Monday, February 15, 2016

day

the day scan returned ten pages. here are selected charts.
start

Saturday, February 13, 2016

fathers

still studying the question of whether you can trade, that is, hold for less than a year, inside a Roth IRA. no evidence so far that you can't. here's an interesting page. let's study it for perspective. what are the Church Fathers saying?

mechanics

what would your investing look like?

let's say you have a Scottrade account with $1000 in cash in it.

should you invest all of it in one company? if you win, you save a little on commissions. or should you invest $100 in each of ten stocks?

what would be the advantage of the latter? ironically, it would hold you to a long term commitment, or push you in that direction, and that could be a good thing. certain very informed investors would have you never look at your stocks, by the way. it could be said i'm training you in bad habits, here.

the other reasons would be you aren't sure of yourself and diversification might help, but maybe then you should do more research, or you can't decide between the many fine stocks you're seeing, and then one or another might do especially well, and it might be good you bought even a little of it. i suppose.

or you might have looked at all the evidentiary charts, if that's a word, and decided trading is for you, and that you can pick the especially good ones for super-rapid gains. then the solitary investment is definitely it ... with a stop! how is that constructed?

anyway, what are the actual mechanics of buying a stock? i've been writing about buying at the breakout level, so, seeing a signal, you could place a limit order there, all or nothing, even guc. (do you know what a limit order is? do you understand it well?). but it only might be filled.

you could place your limit a little higher ... i mean just a smidge. then it might be more likely to fill. and you could, conceivably, watch the market, and i mean during the day, and if it gets near the breakout level, buy at the market. you could do that.

but, if you don't want to do that, if the fundamentals are compelling, just buy at any price, or place your limit at the breakout day high, assuming it isn't all that elevated - assuming it looks just right based on your extensive inspections of historical examples.

watching a stock all day is hard. it might be fun, but it's probably kind of a silly thing to do. maybe we can learn to predict a good limit effectively. so far everything worthwhile has touched the breakout limit ... in a few cases that might be considered worthwhile gone through it. maybe orders near the breakout level, a little above the breakout level, are actually likely to be filled. experience will tell.

roth

we're learning about the Roth IRA. we're kind of slow.


if you're buying something you think will go up continually for a year, or that it will go up within a year and then stay up, maybe forever, and you're committed to it, do it from within a Roth IRA.

a simple but very specific set of rules applies if you want to create a Roth IRA and invest in it.

it seems i'm mistaken in saying you need to hold a stock for a year in a Roth IRA. i didn't actually say that, but i thought and implied it. it seems you can buy and sell any time you want, in the account, but that you cannot withdraw profits for five years after you first contribute to the account ... without facing a penalty. (the list of consequences is interesting.)

if you are committed to five years of investing with some part of your money, and you qualify, investing within a Roth IRA can ultimately save you gobs in taxes.

seems kind of dreamy.

this kind of looks like an official site, though i don't actually know what it is. anyway, it's got articles about the rules - in fact, that's what it is, articles about the rules. it's set up like a guide. maybe it is one. oh, wait, i was looking at the Roth IRA rules article, not the web site (rothira.com). the article is listed in the home page, though.

i'm just getting a little excited because i'm finding these solid looking, safe looking, long term type companies in my current scan. i wonder if knowing (if it's true) you can trade from within a Roth IRA changes things?

more how to

more on the subject of how to read the blog:

note that clicking on the charts enlarges them

note that the top chart in a post is the updater. it shows you the latest data (when you load the post).

then the bottom post in a blog is the first observation.

the history of the trade, if it's not complete in the bottom post, follows, from bottom to top, in the charts above the bottom post and below the top post.

note that clicking on a chart also puts you into a slide show of all the images in the post. which one is the top chart? probably the first slide ... but i have to wait to test that.

note that it is cavalier of me to say it's safe to hold through dips ... although, if the stock is fundamentally sound then that's the practice of the all time most successful investors. the question is, are we sufficiently knowledgeable to assess the fundamentals? it always worries me. that's why i am studying these chart patterns. how well will they perform? only time will tell. in the posts or in the slide shows, study the updaters versus the historical charts. return to them again and again. schedule reviews of older posts at intervals of months.

brk




the first signal was the first day in Ocober ... a spindly red bar breakout, in a flag directly off a dip ... and heel ... just like the last example, and they both have produced ... now ... dips. plus, the ... well, you buy at the breakout level. it broke out from a pattern that formed after the red bar in mid September, and from a three bar pattern that created a third bottom after and including that red bar, and the day after the breakout it dipped into that three bar pattern, thus producing a buy on the return to the breakout level. but the rally that followed stalled out. it remained in break-even territory for months, then dipped.

it just broke out again, right at the end of January. it's building a base, here. i wrote about buying dips ... about if you bought a signal and then it dips, and flashes more signals at lower prices, buying more, buying again ... a dangerous tactic if you don't know what you're doing ... but i wonder what the fundamentals are like. oh my God, it's Berkshire! the most fundamentally sound company in existence! well, it's marked down 10%, and this green marubozu scan seems to highlight fundamentally strong companies ... it could be one way to find them.

