Week In Review 2-15-2008
Most of my problems this week came from trading mistakes. I held too long on stocks that I knew I should sell, and I didn't take gains when I had them. I decided to change my strategy a bit to take advantage of the volatility that exists in the market now. I am still using my screens to purchase stocks on Monday and holding them throughout the week. I do that with half of my portfolio.
With the other half, I am more actively trading some small-cap stocks and holding for just a few days (or hours). I could have made some decent returns this week, but I'm too used to trading on a weekly basis. The weekend allows me to make decisions that are much less emotional than when I am trading during the week. I need to work on being more mechanical in my decision making if I want to make the intra-week trades work out. There's potential there, but only if I can keep my emotions (and so-called logic) at bay.
I am now being beat by ALL of my screens. I'm pathetic. To The Moon had the best returns this week thanks to a big gain by CSIQ--21.17%. The solar stocks came roaring back this week. The Zacks and Zweig screen had a pick on KEX that made 2.48% this week. So far that screen has only produced two picks since the beginning of the year. I'm thinking that it would be wise for me to track the number of picks on that screen each week to see if it correlates with overall market direction.
The Zweig RS 5 screen managed to eke out a .15% gain for the week. It had GHM, KEX, WATG, WFR & WSCI in its portfolio with KEX doing the best and WSCI doing the worst -4.07%.
I am now officially down YTD more than I have ever been since I started trading in 2003. I assure you that I'm quite bothered by that. I am still convinced that I can get out of this hole and make some decent gains this year. It will be a challenge.
It's during times like these that record-keeping is so important. I need to be constantly reassured that what I am doing works. There is nothing to reassure me but the history of my trading and of the screens I use. When I look back at the last few years, this past couple of months are just a blip.
Posts
6 comments:
Interesting on the Zweig + Zacks. I never wrote down KEX. I assume you got that on Sunday last week? I actually got WW when I did it. I'm going to have to pay more attention.
I'd be interested how you got CSIQ? In your list for to the Moon I see WSCI was the first Zweig top 5 with RS and NEU came up on one of the CANSLIM screens (it was up 6%). But I don't know if that's how you got that one. and I don't see the other two on any of my screens.
I got KEX on Sunday, I think. I forgot to write it down and reran Research Wizard later in the week. WW would have been a better pick. So you made a better choice.
CSIQ came from a screen I created in research wizard. I didn't buy it (that would have been too smart). All but WSCI came from different Research Wizard screens.
ok, just checking to see if you got the same on the ZACKS...and thus the same on the ZWEIG...I got Ranks of 1 for three stocks on the ZWEIG list. Did you get the same?
Yeah, I got the same thing. ANDE, KEX, and WW.
Looks like things are turning around--the Zweig screen is back up to 18 picks (up from 10 a few weeks ago) and Zacks is starting to pick more than 1 stock. We'll see if this is an indication of a turn.
Hi Scott,
I would like to know which was the worst draw dawn of the Zwseig+Zacks strategy since you have been following it.
I would subscribe to Research Wizard and run it to know, but all the comments that I read seem to imply that this software does suffer from survivorship bias and so the results are not realiable enough.
Thanks for creating your blog and sharing!
Albert
Since I started tracking in 2005, the worst drawdown for Zacks & Zweig was late July to mid August 2007 where it lost 21.36%. The screen ended up making 44.64% in 2007 so it still performed quite well despite that drawdown late in the year.
Unfortunately, RW doesn't include the Zweig strategy. I wrote them 6 months ago with qualifiers for a Zweig screen and they never got back to me. I'm guessing you'd have to manually input the weekly Zweig screen to find historic Zacks rankings for AAII's Zweig screen.
Post a Comment