Well, I do lots of things - I should say, I'm *experimenting* with lots of things, day trading, end of day trading, trend following, swing trading, etc. I guess I'm still trying to find what works best for me. For every person is different. But I can gladly share what I've learned so far:
* Moving averages are the most powerful technical tool. I use 5,10,20,50-EMAs.
* 5-days Stochastic works pretty well, at least in non-trending stocks (it is very dangerous in trending conditions, they can mislead you to trade against the trend).
* RSI divergences - excellent, at least in non-trending stocks (again, dangerous in trending conditions).
* Patterns. I especially like channels and ascending/descending triangles.
* Trendlines. Although they can be a little subjective. Moving averages are better - everybody sees them, even computer programs can see them and trade based on them.
* Always keep an eye on volume.
* Check at least 3 different timeframes. Make sure your trades follow the trend of the higher timeframe (ideally, they would follow the trend on all 3 timeframes, but that's hard to find).
* Also check the market as a whole, and try to find trades in the direction of the general market's trend.
Now, it wouldn't hurt if the fundamentals agree with the technical analysis, at least for longer-term trades. For example, in Google's case, it is an excellent company with great people/ideas/technology. So, when my technical analysis says "jump", well, I jump!
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Alright, GOOG seems ready to take off again. After a nice 5-day correction that relieved the overbought conditions, today's action brought GOOG once again to a textbook-perfect position for resuming its uptrend: the price went up to close above all its averages (5, 10, 20, and 50 EMA) which are also very nicely stacked in a bullish formation. Today's candlestick was a perfect dragonfly, which usually signals reversal after short-term downtrends. The 5-day stochastic is down at 20, and turning up again. Volume has been falling during this correction. On intraday charts the price today escaped its down-channel, while on weekly charts the volume was increasing for the last 4 weeks that GOOG was closing up, and decreased this week (almost to half!) that GOOG closed down.
If this now isn't a high-probability (long) trade, I don't know what is! 
I think this time GOOG can hit 500, even if it fails to break through - but we'll see when it gets there.
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An update on this:
After my original post and subsequent discussion, I noticed that at the same days (Aug 23-24) there was after-hours huge volume on some other stocks too. So, whatever happened was *not* specific to Google. Was it a big fund buying several different stocks? Perhaps. Was it a data error? Maybe. Was it some kind of technicality, like "system reset" as BigBlock suggested? Could be...
However, this didn't retract from the fact that GOOG was in an excellent technical position, as I explained in my original post, which finally resulted in the start of this strong uptrend (which could lead it soon to 500). Watch out for resistance around 409 from that symmetrical triangle upper edge in the next couple of days, if GOOG clears that, we're in for lots of $$$ from now till Christmas...
Oh, and by the way, Cramer seems to agree, he said in Mad Money Program that "Google is cheap", although he didn't mention any technical reasons... 
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Admittedly, I know very little about what's going on "behind the scenes", how after-hours trading is executed, system-resetting, and all that. All I know is what I see on my charting software. And I don't even use the level III data, I simply look at the regular, plain vanilla, intraday charts. My software (Fidelity's ActiveTrader Pro) shows the transactions (volume) even for before (8am-9:30am) and after market hours (4pm-6:30pm). Usually the volume is VERY low, but on those two days I just happened to notice huge volume on the after-market hours on GOOG. Not on one single transaction of course, but several transactions spread out between 4pm-6:30pm. The biggest single transaction was 1,082,700 shares at 6:30pm on Aug 24. The second biggest transaction was 702,630 shares at 5:35pm on Aug 23. The other transactions were at around the 300,000 shares level.
Now these may just be clusters of transactions, I don't know, the resolution in my software drops as we move further away from those days, in another 2 days I'll be able to see only what happened on 15-min blocks, and in 7 days I won't be able to see at all the after-market action for Aug 23-24.
Anyway, another very interesting thing is that the price remained flat during these huge transactions. Which makes me suspect that the transactions may have been pre-agreed, it didn't look like there was the usual price-dance. Which kinda makes sense, if anybody would want to buy these huge numbers of shares, why get into the fighting arena and cause a major price chase, just do the transactions quietly behind the scenes.
But, as I already said, I don't really know what's happening behind the scenes, all these are just wild hypotheses trying to explain a UCO (Unidentified Chart Object).
Or at least find a way to profit from these things... 
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True, limiting to intraday-scope is less risky, and with all positions closed you can sleep well at night, however I have concluded that it also limits significantly profits because of all the missed (friendly) gaps, all the money lost to commissions and slippage, and it is also quite intensive leaving little time for anything else. All these from my very personal experience and point of view, of course.
