Category Archives for "Stocks"

October 21, 2015

Biotech: My love-hate relationship

My love

RDUSa

My hate

CELGa

The two charts above are from recent trades I have taken. Charts created in AmiBroker.

On July 20, 2015 IBB, iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF, made a closing high of 398.  About three months later it closed at 289 for 27% loss. A very common thing I hear from traders is that they “don’t trade biotechnology or pharmaceutical stocks.” I completely understand. These stocks tend to be very volatile and news driven. But does removing these stocks really reduce your drawdowns? What happens to your Compounded Growth Rate? Time to see what the research shows us.

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The Health of Stock Mean Reversion: Dead, Dying or Doing Just Fine

My second post on this blog was a look at mean reversion, Is mean reversion dead? Given I am using a new data provider(Norgate Data), it has been almost two years since that post and there have been other articles on this recently, I figured it was time to check again. The research will focus on Russell 1000 stocks since 1995. The test is back to 1995 covers 3 bull markets and 2 bear markets.

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January 14, 2015

Using 52-week highs in a S&P500 monthly rotation strategy

One area of recent interest for me is trading rotational strategies on a monthly timeframe using S&P500 stocks and ETFs. Areas of exploration include Momentum and Dual Momentum. Recently I came across The Secret to Momentum is the 52-Week High??? on Alpha Architect, a blog I highly recommend on reading along with the quant mashup Quantocracy.. The article is a synopsis of research done comparing momentum vs. 52-week highs as ranking filters for a rotation strategy. A new idea I had not tried. What a great way to start the year, testing a new idea. Even though often they do not work out, one needs to be exploring all the time.

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September 22, 2014

DTAYS Weekly Breakout Strategy With Time Stops

I recently read on Don’t Talk About your Stocks about an idea that stocks that were losers after (4, 6, 8) weeks should be sold to make way for other stocks that may do better. Will this idea improve the results from the original DTAYS Weekly Breakout Strategy? This reminded me of research I did while working for Larry Connors. On a mean reversion strategy we were researching, we noticed that after 10 days, 95% of the positions end up being losers. Then came the ‘obvious’ rule to add. Exit a position if it had not bounced after 10 days. We both thought this would greatly improve the results. It did the opposite and hurt them. Why? Because it was better to wait for the bounce even if the trade was a loser.

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