I ‘fell’ into technical analysis and trading back in late 2007. My background prior to that time had been in Science Research (Chemistry) and then Education. Technical analysis, scientific research and experimental design had always formed a large part of my daily activity in the scientific domain and, thus, the transition to technical analysis within the trading domain was not such a huge leap for me.

The motivation for this transition was a personal one and evolved, in part, because I wanted to continue to work but on my own terms and in a field that gave me more flexibility and control over my time.

The journey from that point back in late 2007 to now has been long and varied. I have spent a lot of time, and money, exploring various trading schemes and educational packages. I used to reflect that this was time and money wasted. I look back on this period now, though, as a valuable learning phase that has brought me to the level of understanding that I have developed today. During this time I gathered and processed a lot of trading knowledge and assimilated this within a scientific framework. I firmly believe that I was able to develop my successful trading strategy/algorithm due to my strong adherence to the basic tenets of scientific methodology.

My Trade Charting System (TC) was developed by the middle of 2010 and, with back-testing on daily FX charts, I found it to be very successful. Some self-doubt continued though and I continued to be distracted by looking for other ‘black-box’ style trading systems, all without success.

A period of illness during 2011 proved to be a turning point for me and for my Trade Charting system. This period marked a significant shift in my thinking and I made a valuable decision on the trading front. I decided to cease chasing the trading advice, strategies or schemes of others. I pulled my own Trade Charting  system back out again and committed myself to giving this TC trend trading system a full and rigorous test to see if I could get it to work and to see whether it could be consistently profitable for me. This ‘Blog’ actually evolved out of that recovery period as I found writing about my trading to be a valuable part of my healing whilst going through chemotherapy. My TC system can be applied to the trading of any charting instrument: Forex, Stocks, Options, Future and ETFs. This illness was a most unpleasant period of my life but I also look on it as the catalyst for re-positioning me on my successful Trade Charting journey.

2016 marked my 5 year anniversary post cancer and I celebrated this with a few trips. One was a solo trip to Europe to Trial my TC algo during the European and US trading sessions off shorter time-frame charts. The advantage I see with this type of trading is that it delivers a greater frequency of trade signals and allows for lower-risk trade set ups to be actioned. Since then, I have developed my TC Indicator, a proprietary mathematically formulated algorithm, and I continue to focus on shorter time frame trading.

During 2017 I carried out two Trials of my TC algorithm and this helped to refine my understanding of its best application and about the kind of trading skills required to successfully trade this system. There is more information about these Trials elsewhere on this website.

I am passionate about technical analysis and enjoy the challenge and opportunities that the various charting set-ups of trading instruments from the financial markets offer me each day. I delight in helping others where possible so please check out this 2021 article on how traders can start their own technical analysis journey.

NB: Please note that prior to April 2014 my blog site was run from a different site and was referred to as TradeSpotting (TS). Thus, posts prior to April 2014 will appear with this terminology rather than TradeCharting (TC). Please excuse any conflict of these terms used here through articles and images on this blog site.

Mary McNamara

B Sc (Hons) Inorganic Chemistry

M Ed (Management and Human Resource Development)

RG 146

Email: mary@tradecharting.com