The Saga that was SWSH
Posted by orangequant on February 7, 2007
Okay, best to maintain frequency. The play was SWSH. I got in too late and stayed too long. Damage was minor- in at $1.31, out at $1.24 for abt 5% loss. Still hurts my pride, tho. By EOD Tuesday’s macd was teetering down, and stoch was definitely southbound. Enough already. Quanted it Monday night and didn’t like that picture either.
So, a couple resolutions. More quant, less technical analysis. Do what you know best. Do what you trust the most. For me, that’s quant. Second resolution, definitely looking at some plays for less than 10% “certain” gain. It’s simply a dull fact of life in my chosen market slice that 10% or more is highly unusual in one day. And I just don’t trust the market for more than one day at a time. That “slice” for me is NO PINKS, and around $.50 to $1.25.
At first, quanting is not nearly as easy as TA. You have to study one stock intently, like a chemist trying to crack a molecule. Then, once you crack it, you OWN it, for awhile at least. Only problem is, you may then have to wait awhile for it to get hot. On the plus side, however, once you’ve got a dozen or so like these, one of them’s bound to get hot at least every few days. I had a bunch- I mean dozens and dozens- but that was before I changed to a NO PINKS policy and upgraded to higher prices. So I’ve been kind of lamed so far in this Experiment, now with only 25% total gain over start balance. No more. From now on we play this MY way. You want to hear something weird? Tonight I quanted a stock that says the sum of OHLC divided by 16 is almost ALWAYS .28-.32 . So at any time of day I can make a crude assessment of where the day is going. That’s my kind of game.
scmfinance said
sounds great orange! you sound so fired up, it’s inspiring
orange has expanded his influence over me and i have begun looking into quant myself — so far i love it! but i only know a little. i hope to work on developing my own algorithms soon (specifically one for momentum), but until then, i am slowly learning. i haven’t made a trade using any of the knowledge i’ve gained so far because i’m not very confident in my ability yet, but on paper some of the picks i’ve made have performed exactly as how i predicted, which is amazing.
if you’re interested in exploring quant, i suggest you check out orange’s site called “what to learn” which we link to under the blogroll.
i have a play that i am trying to get out of now but waiting for my target exit, so hopefully i’ll have an update later.