It takes demand, or buying pressure, to move a stock higher. But when it comes to declining price action, a stock can very easily just fall of its own weight. A falling stock doesn't necessarily need selling pressure to move lower, just a buyers' strike.

When buying a stock prepping to break out from a basing pattern, the most efficient way to do it is to buy in two or three steps. However, following one of the sell signals that I outlined in the Kuhn/Marder Trading Course, it's usually best to sell quickly -- in one shot.

When it comes to buying a stock, we want to buy for fundamental reasons and sell technically. When it comes to timing our selections we want to scale in slowly, but sell out fast.

In managing my hedge fund, I normally like to buy in thirds, three times, as a stock nears the completion of its basing pattern. I will show you two different scenarios in using this approach -- one off a completed base, and one off of what I termed the "cheat" area in one of the articles I published in Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities magazine in 1995. As an individual investor with, perhaps, a much smaller stake at hand, you can even defer to doing your buying in two steps.

One of the ways I like to buy in three separate steps is in the formation of a properly set up cup-with-handle pattern.

Rare Medium (RRRR | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) was one such stock that I did this with in February 2000.

Following its three-day pull back to form the handle to its eight-week cup-with-handle pattern, Rare Medium stopped dead in its tracks -- closing just above its 21-day moving average (A).

Personally, I do not recommend buying anything on a pullback while still in its basing formation. One just never knows how low the stock will drop, or if it will just fall apart altogether. I don't care what oscillator one uses to buy pullbacks in a stock, I've found them to be far too inconsistent, only serving to create a false sense of security to the trader. The better way is just wait for the stock to stop going down and turn up. Then, if your favorite oscillator was showing a short-term oversold condition, the reverse movement in price will confirm the oscillator's signal. In other words, if you understand the pattern the stock is forming, and we're going to wait for the stock price to turn up anyway, why even bother with an oscillator? You just don't need it. This is an important attitude because we really want to eliminate anything that will give us this false sense of security.

Back to the issue at hand.

Once the stock stops moving lower in the handle, I'm waiting for it to retrace about half the handle's decline on the upside. Now I begin building my position. The first third is put on. I did this with Rare Medium on February 3 (B).

After pulling back the following day, the stock moved higher once again on February 7 -- rallying above the intra-day high of the first buy point. My first buy is now showing a profit -- this is key -- so I put on the second part of my position (C).

Now I'm just waiting for the breakout above the high of the right side of the cup from January 26 (D), which will complete the pattern, and hopefully set the stock's new, upward trend in motion.

As soon as it crossed 1/8 of a point above the high on January 26, I finished up my buying campaign with the final third on the February 8 breakout (E) -- effectively lowering my overall average cost. Why is this important?

First, I made the stock prove itself to me each time I bought it -- each position showed a small profit before buying the next. Moreover, the sticky selling decision we are so often confronted with in the market is partly solved by buying a stock properly in the first place.

Veritas Software (VRTS | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) is a current example of what I call a "cheat" play. By the time you read this, however, the stock may already be charging back to its old high. I felt using a current example, without the benefit of hindsight, would be helpful nonetheless.

Following its 43% swoon from the March highs, VRTS has since formed a perfect cupping, or rounded, bottom. In some cases, a stock will move up the right side of its cup formation and stop dead about halfway up. That's where Veritas Software has been in its basing pattern for the past seven days (A). This isn't the handle, but what I call a "shelf", which can be "cheated" off of with an initial buy. The shelf will form like a handle -- tight price areas and low volume as it consolidates -- but, because it's still in the middle of the overall basing pattern, it still needs to work through some more overhead supply before forming a proper handle closer toward its old highs. Essentially, until the basing pattern is complete, the stock is still relatively unproven at this point and should only command half of our attention.

Therefore, provided this shelf spends enough time consolidating -- at least a week -- I will only buy one-third of my allocated position if it breaks out of the consolidation. If this is achieved, I will simply wait for the stock to follow through in price toward its old high and form a handle. Sometimes the formation of a handle will begin with a sharp two- or three-day pullback in price toward my initial buy spot, which will now represent support. However, I don't have to get too concerned about the stock completely falling apart, since I still only have one-third of a position on.

Once the stock stops going down to form its handle, provided this stock does just that, and retraces one-half of the handle on the upside, like in the case of Rare Medium, I will buy the second part of my position. My position will then be completed with the final third on the handle's breakout move. Each position was at a profit each time a new position was established.

One word to the wise. Cheating on the completion of a cup-with-handle pattern doesn't mean buying as the stock moves up the right of the cup. Each time we buy, we need a point of reference -- a pivot price. Waiting for the initial run to stop, pull back, then proceed, gives us that -- an upward move, followed by a testing pullback, followed by a continuation of the advance. By waiting for the first consolidation zone to develop, we get a free look at how healthy the developing trend in the stock truly is. A trader can never know exactly where a stock's advance will stop. You will avoid needless whipsaws more often by waiting for the advance to halt, then resume.

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