Hey there ralfphie boy
Welcome back from the cold, rain, and wind. Did you find any snow to play in? Those might not have been the best three days for outside living. But, yesterday had me singin’ “Summertime” as I drove through town with the sun pouring in the open window and saw West Coast Amusements set up in a parking lot. I love hearing Gershwin’s bass line in my head as I’m driving along lost in song...and they figure cell phones are a distraction...and they are.
“The stock game has driven me to nap mode. Nuthin I touch has moved much in months.”
Yeah, I was getting the market blahs for quite awhile too until I decided to quit looking for (but not entirely) stocks that may be going up and decided instead to find the ones that are definitely going down fast. I had to slap myself around a bit until it started to make sense. But, it really livens things up, and I’ve found it to be quite pedictable and profitable. For me, it makes sense, I love the rush of the shorter-term trade. I wouldn’t bring it up ‘cause everybody’s trading, unless they want to offer some info, is their own business and style but since you were saying that you are getting bored, here’s my offering for a possible method of beating the boredom. You’ve mentioned bounces before, I figure you’re an advocate, so this is probably preachin’ to the choir.
This is basically the thing I was ramblin’ on about while we were breaking bread at the garden designed for that purpose. It’s loosely based on the work of Ken Wolff’s Dumper strategy Message 4571285 and one of Vic Sperandeo’s observations as well as some Russian guy on SI who talks about the dual reality of the marketplace and a few other folks. Trader Vic’s notion is that if a stock has gone down for 3 days in an intermediate uptrend, the odds of it going up the next day are 94.4%. I’ve found that this strategy is not particularly suited for the market we are in now though—my papertrading numbers were markedly different— his data are taken over a very long term but still it’s not today’s market. I keep running the MetaStock filter that I’ve written for these stocks every day but they really don’t produce much, usually the gains aren’t high enough to interest me, but I’ve found a few of them there over time.
Monitoring my setup of the intraday real time MarketView filter in StockWatch with Wolff’s version of the “dead cat bounce” in mind has been giving me good consistent results for Toronto stocks for some time now. I look for a good number of trades in a freshly beaten up stock for liquidity and then just use common sense on the house positions, intraday and interday TA charts, and board sentiment and such to see if I should trade it, leave it, or monitor it. Occasionally, they match up with Sperandeo and I get in a litle bigger. It takes practice and patience to figure out where to get in and out (they’re mostly swing trades but I’ve done ‘em shorter). I tried to catch a few knives at first and also missed some good opportunities, but over the last year and a bit I’ve refined it a lot until it is second nature now.
Basically though, it is just common sense, trying to find the reason for the fall and calculating how much of an overreaction there has been for a possible upside ride. The tools I’m using are just over a hundred bucks a month but I figure it’s well worth the price, it comes back pretty fast. WM is the latest one I worked that way (I posted as much here earlier this week). I just got out of it today for a 22 cent profit on a decent sized position. It could go higher but the odds are getting shorter and I need a few bucks for tipping the waitresses down at the Buccaneer this weekend as we sing Barrett’s Privateers and such incidentals. It'll be good to get out, haven't done that for a long time. I may even be talked into havin' a beer or two.
I know your schedule is hectic during most of the trading day but I find that if I show patience and only get in when I’m relatively sure of what’s happening, I can keep a carving project going in the corner at the same time as I’m trading. I put in an ask as soon as I’ve made the buy, et voila, it works for me.
Of course, it’s really just a dead cat bounce that I’m overly explain’ here but this is how I’m working it and I’ve got 10 bouncy cats to feed. Anyway, just an idea, or the seed of one, for something to do until the sectors change with some commitment, or until help comes. Longer term though I’m holding my gold positions and adding a bit from time to time. None of this is making me rich, but it also buys a lot of dogfood for the dog who eats more than the 10 cats; and my teenager who eats more than the dog. It keeps everybody smilin’ and chewin’.
Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you, have you heard of the Ifield pump? Probably eh? It’s been around for quite awhile but I just came across it. It was invented by Frankie Ifield’s dad...ah you’re too young to remember him, Frankie that is, not his dad. I found a webpage awhile ago that I’ve since misplaced about (I think it was) Navigator using it in one of their models. Essentially, it is a hydraulic pump that stores energy put into it by anything that can rotate. Well, the drive shaft in cars rotate so when we use our brakes this thing also grabs the driveshaft and then stores the energy. It gives it back to the driveshaft (computer regulated of course) and away ya go. It also saves up to 70% wear on the brakes if I remember right. I think they claimed that you can get up to 20 miles per hour just on the pump itself, depending on how long and hard you’ve been braking. Hmmm...we wouldn’t need as much oil then would we? Zeus, you could get better mileage in the city than in the country.
Happy trails
Lenny
EDIT...and Eureka, I’ve just found it...it’s called the SHEP for Stored Hydaulic Energy Propulsion. It’s an interesting concept, not for investing (for me anyway) but to know that somebody out there is thinking of how to use existing technology. |
