i admit upfront the highest respect for John Murphy…. while never having subscribed to any of his services, i have gleaned the internet for his writings…. those writings have always been without ego , presumption, ulterior motive and such that is so widely seen in some of the most popular analysts….. his two page lead in note is typical John Murphy, nothing is concealed in any way…. my respect for him in no way will influence this, and that’s just how he would want it….. the plugin 'chart pattern recognition' or 'cpr' deals with nine popular chart patterns…. having for years subscribed to marketscreen.com for that purpose, obviously i was pre-interested in them….. i spent about 3 weeks looking into it with most of that time spent scrolling through the s&p 500 with the expert attached, that takes awhile ….. the average person could be trading with it in a couple hours if proper conditions existed, though some time spent studying would be wise....…. the broad market direction can at times influence chart pattern outcomes…. that being said, chart patterns often do work to our benefit… there are both psychological and financial/technical reasons for them working and many sites explain both….. certain patterns seem to work best in certain markets…. the plugin has 2 explorations, 1 expert and no system test….. the explorations are for confirmed entry signal and unconfirmed entry signal….. the unconfirmed is simply a recognized pattern but price has not violated any of John Murphy's trading rules….. once a violation/breakout occurs the security will fall into the confirmed for that day/bar only…. a symbol will be placed on the chart along with some trading commentary thoughts….. the confirm is for the last bar only and you would need to scan daily….. the expert can be attached to a multitude of securities running in real time except for the 'tick' time frame….. its doubtful you will use it in that way, most likely it will be used with eod data….. a note here..... repetitive tasks should be minimized if possible… the manual's suggestions on attaching the expert after running the exploration is a case in point….. the book suggests clicking on a chart from the returned list to open that chart, then going through the steps required to attach the cpr expert, reading the commentary…. doing that repeatedly for each chart….. perhaps a better way would be to have a template created with your choice of line studies and the cpr expert attached….. after running the exploration, open the favorites folder which will have the 'results from last exploration' in it …. open a chart in that folder and apply the cpr template..... once the cpr template has been applied, open the commentary….. just use the arrow buttons to scroll through the folder, the commentary will be already opened to the last bar..... of course this would go for any folder…. clicking on any expert symbol will give the commentary for that bar…. to select a particular historical bar, click above/under it to see the commentary for that bar, don't click on the bar itself….. the cpr expert nor the 2 explorations are password protected so you can make changes to a degree, such as adding a minimum volume ….. the last pages in the manual contain functions and parameters which seem to encourage modifications to cpr, those pages appear of vast importance but are beyond my abilities at the moment….. Metastock is a tool for me , the cpr plugin definitely increa

hey steve.... yeah, i know what you mean about deleting, sometimes i'll just export things out of meta to streamline..... the CPR plugin kinda streamlined my operation by making my marketscreen.com subscription redundant, hated to let it go but ..... btw, it was the power pivots plugin that i started with about a month ago.... your right, it is a handfull...... maybe 2 handfulls..... i'm back to studying on it now.... h

Thanks for the information Henry. I'll have to spend some time with it as it sounds like it will be very helpful. I should have not gotten these add ons so close together as I have a lot of stuff to go through now! Steve B

hey juncatou.... sorry about being so late, just noticed your post..... the patterns it recognizes are formed..... the only thing that remains questionable will be if the patterns typical breakout comes true.... by that i mean a descending triangle indicates distribution and its horizontal support often will fail.... john murphy is probably one most experienced in patterns..... there are technical targets for most patterns.... the commentary in CPR will suggest some targets...... and of course those are just suggestions, as no one can truely predict outcomes...... it is enjoyable to use......will post some examples of current charts this weekend...... h

For references on chart pattern and recognition, I recommend starting with John Murphy's book, Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets.... and Martin Pring's book Techncial Analysis Explained. Regards Jim

Hi Hayseed,
thanks for bringing us a first review on that interesting plug-in.

I have some more complicated questions:

1) Explorations
As I understand, this tool is also good for explorations (not only expert to display in a single chart)?
How does it work - just explores the defined securites and brings back the patterns it possibly found or do you have to explore for each formation specifically ?

2) Weekly Formation
Can this tool be told to scan for formations on weekly data, and if yes, does it need a rocket scientist to do so or just an option to be clicked?

3) Combination with Trading Strategies
would it be possible to do system testing in combination with other indicators or systems like e.g. if Close is above Moving Averages 200 and CPR finds a symmetrical triangle, Buy ?


4) Use for Simulation together with TradeSim
Would be possible to use CPR in combination with another system or indicators (as described in 3) and then be used for portfolio simulations with TradeSim ? As you possibly know, TradeSim is based on explorations run on a defined set of securities.

Any feedback on this would be highly appreciated !

Thanks,

Ben