Weekend Update 10-10-10

Below are the tide charts and spx projection for this week. I cant say either is too impressively on track right now...lol

Due to some family health issues and other things, I think this post will very likely be my last unfortuneately. Just so many things in the fire and my interest level has been waning the last several months. Maybe this winter when things are slow I'll find the fire to take on some new project that will catch my interest. In the meantime, I'll continue on with my trading experiment off the board and possibly report results at at the end of each month or something....whether I find the time to get more tidal data in a useable form, I dont know. As it stands now, I pretty much would have a lot of data to "mine" to get past Jan 2011. Chow for now and trade well!

Weekend Update 10-1-10

Starting out with the spx projection this week. According to this, next week doesnt look pretty from a bull's perspective, but these things have been known to invert which would not surprise me in the least.



Below is the trading test results. Last week proved to be more in line with expectations. For a $25,000 portfolio, I would hope one could see an average daily return of about $50. Nice pocket change, but key to it all would be consistency which hopefully will be proven over time.

Note that I have made a few adjustments to some of the stock signals. These are actually improvements to performance....one of which was a quicker trigger on cnxt using a short sma crossover of a slower ema. The change put cnxt into a buy mode on9/21 at $1.48. Because this system is still in test mode and I want to find the "best" fit for all stocks, these kind of changes will happen for the first couple of months I would assume. All for the betterment and performance improvement. Stocks to watch on the long side moving forward here I think will be cnxt, gfre, nxwi, mmrf. Also note that I have added a cash line on row 33. Basically this is the result of reversing from short to long on cnxt, and in real time, real life this would represent spendable gains on the account. Keep in mind that we are always invested $5,000 on each stock, so gains have to go somewhere...right into a pocket. :)

My original concept here, in case you forgot, was to take a small, fixed amount of retirement cash ($25,000) and keep it invested in a somewhat aggressive mode. Still a few years away from hanging up the slide rule, I want to test a method of doing just this. Take some pressure off the retirement account and make "frivolous" expenditures in retirement an easier decision to make.

If you're nervous right now and looking down, here's some potential stocks out of this list that have had good runups and might be due for a correction (after the signal is received of course): TQNT, EXAS, KMKCF.OB Again, dont jump in, wait for the signal.



And, of course, the weekly tide chart. No words needed here. :)

Weekend Update 9-24-10

As I type this morning, its a little more difficult than usual. I heard last night that my little sister has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and will require an all out blitz of the full treatment to kill this thing. My wife, and I by association, have been through all that process in the past when she had rectal cancer, so we know what it will be like for her. Its no picnic, but she will have an incredible amount of support from family and friends, and she will get through it. She is a tiger in every sense of the word but also one of the kindest persons you will find anywhere. She will do anything for you at the drop of a hat. Hang in there sis, you will be in our thoughts often in the coming months. Two words in summary....Cancer Sucks.

Tide chart below, as you well know by now. Supposedly a low yesterday. Interesting how the market masquerades itself.



The market kind of found us this week, then made a statement on friday to the effect, no one can predict my next trick, watch this !



And the trading adventure. Another blah, blah week....part of the reason to remain patient and let these stocks play out. History tells me the results will be much better than has been experienced in the last 2 weeks. Wait, wait.

Come to Papa

I always said, let the market come to you. :) At least it seems to be coming to this projection model for the time being. Lets run it out till the end of September and see how it does.



Tide chart below. No commentary needed. Expect some weakness ahead, but nothing extraordinary.



And lastly, but certainly not least, the trading test results for the past week. Certainly not a big week with a $22 gain, but thats to be expected at times. I changed the daily percent change formula a little bit so that it showed change from the prior days close, not from the current days open. Stocks do gap, as we all know. I also added in the upper right, a formula for estimated annual dollar gain from the portfolio and annual percent gain. Now, its important to note that these gains are not including commissions (which should be very minor with this trend following method) or slippage. I expect to add in this feature shortly, but for now, its only an estimate of future results so we wont quibble about smaller dollars. Also important to realize that this projection will vary wildly in the beginning because the basis for it is a very small sample of results (only about 2 weeks at this point) so its accuracy is surely suspect now. It'll get better as time goes by. No position changes in the test portfolio were called for this week. I will post position change requirements as they happen during the week. Have a good weekend, y'all.

