What a week! FIRST, Lehman Brothers (LEH) announced a $2.8 billion loss. THEN, Goldman Sachs Group (GS) reported an 11% profit loss and downgraded its outlook for the broader banking industry. FINALLY, Morgan Stanley (MS) said its quarterly earnings fell by more than half.

These rude awakenings keep knocking us out of bed; and yet, I remain hopeful. Why? I let the market dictate my actions, and I don’t fight the trends. It’s been working, too. Here are some of the gains my investment strategy generated earlier this month: Western Refining, Inc. (WNR) – 45.90% in only 5 weeks; Rackable Systems, Inc. (RACK) – 59.27% in 16 weeks; Sohu.com (SOHU) – 91.08% in 16 weeks!

How? It’s simple: The Charts Don’t Lie.

Mark Twain said, “History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”  There’s a lot of validity in that statement, especially with regard to Wall Street. Like history, the market is dynamic, constantly changing and adapting to circumstances.

If you study the market’s fluidity long enough, you recognize current events that resemble events from the past. Let’s call these reference points. If you connect the distances between them, a pattern unfolds that guides investors to the next point, and so forth. Subscribers to my trading service, Trending 123, rely on these patterns to project a stock’s future profits and get in on the ground floor.

The driving force in our investment strategy and decision-making is where a stock closes at the end of the day. We use it as a point of reference within the context of a greater pattern, which ultimately determines how we play the market. When we identify the trends of past market leaders, we can look for similar movement in stocks in the market today.

But how do we recognize these patterns? Just as you can’t take one day or even one year as a representation of an entire nation’s history, you can’t analyze the market without context. To find meaning in isolated occurrences in history—or in isolated closing prices on Wall Street—we must connect a number of events to comprehend the greater picture.

Each pattern that we identify at Trending 123 typically forms a geometrical shape, and you can check many of them out in my free online chart patterns guide. After identifying the pattern, we then see what typically results from the shape because trends have degrees of failure and success. All that’s left is to decide what patterns are most likely to give us profits and play our hand!

It may seem more like number crunching than an investment strategy, but click on any investment service, and you’ll see loads of statistics and numbers designed to guide investors. This is just another method – and one that’s based on fact and past market trends, not whatever stat is the flavor of the week on Wall Street. Remember that the object of this game as always is to identify the highest-probability chart patterns and milk them for all they're worth.

That’s why I said earlier that I remain hopeful. I can look at the charts and identify the patterns. And they don’t lie, whether the market on the whole is up or down. Once you understand that method, the profits will start rolling in. It’s not as hard as it sounds.

Down days in the market can disrupt the focus of traders and throw them off their trading plan. But not John Lansing’s subscribers! They have tremendous focus, and you could, too. Don’t accept losses and forgo gains. Join Trending123 today and ride this market all the way to the top!