Sunday, June 29, 2008

Open positions for June 30

It’s been a volatile week which sadly ended badly. TSYS is about to sell today due to stop loss. IRETS is not looking very good as well and hopefully it will recover during the week. If you followed SATC you probably saw how volatile its behavior has been.

Here is the status of my current holdings:

Symbol Entry Date Entry Price Current Price Profit %
RCCC 22/01/2008 44.13 44.57 1.00
SATC 05/05/2008 1.86 3.01 61.83
GILT 27/05/2008 10.79 10.87 0.74
IRETS 9/6/2008 10.37 9.64 -7.04
TSYS 16/6/2008 5.19 4.61 -11.18
EPMD 23/6/2008 2.97 2.99 0.67

Monday, June 23, 2008

Buy signal for June 23rd

A new buy signal was received from the system for EP MedSystems (EPMD).

If you’ll look at the chart below you can see it had a major move 11 weeks ago where it gained around 84%. Despite the steep climb the stock has seen higher prices.

image

I intend to buy EPMD during the next trading day.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Open positions for June 23rd

Here is the status of my current holdings:

Symbol Entry Date Entry Price Current Price Profit %
RCCC 22/01/2008 44.13 44.79 1.50
SATC 05/05/2008 1.86 3.29 76.88
GILT 27/05/2008 10.79 10.85 0.56
IRETS 9/6/2008 10.37 10.35 -0.19
TSYS 16/6/2008 5.19 4.87 -6.17

Thursday, June 19, 2008

How to make sure you’re in a trend?

My system tries to identify whether the market is currently in a trend. For the human eye discovering whether the market or a specific stock is in a trend is relatively easy. Just look at the graph and if the line goes up or down then chances are it is in a trend.

Discovering whether the stock is in trend helps filter the signals generated when the trend is opposite to your system’s trend. I.e if I build a system which trade only bullish market, I need to disregard all trades generated when the stock was in a bearish move.

When building a computerized system things become a bit complicated and my way of overcoming this problem was to measure the values of two close prices, one for the current day and one in the past x days. If the current’s day closing price was higher than the closing price of the other closing price I assumed I’m in a bullish period.

Running a test for this rule did eliminate lots of false trades however, I encountered another problem. There were times when the closing price of the current day was higher than the closing price of the previous measured period but only due to a peak in the price. Meaning, the stock was in the opposite trend but the system used two prices which gave resulted in a false signal. The way I overcome this problem was to measure the two periods on a moving average of the closing price rather on the price itself.

image

That did the trick. obviously you would need to find the right period for the moving average since using small period will make the moving average act like the closing price series and large period might be too slow and the system can miss the trend or enter too late.

image

If you have any other questions about computerized system, please let me know.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Buy Signal for June 16th

A new buy signal for TeleCommunication Systems (TSYS) has been given by the system. I plan to buy the stock today.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Open positions for June 16th

Last week encouraged me to the reason I decided to work in weekly timeframe. Last week movements for SATC were as follow:

Monday: –9%
Tuesday: 1.45%
Wednesday: -3%
Thursday: 10%
Friday: –1.68%

Week change: –3.3%

Working on a daily timeframe would not do good to my nerves but when you look at the picture from  a week point of view the damage is not so bad.

Here is the status of my current holdings:

Symbol Entry Date Entry Price Current Price Profit %
RCCC 22/01/2008 44.13 44.77 1.45
SATC 05/05/2008 1.86 2.92 56.99
GILT 27/05/2008 10.79 10.83 0.37
IRETS 9/6/2008 10.37 10.21 -1.54

Monday, June 9, 2008

Buy signal for June 9th

A new buy signal for Investors Real Estate Trust (IRETS) has been given by the system. I plan to buy the stock today.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Open positions for June 9th

ASE is going private with ASE Test (ASTSF) and the stock was removed from the NASDAQ. This has happened early in the previous week. At the moment I still see the stock in my active positions but am unable to sell it. When I called my broker I was told it may take several days so I’m still waiting.

Here is the status of my current holdings:

Symbol Entry Date Entry Price Current Price Profit %
RCCC 22/01/2008 44.13 44.70 1.29
SATC 05/05/2008 1.86 3.02 62.37
ASTSF 05/05/2008 14.59 14.77 1.23
GILT 27/05/2008 10.79 10.90 1.02

Friday, June 6, 2008

Bull or bear, who cares?

This post has been written following Trader Narrative’s great post about the financial stock leadership.

It may sound a bit harsh but I believe the definition of market status should not influence the average trader. The average trader doesn’t buy the market, he buys stocks which can perform quite differently from the market.

Lets take as an example SATC which is currently in my portfolio. I bought SATC four weeks ago and the stock has gained 68% since. At the same time the NASDAQ barley made 2.9%.

image

Other example of a signal that was profitable in 2007 is SQNM with 71%. The stock was bought in late August 2007 and was held up to February 2008.

The point I’m trying to make is the market will always have good bargains for a trader who knows where to look no matter whether the pundits consider it bearish or bullish.