Some of The Inner Workings

Let's take a look at the program behind all this. Columns B through G obviously hold the days action....change,open, high, low, close and volume. Standard stuff. This information is brought into the excel workbook by a web query that is run from a macro developed by: excelhero.com Its a rather complex macro that the writer allows anyone to use as long as his copyright material in the macro itself is not removed. Easy enough, and for all the work and talent he put into that macro, he deserves all the recognition he can get...believe me.

So, one can either enable or disable the worksheet to go out to yahoo and retrieve data. In fact, these 5 columns of data (COHLCV) are just the tip of the iceberg as to what can be retrieved automatically and dumped onto the sheet, due to the beauty of this macro. And, you can setup the worksheet to refresh information at any minute interval you want. So, at work I just have this worksheet running in the background (minimized) and refreshing every 5 minutes or so and I can immediately check on my entire portfolio by maximizing the window in a flash. Very nice and handy.

So, in summary, columns B through G are changing automatically as the information is refreshed which in turn is dependant upon the number minutes between refresh intervals. Column A is a listing of the stock symbols that are hyperlinked to the actual backup worksheets. By hyperlinked, I mean when you click on the symbol, the backup worksheet is automatically opened, allowing you to look at the details of that stock symbol in more detail. No need to go hunting for the worksheet tab at the bottom....just click and go.

Thats it for now...much more on the flexibility of this workbook at a later time.

Why the Trading Test?

Thats a good question you might ask. Its like this. In a few years, I expect to be "retiring" such that I wont be spending each day at a desk job. I've got a nice little nest egg salted away for that time, but the thought occurs to me that a pretty good and dependable bit of extra income would surely help with the peace of mind. Knowing that I can pocket $10,000 up to $25,000 a year with a trading account would be nice for a little extra spending money that I wouldnt have to use the nest egg for. The fear, of course, is that a trading account can get wacked pretty hard during a quick crash as we've seen in the recent past.

So my thought is to try to protect against, or hedge, by having nearly half the account always invested on the short side with stocks that are in downtrends anyway. Ideally both the long side and short side investiments are complimenting each other as their trends play out. I know there are tactical problems to making this work and I havent thought through all the likely hurdles yet. But, as I say, its a work in progress and I expect to get to where I want to be eventually. I have anywhere from 2 to 4 years to work the bugs out...so time is on my side. On the whole, I think I've experienced pretty much the entire gamut of investing quirks....I've seen some of my buy and hold stuff get slaughtered, I've managed to trade away profits by being overactive in the markets, I've seen nice profits vanish or turn into losses and I've watched long trade losses grow and grow hoping things will turn around. After all this, my experiences tell me that you have to be patient but...most importantly, when things go your way and then turn around, you must take profits and walk away to look elsewhere or simply reverse the position and look to make gains in the other direction. The markets give...they also are more than happy to take that away, and then some. In the words of Don Wolanchuk, "think like a criminal".

and furthermore...it strikes me that there are a lot of folks in or close to my position ....a lot of people appraoaching that point in their lives when its time to think seriously about what comes next. In my honest opinion, its not gonna be bad, all we have to do is be smart and navigate our way through it. In the meantime, take the time to pay attention to the things that are important in life...you know what I'm talking about.

Trading Test Update 9-11-10

Not much happening in the portfolio of randomly picked stocks this week. As I said, the system called to go long on VLNC which was done on the open on 9-9-10 buying 5,747 shares at .96 or roughly $5,000 worth. We are now long 3 stocks and short 2. EXAS had a great week and has been on a tear since mid July vaulting from 3.31 to yesterdays close of 5.55. One to keep an eye on.

Weekend Update 9-11-10

Below are the tide chart and spx projection through the end of the month. I'm on a short schedule this morning so gotta run. Family reunion type stuff. I'll post some trading modely results on sunday.

