Let’s face it—in this volatile market, traders need to use every tool available to make sure they grab profits where and when they arrive. The methodology that has given my Parabolic Options subscribers and me dozens of triple-digit-percentage returns over the past year is technical analysis.

Investing gurus say most investors should shoot for 8% annual gains.

Swing traders are happy as clams if they bank a 15% profit.

I’m a “big-game hunter” when it comes to making money in the stock market. 10% gains are for whimps. 20% profits are life in the slow lane. I’m after money-doublers with every trade I make.

My name is John Lansing, and I’ve been trading using technical analysis for 10 years. Since I started my Parabolic Options service last May, subscribers have doubled their money 48 times:

In fact, I won't even initiate a trade unless I expect that it's going to at least double my money. I like to joke that making money-doublers is what I do on a bad day, because when I apply my technical-analysis signals to low-cost, high-leverage options plays, I help my subscribers to have a great day with returns along the lines of 200%, 300%, 400% and even 500% gains!

If you want to make returns like that, time and again, in all kinds of market conditions, you've come to the right place. But I also know that some of you are intrigued—and maybe even somewhat mystified—by the science behind it. This Essential Options Trader’s Guide to Finding Profitable Trends will show you how we use technical analysis to do it.

Don't Covet the Pros' Profits; Earn Your Own!

I don't have any secrets or special insight into what the markets, stocks or options are going to do. Quite simply, I'm just a math geek at heart. Patterns and probabilities are my comfort zone, as analyzing charts opens up my trading account to endless possibilities.

The more you know about the securities you're trading, the better your returns will be. Understanding how they've traded in the past, what their trigger points are, what the classic chart formations mean and the time they take to play out, and which signals mean a stock is going to stumble or soar means that there's no reason to guess where a stock's heading next.

And when you're anticipating a significant stock move in a short period of time, well, what better way to play it than by buying options instead of spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on the shares?

As an investor, no doubt you have a handful of favorite stocks that you just can't cut loose—whether they're great performers or whether you're “hanging in there” till they do what you expect them to.

As a trader, though, you never want to get “attached” to a stock. You've got to be ready to cash out quickly when you've made your gains, and you've got to cut loose those underperforming positions to keep your capital intact for those trades that will behave—and pay off!

When it comes to trading stocks (and their options), it's crucial to be directionally agnostic. They can go up or down; we don't care. The only thing that matters is that we're playing them the “right” way (i.e., buying call options on the big gainers, and buying puts on the losers), wherever they're headed!

Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't know/like a stock's story. On the contrary—the first step to “getting” how technical analysis works is knowing how a stock behaves…and using exploiting both its trading rhythm and the anomalies in that process to your advantage.

Take a look at your current portfolio—you've likely noticed which ones pop up after the company's quarterly earnings announcements. You know which ones trade flat during the summer as traders “sell in May and go away.” You may have also observed which ones are more active than others, as the company may release more new products during the year than other companies.

Traders make the same observations about the securities in their accounts. The only difference is, they might trade more stocks, and hold them for shorter time periods.

And in this time of market uncertainty—where it used to take certain stocks a year to move 20% and now it might only take a week or even a day to cover the same amount of territory—there's no reason why you shouldn't be trading (in particular, trading options) to take advantage of those quick swings that can lead to even quicker profits! Join us at Parabolic Options now and see how we’re putting volatility to work for us.

The Butcher, the Baker…the Candlestick Trader

Often when people think of technical analysis, they can feel overwhelmed with the vision of charts and unfamiliar phrases like “candlesticks,” “moving averages” and “trendlines.” Just as there are thousands of stocks available for trading, so too are there myriad ways to analyze the way they trade.

It seems that every trader has his or her own “tried and true” signals that help them to separate a “just OK” trading opportunity from the money-doublers. But today we're not worried about what “other traders” do—I'm going to break it down for you what gets me jazzed and makes me pull the trigger on top-notch trades!

So, what kinds of indicators do I use to generate triple-digit trading profits?

In a nutshell, all I'm really looking for are signals that help me determine the speed, direction and distance of an underlying stock so that I can uncover the best options to take advantage of the expected movement.

It’s all about finding and playing the trend

At the core, there are really only two trends that comprise technical analysis: continuations or reversals. So, technical analysis helps us identify whether an underlying security's movement (whether it's a stock, option, bond, ETF or commodity) will remain the same or change.

Technical analysis essentially holds that the history of a price action helps to define and shape future events. So, for example, if traders supported a stock on light-volume pullbacks to the 50-day moving average, they are likely to do so again.

Now, if you don't know what a 50-day moving average is or why light volume is different than heavy volume, don't worry—you'll learn all about that before you finish reading this report!

But for those of you who are looking for a definition with more depth, in more complete terms, technical analysis is the practice of anticipating price changes of a financial instrument by analyzing prior price changes and looking for patterns and relationships in price history.

The smallest changes can equal the biggest movements

Sometimes, spotting even the smallest deviation in a stock's “normal” (or expected) trading pattern can make a huge difference. And as you well know, a new “normal” is being defined practically every day, but there are decades of history that tell us how stocks reacted to similarly volatile conditions and events.

Perhaps you've heard the term “butterfly effect.” It's a phrase that encapsulates the more-technical notion of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory. Small variations of the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long-term behavior of the system.

The phrase refers to the idea that the flapping of a butterfly's wings—a barely perceptible, and seemingly insignificant action—might stir up tiny changes in the atmosphere that could ultimately cause a tornado to appear. (Or, for that matter, prevent a tornado from appearing).

The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events that can lead to large-scale phenomena. And had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different.

So how does this relate to us when we're looking to use chart patterns to enhance our trading?

Think of a ball placed at the crest of a hill, which might roll into any of several valleys, depending on slight differences in its initial position.

Similarly, for example, if a stock doesn't trade above a certain level within a defined time frame, it may be that it will instead experience a new low. But if the overall market rallies and take that stock up with it, the stock may instead run to new highs…simply thanks to the market having a good day instead of a bad one while the stock was trading in a particular pattern.

At a very organic level, we use technical analysis to spot butterfly effects (in the charts) before anyone else so that we can get positioned to enjoy large-scale profits in our trading accounts!