply and demand or accumulation or distribution, it is only interested in reading the bars as though a piece of music, and providing the reader with a clear visual means of navigation because, at the end of the day, many people are attracting information overload from which they make their trading decisions which usually ends up in either confusing, expensive errors of judgement, or both. The process of Trading requires a clear observation of whether price in this moment is rising or falling, and the more accurately we can see that, the more chance we have of making trades which make sense and make gains.

Music is of course a form of entertainment, and therefore so is this program but running alongside an ordinary live chart at the trading desk can often assist to keep the Trading activity OUT of likely poor positions which might otherwise be placed in the wrong direction as a result of each individual's own decision making process. The Program does not attempt to "tell you what to do" but can be a visual aid to enhance the individual's intra day analysis.

NOTICE: This article is a brief explanation of the system for academic or entertainment interest only, i.e. it is not a product to be sold or rented. However, the technical and administrative feasability of live broadcasts to students for purely educational or entertainment purposes only is currently being studied. If you are a Software Engineer with experience or ability in producing a charting program please email.

Above is a screenshot of the program operating on a 2 minute timeframe during 78 minutes of "a perfect day" in the FTSE100 Futures Contract. Above and below the price bars you can see the coloured indicators, as loosely defined in the above table. The Program only operates in live time, i.e. it does not look into the past nor the future, only what is happening now.

The Program is also being developed in a different version to read the Dow..

All musical notation has 7 white notes and 5 black notes, meaning that all music is composed from a total of just 12 notes!

However, there is almost an infinite number of permuations of those notes, if it were not so then most music would sound the same.

Although there are just 5 indicator colours used by the Program, these represent the outcome of many indicators to embrace many thousands of permutations, which share the same colour for rapid observation of apparent price action\direction.

In the same sense that there are traits which are unique to jazz music and distinct from pop music, so too does each individual financial instrument or market possess its own distinct aspects. Therefore, each market has its own unique "library" of about 1000 indicators in turn sub divided into 100's of lines of algebraic definitions.

Clearly, it is probably impossible to capture every possible permutation but each library has sufficient of them to to compute the analysis of what each successive bar is revealing about the live price action in an attempt to "track" the direction and mood of the price, factoring in any extremes of trading activity, automatically producing an indicator when appropriate., together with some additional onscreen arithmetical information to complement the visual aid. For example, if there is a blue followed by a green and leading to a correct analysis, and then a series of reds to suggest the end of the move, this does not in itself provide a viable opportunity if, no matter how accurate the signals are, the number of points travelled between one signal and another is too small to be of tradeable value. Hence, the wider the range of any given day, the more practical this program is.

No User input is required and no classical technical analysis indicators are employed.