Wait to Reconcile Conflicting Charts

This column was originally published on RealMoney on Aug. 29 at 11:02 a.m. EDT. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers.

Last week, a reader asked me how to reconcile conflicting daily and weekly charts. This swing trader, whose average trade is one to three weeks, finds weekly charts more useful for his trading methodology, but notes that the corresponding daily chart almost always conflicts with the weekly chart.

"The weekly looks good, but the daily is starting to roll over. Should I ignore the daily if I'm trading the weekly chart?"

I have a fairly straightforward answer. I'd suggest using multiple time frames for any chart analysis. Two is a minimum, and more is better. The longer time frame (here, the weekly chart) should be used for trend. Forget about how the daily chart looks for a minute. ...