STEPHEN BIGALOW

1. Account screen to monitor current positions

2. Intraday charts for existing positions

3. TV for instantaneous news

Kidder, Peabody & Co., and then for Oppenheimer & Co. When I discovered brokerage firms didn’t know more than anyone else about what made prices go up or down, I struck out on my own.

Favorite trading strategy?

I discovered candlestick analysis by accident. As I started researching the signals and patterns, one concept kept hitting me in the side of the head—this all makes sense! Before candlestick analysis came along, I was one of the worst investors in the world. Once I started using candlestick charts, I started making money consistently.

Average number of trades per day?

One. I’m a swing trader with the average trade lasting two to 10 trading days based upon 400 years of Japanese rice traders’ observations.

Favorite trading moment?

A lot of moments, but especially when a candlestick pattern is performing as the high-probability expectation.

Worst trading moment?

How did you start trading?

When I was 8 years old, my dad bought me one share of Eazor Express [a trucking company now defunct]. It split two-for-one, so then I had two shares. I would watch the price movement every single day in the newspaper. Starting at the age of 21, I became a stockbroker for

What percentage of your outcomes do you attribute to luck?

A very small percentage. With candlestick signals and patterns, you are constantly putting on trade set ups that are going to have a high probability of moving in your favor,

When I would be in a good bullish candlestick price pattern and a news announcement would come out that would knock the price way down. I would sit there all day long hoping the price would go back up, but I learned that if the price was not doing what the pattern was expected to do, I had to close out a bad position very quickly and move on to another trade that had better chart pattern probabilities for a profit.

Favorite trading book Profitable Candlestick Trading by Stephen

W. Bigalow