Some Blog Site

Last week, I posted the results of a week of gathering stock picks from a technical analysis site. This week, I am posting the results of the second week of that effort. This week shows how those stocks have fared a week later, without any changes to the portfolio.

Also, I corrected the earlier numbers. The values for 2 Days, 3 Days, and 1 Week were added instead of averaged, so the returns were greater than they should have been (e.g. 5 stocks returning 5% each does not mean you will get a 25% return). That error does not affect the results in that the point of the exercise is to compare analysis methods. As long as the methods were compared using the same calculations, the comparison will be valid. But the error would affect the secondary part of the exercise, which is to see how the analysis methods perform against the market itself.

So here are the this week’s results:

NASDAQ

NYSE

This is not an offer to buy or sell any securities. Any information on this site is general in nature and is not intended to be financial advice for your specific situation. Trading stocks carries risks that should be discussed with a professional financial advisor. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Use at your own risk. This post was written in a facility that processes peanuts.

“He who increases his wealth by interest and usury Gathers it for him who is gracious to the poor.”
– Proverbs 28:8

Thus begins a recurring feature here at Some Blog Site – an analysis of Technical Analysis.

For those who don’t know, Technical Analysis is the study of stock charts and the process of choosing which stocks to buy based on what the price has done and is doing, not necessarily using any other information about the company.

I used the Stocks Scans page from stockcharts.com. It lists a table of the various exchanges versus the various indicators. I had seen these and wondered how well they worked. So I thought I would chart the results for a while, rather than experimenting with my money. This series of posts will update how well the various indicators are doing over time.

I limited the experiment to only the NASDAQ and NYSE. I’m sure there are some stocks or funds to be had at the other exchanges too, but I wanted to keep the experiment simple. Each day for a week, I would run the scans and collect which stocks were listed for that day. After the scans were run, I removed the stocks that were either below $1 in price or below 50,000 shares of daily volume. I used the closing price as the purchase price, and added the stock to the list of stocks in the imaginary portfolio. If an indicator were bullish or “Buy”, then the portfolio would pretend to buy the stock. If an indicator were bearish or “Sell”, then the portfolio would pretend to short sell the stock.

At the end of each day, I would also collect the closing prices of all stocks in the portfolio. These were compared to the purchase price to get the gain for the period. After the one week was done, I stopped adding stocks to the portfolio. But from here on out, those existing stocks will be tracked and the performance of the technical indicators will be observed.

This chart is not not exactly represenative for various reasons.
1. The stock scans are run at the end of each trading day. Therefore the purchase price that this chart uses is the closing price. But after the market closes, you can’t buy the stock at that price anymore.
2. The stocks are not weighted. So a $10 stock is going to have ten times the influence that a $1 stock does. This is not ideal, and does not represent how I would likely invest.
3. The indicators may need to be tracked for more than one week. Some indicators may oscillate, showing buy a stock one week and sell it the next. That means that the longer I continue this comparison, the less representative it will be.

NASDAQ

NYSE

This is not an offer to buy or sell any securities. Any information on this site is general in nature and is not intended to be financial advice for your specific situation. Trading stocks carries risks that should be discussed with a professional financial advisor. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Use at your own risk. This post was written in a facility that processes peanuts.

“Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest.”
– Matthew 25:27

It is the end of May, and I have not received my economic stimulus tax rebate check. According to what the IRS said, I should have received my money a few weeks ago. But I did, last week, receive a letter from the IRS saying that I will get some money. Not the money itself, just a letter describing the money.

Lewis Black had a comedy routine about this the last time there was an economic stimulus rebate thingy (around 2001). And I have to agree with him. Why not, instead of mailing people letters telling them they’re going to receive checks, just put the checks in the letters? That would save people some annoyance and save the government some money. How much money? It cost the IRS $42 million to send letters without checks in them.

“For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing.”
– Romans 13:6

 I have switched things around slightly.  Now the financial calulators have their own page, for better organization and cleaner names. 

“Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE,” says the Lord. “AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN; And I will welcome you.”
 – 2 Corinthians 6:17

The best way to get rid of debt is to pay it off. Another way to pay it off faster, other than rounding a payment up to the nearest hundreds, is to participate in a bi-weekly payment schedule instead of the normal monthly payment schedule.

To see the effects of paying 26 half payments instead of 12 full payments, try the bi-weekly payment calculator, which I added to this site today.

“So we built the wall and the whole wall was joined together to half its {height,} for the people had a mind to work.”
– Nehemiah 4:6

The best way to get rid of debt is to pay it off. The best way I’ve found to pay it off faster is to round up your payments to a nice number. In my case, I round to the next hundreds place, but you could round to the next tens place or thousands place, depending on your situation.

To see the effects of paying more than the minimum amount each month, try the loan acceleration calculator, which I added to this site this past weekend.

“Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.”
– Matthew 5:41

Recent news articles have mentioned that recent stock prices have been volatile. Or you’ll hear about the stock market’s being volatile. I always understood that to mean that the prices changed rapidly.

One example of that is Virgin Mobile (ticker symbol VM). I bought that stock upon a recommendation from a previously reliable person. I bought at $5.something on 3/27/08 and the stock is now at $2.13 (4/3/08) . Now that I have owned VM, I recall hearing my high school chemistry teacher tell me that volatile means “evaporates readily.” And that is a fitting description of my VM stock.

“Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”
– James 4:14