Looking A Little Deeper

at VLNC...below is the backup sheet for "V". Just by the narrowest of margins, the stock was signaled as a buy, based almost entirely on the boost from yesterdays burst up. Does not matter how narrow or weak the signal is, the trade has got to be taken. It could end up as a whipsaw, but thats part of the whole process. You take some lumps on the whipsaws to guarantee you are on the right side of the trade when the trend begins. Taking a closer look at VLNC and how it has acted within the sytem:

In 1225 days of trading the system has called for 25 trades, about 50% winners and 50% losers. VLNC has not been a particulary great stock to trade within the past 4 or 5 years. However, having said that, a great breakout of this stock would give us a very nice return. Average number of days between trades has been about 49 days. A great example of a trending stock (in this case downward) has been CNXT. Thats the kind of return for each of these stocks that we want to see. Patience is key.

Trading Test Update 9-8-10

We had a trade signal change tonight on VLNC. Signal change is from short to long based on the stocks surge yesterday. If you look in the signal column you'll see the exclamation marks in the blue colored cell. So tomorrow morning we cover the VLNC short and go long on that stock buying $5,000 worth at the opening price.

Well Geezus Man....Getit Right

Gawrd...okay, so when I went back to the last signal for the price entry I forgot to adjust the number of shares....you see, each trade begins in this adventure as a $5,000 trade...regardless of price. So for instance, since the price of cnxt when the system went short was higher, the number of shares sold short had to be reduced. All adjusted now. You just gotta be a stickler for details, eh?

Rather Than

jumping into the middle of a trend, which really doesnt make sense, I went back to the last signal change and inserted the price for that signal as the benchmark for moving forward here. Also added a few columns on the far right for tracking daily changes to the fictitous portfolio. Oh yeah, for information, the blue colored cell with !!!!! under the signal column indicates that stock has a position change that needs to be taken. In this case dcth has changed from short to long (if you could only see the backup sheet for that stock).

ps...just happened to notice that ptsc.ob has a glitch which will be fixed shortly. It should not be a buy at this point. Like I said, a work in progress.....lol

Trading Test Numero Uno

A while ago, I mentioned I was working on a tradable system for lower priced stocks, say below $10. I'd guess I'm about 80% of the way to having it complete. Below is a snapshot of what I call the summary sheet of the excel workbook. There's about 25 stocks shown (not including the dow, spx and emini). Some of you may recognize many of these stocks as they have gotten attention for various reasons on disccusion boards. I have decided to try a dry run of the system here just to see how it pans out, so I randomly picked 5 of the stocks (gss, vlnc, ftk, c and cnxt) and bought (or sold) a fictitious amount ($5,000) of each using last fridays closing price. Each was either a long or short position based on what the current signal is for that paricular stock, and this test therefore enters a trend possibly right in the middle of it, but so be it, you have to start somewhere....I ended up with 3 short positions and 2 long positions. The whole idea here is a method of trading the trends as much as possible using moving averages, either simple or exponential, tailored for each stock, as trigger points. More on this later on.

This was intended to be an end of the day piece of work so that signals are received in the evening and if a trade is indicated, it is made at opening price the following day. Sort of 'trading for the working class guy', or whatever. You get the picture.....its still a work in progress....lets see where it goes. For now, commissions and slippage is ignored.


The worksheet shown below is one of several in the excel workbook. This particular worksheet is for the stock symbol GSS. The stocks open, high, low, close and volume is brought into this worksheet by a series of macros, so that its done essentially automatically with the push of a button on the sheet shown above. As the information is brought in, it also plots that data on the chart on the right hand side and determines what the postion (buy or sell) should be for that stock on the following day. This is based upon the moving averages that were selected especially for that stocks characteristics. There is much other information on this sheet too detailed to get into right now....suffice it to say that this worksheet is the 'brains' behind the whole thing. If you have or know of a good candidate for the system let me know and maybe I can list it. Basically looking for trending or volatile stocks less than 10 bucks. I say maybe because I have no intention of turning this into pure labor...lol. One other thing of importance I guess....stops are not used...the idea is to get on the correct side of a trend (either up or down) and ride it as long as possible. And, of course, this is not trading advice...if you buy or sell based on this information you could go broke, your spouse could leave you and your house could burn down. So dont do it.

