[mongoose1969]

I've read through your thread and set up that indicator. I want to be sure I'm looking at the cloud the way I'm supposed to. Is the goal to make sure the cloud is not as "thick" above the price like it looks with BANX? As I look at something like RDCM, the cloud is actually under the price trend. I guess I need an assist with what I'm supposed to be looking at with that cloud.

A thick cloud above the current price is bad, as it shows a lot of potential resistance. The ideal is to have a Stage 2A breakout occur above the cloud. For simplicity sake, above the cloud is good, below the cloud is bad. Thick cloud is heavy resistance and thin cloud is light resistance. However, ichimoku is an extremely complicated subject, and I believe there's more than ten volumes of books by the creator of it to explain it's use. So we are only looking at a small fraction of it, as like Stage Analysis it's a complete trading method of it's own.

Stockcharts have a explaination page that should help you understand it's basic uses here: http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?i...moku_cloud

But in terms of Stage Analysis I just use only the cloud part for visualising potential resistance, as it speeds up manual scans of stocks which are necessary when using Stage Analysis.

Thanks Isatrader....and thanks for patiently explaining this stuff. It's fun to learn, especially with knowledgable people.