Technical Trader subscribers click here to download the complete report.
The extra layer of screens that I instituted for swing trade chart picks last week, and a cooperative market, paid off in a big way.
The list had been empty for two weeks after the market shook me out of a slew of earlier short picks that were just a tad too early. I added 9 picks as of the open last Tuesday, all on the short side.
At Friday’s close the average gain was 9.5% and the average holding period was 4 calendar days! That’s all cash, no margin, no options, no leverage of any kind. It more than reverses the battle I lost with my own stupidity at the turn of the year.
Although maybe it wasn’t stupidity. As it turned out, those short picks would have been huge winners had I just stayed asleep for another couple of weeks, Rip Van Winkle like.
Meanwhile, last week was by far the best weekly record since I began this experiment for you a couple of years ago. Considering that the S&P 500 lost 5.7% on the week, I’ll allow for some self back-patting after my self-flagellation of prior weeks. Let’s face it, sometimes the market whips us. That’s why they’re called whipsaws. First they whip you. Then they saw you in half.
Please, no calls from trading rights activists. No actual trades are harmed in the performance of these lab experiments. Results have not been peer reviewed nor replicated under real world conditions. If you attempt to replicate these experiments, your results may differ.
Daily Data Table (subscriber version only).The raw daily data for last week as a whole tilted to the sell side, which would seem obvious. But it wasn’t lopsided. There’s no sign of massive capitulation or widespread downside thrust either.
I must assume that this means that this selloff can get a lot worse. That’s not carved in stone of course, but I want to be open to the possibility, and not cut off the profit potential of an extended decline by setting trailing stops too tight.
Screening on all days of the week, as opposed to just Friday is an extra layer of work that allows me to see the progression of short term sell signals on every one of over 10,000 stocks on the NYSE and Nadsac. I had been running just Friday’s screens, in the belief that once a week was enough. But the results were ragged. So I went to daily screens with the added filter of a Friday re-screen on the charts that qualified.
The next step is to take all the stocks that had signals on any day during the week, and run the buys through a re-screen for buy signals on Friday, and the sells through another screen for sell signals on Friday. That resulted in a buy side screen on the 85 charts that had had one or more buy signals over the prior 5 sessions. The final sell side screen was run on the 122 charts with prior daily sell signals.
Those final screens for Friday resulted in 21 charts with buy signals and 46 with sell signals. The buy setups looked like they might be candidates for dead cat bounces after mostly getting slaughtered last week. No thanks. I’ll leave them off this week. This is not about grabbing quick pops.
The sells had mostly been beaten to death. They could get worse, but they might also have vicious 2 day spike rallies from already deeply extended positions. No thanks to those, too. But there were two that weren’t so extended and looked to be early in downturns. I added those to the list as you can see on the table below (subscriber version only), and in the charts that follow.
Meanwhile, I added trailing stops to the 9 charts already on the list. These have daily price adjustments as shown, with Monday’s starting stop price, minus the reduction per day thereafter.
The table and charts of open and new picks are below (subscriber version only).
Technical Trader subscribers click here to download the complete report.
The strategy and tactics opinions expressed in this report illustrate one particular approach to trading. No representation is made that it is the best approach, or even suitable for any particular investor.
These picks are illustrative and theoretical. Nothing in this report is meant as individual investment advice and you should not construe it as such. Trade at your own risk.
