Immediate definition
In plain words — First define which price behaviour deserves attention. Then set the monitor. When the alert arrives, verify the context: the notification is not yet an order, and the displayed price is not a guaranteed fill.
For Hurst, tracking is the system's fourth pillar. Analysis prepares a condition—such as a valid trend-line break—and price monitoring identifies when that condition occurs. Watching the entire market without a hypothesis is not tracking; it is noise.
The technology of 1970
The book separates commercial charts, useful for general awareness, from large self-drawn charts suitable for precise envelopes and lines. Daily and weekly high/low/close/volume data were copied from printed collections and updated in pencil. Cyclic analysis of the Dow 30 continued in parallel as the general market compass.
Frequency depended on the trading cycle. Weekly updates could serve long horizons, daily updates medium cycles, while short cycles and mid-band signals required real-time prices. The most advanced tool was the Trans-Lux “Personal Ticker”: up to 40 programmed symbols printed whenever they traded. It was a hardware watchlist filtering the tape.
The part that has not aged
The formula remains predefined condition + timely notification. Today the ticker is an alert and paper charting is software, but quality still depends on specification. The trigger price, timeframe, confirmation, and cancellation condition must be stated.
A generic “price above 20” alert does not equal a confirmed break. Last trade, bid, ask, and bar close may trigger at different times. Delayed data, market hours, corporate actions, and symbol changes can also create false alerts.
Alert, decision, and order are different objects
The alert says that a technical condition appears satisfied. The decision checks whether analysis, risk, and liquidity still hold. The order translates that decision into instructions. Execution finally depends on broker and market conditions.
Investor.gov notes that an online order does not travel straight to an exchange; the broker chooses its routing. For stop orders, the trigger is not a guaranteed execution price. A stop-limit controls price but may remain unfilled. These distinctions prevent a notification from being treated as an already-realised result.
An auditable modern protocol
Each stable entry should retain thesis, condition, data source, timestamp, expiry, invalidation level, and intended action. The alert should record the data that fired it. After execution, compare theoretical price, order, and actual fill. If a condition changes, create a new version rather than rewriting the old one retrospectively.
This protocol makes tracking auditable and limits the perfect-chart illusion created by hindsight. It still does not show that a Hurst signal has an edge; it shows only that it was observed and executed without future information.
The source-checked label concerns tracking as described in Chapter 7, not
the performance of modern alerts or strategies.
Sources
- J. M. Hurst, The Profit Magic of Stock Transaction Timing, Prentice-Hall, 1970, ch. 7, pp. 120–122 — charts, monitoring frequency, and the Personal Ticker.
- SEC Investor.gov, Executing an Order — order routing and handling.
- SEC Office of Investor Education and Assistance, Stop, Stop-Limit, and Trailing Stop Orders — triggers, non-guaranteed prices, and non-execution risk.
Related entries
- Total scanning and the stable — what is monitored.
- Selection and tracking — the complete process.
- Screening — why a candidate enters the list.