I have found Andrews Pitchfork (AP) developed by Mr. Alan Andrews to be one of the best trading tools for the traders.

AP essentially requires three pivot points and two of the pivots must be the high and low (B & C) of a price swing. The midpoint between the high & low is calculated  The third pivot is the median line starting from pivot point (A) which is  immediately before the price swing B & C.

While Alan Andrews made various observations which are helpful to the traders, the important observation he made is that median line will act as a support and resistance line. I have used this tool on the Nifty Future and Dow Jones Ind. Avg. on a quarterly chart and the observations are as follows:

NIFTY FUTURE:

With AP tool one could have indicated in the beginning of Jan 2011 that if Nifty Future remained below 6240, the up side was capped. You will observe on the attached chart that the previous quarter ended Dec 2010 closed at 6163 and the close was much above the median line level of 6040, indicating strength. However, due to the ascending nature of the median line,  the reference point of the median line shifted to 6240 for the next quarter beginning Jan 2011. For the month of Jan 2011, Nifty Future opened on 3.01.2011 at 6202 and on 4th Jan it made a high of 6210. Since then,  Nifty Future has been falling and made a low of 5629 on 17th Jan 2011.

This simple tool has indicated the impending hurdle and also provides a good trading opportunity with a small stop loss. In the weekend post on my blog (1.1.2011), I  had indicated this as a likely hurdle for Nifty Future. (http://go2turningpoints.blogspot.com/p/quarterly-review-july-to-sept-2010.html)

(Click image to enlarge)

 Dow Jones Ind. Avg.:

The success  in Nifty Future prompted me  to  use  the same  tool on  quarterly  chart  of  DJIA. It is interesting to find on the chart below, currently the Dow is flirting around the median line at 11860. This being a quarterly chart, even if it manages to cross it for a while, one needs to keep this median line level of 11860 as  a  reference point  during  this  quarter. Whenever it comes down from  this level, there  is  imminent danger for Dow  going  down. As such, EOD chart for Dow is already showing   negative divergence on the oscillators,   which suggests   weakness. Will Dow face the median line as a hurdle and come down as it happened with Nifty Future? Only time will tell…..

I hope this article has helped demonstrate the utility of the simple but very effective tool devised  by Alan Andrews. This tool when used on shorter time frames viz. 60 min, EOD or even weekly, in conjunction with oscillators, will give many profitable trading opportunities.

Keep Learning.

Ketan Asher.

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