March 5, 2008
Aboard for the Crash in United Airlines
I’m really excited about the new weekly trend filter for the Box Ideas for two reasons:
- It will allow me to offer both “Preferred Ideas” (those in the same direction as the weekly trend) and “Other Ideas” (those going counter to the weekly trend). This will dramatically reduce the number of things to follow. For example, here are the numbers since December:
- December ‘07 - 34 total ideas including 11 “with the trend” ideas (32%)
- January ‘08 - 36 total ideas including 22 “with the trend” ideas (61%)
- February ‘08 - 76 total ideas including 45 “with the trend” ideas (59%)
- March ‘08 (through March 5th) - 21 total ideas including 3 “with the trend” ideas (14%)
I know people were concerned about there being too many ideas to follow and you’d need a huge account to take even small positions in every suggestion. Having the “preferred” ideas should help out a lot on this front.
- I’m pretty sure it will improve the overall results to go just with the preferred ideas, though I haven’t rigorously measured it yet.
Anyway, here’s an idea the Box suggested for February 5th, that was “with the trend” (25% drops from entry are definitely “Preferred”!):
Short UAUA below 38.20
Initial Protective Stop above 41.47
Initial Risk $: 3.27
Initial Risk %: 8.56%
Target 1.0: 25.08
Expected % move: 34.35%
Expected R move: 4.0R
Target 1.1: 23.11
Expected % move: 39.50%
Expected R move: 4.6R
Cat: | Time: 2:54 pm (utc+8)
March 5th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Hi Chairman
I personally think your fundamental thinking is more valuable than these technical ideas. Which have you made more money on, yourself, over the last ten years? That would be enlightening.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Rod: No one gets that for $20 a month, lol. These technical ideas are pretty darned good, especially after applying the weekly trend filter… I’m confident I’ll get a couple hundred subscribers for them eventually. :)
March 5th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
when I checked your site - I see you are over 3 doz - good - I had asked in my e-mail - no need to answer.
March 6th, 2008 at 2:14 am
Agree Rod, site value is way down. Perhaps Mao, you should just go ahead and rename your site boxian.com as that is about the only thing it is about anymore. Is there a Box(er) Rebellion coming?
But at least I found a nice site from someone who posted here (I often check out the sites of posters). He writes some heady stuff.
http://twocents.blogs.com/weblog/
March 6th, 2008 at 3:45 am
Just wondering what is the average R in previous months if we only consider the preferred ideas?
March 6th, 2008 at 4:47 am
I have a question regarding the INFY price action today. The “100% Ini Risk” level is $38.93. The stock ran up to $39.07 and came back down. Currently it’s $38.10.
My question is regarding moving the stop to breakeven.
Do I do this the moment it went above $38.93 or does the stock have to close above this level for me to move the stop?
Thanks!
March 6th, 2008 at 5:44 am
@biff: Box(er) Rebellion, I like it. :) It’s true the newsletter is taking time away from the blog, but that’s tough luck for the freeloaders … I invite you to visit one of the other 15,000,000 blogs out there, including twocents’.
@Landola: I haven’t crunched the numbers yet but it looks like December would have been slightly better, January slightly worse, and February a lot better, but I just don’t know yet. Hoping to find some time this weekend to look at it closely.
@Lawrence: That’s a judgment call. You can move the stop to B/E *or* you can stick with your original stop depending if you want to be conservative or loose. Price just has to *touch* the 100% level (no close) to consider going to B/E, but you’re free to make up your own rules regarding this. The Box still likes INFY so I might stay with the original protective stop, but as you know, this is a countertrend trade. Everything hinges on how much risk you want to take, as always.
March 6th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
“December ‘07 - 34 total ideas including 11 “with the trend” ideas (32%)”
How do you calculate your percentage gain, and what does 32% mean? Is it the average percentage return of all trades, assuming all trades are taken and have been stopped out?
March 6th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
mehmeh: The 32% refers to the number of trades among the total that were “with the trend” — 11/34 = 32%
March 6th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
oh ok, I see. Where can I find the performance of your picks? I need to see some track record, though I understand past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.
March 6th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
mehmeh: I’ll email you the spreadsheets from last December and January now … February still has a bunch of open trades so I haven’t done that month yet — could be OK, could be terrible, I just don’t know yet. There’s not much past performance to look at and I guarantee absolutely nothing, ever. :-)
March 6th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Ok thanks, I mistyped my email address in my previous posts. This one is the actual one, if you could send to me that would be great.
Are you going to do a public post entry to show how your picks did? I suspect you might be getting more enquiries on “performance”.
March 6th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
meh: I just forwarded the originally kicked-back email to you. Similar to the Gorilla guys and their ilk, I will do everything in my ability to obfuscate and/or distort the “performance” of the ideas. :-) Seriously, I plan to put out a little chart booklet with the ideas from the previous month described in complete detail.
March 6th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Thanks! December looked impressive! January was not so impressive. I look forward to seeing more reports and analysis on subsequent months, at least for those trial months.
March 6th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
meh: Yes, it’s a mixed record — that’s why it’s only $20 a month, lol. The only people whose accounts grow uninterruptedly to the moon are Gorillas, former penny-stock brokers in Vancouver, and assorted other hucksters. :-)
March 6th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I outsourced my entry signals for a system once, and then worked out I could improve my results by applying a trend filter. I backtested various filters over 200 old signals or so which took a few days and from then on I ended up taking about 1/3 of the signals and my stats and profitability shot way up.
Does a black box system become grey box when you start adding your own input?
Btw.. Good article for you Chairman over at Kevin Kelly about long tails and 1000 true fans, check it out.
March 6th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Andrew: Yes, it’s turning a little gray but I’m pretty sure it’s a smart move. I’ll probably always offer both trend and countertrend set-ups since people like to review *all* the ideas.
Dunno who Kevin Kelly is but I’ll check it out if you have a link, thanks.
March 6th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
1,000 True Fans
March 6th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Andrew: Thanks for the link. I have a dozen true fans but they’re all cheap bastards. Seriously though, Kelly is onto something, but that thousand figure is pretty darn big … I’ve found managing even a handful of True Fans is exhausting, let alone 1,000. :)