You're right mate, there's a lot of noise in all of this. Weak...

You're right mate, there's a lot of noise in all of this.

Weak hands play out in two scenarios - when a stock is falling for a very good reason (see the AVZ example above) or when a stock is simply on a pullback, and there is no fundamental or technical confirmation that you should sell. The former I would say are smart hands, the latter are the weak hands because they haven't looked at the price action, or they don't understand it.

Heaps of people on HC use the term 'weak hands' too readily IMO, seems to me to be an excuse for them to do nothing.

If anyone calls out weak hands without any argument, technical or otherwise, they are best disregarded. Make your own decisions. If anything, look at a chart and focus only on price action and the volume behind that price action. See how it behaves.

At a risk of being modded here, look at the AVZ chart as a classic example. The first signal (not to sell but to watch closely) was when there was a confirmed false break out on 22 Jan. The first sell signal was a failure to rally and break through that resistance on 5 Feb and the resulting sell down on 6 Feb, which critically broke trend. The subsequent failures to rally confirmed this (further sell signals) and the move below the 50MA (red dotted line) was confirmation of a new downtrend (a major sell signal).

Volume (particularly those I've highlighted with a red arrow) is confirmation that this price action is legit. It's not weak hands, it's large positions exiting.

If you then add the FA to this (where AVZ is at on its cycle etc), the picture becomes clear.

Many would have claimed it was weak hands selling, but the chart proves that anyone selling since January is going to come out far better than those buying. Traders paradise between Jan and April.

Some say hindsight is a wonderful thing, but there are some many signals here that would have seen someone exiting real time near tops.