D.R. Barton

Once-in-a-lifetime events seem to be coming every week lately… Nassim Taleb defines a black swan event as an event that is unpredictable, has a massive impact, and after it happens, people try to rationalize it as if it could have been predicted. According to Taleb, the three traits of a black swan event are rarity, unpredictability and severe consequences. It’s not hard to remember this type of disruptive event. Think back to 1987 and Black Monday. Or several moves in the market dives of 2000 and 2008, the flash Crash […]

Six years ago, I covered the origin story of the saying “Draw a line in the sand”. As I’ve been doing my normal chart scans over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been struck by how often a “line in the sand” keeps showing up. The line that I’m seeing is the 200-day simple moving average (SMA). I’d like to revisit this very interesting and useful idea from a couple of perspectives: Why certain indicators seem to be more important than others. Revisiting the S&P 500 chart we looked at