Category Archives: Stock trading

It’s all relative you see

group and sector, indexes, stock market, Stock trading

The markets have been shall we say been less than inspiring recently. Brexit came and went with a brief hiccup in the action and only in the last week or so has the volatility picked up. The Dow as you can see in this weekly chart is back the same level as December 2014

 

 

The VXX shows clearly the decline in volatility since the high back in 2011

 

The summer doldrums may be over, but during periods when the market is range bound, segments within the market are often performing very well or very poorly. One AIQ Report that can show the strength within segments is the Relative Strength Strong – Short Term. This report shows stocks in 3 month trend up and is a great report for those who trade with ‘the trend is your friend’. Here is Friday 9-16-2016 report. The report is ranked by the stocks with the best trend.

 

 

I highlighted 6 stocks in the top of this report. All have good trends in place, and all in the Oil and Exploration S&P 500 group. The group has performed quite well recently. The top 2 OILEXPO stocks CHK and DVN have both had a small pullback to their uptrend line. We’ll see how they do this week.

 

The World is Your Oyster – 4 Days a Month

jay kaeppel, seasonal, Stock trading
Some things are just plain hard to explain.  I did the following test using all 17 of the iShares single country funds that started trading 1996:
I tested the performance of each single country ETF on each specific trading day of the month (i.e., the 1st trading day of any month is TDM 1, the next day is TDM 2, etc.)
I also examined the last 7 trading days of the month counting backwards (i.e., the last trading day of the month is TDM -1, the day before that is TDM -2, etc.)
The basic idea was to see if there were any consistently favorable or unfavorable days of the month.  I wasn’t necessarily expecting much given that the stock markets of each of 17 different countries could  rightly be expected to “walk to the beat of their own drum”, given that the fundamentals underlying the stock market in any given country may be unique from that of other countries.
Or maybe not so much.
For what it is worth, the results from 3/25/1996 through 6/20/2016 appear in Figure 1.
(click to enlarge)
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Figure 1 – Trading Day of Month Results for 17 iShares single country ETFs; 3/25/96 through 6/20/16
Each column displays the cumulative % return for each individual single country ETF if we held a long position in that ETF on only that particular trading day of the month.
As you can see – and what are the odds of this, I am not even sure how to calculate that – there are 4 days (highlighted in green in Figure 1) that were uniformly “favorable”, i.e., all 17 ETFs showed a net gain on that particular trading day of the month (for the record, there are three trading days – TDM #7 and TDMs -7 and -6 – during which all  17 ETFs showed a net loss (highlighted in yellow in Figure 1.  Go figure).
Using as a Strategy
I am not recommended the following strategy, but wanted to test it out for arguments sake.  Figure 2 displays the results of the following test:
*Buy and hold an equally weighted position in all 17 single country ETFs only on TDM 1, 9, 13 and -4 (i.e., if Friday is the last trading day of the month then – barring a holiday – TDM -4 would be the Tuesday of that week), earn annualized interest of 1% per month while out of ETFs.
*Versus simply buying and holding all 17 single country ETFs from 3/25/1996 through 6/20/2016.
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Figure 2 – Cumulative % return for holding all 17 single country ETF only 4 days a month (blue) versus buying and holding (red); 3/25/96 through 6/20/16
Summary
Yes, this model can probably be accused of being “curve fit”.  Also, does anybody really want to trade in and out of 17 single country ETFs 4 times a month?  I don’t know.  But the bigger points are:
*Why would all 17 single country ETFs all be up (or down) on a particular day of the month over a 20 year period?
*If I were considering buying and holding a cross section of individual country ETF’s, um, well, I can’t help but think that I would be haunted by the thought that there might be a better way.
Jay Kaeppel
Chief Market Analyst at JayOnTheMarkets.com and AIQ TradingExpert Pro (http://www.aiqsystems.com) client

Classic Flag Breakouts on CVX, NFG, TOT

chart patterns, stock market, Stock trading

Our Chart pattern Recognition tool had a wealth of gasoline related stocks have breakouts yesterday. The classic flag breakout on good volume could be seen on CVX, NFG and TOT.

Quick reminder on what a flag pattern is.

The flag pattern is considered a continuation pattern after a consolidation period. The flag is a rectangular shape, similar to  the pennant, but the pennant looks more like a triangle.