OH, AND, THIS IS EXPERIMENTAL. IF YOU DONT LIKE WHAT YOU SEE, DONT LOOK AT IT!

Weekend Update 9-3-10

Tides....hurricane tides in fact.



Here's the projection right on up through the end of September. Though direction is correct almost all the time, the magnitude cannot be matched exactly, for sure. I might continue on with this experiment offline, but will not be posting it online beyond this date. It seems funny to me that people are more interested in exact or near exact magnitude of movement matches than they are with getting the direction correct. I guess they have differing trading interests. When I'm about to make a move, I want to know if I'm making that move into a market headwind (not good) or preferably with the market forces are on my side.

Weekend Update 8-28-10

Tide chart for the week below. Seems to be tracking fairly well...at times.


This will have to do for now...at least until I can find some better fit. This is the projection to the end of September....not real happy with the correlation, so think of it as an interim projection....lol. Need to find a new way to adjust one or some of the variables. Again, as mentioned earlier, not for trading....if you use these projections blindly you could lose your shirt, or pants for that matter.

Contemplation

Been working hard lately on a new trading system for stocks, possibly futures as well. As hard as it sometimes seems to be, I have to understand that price movement in one direction doesnt continue on forever. My bad experiece over the years seems to be centered around holding on to equity positions for too long, either watching a bad postion get worse or a good position reverse and evaporate my gains.

To keep things easy I am working on simple moving average two line crossover systems, both simple moving averages and exponential moving averages. I've developed an excel spreadsheet that imports daily data and plots the price charts as well as any combination of price, simple moving average and exponential moving averages. My premise for lazy trading is based on only closing price signals and taking a reversal position on open the following morning. Based on backtesting any of these combinations, the plan is to find the best combo for each stock and use it to get me into or out of positions based on the best results attainable. So far, things look promising, and time be willing, I'll see if I can share it. Fortuneately my skills with excel are such that I can easily changes the variables and see the results instantly. I know, I know, there are probably canned programs out there that will do that for you (Amibroker for sure), but what fun is that when you dont really understand what is going on in the black box. With excel, I can see everything right in front of me.

My idea is to run the system around mostly low priced stocks, under $10, and to take a position each time based upon a fixed amount, maybe $5,000. So, in other words, a $1 stock would be bought or sold at 5,000 shares, a $3 stock at about 1,500 shares. No preference for going long or short would be taken. The whole idea, and where I think the easy money lies, is riding the trends for as long as the system allows me to, without excessive whipsawing. Initially, I think no more than 60% of the entire portfolio should be invested in the system, so that for example, a total $50,000 portfolio would have no more than $30,000 in the system, therefore at $5,000 per trade, no more than 6 positions should be running at a time. All for now, we'll see where this heads and report later. Comments welcomed!

Weekend Update 8-22-10

Aaaaahhh, not so good this week. In fact, rather terrible....lol. Certainly the poor jobs report last thursday took its toll. Considering mixing in some 10 dma offsets into the formula in some fashion to see how that works out. I had no doubt that at some point we would have an epic divergence of the projection and reality, especially considering how large the projection was forecasting an upwave this past week. For now, I'll sit tight and try a few things...maybe some changes next weekend.


Tide chart below.

Weekend Review 8-14-10

Well, the nights are starting to cool off where I am...quite the change from what we have been having. Global warming, huh? Been a great summer weather wise though, so who's complaining?

Below charts sums up where we are at this point in August. Projection still tracking very well...havent made any modifications to the parameters this weekend, think I will stick with what I have for now and see how it handles the projected surge next week. Having said that, watch us go in the hopper for the week...lol.

Tickets have been gotten for the 2011 frozen four in Minneapolis next April...also for our annual trip to the Carribean early next year. Its all pay now, enjoy later. Go ahead and sit on my money for 6 months! Have a wonderful weekend, and hopefully I'll see you next time 150 points higher, though that does seem a bit of a stretch.

Weekend Review 8-7-10

Here are my two main charts for the weekend. The spx projection fell off a bit in the last couple of days but I will stick with the present chart settings and not try to fine tune it now. Interesting week coming up with WWW on wednesday...perfect chance for the market makers to take it down into or around that date, which also fits pretty well tidally speaking. I've been dabbling with some customized stock trading systems, but nothing quite yet to report.

