January 31, 2008
Two Trading Ideas for Thursday, January 31
After a long dry spell, the Box came up with two ideas for Thursday, January 31 — one in Big Blue and a very interesting setup in a Small Cap. If you want the details on these ideas, just email me.
Here is the deal on the Box’s ideas becoming a subscribers-only service. Since Chinese New Year is starting next week, and I will be away on vacation until the middle of February, I’ve decided to start charging beginning March 1st instead of February 1st. This will give folks a few more weeks to review the ideas in real-time, three month’s worth of spreadsheets with complete details on all trading ideas (December, January, and February) , and enough time for me to write a short guidebook for prospective subscribers. All this should give people enough information to make an informed decision.
Although I have a huge number of people signed up who are willing to pay me nothing, I expect only my dozen old friends will open up their wallets in the end. That’s OK, I’d rather be of service to 12 subscribers than to 1,200 freeloaders. :)
February 1st, 2008 at 12:55 am
Has the Box been backtested? How many Rs over the last year?
February 1st, 2008 at 6:33 am
MrTrend: No, it hasn’t. I got it in December so I only have results for December and January so far.
February 1st, 2008 at 8:29 am
Mr. Trend, check out the stock black box system I’m testing, Stock NeuroMaster. Its a neural net system that generates Buy and Sell signals using EOD data from Yahoo, Metastock, or CSV files.
Yes, you can backtest it and get some system performance stats on it too.
February 1st, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Chairman, why not backtest the Box?
February 1st, 2008 at 9:52 pm
MrTrend: It would take a lot of effort since I would have to record the Box’s results by hand, day by day, going back in time.
February 1st, 2008 at 9:57 pm
How about using something like Wealth-Lab?
February 2nd, 2008 at 7:03 am
MrTrend: I have Wealth-Lab but I don’t know the precise formulas and criteria that the Box uses.
February 2nd, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Are you saying someone else wrote the formulas and criteria that make up the Box? In that case could that person back-test it?
February 2nd, 2008 at 9:19 pm
MrTrend: Correct, I don’t know precisely what it does but I have a very good idea after watching it for a couple of months. I suppose the creator could backtest it but I suspect he hasn’t… remember, it’s not a “system” per se, just something that searches for particular patterns that are low-risk / high-reward. I guess the way to backtest it would be to drop to a very low time frame (5 minute?) in a super-liquid instrument (like the SP) and record every “valid” idea it comes up with over a long stretch of time … then you’d see if it’s worth a darn, but who has the time to do that? :-)
February 2nd, 2008 at 10:05 pm
I agree that it would be very tedious to backtest the Box “by hand”. I guess the way to backtest it would be to get the formulas and criteria from its creator and to input them into a backtesting software like Wealth-Lab. It would be nice to know whether or not these “ideas” have a positive expectancy over long stretches of time including bear, bull and sideways markets.
February 3rd, 2008 at 7:59 am
MrTrend: I agree, but we’ll (me and my dozen subscribers) find out if they ideas are any good over time as I run it as a service — the monthly record of all ideas generated will always be available to everyone to freely review.