Price tracking (Hurst)

Who this entry is for — The method's signals are set up in advance and triggered by price: if you do not see the price at the right moment, the signal passes without you. Tracking is Chapter 1's fourth pillar, made daily practice here — with 1970's technology as a timeless lesson.

Source: J. M. Hurst, The Profit Magic of Stock Transaction Timing, Prentice-Hall, 1970 — Chapter 7, How to Track Your Stable and Summing Up Selection and Tracking (pp. 120–122).

Prerequisites

A built and analysed stable: tracking watches over it.

The right charts for analysis

In plain words — Commercial chart services are fine for general awareness, but "far too miniature" for graphical accuracy: envelopes and trend lines need your own charts, drawn from the data.

The book's setup: Mansfield (weekly) and Geiergraph (daily) clippings side by side in plastic folders, in a ring binder or on a pegboard, pencil-updated daily. But for analysis — the real kind, with constant-width envelopes and valid trend lines — you must plot your own charts; the bottleneck is data, and the era's solution was the quarterly ISL volumes (Standard & Poor's) with daily and weekly high/low/close/volume for every listed issue — freeing you from newsprint archives ("never more than 90 days of paper on hand").

In parallel, continuous cyclic analysis of the DJ 30: the climate compass — it tells you whether the moment calls for long or short positions (Chapter 5's doctrine: the Averages treated like a stock).

From weekly to real time

In plain words — How fine must tracking be? It depends on the cycle you trade. Long cycles: updating the charts is enough. Short cycles and mid-band entries: you need to see the price as it happens.

The book's ladder, by fineness:

Daily or weekly chart updates — sufficient for long cycles or large capital.
Special orders at the broker — the floor specialist "tracks for you", but with "severe drawbacks" for the method's purposes (a valid signal is richer than a threshold price).
The tape and quote terminals at a brokerage — station yourself (or an aide) there during the windows when a signal is awaited.
The Trans-Lux "Personal Ticker" — 1970's ultimate instrument: a dry-tape printer with analog computer, programmable for up to 40 stocks via slip-in tabs, wired to the exchanges: it ignores everything except your issues, and the moment one of them trades, symbol, volume and price print instantly. "Your personal watchdog."

The line that makes it all timeless is the close: the techniques tell you in advance what to do the moment the stock price behaves a certain way; the personal ticker tells you instantly when this happens. Predetermined signal + immediate notification: the pairing has not aged a day.

1970 and today — The 40-stock Personal Ticker is now an alert on any platform; the ISL volumes are a data feed; the brokerage floor is a screen. The lesson that remains: tracking is not "watching the market" — it is watching pre-written conditions on a short list. Watch everything, and you see nothing.

The chapter's summary (its close)

Any issue with available history can be analysed and traded on the model: selection may start from any traditional route.
But optimized profit demands maximum percent time invested → a stable with complete analysis and constantly offered signals.
The stable is maintained through simple but regular scans of many stocks' charts.
The criteria that matter: cyclic readability, volatility, imminence of action signals — plus anything logically based on the model.
Chart services suffice for general tracking; analysis requires hand-drawn charts.
Services exist that make data extraction for your own charts fast.
Brokerage displays for fine tracking (mid-band, short cycles); the Personal Ticker as the ideal instrument.

Summary card

Trading cycle	Tracking required
Long (months)	Weekly chart updates
Medium (weeks)	Daily updates
Short / mid-band	Real time on a short list (alerts)
Always	Continuous cyclic analysis of the Averages (long/short climate)