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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ted Jackson who wrote (22329)	11/20/1997 11:16:00 PM
From: Meathead	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Ted - yes, repeatable patterns are an observation of the human emotions, hope, greed and fear. Charting is somewhat of a perpetual academic study in this area. Someone just posted (I forget who) that during Dell's recent decline and partial rebound, those who didn't get out on the first leg down got out on the rebound, those who got in at the bottom took quick profits on the rally. Charting does glean some insight into this behavior and that's why I don't totally discount it's use as a predictive tool, but it's only useful it certain situations for the highly skilled true believers. Someone else mentioned TA's self fulfilling nature. This also has some merit. Anyone who's studied charts has undoubtedly noticed how stocks seem to have an uncanny ability to bounce off of their 200 day MA. I have to side with Paul however. Statistically, this stuff is insignificant and you'd be better served focusing on the mechanics of your trading strategy (his vegas analogy was a good example). Can you run Dell through OmniTrader's system to see if you can go long and short over it's history and come out ahead of just staying long? I haven't found such a system for this particular stock. I know that for stocks which generally don't trend often (that is, stay in trading ranges), it's easy to tune a set of indicators through backtesting to yield awesome results... unfortunately, your'e only very accurately predicting history <g>. MEATHEAD

To: Ted Jackson who wrote (22329)	11/20/1997 11:29:00 PM
From: Chuzzlewit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Ted, as I said before, I am willing to be convinced. Therefore, I propose the following test. Choose some arbitrary time limit -- say two weeks. Select two portfolios of ten stocks each using the software, one short and one long. "Trades" will be made the next day at the average price for the day, and all positions will be closed in two weeks. At the end of two weeks let's test the results from a strict statistical perspective. Regards, Paul