Category Archives: trading strategy

The 3 Days of the Month to Avoid

educational newsletters, jay kaeppel, seasonal, trading strategy

Some days are just better than others – am I right or am I right?  As a corollary, some days are worse than others.  Wouldn’t it be nice to know in advance which days were going to be which?

Well, when it comes to the stock market, maybe you can.

The 3 Days to Miss

 For our purposes we will refer to the very last trading day of the month as TDM -1.  The day before that will be TDM -2, the one before that TDM -3, etc.  Now let’s focus specifically on TDMs -7, -6 and -5.

 Let’s now assume that we will buy and hold the Dow Jones Industrials Average every day of every month EXCEPT for those three days – i.e., we will sell at the close of TDM -8 every single month and buy back in 3 days later.  We will refer to this as Jay’s -765 Method.  Granted some may not be comfortable trading this often, but before dismissing the idea please consider the results.

Figure 1 displays the growth of $1,000 invested in the Dow as described above versus the growth of $1,000 from buying and holding the Dow.

*The starting date for this test is 12/1/1933.
*For this test no interest is assumed on the 3 days a month spent out of the market.
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Figure 1 – Growth of $1,000 invested in Dow Industrials during all days EXCEPT TDM -7,TDM -6 and TDM -5 (blue line) versus $1,000 invested in Dow Industrials using buy-and-hold (red line); 12/1/1933-8/15/2016

For the record:
*Jay’s -765 Method gained +94,190%
*The Dow buy-and-hold gained +18,745%

While these results are compelling, the real “Wow” comes from looking at would have happened if you had been long the Dow ONLY on TDMs -7,-6 and -5 every month since 1933.  These results appear in Figure 2 (but you’d better brace yourself before taking a glance).
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Figure 2 – Growth of $1,000 invested in the Dow ONLY on the 7th to last, 6th to last and 5th to last trading days of every month since 12/1/1933

The net result is an almost unrelenting 83 year decline of -80%.

Summary

 I would guess that some readers would like me to offer a detailed and logical reason as to why this works.  Unfortunately, I will have to go with my stock answer of “It beats me.”  Of course, as a proud graduate of “The School of Whatever Works” (Team Cheer: “Whatever!”) I am not as interested in the “Why” of things as I am the “How Much.”

Sorry, it’s just my nature.

Jay Kaeppel
Chief Market Analyst at JayOnTheMarkets.com and AIQ TradingExpert Pro (http://www.aiqsystems.com) client