The table below shows a simulation on the NASDAQ since the beginning of 2007

Symbol Entry Date Entry Price Exit Date Exit Price % Change MAE % MFE %
SPPR 03/01/2007 6.35 09/07/2007 7.82 23.25 -4.18 26.22
FCTR 03/01/2007 23.46 26/02/2007 23.96 2.14 -4.87 2.34
DSCM 03/01/2007 3.66 08/01/2007 3.29 -10 -10 0
IMMR 08/01/2007 6.94 16/07/2007 19.3 178.1 -3.31 197.98
ECGI 08/01/2007 2.55 16/07/2007 3.27 28.24 -1.96 59.61
IIJI 08/01/2007 8.74 09/04/2007 9.79 12.01 -4.69 18.76
CSLR 08/01/2007 5.2 26/02/2007 5.49 5.58 -20.58 26.35
RELL 08/01/2007 8.74 26/02/2007 9.08 3.92 -6.69 10.87
SABA 08/01/2007 6.84 12/03/2007 6.16 -10 -10 13.3
CHUX 16/01/2007 21.24 26/02/2007 21.49 1.16 -7.6 4.77
CKSW 26/03/2007 3.42 01/10/2007 5.5 60.82 -17.84 97.66
ALSK 26/03/2007 14.11 09/07/2007 15.04 6.57 -3.82 14.47
HOLL 26/03/2007 4.38 07/05/2007 4.53 3.42 -5.48 8.45
QADI 26/03/2007 9.1 14/05/2007 8.69 -4.55 -15.37 10.5
CNST 26/03/2007 9.96 26/03/2007 8.96 -10 -13.76 0
PESI 02/04/2007 2.31 06/08/2007 2.8 21.21 -7.79 47.19
PCTI 16/04/2007 9.99 29/05/2007 9.2 -7.92 -10.27 3.39
XOMA 21/05/2007 3.3 09/07/2007 3.13 -5.15 -12.42 6.97
RADS 29/05/2007 13.16 03/12/2007 15.77 19.83 -6.46 39.29
ALTI 04/06/2007 3.19 13/08/2007 3.35 5.02 -12.23 28.21
CALD 16/07/2007 8.92 17/09/2007 8.44 -5.38 -8.74 13.34
STBA 23/07/2007 32.12 24/09/2007 33.17 3.27 -9.95 10.25
ASYT 23/07/2007 7.4 30/07/2007 6.66 -10 -10 0
IMGN 23/07/2007 5.63 23/07/2007 5.07 -10 -21.85 0
CEVA 23/07/2007 9.02 06/08/2007 8.12 -10 -10 0.22
ACTU 13/08/2007 6.34 31/12/2007 7.94 25.24 -8.68 41.8
SQNM 27/08/2007 4.81 19/02/2008 8.26 71.73 -1.25 141.79
ARTG 27/08/2007 3.1 14/01/2008 3.96 27.74 -11.61 56.13
BABY 27/08/2007 16.83 10/09/2007 15.15 -10 -10 0
CHKP 04/09/2007 23.31 05/11/2007 24.51 5.15 -4.8 14.93
PCOP 17/09/2007 5.68 29/10/2007 5.73 0.88 -10.92 7.39
INTV 24/09/2007 9.41 10/12/2007 9.05 -3.83 -11.9 17.22
CYTX 01/10/2007 6.05 12/11/2007 5.45 -10 -10 7.44
SNWL 08/10/2007 9.53 07/01/2008 9.85 3.36 -8.81 20.99
DYII 05/11/2007 6.13 12/11/2007 5.57 -9.12 -9.12 7.5
CTGX 19/11/2007 4.72 14/01/2008 4.36 -7.52 -7.52 28.18
IDEV 19/11/2007 7.33 31/12/2007 6.65 -9.26 -9.26 5.05
TQNT 26/11/2007 5.86 07/01/2008 5.27 -10 -10 20.82
RCCC 24/12/2007 44.35 Open Open 1.01 -3.47 1.08
SATC 28/04/2008 1.83 Open Open 61.2 -1.09 63.39
GILT 19/05/2008 10.88 Open Open 0.09 -1.38 1.47

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Links of the week

  • John Forman of The Essentials of Trading share with us why sticking with your method is the best thing you can do.
  • Brett Steenbarger launched new blog for his new book.
  • Advisory Group write a column analyzing guru’s performance. This time they analyze the “fast money” gurus and apparently they don’t excel in making fast money or as Advisory Group put it:
    ”In summary, the Fast Money experts probably do not offer fast money with their stock picks, but they do as a group mostly outperform the broad stock market over the short term during recent months. The sample is not long enough to determine whether the outperformance is peculiar to recent market conditions.”

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Open positions for June 2nd

NUCO was acquired by Aurora Capital Group and the stock was removed from the NASDAQ. This has happed before and since my system cannot follow the stock anymore I am forced to exit the position on the next trading day.

Here is the status of my current holdings:

Symbol Entry Date Entry Price Current Price Profit %
RCCC 22/01/2008 44.13 44.76 1.43
SATC 05/05/2008 1.86 2.88 54.84
ASTSF 05/05/2008 14.59 14.77 1.23
NUCO 19/05/2008 29.56 29.77 0.71
GILT 27/05/2008 10.79 10.99 1.85