Charting Cramer's Dow Forecast, Pt. 5

This column was originally published on RealMoney on Jan. 12 at 11:09 a.m. ET. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers. For more information about subscribing to RealMoney, please click here.

Editor's Note: This is Part 5 of Dan Fitzpatrick's technical review of the prospects for the stocks that make up the Dow 30. Be sure to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

This is my last in a series of five articles covering the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Back in late September, I contributed to a 360 Degrees of the Dow. In that piece, I ran a three-part analysis of the Dow in different time frames -- daily, weekly and monthly periods.

You can read the piece if you want -- but that's rearview mirror stuff now. In a nutshell, here's what I said: On the daily chart, with the Dow at 11700, I was looking for a short-term pullback to around 11550. It never occurred. My weekly chart analysis was consistent with the daily, noting that over the past several years, significant advances, such as the one that began in July, have almost always given traders a second chance to buy. (We're still waiting for that second chance, aren't we?)

But on the monthly chart, I pointed out the two-year period during 2004-2005 where the Dow essentially marked time, setting up a volatility squeeze that started popping to the upside in early 2006. What was my prognosis then? I felt that the uptrend in the Dow would continue through 2007. I still do.

But here is a lesson that I learned. The sequence of time frames in your analysis is critical. By starting with the daily chart, we are necessarily looking at a time frame that is more geared for taking action than for making "Big Picture" decisions about market trends.