Friday, July 11, 2008

Week In Review 7-11-08

7-11 didn't bring me any luck today. I capped off an entire week of losses with a final -.23% For the week I lost 2.27% even though I held very few positions. If I had been fully invested in the Zweig RS 5 screen I would have made 2.54% even with a nearly 15% sell-off of AEHR. NSYS was the best performer in the screen with a 14.38% gain, but it was very thinly traded (less than 2,000 shares today), so I wouldn't have bought it anyway (I've got to find something).

You guys posted some great comments on the Zweig Screams post! I love discussion about different approaches. I wish I would have followed the advice of one of the anonymous posters and just played the screen this week!

I've decided to quit paying for Zack's Rank numbers for the time being. I haven't bought stocks lately based on Zack's Rank, and I think there are other methods to screen for stocks with earning surprises for less than $200.00 per year. StockBee has an interesting article in that regard.

So now that I am no longer a Research Wizard I won't be able to specifically screen for Zacks #1 ranks and will stop keeping track of the Zweig and Zacks screen from here on out.

5 comments:

Scott said...

I guess I was just bothered by my Research Wizard experience. I want to find a way to screen for earnings surprises without having to rely on Zacks. When the market gets better I might change my mind, but right now I'm moving another direction.

Unknown said...

Hi Scott,have you ever read Zweig's Winning On Wall Street? He does try to be invested when the market is trending up and be in cash when we are trending down.I try to use this approach.I am still down 6 or 7% yr. to date,but that is better than the 14% decline yr. to date loss for the S & P.
Ron

Anonymous said...

You can do some work on earnings estimates and surprises by using an excel add-in from this Yahoo! group: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/smf_addin/

It takes just a little work to do really handy spreadsheets. Be aware that if the format of the web-sheet changes your data may be off, but for the price (free) it is a great tool.

Scott said...

Ron,

I have read Zweig's book, but it was back when I understood very little of it. I plan to re-read it soon.

I see the benefit of just staying out when the market is trending down. But if I want to trade for a living, I am going to have to learn how to make money no matter what trend is in place.

Anonymous said...

sc, that sounds like a good tool, thanks :)