Stocks & Commodities V. 28:13 (44-49): Entering The Fibonacci Zone With Carolyn Boroden by J. Gopalakrishnan and B. Faber

Entering The Fibonacci Zone With Carolyn Boroden by J. Gopalakrishnan and B. Faber

Carolyn Boroden is a Commodity Trading Advisor and technical analyst specializing in Fibonacci analysis. Her unique form of price and time analysis is quickly proving to be one of the most promising trading techniques using Fibonacci available today, leading to her nickname as the “Fibonacci Queen.” Boroden’s first book, Fibonacci Trading: How To Master The Time And Price Advantage, was published by McGraw-Hill in 2008. Boroden’s background includes working on the major trading floors including the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade, Nyfe, and Comex. She taught a segment of the Chicago Commodity Boot Camp seminars for four years on advanced trading techniques using Fibonacci ratios on both the time and price axes of the market. Boroden has been a featured speaker on Fibonacci analysis for such venues as the Market Technicians Association, the Online Trading Expo, TradingMarkets, and Cornerstone Investments Group. Currently, she runs a daytrading chatroom featured on www.fibonacciqueen.com.

Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities Editor Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan and Staff Writer Bruce Faber interviewed Carolyn Boroden via telephone on January 20, 2010.

Carolyn, how did you get interested in trading?

I had no interest whatsoever in the markets until I started working for a living at a very young age. My cousin invited me to interview on Wall Street because she knew I was working a couple of jobs on Long Island, and she thought that Wall Street would be a better fit for me. So I interviewed and got my first job with Donaldson Lufkin Jenrette as a secretary/gofer to the government bond trading room at Dlj. After I was there for a year and a half, one of the traders asked me to help him with some futures tickets. The next thing I knew, there was a job opening on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (Cme), and they shipped me out there when I was 20. That’s how I got involved with the markets. It was a fluke, and now they can’t get rid of me.

After I got to Chicago and worked on the trading floor there, I got interested in the basic technical analysis course offered by Ken Shaleen and I read John Magee and Robert Edwards’ Technical Analysis Of Stock Trends, the technical analysis bible.

You are considered to be an expert in the application of Fibonacci levels. What got you interested in those particular numbers series?

I had a broker friend who referred to Fibonacci ratios. I had no idea what he was talking about, but he made it sound interesting. So I went to a seminar and saw a presentation by Robert Miner, who talked about applying Fibonacci on both the price and time axes of the market. It was then that a lightbulb switched on for me. I was especially fascinated with the timing analysis part of it. I met him after his presentation and he invited me to his seminar the next day, and that was the beginning of my Fibonacci education.

Robert Miner actually wrote for us quite a while ago and I was also very interested in his price and time projections as a forecasting tool. Do you use a lot of clusters in your chart analysis?

I like to see the clustering effect of the ratios from different swings on a chart. I have three specific setups that I work on every day. Those setups are in my book, Fibonacci Trading. I do Fibonacci price cluster setups, which is the coincidence of at least three or more Fibonacci price relationships that come together within a relatively tight range. I also run two-step pattern setups, which also might be called a zigzag pattern in Elliott wave terms, or Gartley patterns. I also use symmetry setups, which use measured moves in the direction of the trend to get involved in the market in the direction of the trend.