Hedging Risk Away with Ticker TZA

educational newsletters, ETFS, jay kaeppel, trading strategy
It pains me to say that I don’t know where the stock market is going next.  You would think that after being in the markets for so long and following a bunch of indicators and systems etc., that by now I would have developed some ability to divine what is coming next.
Alas, I have not.
But I do know three things:
*My trend-following stuff is bullish so I need to give the bullish case the benefit of the doubt (no matter how nervous or cynical I may be).
*Based on a variety of indicators the market is certainly getting overbought
*Based on the calendar, some caution may be in order
So, a thought today for those who might be wishing to hedge away some of their market risk.
Ticker TZA
Ticker TZA is not necessarily one of my favorites.  It is an ETF that tracks 3 times the inverse of the Russell 2000 small-cap index. In other words, if ticker RUT falls 1% today then TZA should rise 3%.  There are two primary concerns to keep in mind before considering buying shares of TZA are:
*The shares are extremely volatile
*The shares have experienced a serious downside bias – even when RUT is headed sideways (See Figure 1).
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Figure 1 – Ticker TZA (black bars) versus Ticker RUT (Russell 2000) (Courtesy AIQ TradingExpert)
So if you are going to buy TZA you’d better pick your spots. As I discussed here we are entering an “interesting” time for the market.  So let’s explore the possibility of buying a call option on ticker TZA as a hedge against a potential market decline.
Call Option on TZA
Remember, TZA should increase in value if the Russell 2000 declines.  Therefore, a call option on TZA should also increase in value if the Russell 2000 declines.
As you can see in Figure 2, the “implied volatility” (which generally tells you whether there is a lot of time premium built into the price of the options for a given security) for options on TZA is near the low end of the historical range.  This tells us that there is relatively little time premium built into TZA options, therefore they are “cheap”.
2
Figure 2 – Implied option volatility for options on TA near the low end of the historical range (Courtesy www.OptionsAnalysis.com)
Next I ran the “Percent to Double” routine in www.OptionsAnalysis.com (see output in Figure 3.  The phrase “percent to double” tells us what percentage the underlying stock must rise in order for the call option to double in price.
3
Figure 3 – Percent to Double routine suggests buying Sep30 TZA call which will double in price if TZA rises 12.56% (i.e., if RUT declines by roughly -4.19%) (Courtesy www.OptionsAnalysis.com)
Figures 4 and 5 display the particulars and risk curves for buying 10 TZA Sep 30 calls.
4
Figure 4 – TZA Sep30 details (Courtesy www.OptionsAnalysis.com
5
Figure 5 – TZA Sep30 risk curves (Courtesy www.OptionsAnalysis.com)
A few things to note:
*The cost to buy 10 is $2,550.
*TZA is trading at $30.25/share.
*The breakeven price for this trade is $32.25 (if TZA is below $32.25 at expiration and we still hold this position then we will lose -$2,250)
*There are 50 days left until September expiration
*The trade has unlimited profit potential
Regarding potential, in Figure 6 we see that if TZA rallies back to its June low of $33.77 this trade will generate a profit of between $1,500 and $2,400 depending on how soon  that price is reached
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Figure 6 – A potential 1st profit target for TZA hedge (Courtesy www.OptionsAnalysis.com)
Summary
Is this a good trade?  I can’t say for sure that it is.  In fact, the only way this trade makes money is if the broader market suffers a hit, so a good part of me would prefer to see this trade “not work out”.
But the point of all of this is simply to point out that it is possible to hedge against a significant market decline by buying call options on an inverse leveraged ETF.
Mr. Market, you take it from here.
Jay Kaeppel
Chief Market Analyst at JayOnTheMarkets.com and AIQ TradingExpert Pro (http://www.aiqsystems.com) client

Zero In On The MACD

EDS, Stocks & Commodities traders tips, technical indicator, trading strategy
The AIQ code based on Barbara Star’s article in May issue of Stocks and Commodities “Zero In On The MACD,” is provided at www.TradersEdgeSystems.com/traderstips.htm, and is also shown below.
Sample Chart

FIGURE 7: AIQ. Here is a sample chart of VIAB with MACDhist, the color bars, and the 34- and 55-bar EMAs.
Figure 7 shows the MACD histogram on a chart of Viacom (VIAB) with the color bars and the 34- and 55-bar exponential moving averages (EMA). Note that I did not code the weighted moving average (WMA) but substituted the EMA for the WMA. I chose to view the chart of VIAB by running the EDS “Zero MACD.eds” on 3/14/2016 and examining the alert messages on the report “List.” VIAB is the only one on that date that showed a cross up on the MACDhist (see Figure 8 for a look at part of this report for 3/14/2016).
Sample Chart

FIGURE 8: AIQ. This shows part of the EDS custom report “List” that shows the MACDhist values on 3/14/2016, the color status, and any alerts that were generated for that day.
! ZERO IN ON THE MACD

! Author: Barbara Star, TASC May 2016

! Coded by: Richard Denning 3/14/16

! www.TradersEdgeSystems.com



! INPUTS:

macd1  is  12.

macd2  is  26.

macdSig is  1.



! INDICATORS:

emaST  is expavg([Close],macd1).

emaLT  is expavg([Close],macd2).

MACD  is emaST - emaLT.  ! MACD line

SigMACD is expavg(MACD,macdSig). ! MACD Signal line

MACDosc is MACD - SigMACD. ! MACD Oscillator



HD if hasdatafor(macd2) = macd2.