As a day-trader, I would have closed my GOOG position today around 1pm, but guess what, the last minutes of the session the price did go up, and there is a good possibility that tomorrow it will gap up. Day-trading is good for rapidly getting trading experience in short time, but I would argue that longer timeframes provide bigger profits, more time to think and control your emotions, and more time to enjoy life! At least that's my recent conclusion, as I'm trying to move from intraday to longer timeframes, hopefully transferring successfully prognostication skills from shorter timeframes to longer ones... 
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Excellent! Great news, and great action today. Sometimes it makes you wonder, is it the technicals that drive the news? Currently GOOG is in the best technical position it's been in a long time, and seems ready to take off. And, sure enough, here comes some good news. Not one day early, not one day late, but exactly when the technicals said: GO! Do they use technical analysis in their PR team? (I wouldn't be surprised)...
I believe Google is starting a solid uptrend. This week it should reach its 200-SMA, around 397, make a small pause, and then break up to test the upper edge of its symmetrical triangle, which by then should be around 405. Then, in the next few weeks, break up from that too, and after some short pauses at its previous highs 410, 425, and 450, eventually move to all-time highs.
Too good to be true? We shall see....
At least the insider action indicates that some big players feel quite optimistic too...
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Yesterday, after market close, someone bought 3 million shares of Google! (almost equal to the daily volume). The previous day (again, after market close), another 2.5 million shares! Note that usually the after-hours volume for GOOG is a few thousands shares, at most.
Assuming that my software doesn't play tricks on me and the data are correct (I use Fidelity's software and datastream), that strongly suggests that a big player is quietly accumulating GOOG trying to remain unnoticed (after-hours volume is ignored by most daily charts, otherwise it would *double* the GOOG volume in the last two days).
Now, technically, anyway you see it, GOOG seems primed for a big up-move. On daily and weekly charts, it has found support on a 2-year, strong multi-point trendline, stochastics are very low and started going up, it has completed a 3-wave up, 2-wave down pattern, found support on the very strong weekly 50-EMA, and it comes close to completing a 8-month textbook symmetrical triangle, which usually serves as continuation pattern. On intraday charts also things look good, positive RSI divergence on the 1-hour charts, and flattened averages which are easy to penetrate. Finally, the median analysts' price target is 500, much higher than the current price.
Does the strange after-hours action suggest the Google is about to take off? This is the first time I notice anything like this (on this magnitude). Have you seen other stocks with very high after-market volume in a relatively quiet period, which in the next days made a big move? Could this be another useful indicator to add to our toolboxes?
Kosmas
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Thank your for your detailed answer, and I will also check out the book you recommended.
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How does stock options trading influence price charts?
I'm assuming that simple opening/closing option positions do not register in the stock's chart at all (please correct me if I'm wrong).
However, what happens when options are exercised?
As a concrete example, let's say MSFT currently trades at $27, and someone exercises a $20 call option. This means that potentially several hundreds (or thousands) shares are bought at $20. Would this appear as a downwards spike on the stock's chart? Would this add a huge tail to the day's candle? (possibly affecting trading decisions based on Japanese candlestick analysis, patterns, stochastics, etc)
The other two alternatives I see are that either the transaction is not recorded at all (which seems absurd, given the fact that it may involve millions of shares changing hands), or that it is recorded in the current price (but would that be the Ask, or the Bid? and again, this seems too arbitrary...)
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Occasionally, a stock price may spike momentarily out of its normal range in a very dramatic way, and then immediately return back into its regular range and continue like nothing happened. This is a rare occurance (I've seen it happening perhaps once a month on a given stock), and it is NOT a gradual move. Even in the intraday 1-min chart, it appears as a spike that lasts no more than 1 time step. Nevertheless, it is recorded on the daily chart, affecting technical indicators, scanning criteria, etc, etc. In terms of volume or duration it's insignificant (there's no accompanying volume spike), however it does affect traders that work with daily charts. What causes these dramatic spikes? Did that market maker for a moment fall asleep? Or is it a plot by someone to influence the daily charts and lead traders into wrong conclusions? How do you interpret these spikes?
As an example, today (12/8/05) CECO was trading in the range 35.5-36, and suddenly, at exactly 1:08 pm it shot up to 38.37, before returning immediately back to 36. These spikes sometimes are even more dramatic, but what really happens at that moment behind the scenes? I've seen this even on stocks with big volume, like MSFT a few days ago. What bothers me is that when there's a spike like this, the daily chart does not *really* reflect the price action of that day.
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