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Byline: DAVID SAITO-CHUNG
Reading The Market:
Fifteenth In A Series
Since Sept. 12, this column has focused on the many false turns and sell-offs in this bear market. We aimed to show just how crucial it is to let the market be your guide.
As readers have discovered and reconfirmed in their minds, knowing the market's direction doesn't require a Ph.D. or tarot cards. But it does take discipline.
A smart investor needs the willpower to ignore airwave chatter, 12-month price targets for the major indexes, and opinions of the guy on the next StairMaster at the gym. He or she must block all that out and carefully study charts of the Dow, S&P 500, S&P 600 SmallCap index and the Nasdaq.
It takes discipline to study each squiggle on a chart, each day's close, every volume bar. Yet only a chart speaks of a heavy round of declines on busier trade or the S&P 500's failure to prop itself and stay above the 200-day moving average. These plain facts give golden clues to what millions of investors are thinking and doing.