One More Slight Adjustment

This time it's only a one day adjustment of the moving average. Fits extremely well for right now. So, if we have a one day 'shock', do I continue with the present projection or make a one day adjustment? I dont know at this point, decision to made later I guess. What I do know though is that if this model holds up over time, I may have to take it off the board. Seems to me it would be counter productive to make it public....I hope to make money off of it, you, on the other hand, are on your own. :-)

Weekend Stuff - 7/30/10

Here's the weekly tide chart. Supposedly a top coming up mid week, but if you check the composite tide-clx chart below, no such top will be found. Based on only two weeks of history, I have to go with the composite chart.



The new moving average used in my composite clx-tide charts seems to be working quite impressively. Of course, we havent had much in the way of volatility in this time span. What will be most interesting is how it holds up when the averages really start to move. I have to believe that the projection chart will not mimic these one day shocks we often get in the market, but we'll see. Having fun with it....just watching, comparing and shaking my head in awe. BTW, I have increased my long positions in anticipation of the August projections. We'll see how that turns out.

Mid Week Tweak

A small calibration change has been made to the projection model and seems to fit very well, at least for now. Basically I changed a moving average by 3 days and the results look like this. Lets see how it holds up for the next week or so.

I Meant to Add

Based on the results of the first week of spx projection, there will be no need to make any adjustments or calibrations at this time. I am sure as time passes here that some baseline adjusting will be needed, but for now, we sit tight and watch.

Just pondering here, but wouldnt it be nice if it is possible to mirror the spx movements with relatively good success in the future? Consider the opportunities. ;-)

Tidal Trend Update and SPX Projection Results

Below is the weekly tidal trend chart and the first week results of my spx projections based upon, in case you havent been paying attention, DW's clx model and my tidal model (see below). I wont elaborate on how the two are mixed at this point.

Tidally speaking, we should have entered a short weekly downtrend at the end of this week...but apparently no so based on friday's numbers. I think bears call it market manipulation or something similar:) More on the boys fingerprints on the markets later.

Well, first week of projecting the market I have to say was even more successful than I could have possibly hoped for. Other than the obvious take down of the market on wednesday afternoon and subsequent re-launch of the snp futures in the wee hours of thursday morning (check it out for yourself - the boys were hard at work), it appears our projection were spot on. Obvious that they wanted to clear out some long stops before what they have ahead of us. A word of caution, before you start trading off this model, lets give it some time for observation....there is such a thing as beginners luck...in any event, very encouraging start, lets see where it goes from here. It is said no one can project the markets and I believe that, but that doesnt prevent some of us trying. :-)

Weekend Update and Projection

I'll throw these two charts out there without commentary as I am about to head to Boston to take in a Sox game. Beautiful day, should be fun....hope yours is as fun as mine.

Something Experimental

That I just started working on below. It's a projection of the SPX for about 30 days ahead. Very, very experimental at this point...based on some input from Don Wolanchuks clx and my tide data. It looks ahead using his offsets combined with the cycles from the tidal data. I am sure I will need to calibrate the projections as time goes on because right now I have no idea how far out of calibration they might be. Anyway, I'll keep ya posted on a weekly basis and we can just watch any maybe learn something in the process. Tally ho ole chap!

Weekend Update 7-11-10

Back to inverted trends already? Does look like it. I still think we go up here at least to the end of August or early into September based on the tides. And there's more evidence but thats for a later time. Please excuse the lack of posts...been a very, very busy summer with way too many projects going on. Its what keeps us sane though, I guess.

Weekend Update 6-25-10

Let's see what the bulls got, if anything here. Can't really say its do or die time for them quite yet, but its quickly approaching. Probably one spark of good news would do the trick, but who really knows. Myself? Watching, with caution. Good to see the markets back in synch with the tides at any rate.

Weekend Update 6-20-10

Interesting that we have a turn on the longest day of the year. And it's supposed to be a high. For the bulls, I think it may be important that this next trend get inverted from down to up. If it happens I expect it to really begin a run to the upside. If not, well we can look for more garbage.