The 10/60 cross (how indicators work)

All indicators are themselves lagging indicators, meaning they are derivatives of price and volume. The 10/60 cross is useful in many respects because it smoothes out the data coming from the chart and thus can provide some perspective about what is happening to the stock. Remember the indicator will be much slower than the actual movement of the stock price, so you can be aided by it or hindered by it depending on the circumstance. Let's look at the ABK chart recently:

The 10/60 cross into the entry was decent because the gap up and retracement provided a confusing signal but the following run up confirmed the move nicely. The 10/60 cross kept you out of several potential sells on the retrace. However a sell on the retrace below 4.00 was not bad move in this situation since the exit signal of the 10/60 cross was far less than the ideal sell price and the sell should have been triggered on something more like a 4.00 fail than the 10/60 cross below at 3.85 (that would have likely been filled at 3.65).

This underscores the point that the 10/60 cross is only a guideline and cannot be relied upon for precipitous moves in the opposite direction but can be generally relied upon to filter out noise moving in the direction of the trendline.

Here are two examples of my SIL entry short:

I have already mentioned my entry into SIL short and you can see its relation to the 10/60 cross. Waiting for the cross here would cost you a big move in your direction.

My 2nd entry into SIL short was in the 2.4's from this chart:

Again, ahead of the indicators but they are useful for smoothing out the data, just be aware that you are literally 'behind the curve' when using these.