Here's Why I Track the Percentage of Stocks Above Their 50-Day Moving Averages

If you've visited the General Market Overview page or watched my Chart Notes page for a while you've seen the % of Stocks Above Their 50-Day Moving Averages indicator. 

Trades of the Week: Jan 29 - Feb 2, 2018

So this was quite an interesting week.  It started out as death by a thousand cuts for me.  Well, it wasn't quite that bad, just a little choppy.  But Friday was my best day of 2018 thanks to my willingness to go short.

Trades of the Week(s): Jan 15 - 26, 2018

So this was a slow couple of weeks for me.  I was out of the country on vacation for most of that period, so I was trying not to do much trading.  Also, I don't like to do a whole lot in the heart of earnings season, because the market can often become choppy from one day to the next based on how the reports are each day.

First an update on the positions (CENX & MNTA) I mentioned in the previous Trades of the Week. 

Trades of the Week: Jan 8 - 12, 2018

I'm going to try to do a post like this at least every other week.  My goal here is to show a bit of my process and the scans I use to find these trading candidates.  They certainly won't be the best trades one could have possibly made, it will just highlight those I found and chose to take.

CENX

First up is CENX.  This stock has been on my watchlist for a few weeks because I traded it in December.  I bought above that consolidation pattern at  $16.14 (with a stop loss under that rectangle at 15.30 -- a great example of a classic Darvis Box or a flag) and sold it on December 28th at 19.82.  So my initial risk (1R) (read more about R and R multiples here) was 84 cents per share, so I made 4.4 times my initial risk (4R).  I liked how the stock was acting, so I kept an eye on it by adding it to one of my watchlists.  

New Feature: Import Stocks into Your Portfolio from a CSV File

For a long time I've wanted to make it easier to keep my SwingTradeBot portfolios in sync with my actual brokerage portfolios.  Today I've come one step closer to that goal.  I just released a new feature which allows you to import stocks into a portfolio from a CSV file.  There's now an 'Import Stocks' button next to the portfolio's name:

Clicking that button will open a pop-up which will allow you to select the CSV file to upload.

Site Maintenance This Weekend...

I apologize to those of you who were met with errors*** and/or the "down for maintenance" message on Thursday night.  The site has been experiencing some performance issues, exacerbated by the changes I made to the way things are stored in my database about a month ago.  As a result of those changes, the site is storing a LOT more data.  In addition, the introduction scanning across date ranges has but more load on the database.  The other new feature, displaying a page full of charts, puts even more of a workload on the database. 

You Can Now View Scan Results as a List of Charts

I just released a new feature which will be a huge time saver when looking through scan results.  There's a new option which allow you to see up to 20 charts at a time.  It looks like this:

New Feature: Scan Within a Date Range

Scanning for a given pattern / signal over a range of dates is a feature I've wanted for a long time.  A nice side-effect of the recent change I made to the way things are stored in the site's database is that it's now much easier for me to build that capability.  Over the last couple of weeks I received a few requests for adding a date range to the scans.  So starting today paid subscribers will be able to run scans across a date range.  You'll see that there's now an end date as part of the search / filter criteria.

Backtesting Using (Google) Spreadsheets and SwingTradeBot

I had a really good email exchange with somebody (Jason) the other day.  He shared with me how he incorporates SwingTradeBot's data into his research process.  Here's part of our exchange:

Check Out the New 'Articles & Podcasts' Section

I've added a new "Articles & Podcasts" section to the site.  Throughout the day it pulls in new content from several sources I've selected (some of my favorite sites and podcasts).  It'll will contain a mix of stock-specific comentary as well as more general trading information / education.  I'll also be manually posting links from time to time.   (You can find the link to it in the site's navigation menu under Research > Resources > Articles & Podcasts)