Stock Blog

On February 15 I took a look at the trading account I started tracking on Covestor in August 2007. What is being tracked is a combination of a couple of IRAs which total about $70,500 at inception -- not a huge amount, but was using it to test some strategies and start creating an online track record. Now starting in about the middle of 2008 I didn't put as much emphasis on this account; one, there weren't that many opportunities to be long stocks during period, and two, there was so much turmoil... [Read More]

Yesterday I took a look at the trading account I started tracking on Covestor in August 2007. What is being tracked is a combination of a couple of IRAs which total about $70,500 at inception -- not a huge amount, but was using it to test some strategies and start creating an online track record. Now starting in about the middle of 2008 I didn't put as much emphasis on this account; one, there weren't that many opportunities to be long stocks during period, and two, there was so much turmoil... [Read More]

2008 was a year I'll remember vividly in my trading career, and certainly NOT because I made lots of money in the markets.

It is human nature to look for the holy grail, and traders -- professional or amateur -- are no exception. We all deep down would love to find that one indicator or system that will open the coffers to a lifetime of easy profits. Well, I didn't find the grail, and I probably never will, but that doesn't mean I didn't learn some valuable lessons; moreover, I am absolutely... [Read More]

2008 was a year I'll remember vividly in my trading career, and certainly NOT because I made lots of money in the markets.

It is human nature to look for the holy grail, and traders -- professional or amateur -- are no exception. We all deep down would love to find that one indicator or system that will open the coffers to a lifetime of easy profits. Well, I didn't find the grail, and I probably never will, but that doesn't mean I didn't learn some valuable lessons; moreover, I am absolutely... [Read More]

How do you go about selecting stocks?

That always seems to be the million dollar question. "Do you use a stock picking strategy for your longer term holdings? You do? Why bother? You do know that nobody beats the market, right. Do you know that 80% of fund investors do not beat the S&P? Why wouldn't you buy a low fee index fund and get out of the way?"

Fair enough. Who can argue with that? We always know what investing in the S&P 500 would have gotten us, versus investing with a mutual fund... [Read More]

How do you go about selecting stocks?

That always seems to be the million dollar question. "Do you use a stock picking strategy for your longer term holdings? You do? Why bother? You do know that nobody beats the market, right. Do you know that 80% of fund investors do not beat the S&P? Why wouldn't you buy a low fee index fund and get out of the way?"

Fair enough. Who can argue with that? We always know what investing in the S&P 500 would have gotten us, versus investing with a mutual fund... [Read More]

As I got started into active trading and started to develop my trading style and specific strategies, I spent hundreds of hours and read dozens of books on the subject. Here are two traders that have some great resources out there in the form of books and websites.

How Markets Really Work: A Quantitative Guide to Stock Market Behavior, by Larry Connors.
All traders wonder if the setups they use actually make you money...breakouts, momentum, trend, counter-trend, sentiment, volatility, high volume... [Read More]

As I got started into active trading and started to develop my trading style and specific strategies, I spent hundreds of hours and read dozens of books on the subject. Here are two traders that have some great resources out there in the form of books and websites.

How Markets Really Work: A Quantitative Guide to Stock Market Behavior, by Larry Connors.
All traders wonder if the setups they use actually make you money...breakouts, momentum, trend, counter-trend, sentiment, volatility, high volume... [Read More]

Rules for the Knish system (as of December, 2007)

Knish is a mean reversion system, looking to capitalize on stocks ready for a quick rebound after being "overly stretched downward".

Entry. Knish uses two methods to determine potential trade entries:
1) A streak. You may enter the day after five consecutive down days, with the condition that the difference of yesterday's close (Bar) and the previous day's close (Bar - 1) is greater than the day before yesterday's close (Bar - 1) and the close of the... [Read More]

Rules for the Beeks system (as of January 2008)

Beeks is a primarily a momentum system, which looks for stocks in an uptrend...but at the same time is a shorter term countertrend system, looking for stocks that have taken a quick breather, attempting to get back in as the stock gets its second wind and takes off on that next leg up.

Entry criteria:

• Stock must be behaving well; that is, RSI needs to be in "overbought" range at some point over the last month.
• The stock then needs to have slowed, as... [Read More]