Monday, July 14, 2008

A tiny gain

I managed to squeeze out a .14% gain today. I'll take it.

The weekly chart of the S&P 500 looks pretty ugly.

However, if I would have followed the trends (trend changes indicated by arrows) and sold when the trend flipped to the downside and bought when things were trending up, I would have ended 2007 with a 53% gain (instead of 40%). This year I'd be up nearly 20% instead of down 12%. Interesting stuff.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Scott, can you share how you came about putting the red and green arrows where they are? Thanks!

Scott said...

I use a program called SnagIt to capture and annotate the charts I show. It is extremely easy to use and looks great in my opinion. This is their website.

http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp

Anonymous said...

Sorry, i meant why did you put the red and green arrows where they were? Is it just the crossover point?

Scott said...

What a dork I am. They are pretty arrows aren't they?

The red arrows indicate new trends to the downside while the green ones are trends to the upside.

Trends are your friends.

Anonymous said...

Scott. I dont think its you, more than the way i am asking the questions. What is telling you that it is a trend to the upside or downside? I assume its the crossover point but the green arrow isnt indicating that. Thanks again,

Scott said...

According to DOW theory, for a new trend to be defined an uptrend has to make a higher high and a higher low. The trend is not confirmed until the first higher high is surpassed (after the higher low). That's what the green arrow is indicating--the higher high has been taken out.