be careful

be careful!

this is strictly non-professional ... it's notes.

do you understand breakouts, stops, no stops, dips, waiting out dips?

any money you invest you can lose.

you have to be very effective to make money trading $100 investments, catching big moves, or your commissions eat your profits. you would need ... if you don't already know how to do it, and you're trying to learn here ... to, in fact, learn - what works, what doesn't - from these examples, of which there are, at this writing, only a few.

with $1000 investments, you can make money on small % moves, but your risk is greater, so there's no less need for precision, for that thing, effectiveness, for careful, systematic study of many many examples. this is a system testing record. be extremely realistic about hindsight trades. i wouldn't say i've got it all figured out.

there is a proper way to read the blog, and that's from the bottom to the top. in the side bar, find the earliest year of posts - maybe i'll keep this up for years, who knows - and click it. find the earliest month in the year, and click that. now find the earliest post in the month, and click that.

from there you have to navigate to the next (next earliest) post ... using the inconvenient "earlier post" link at the bottom of the post, or maybe using the side bar.

or, you can create big scrolling pages of posts by clicking the months ... and, of course, the most recent posts, and even actual alerts, would be at the top of the blog ... which you can get to by clicking the blog title.

bif




the signal was the breakout at the beginning of October. the breakout level wasn't reached until December. then, in January, the dip. we should at least try to learn to predict those. the heel in August acts as an attractor. dips below heels happen often. dips are also buy signals, and now we have a bottom forming, but no ... well, there's a little pattern breakout, there, at the end of January. it has broken through the breakout level. more pattern breakouts and we can get in for a move above 7.75 ... + 10% ... although dips past heels are something we want to investigate. maybe it's got good fundamentals.

bhv




the first signal, the green breakout bar in June, and buying at the breakout level later in the month. the second signal, the big green bar in July, and buying at the breakout level ... and then it dips. then it forms ... a real needle, past mid September ... breaks out - a red dragonfly ... and buying at the breakout level, or near it, we get in on many small moves up. we have to wait out little hesitations at the earlier tops ... there's another signal, and buying that in the breakout level ... all but the last of these is profitable even with a $100 investment ... but just ... or makes you about 20% once it gets up there in December ... and maybe reason to sell it ... and if it's a bigger investment, $200, even, or $1000, you are actually doing quite well. would you sell it? it's got longer term potential, from the look of it ... it's a buy again at 17.50 with a stop below 17, which is a break even on your early trades, even
the fundamentals were quite interesting. tiny, an oddball kind of company - a muni fund - makes money - by my calculation it's priced at 24 times earnings - book value is good, period - not cheap, but good - and it has payed a dividend for decades, currently pays 13 cents a share annually which is, what, ... i found a better number. it pays 24 cents a share, no, 28 cents. .28 / 20 = ... a 1% dividend ... right? ... ok? ... but, the price should climb, now, and then it should stay up for years ... even forever.

bdr




now you can see how this is also problematic. it was a breakout out of distinctly a pattern - though we might now be able to say it was not the ideal type - and this was in September ... buying near the breakout level, and then, yes, it started to move in little steps ... but then it collapsed downward. stopped out, and with a 20% loss.
there was an alternative to being stopped out. well, there were two: not buying it, and then not selling it. i've been seeing these failures produce break-even trades and even profitable ones after a dip. here, it has dipped, and then in December it started breaking out from patterns again, and now it has broken out again, from a nicely positioned pattern, and buying at .35 for a rally back nearly to .6, or even to it, makes sense. even holding at .6, in the expectation of a flag, might make sense. we'll see. selling at .6 the first trade would break even and the second would be distinctly profitable.

ayr

inventory

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<table><tr><td><a href="http://finviz.com/chart.ashx?t=AYR&ty=c&ta=1&p=d&s=l" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://finviz.com/chart.ashx?t=AYR&ty=c&ta=1&p=d&s=l" style="width:200px" /></a></td><td></td></tr></table><table><tr><td><a href="http://finviz.com/publish/021316/AYRc1dl1435.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://finviz.com/publish/021316/AYRc1dl1435.png" style="width:200px" /></a></td><td></td></tr></table>

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aumn




let's see ... a dip, a ledge, another dip, and now in mid January a pregnancy, and a breakout. buying the next day at the breakout level ... possible ... and you're in for the ride. then into February a flag! and a breakout ... and, buying the breakout level ... in fact possible, if not likely ... it's like being shot from a canon. it has to be a sell now.

ares

buy near the bottom of the green bar Monday
this is quite the minimalistic pattern. it shouldn't produce a sustained move, and any bigger breakout is sure to be retraced, so we're looking for a quick exit ... although, if you read succeeding posts, you will find i found good stocks on this list, ones that hold up to buy and hold scrutiny (to the extent i am able to scrutinize that way, which is limited). i want to do more of the research on this one. but it is a signal and my guess is it will move from here.

keep an eye on the updater. let's watch and learn.

what was i thinking about this one? was it about another one? what was it?!

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

disbelief


can you believe this url is available?! it's another silly name for a blog ... maybe i'm just silly ... but i can't resist it.