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Strategies & Market Trends
January Effect 2004
An SI Board Since December 2003
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Emcee:  Q. Type:  Unmoderated
Low-priced stocks have their best performance, by far, during the first 10 weeks of the year.

Those that move up most strongly have the following typical profile:
* small market cap
* low stock price
* low RS for last 12 months
* low RS in last few weeks of year, due to tax loss selling
* owned primarily by individuals

The purpose of this thread is to identify stocks that meet these criteria.

I will follow this mechanical timing formula:
* Buy halfway between Christmas and New Years.
* Sell everything by the first Friday in February, or as early as the first week of January if the January Effect (and preceding tax-loss selling) is particularly strong or weak.
This timing is based on historical average charts for low-priced stocks and on my experience in recent years.

I'll avoid:
- companies that are so unhealthy that they could go BK at any time, including stocks with terribly negative working capital and cash burn, and mfg. co.'s with a debt/mkt cap > 2
- BB stocks
- thin stocks

Similar threads I started the last four years were:

January Effect 1999
Subject 24490
My return, net of trading costs, was +11%, vs. nil for the Russell 2000. Here's my final report:
Message 7737621

January Effect 2000
Subject 32350
My return, net of trading costs, was +17% vs. +10.6% for the Russell 2000. Here's my final report:
Message 12781974

January Effect 2001
Subject 50376
My return, before trading costs, was +29.7% vs. +3.6% for the Russell 2000, assuming all stocks were bought on the last day of trading. Here's my final report:
Message 15290866
In retrospect, the optimal time to buy in December 2000 was about halfway between Christmas and New Years Day. By buying one day before the last trading day of the year, my portfolio would have returned +36.3% on paper, as compared to +29.7% for buying on the last day.
Midland, another poster on that thread, posted his picks and reported a return of +111%, net of 1 cent/share commissions, or +94% if all buys were done on the last day of trading in the year:
Message 15296872
He attributed his superior results to several factors in his stock-picking method:
Message 15297778
He also suggested a volume criterion to avoid thin stocks: 10 day volume should be > 500k and 3 month volume > 200k
The January Effect in 2001 was 5X bigger than typical, according to a news story I read recently; the analyst quoted in that story attributed this unusual outcome to the bursting of the tech-stock bubble early in 2000.

January Effect 2002
Subject 52124
My return was disappointing. Before trading costs, it was -4.2% vs. +2.7% for the Russell 2000, assuming all stocks were bought at the close on Dec. 28 and sold the first Friday in February (returns would have suffered an additional 8.2% if I had waited to buy at the close Dec. 31). Here's my final report:
Message 17002775
Midland whipped me soundly for a second year, fetching a return of +15.7% for stocks purchased Dec. 28:
Message 17003213
He got his best results for stocks priced between $0.40 and $2.00
Note added December 30, 2002:
My picks appear in the portfolio below.

January Effect 2003
Subject 53512
My return was up 4% for the paper portfolio, while in my real-dollar account I netted about 2 or 3% after commission. There wasn't a strong January Effect this year, and there wasn't much tax-loss selling in December, either. The rest of the year, though, was amazing. My picks, which I unfortunately no longer owned, gained 198% by Dec. 2, 2003. That's because in 2003 the market went up and beaten-down small caps went up a lot.
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55Thanks for opening the thread. The talk techstocks link did not work too well, iRockyBalboa-12/9/2004
54New thread for January Effect 2005 that I created: techstocks.com Last year thQ.-12/6/2004
53note the bold type(mine) below By James Altucher RealMoney.com Contributor 10/2stevenallen-10/27/2004
52Things could very likely play out in the manner you describe and I just can'stevenallen-10/24/2004
51RE "we get a relief rally once the winner is determined" That may takEACarl-10/24/2004
50Any guesses on how the election will influence the January Effect 2005? My intustevenallen-10/23/2004
49GNTA is controversial - lots of strong well-backed opinions on both sides. So faBiomaven-3/30/2004
48Peter, over at the GNTA thread, IYO how good or bad is GNTA's science? TIA. semi_infinite -3/30/2004
47Not surprisingly, after Ftus also Gadzooks filed for Ch.11. They die as they fRockyBalboa-2/3/2004
46~N had the right idea in abstaining from JE2004. BRCD CPST RGEN VITA are the onsemi_infinite -1/31/2004
45Recap of January Picks as of end of the month. The portfolio gained slightly, RockyBalboa-1/31/2004
44Look, Silicon investor always finds a way to screw things up. The portfolio shoRockyBalboa-1/15/2004
43sold stsi @ 1.98 today for modest gains - just have ORCH left, wish I had lockedstevenallen-1/13/2004
42Your ideas, Revlon amongst them do better than mine, like having bought near defRockyBalboa-1/12/2004
41Took my profits on SCO, ALS, & WLSN today, already had cashed in on FSTW andstevenallen-1/9/2004
40It was slim pickings. The Jan effect is taking up the likes of unappreciated mrsemi_infinite -1/2/2004
39I bought nothing this year for the January Effect. When I did my screens Dec. 2Q.-1/1/2004
38Picked up just a handful of EOY plays this time around as many I was watching rostevenallen-12/31/2003
37GLGC is my pickJack Hartmann-12/31/2003
36Mylist is BRCD, XNVA, ACTG, OPTV, INAP.Madharry-12/31/2003
35The RGEN CTLA4 patent issues are complex and still pretty murky. They lost the fBiomaven-12/30/2003
34Thsnks. I was aware of trials of secretin for autism and the scheduled release semi_infinite -12/30/2003
33BRCD has two conferances next week...Capt-12/30/2003
32<i>The option premiums on RGEN were very high and I sold Jan 5 puts on RGEBiomaven-12/30/2003
31CVV and LUMEE should be taken off my working list. The ones I bought are BRCD Csemi_infinite -12/30/2003
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