Price and Volume Rule, Say Real Money Pro Experts on Investing Chat

Keep it simple, and keep your eyes on price and volume.

That was one key takeaway from Real Money Pro contributors Carley Garner, a commodities and futures expert, and Bruce Kamich and Helene Meisler, both technical analysts, during a webinar on Tuesday hosted by TheStreetSmarts editor, Todd Campbell.

Traders and investors can easily become allured by various technical tools and complicated charts pushed by fancy financial analysts and firms, but often those are unnecessary, suggest the experts.

"I'm sorry," says Kamich, "there are only two things that come to marketplace -- price and volume."

All indicators are just derivatives of the price action, added Kamich, noting that traders "don't buy and sell the indicator," they buy and sell the price action.

"Keep it simple," agrees Garner. "Markets aren't necessarily predictable, but humans are."

Garner said she looks for prices on charts that attract buyers and sellers -- those areas she says, are pivots and support and resistance areas.

"There's nothing like price to change sentiment," says Meisler, quoting her favorite tagline.

The three talked about their go-to indicators and reports used to help them get a handle on what's happening under the hood of the market.

Garner watches the Commitments of Traders report -- a weekly report showing the positions of those invested in the futures market -- religiously, as well as the relative strength index, or RSI, and Bollinger Bands to find market volatility.

Kamich monitors price momentum, usually 21-day momentum; advance-decline lines and on-balance volume for stocks.

Meisler's favorite indicators are those measuring breadth -- or daily advancing stocks minus declining stock on the New York Stock Exchange -- to see if the market is 10- or 30-day overbought or oversold. In addition, she stresses the importance of watching sentiment to keep track of bullishness and bearishness.

In addition to touching on their views of gold, Nvidia NVDA and other areas of the market, the three also offered their short-term views on the market for day traders. Garner sees 4730 on the S&P 500 by the end of the year, but expects some bumps ahead over the next week or so. Kamich expects "one last hurrah" out of the averages, around the end of the year, and then a hard down. Meisler sees an early December pullback and then another try at a rally -- but with a caveat that if the market doesn't pull back enough, that view could shift.

Longer-term views vary among the group, but for 2024, Kamich said he sees "an important low and an important high all in the same year."

"Think 2020 ...," he said, "Think 1987 ..."

You can view a full replay of the Webinar above.