Hi Spyder, your post and the document inspired me to program a little script that I attach to this reply... I wanted to clarify the question if it's worth taking a look at the score or not. Therefore I decided to find out, if it makes sense to buy when the score equals '7' and sell the long position when the score reaches '4'. Interesting results... but please be careful and don't trade this standalone: the script contains no stop, no profit target and no trailing stop. It's simply "buy at 7, sell at 4". On a database as of the Nasdaq 100 stocks from 1993 to 2004 it makes 1.3 million $ out of 100k (not reinvesting, with a constant bet size!) as you can see on the chart... It seems like it's worth taking a closer look onto the score. The only thing is, that the Hershey method's signals are dramatically reduced by this restriction. Anyway, this is just a commitment to the ongoing discussion from me. Cheers Odelys
I noticed that MCRI did not appear on my list of dry-up stocks today. I use Yahoo EOD data. This did not match what the Wealth-Lab site uses, nor what Spydertrader is using today. The MoneyCentral data matches the Wealth-Lab site (checked using average 65 day volume.) It appears the Yahoo data has not been correctly split-adjusted, while the data source that MoneyCentral and Wealth-Lab are using is right. If you look at March 22 from MSN data and Yahoo data this will immediately become apparent. Does anyone know if Yahoo data is a never split-adjusted? I can't think of a recent stock split I can check.... Time to switch to MoneyCentral data?
As far as I know, the Yahoo data you can use for downloading with the wealthlab desktop version IS split-adjusted. Please, this is not 100% sure...
One other thing that needs to be pointed out about Odelys' wealth lab results. Not sure what the bet size was, but assuming that it was kept fixed, there's a 1 1/2 yr stretch starting on 8/2000 where the strategy lost 267k. If the strategy was started on that date with 100k, that would've been a 267% pounding before the money started coming back. This same problem would've been encountered if you started on 3/1993 (where the simulation began) and scaled up the bets in proportion with the account size. The entire account would've been wiped out! My point is, I think any long swing strategy needs to be back-tested only as far back as the bursting of the market bubble, because any results prior to that would be unrealistic.
The size was 5000 $ per trade. Correct. I don't agree on that. There are plenty of strategies that take only the longside and remain profitable during the crash. But still to the other point: Please be aware that the code contains NO STOPS! Put in stops and you can be sure the drawdown will be incomparable to what I have shown above...
Excellent work with respect to your PVAD testing script, and I appreciate you sharing your efforts. While your script shows profitable trades during the testing period, we must remain mindful of Wealth-Lab's limitations. We have no way of knowing if a certain equity would have made our list at some point in the past - as Wealth-Lab does not currently allow for screening of fundamental data (EPS & RS rank). Hopefully, Wealth-Lab plans to keep their promise to add this functionality in the Future. Again, just to reiterate Odelys comments, Jack Hershey clearly mentions in "The Big Post I - X" the priority Score has in the Equities Trading Method. Both Price and Volume take precedence over Score. I echo Odelys comments of caution regarding trading the above method as a stand alone methodology. Still, the script provided by Odelys shows we remain on the right track. Odelys, thanks again for your contributions. - Spydertrader
Thank you Spydertrader. That's exactly the point what you say: This was not a "method". It was a hint if looking at the score does make any sense at all or not - not more than that. But it means after filtering the signals it can be useful to keep the score in mind (that's what you said in a former post as I remember it). Not more. Not less. And the other thing is: Did everyone realize that the score is calculated only by looking back TWO BARS ?? Not much as I would say...
You make some valid points. However to be fair, we need to keep in mind Odelys tested his script against equities falling outside our desired parameters (EPS & RS Rank, Float, etc.). - Spydertrader