MACDhist is MACD.                                 ! plot as historigram

MACDblue if MACDhist > 0.  ! use these rules to color MACDhist

MACDred  if MACDhist < 0.  ! use these rules to color MACDhist

MACDcolor is iff(MACDblue and HD,"Blue",iff(MACDred and HD,"Red","White")). !for report list

List if 1.



!ALERTS:

EMA1 is expavg([close],34).

EMA2 is expavg([close],55).

xupEMA1 if [close] > EMA1 and valrule([close] < EMA1,1).

xdnEMA1 if [close] < EMA1 and valrule([close] > EMA1,1).

xupEMA2 if [close] > EMA2 and valrule([close] < EMA2,1).

xdnEMA2 if [close] < EMA2 and valrule([close] > EMA2,1).

xupMACD if MACDhist > 0 and valrule(MACDhist < 0,1).

xdnMACD if MACDhist < 0 and valrule(MACDhist > 0,1).

UpAlerts is iff(xupEMA1,"xupEMA1",iff(xupEMA2,"xupEMA2",iff(xupMACD,"xupMACD"," "))).

DnAlerts is iff(xdnEMA1,"xdnEMA1",iff(xdnEMA2,"xdnEMA2",iff(xdnMACD,"xdnMACD"," "))).
The code and EDS file can be downloaded from www.TradersEdgeSystems.com/traderstips.htm.

ADX Breakouts

back testing, EDS, Stocks & Commodities traders tips, technical indicator, trading strategy
The AIQ code based on Ken Calhoun’s article in the March 2016 issue of Stocks and Commodities, “ADX Breakouts,” is provided at www.TradersEdgeSystems.com/traderstips.htm.
Since I mainly work with daily bar strategies, I wanted to test the ADX concept from the article on a daily bar trading system. So I set up a system that buys after a stock has based around the 200-day simple moving average (Basing200). Basing200 is coded in the system as:
  • The stock closing above the 200-SMA only 19 bars or less out of the last 100 bars, and
  • The stock closing greater than two bars above the 200-SMA in the last 10 bars.
For exits, I used the following built-in exits: a capital-protect exit set at 80% and a profit-protect exit set at 80% once profit reaches 5% or more.
I ran this system on the NASDAQ 100 list of stocks in the EDS backtester over the period 12/31/1999 to 1/11/2016. I then ran a second test on the system using the ADX filter (ADX must be greater than 40 at the time of the signal to buy). I used the same list of stocks, exits, and test period.
Figure 8 shows the first test without the filter: 883 trades, 1.84% average profit per trade, 1.51 reward/risk. Figure 9 shows the second test with the filter: 151 trades, 2.12% average profit per trade, 1.66 reward/risk.
Sample Chart
FIGURE 8: AIQ, WITHOUT FILTER. Here are the EDS test results for the example system without the ADX filter.
Sample Chart

FIGURE 9: AIQ, WITH FILTER. Here are the EDS test results for the example system with the ADX filter.
Although all of the key metrics are better with the filter, there is a significant reduction in the number of trades. In fact, 151 trades would not be sufficient for a trading system over this long test period. If one wanted to use the filter, then the list of stocks would need to be increased to about 2,000 stocks.
!ADX BREAKOUTS
!Author: Ken Calhoun, TASC March 2016
!Coded by: Richard Denning, 1/11/2016
!www.TradersEdgeSystems.com

!NOTE; THIS SAMPLE SYSTEM IS FOR 
           !DAILY BAR TESTING OF ADX FILTER ONLY

SMA200 is simpleavg([close],200).
HD is hasdatafor(250).
Above200 if ( [close] > SMA200 ) .
Basing200 if CountOf(Above200,10) >2
 and CountOf(Above200,100) 200. 
ADXhi if [ADX] >= 40.
BuyADX if Buy and ADXhi.
This code and EDS file can be downloaded from www.TradersEdgeSystems.com/traderstips.htm.
—Richard Denning
info@TradersEdgeSystems.com
for AIQ Systems