Advance block is the name of a technical trading pattern. Technical traders look at the charts formed by securities (like those made by stocks moving day-to-day and hour-to-hour) and use the patterns to determine what will happen next. It's a little bit like ancient oracles and sheep entrails. Only technical trading sometimes works.
The advance block involves candlestick charts. The candlestick shows trading information in a particular way. It looks like a rectangle with a line through it vertically, kind of like a candle, but with a wick coming out on both ends. The rectangle (the candle body) represents the space between the opening and closing price during the time period in question (usually a day, but it doesn't have to be). The line (the wick) represents the space between the stock's high point and its low point during that period.
In an advance block, the stock in question is on a recent uptrend. The pattern specifically involves three candles. In each successive candle, the stock has moved higher, but the body gets shorter each time (meaning the stock has traveled a shorter distance each day).
Meanwhile, the opening prices of the second and third day are located within the body of the previous candle, meaning that its opening price was below the previous day's close, but above the previous day's open. Further, the highs reached each day (as indicated by the length of the vertical line) get higher every day.
The pattern is seen to forecast a bearish reversal (meaning the stock will turn lower), though this doesn't always happen.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is a Chartist?26 Views
Finance allah shmoop What is a chartist Well here's a
chart and here's a chart and here's a chart All
right Well these are pages from the investing bible of
a chartist A chartist is an investor really a traitor
as they tend to own stocks for a much shorter
period of time than a longer term Really invest or
type person a chartist relies solely on the patterns The
pattern's right there These are all patterns imputed by the
charts that they you know sitting poor threw for hours
and hours So check out this chart see how the
plotted data closely follows the characteristic line there The characteristic
line basically is plodded through all those dots Yes So
they're going to stare at that try to figure out
where that line is going in the future right Get
the crystal ball or all right Well let's look at
this one where the data forms what looks like Well
the head and shoulders of someone who you know doesn't
have a neck that's Just common pattern in trading And
you know if you stopped looking at it and two
thirds of the way through there it's heading down Well
Maybe you'd be short the stock for a few days
and then you see it bottoming and then you'd be
long and try to make money that way Good luck
All right len look at this chart Where is right
here where the data appears to We'll break away from
the established pattern which was all just kind of boring
Lee along down here And then suddenly everything goes up
Yeah start doing its own thing Well maybe the company
reported a good quarter or ah you know the government
cut taxes again Everything went up So these were the
tools of the chartist The chart's a chartist is the
opposite of a fundamental investor meaning that she doesn't know
or care what the company does for a living Really
she doesn't care about their p e ratio nor their
profit margins nor their debt levels on their balance sheet
nor much of anything fundamental about how their business runs
Chartist just care about the pattern they glean from the
charts and all the charts always work until they don't
And what happens when the meteor hits that is that 00:02:06.0 --> [endTime] predictable on a chart Ah
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