Hello All,
Another newby here emerging from lurker status. I've read through all 10,000+ messages on this thread, which has been keeping me busy lately. Reading through those messages at an accelerated pace makes me feel kind of like I know you all, if that makes any sense. So maybe I should introduce myself by telling you some things about myself.
My "day job" is software developer/consultant. My investment philosophy has meandered over the years. I started off reading the financial pages and WSJ, trying to puzzle through how people know what to invest in. Then I did read some books and other materials, and did invest successfully in some mutual funds, and took one or two small stock positions. I read a couple Peter Lynch FA books, and ended up in an investment club.
The club did well for awhile, but then began to slide. We didn't cut our losses in stocks, and we didn't know when to take profits. Unfortunately, my personal stock portfolio suffered some of the same problems, especially since I invested in some of the same stocks as the club. The club is still around, but people aren't so keen to participate any more, and membership is dwindling.
Through some people in the club, I got my first tastes of real TA, even though it was discouraged from official use in the club (we loosely follow NAIC guidelines). I picked up Metastock 6.0, then upgraded to 6.5. Honestly, I didn't make very good use of it for quite some time because it all seemed pretty overwhelming, and I didn't have a good data provider for awhile.
I tried to save money and built programs to grab stock quote information off of various websites, but it dawned on me that that wasn't an effective use of my time, and I ended up signing up for QP2. I've been quite happy with QP2, and was actually content just using the QP2 charting program for awhile. The ability to switch between chart layouts with just a push of a button is quite nice, and I spent many hours playing with different indicators, saving different chart templates, etc. My favorite charts have the price on a semi-log scale with the MACD indicator, either weekly or daily. Eyeballing the charts, MACD seems to do quite a good job showing the big moves. I also played with scans a bit, and output to Metastock, but mostly stuck with the QP2 charting program for awhile. I also liked being able to pull up any stock's chart quickly. Since I'm an NT user, I cannot use the QP2 virtual program, so it's a bit more of a hassle to pull up a random stock in Metastock.
I'd stumbled upon the TA Beginner's thread awhile back, and started going through it, printing the gems. It quickly became apparent that printing them out wouldn't be the best approach for me. So I started copying and pasting them into a series of text files (mostly chronological) that I built up. It took a long time, but I finally made my way through all 10,000+ messages.
There were some disappointments along the way, with various people who got on and threatened to ruin it for everybody. When I got to the part where Richard, Dave, and Andy announced they were departing, it was a pretty big letdown. I'm glad you guys reconsidered, and I realize why you did what you did. I for one am glad for the time and effort that you dedicate to this thread. Especially picturing Richard typing everything with one finger -- amazing!
I feel I've gotten quite an education from reading through these messages, and look forward to rereading some of them again & again. I started to make some trades using some of the what I learned on this thread. I didn't have the patience to paper trade because I felt like I've been sitting on cash for too long already. As you might expect, after a brief rise, each one of them headed south, and I used a mental stop to get out. There's only one I'm left holding now, JAKK.
I'm still not sure I have the patience to sit by and papertrade for a long period of time, but at least I did also learn a couple valuable lessons:
1. Act upon the indicators immediately, not several days afterwards. Even if you do want to get back into the market badly. [None of the stocks I bought had had signals immediately, so I fell back to looking for buy signals in the recent past.]
2. Use system test to test the system out, and use that as a starting point to start tailoring it to your individual needs.
Now I subscribe to IBD, and have been keying in the weekend review lists, and sifting through those. I don't currently have a system, but plan to work on one now that I've caught up here. I've been lurking on the Metastock mailing list for a long time, mostly just archiving the messages and not reading them.
I'm sorry I missed the various TAOxx events. It sounds like they were quite educational, and a lot of fun as well. I did see some pictures on Sean's website, so at least I can match some faces with some names now. I'm hoping these events continue, and I can join in. Heck, I'm overdue for a vacation...
Anyhow, that's where I'm currently at. I figured now that I've caught up reading, I ought to step out of the shadows and introduce myself. I've read through O'Neil and Technical Analysis Explained. I'm planning on purchasing & reading through a bunch more books from Richard's list. I'm finally using Metastock like it's meant to be used, and just starting to tap some of its power. Someday I hope to use profits from trades to purchase other packages, such as Advanced GET and TechniFilter+ which both seem to be quite highly regarded here.
I'm not sure what my "timeframe" is. From reading through messages here, it seems like one of the first things an individual is supposed to do is to figure out whether they are a short-term, intermediate-term, or long-term trader. My gut response would be to say that I'm an intermediate-term trader, but really I think I want to focus more on maximal returns, without having devote extreme amounts of time & effort. I have no desire to daytrade right now, but just review my investments nightly. If Dahl does indeed yield a better return than a shorter-term system, then it seems counterproductive to insist upon using the shorter-term system, just to provide more trading excitement. I realize it's more complicated than that, and I have to take into consideration time out of the market, and what the cash would be doing during that time. But I hope to be able to factor that in to the decisionmaking process.
Regards,
Alex |
