Hi Guys PC QUOTE is allowing a 30 days free trial of Mercenary now. I decided to download it and review it here on this thread. Thought others might want to do the same and we can all post are results here. http://www.pcquote.com/products/mercenary/freetrial/index.php Robert Tharp
I'm in the middle of a trial right now. If anyone else tries it, keep these points in mind. 1) I originally thought that the point of the program was to pick out stocks that were experiencing a buy or sell imbalance in the very short term--say over the period of a few minutes--so that you could jump in before the associated price move. However, the data seems to apply over the period of an entire day. You're supposed to give it an hour after open to digest all the data. And the information it provides doesn't change much the rest of the day. In other words, the purpose seems to be to identify stocks that will be strong/weak over the entire day, not over the next 15 minutes. 2) The program is very unstable. I don't know whether it's just a resource hog or what, but it constantly is shutting down on me, and I have to restart it. (Especially Hawkeye, but I think that part of the program is pretty much worthless anyway.) Given what I just pointed out above, that may not be a problem, since you're not trying to figure out what to buy or sell over the next few minutes, but over the course of the day. 3) The only educational material available is on the help menu. I called tech support, I even called a brokerage that used to use this program a couple years ago. I can't find anyone who knows how to use this program effectively. The guy I spoke to at tech support gave me a few pointers, but he didn't know that much. The help menu explains what all the functions tell you; however they don't give you any suggestions about how to use that information. 4) I think there is a lot going on in the 'quadrants' section of the chart. The help menu said that normally you would expect a fat belly with skinny tails, and that anything else would show an imbalance. Again, I don't know what that means; I don't even understand what the quadrants information tells you. If anyone can figure that part out, please explain it. Here's what I am going to do over the next few weeks. From what I can gather, this is how you're supposed to use the program. At 10:30, enter several stocks one at a time into Sniper. The middle part around the symbol has to be blue or red even to get a consideration. The price rotation and lookout symbol have to be that same color. If those conditions apply, and the majority of the circle is one color, I will write down that stock. I will also make a special note if there seems to be imbalance in the quadrants (see #4 above) At the end of the day, I will check to see how well each stock that I wrote down performed that day. This is the only way I know how to check to see how well the program works. Unless we can find someone who has experience with the program. I started a thread on this about a month ago, and got no replies, so I don't know if anyone here has ever used it. FWIW I did the routine I just described on Thursday, and the only stock that fit my criteria was RETK. It was all blue at 10:30 (which is positive) and the price was around 33.5. It closed around 37 that day. I'll see if I can get consistent results.
I'll play with it. Maybe by having a thread of a few users we can figure out if it's usefull. A few heads working with the software are better than one. PCQUOTE believes in it enough to give it a free trial and advertise it to death. rtharp
See if you can bully their tech guys around a little bit. I tend to be a bit passive when dealing with people on the phone. There's gotta be someone there who knows how to use it. I'll try them again too.
it failed on me 4 times this morning. I consider that unacceptable for trading. I can read charts fine without it, free isn't worth the price. rtharp
I hate to put this back on the top list of discussions but wanted to add. It's pretty bad (because PC quote constantly goes down as I've heard from others) I thought I'd talk about my short today. I shorted P at 66.79 I woke up and market indexes in premarket all red. Then the stock opened up below yesterday's close. That's a full green signal to me to play a short I'd been stalking. I owned a bullet so I shorted it during the first freefall Phillips Petroleum had been up over 11 days in a row. They struck oil so justified news. (I maybe soon going long on this one) It had a negative candle the previous day and close slightly with an upward run the last few minutes of the previous day. What an opportunity. I figured good for 3 or 4 points. I'll risk. 30 cents It dropped but couldnt' stay down Well anyhow it retraced up to fill in the gap and back down it went, never touching my stop I pulled up Mercenary just to see what it thought. It's like a bulls eye. Guess what 80% of the bulls eye was blue meaning buyers rule. I was thinking are you f*ing kidding me? The stock is below yesterday's close and Sell orders were bigger than the buy orders. It kept saying buy it. Well 4 hrs later in the day I pulled it up again but this time it reversed position saying more sellers than buyers. (gee I could have told anyone that) so far very useless junk. rtharp if you are wondering I kept part of the short position on as a swing trade but am not super confident on it. IT had a lot of resistance to the downside.
So far I'm seeing nothing impressive. I'm checking several stocks at 10:30, noting them only if Sniper is almost all red or blue, and checking charts later in the day. Very much hit or miss. I'll probably do this a few more days, but it doesn't look good so far.
I did the routine I mentioned earlier in the thread just twice now. I wasn't impressed either time. I realize that 2 days isn't much data to go by, but I checked quite a few stocks both from the long and the short side those days. I think I have the program 1 more day, so I may try it again tomorrow. But the results are pretty much hit or miss. I talked with another PCQuote quy, so I'm pretty sure I'm using the program correctly. As far as the reliability issue goes, they sent me an email with a new download which supposedly fixed the program bugs.
Got a bug fix too in an email. I'll try it again soon, but to be honest I'm not too impressed. I've got another few weeks. If you want to know if buyers are more prevaliant than sellers just look at the current price. Is it more than yesterday's close? If Yes than buyers rule if no than sellers rule, if very near than it's mixed. I really don't need software to tell me that. Rtharp
The more I study the market, the more I realize that's true. I was studying some of David Nassar's stuff, and he talks about trying to determine who's in control--buyers or sellers--before any associated price move. I had hoped that Mercenary would be able to detect that somehow.