Usually there’s a strong price movement followed by sideways price movement which is the flag. The pattern is complete when prices breakout in the same direction as the initial price movement. The following move will be in the same direction as the prior sharp move. The move prior to the flag is called the pole.

The flag pattern forms a rectangle with two parallel trendlines that act as support and resistance for the price until the price breaks out. Usually the flag will slope in the opposite direction to the trend.

The buy or sell signal occurs when the price breaks through the support or resistance level, with the trend continuing in the same direction as the pole. The breakthrough should occur on heavier volume.

I’ve put all three charts together and you can clearly see the pole, flag and breakout. As noted above the volume on the breakout on TOT was reasonable. The Quality of the pattern was also considered high.

Incidentally the volume on NFG and CVX was not as significant.

The entire list of stocks that generated completed flags in our nightly report on 5/25/16 is below.

and check out this new video that shows how we automate this reporting every night using the Chart Pattern recognition plug-in for TradingExpert.

Tired of staring at charts time and time again? We have an app for that

chart patterns, stock market, Stock trading
Tired of staring at charts time and time again, not certain what is setting up?
Check out this chart of FITB, Fifth Third Bancorp, How would you have traded this over the last 6 months?
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What if you had a tool that shows you the exact pattern that’s setup AND includes the direction the breakout is likely to be? A tool that generates a report every night of chart patterns that have completed and are breaking out. 
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 Wouldn’t that simplify your trading?
Check out this completed falling wedge pattern from 02/12/16. You would have been alerted to this breakout on 2/12/16, the direction indicator suggested that prices will rise and they did.
Check out this completed falling wedge pattern from 02/12/16. You would have been alerted to this breakout on 2/12/16, the direction indicator suggested that prices will rise and they did.
 
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Or this inverse head and shoulders on 3/1/16, the direction indicator suggested prices would rise and they did.
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and check out this new video that shows the most recent price pattern we were alerted to on FITB on 5/13/16 AND how we automate this reporting every night.

Trading Gap Reversals

EDS, Stock trading, Stocks & Commodities traders tips
The AIQ code based on Ken Calhoun’s article in April 2016 issue of Stock & Commodities Trading Gap Reversals”, is provided below. 
AIQ has also posted the EDS file at “ is provided for downloading at 
Save this file to your/wintes32/EDS Strategies folder.
Since I mainly work with daily bar strategies, I wanted to test the gap-down concept on a daily bar trading system rather than on one-minute bars. I set up a system that buys after a stock has gapped down at least 10% in the last two days and then trades above the high of the gap-down bar. The entry is then at the close of that bar. For exits, I used the built-in exit, the profit-protect exit set at 80% once profit reaches 3% or more combined with a stop-loss using the low of the gap-down bar and also a time exit set to five bars. 
I then ran this system on the NASDAQ 100 list of stocks in the EDS backtester over the period 12/31/1999 to 1/11/2016 (Figure 7). The system generated 303 trades with an average profit of 1.09% per trade with a reward-to-risk ratio of 1.35. Slippage and commissions have not been deducted from these results.
Sample Chart
FIGURE 7: AIQ. This shows the EDS test results for the example system.
Again, the code and EDS file can be downloaded from www.TradersEdgeSystems.com/traderstips.htm, and is also shown below.
!TRADING GAP REVERSALS
!Author: Ken Calhoun, TASC April 2016
!Coded by: Richard Denning 2/1/2016
!www.TradersEdgeSystems.com

!INPUTS:
GapSize is 10.
GapLookBack is 5.
MaxBars is 5.

!CODING ABBREVIATIONS:
H is [high].
C is [close].
C1 is val([close],1).
L is [low].
O is [open].

GapD is (O / C1 - 1) * 100.
GapOS is scanany(GapD < -GapSize,GapLookBack) <> nodate()
  then offsettodate(month(),day(),year()).
Hgap  is valresult(H,^GapOS).
Lgap  is valresult(L,^GapOS).
SU if  scanany(GapD < -GapSize,GapLookBack).
SU1 if  scanany(GapD < -GapSize,GapLookBack,1).
SU2 if  scanany(GapD < -GapSize,GapLookBack,2).
LE if ((SU1 then resetdate()) or (SU2 then resetdate())) 
 and H > Hgap.
ExitLong if {position days} > maxBars
 or C < Lgap.
EntryPr is max(O,Hgap).
List  if C > 0.
—Richard Denning