PositiveDev's trading journey

[Perishabull]

 

This a a chart of the ratio of GDXJ to GDX covering the last year. I'm looking at this as it turns out it would have been more profitable (so far at least) to have acted on my GDX buy signal by trading GDXJ as a proxy for GDX.

 

It's really a moot point whether I would have opted to trade GDXJ had I seen this at the time, I probably wouldn't have since on 27th Jan it would have looked as if the ratio had topped and was on it's way down. Anyway I digress.

 

 

The potentially interesting aspect of this is that today I thought I would try out my indicator on a ratio...just to see what might happen. Here is the resulting signal chart for my DBDT indicator on the GDXJ/GDX ratio. DBDT is my main indicator, the one I have been trading and dissecting over the last weeks and months on this blog, as it's by far the most interesting and accurate so far.

 

 

I cannot plot the indicator signal line with the value of the ratio as an overlay so I have marked double bottoms on my indicator working on the GDXJ/GDX ratio and the buy signals are on 25th August and 30th September 2010. Those are the red lines I have marked on the ratio chart above (the first chart). So these were clearly very good entry points to buy this ratio. This is possibly another interesting dimension of my indicator I have discovered today but really it's not possible to make a valid assessment on the basis of a solitary chart. I'll need to do a full study and I already have a backlog of different studies that I am going to complete, time just seems to evaporate these days. I've never been so completely absorbed in my life as I am now with this.

 

 

I worked out some new numbers on the performance of my indicator over the last year on the top 100 stocks in the S&P 500 and the results are slightly dissapointing in one sense but enlightening in another.

 

This is an assessment of all the buy signals as a group and all the sell signals as a group.

 

 

On the one hand you have an 81% for buy signals that were correct, on the flip side it's rather obvious the hit rate for the sell signals tells me my system is mostly a long only system when it comes to index based stocks (S&P 100). 54% sell signals being correct is marginally better than a coin toss. My intention was to develop a system that could work both ways. Clearly it is only accurate in one direction when it comes to stocks that form an index (S&P 100). I think that for commodity correlated stocks this doesn't apply since the work I have done on the gold complex stocks and oil based ones seems to be very good on both the long and the short side.

 

I'm certainly not in any way unsatisfied with the accuracy of the buy signals.

 

Another number I worked out was that 28.5% of the buy signals were at or one day following an intermediate low that developed into an uptrend.

 

The real test of this indicator / system will be over a period of time.

[Perishabull]

Intra-day sell signal on NASDAQ today at 3.30pm

 

 

That was a run of ten points in the NASDAQ on the short side and would have netted more in 15 mins than I earn in a day. I'm definitely going to have to take some afternoons off work at some point soon so I can take advantage of these.

 

I exited the Ebay trade on 2nd Feb, the double top sell signal was cancelled when the indicator shot higher the previous day.

 

 

[Perishabull]

I thought I would try out my indicator on a ratio...just to see what might happen...

 

I've been researching my DBDT indicator working on ratios. One of the most interesting ratios is the Gold/S&P500 ratio.

 

 

GLD/SPY 1 year chart

 

 

 

Now here's my indicator working on the same ratio over the same period

 

What I've done is marked out previous double bottom / double top formations, these would be respective buy / sell signals for the ratio.

 

23rd April buy signal (buy GLD and short SPY)

24th June buy signal (buy GLD and short SPY)

1st July sell signal (short GLD and buy SPY)

28th July buy signal (buy GLD and short SPY)

 

Now here are the same signals marked on the GLD/SPY ratio chart

 

 

I was absolutely stunned when I did this, my indicator has picked out 4 signals, 3 of which gave the correct direction at the turning points in the ratio. Wow. The one on 24th June wasn't a turning point but it still got the direction of the ratio correct.

[Perishabull]

I finally finished my study of DBDT on NASDAQ 100 using only the spike double top / double bottom signals eg

 

Over time I've noticed these are much more accurate than rounded ones eg

 

My belief is that there are implied support and resistance levels within the market and this is what the spike double top or bottom in my indicator is showing, this is just a theory though.

 

 

 

Overall 80% of the signals were correct.

 

89% of the buy signals were correct, with 68% of the sell signals correct, better than the signals were for the S&P100.

 

89% for the buy signals is quite a stunning result really. Hard to say but this would seem to suggest there might be something to my theory.

 

The dollar move numbers are the amount the underlying moved in the correct direction following the signal within a period of a month, this should give me an idea of profit targets I can use for individual stocks, when the next signals come. The average overall is $4 but this is a slightly misleading figure since some stocks moved only a dollar or so whereas there were huge moves in some really high value stocks such as PCLN and FSLR.

[Perishabull]

Again clusters of signals were seen on certain dates, from the work I did on the S&P 100, where clusters were present, this is a good signal for the index itself. Here's the rundown for signal cluster dates in relation to QQQQ.

 

7th Jan 2010 - 4 sell signals, (also 2 on 6th and one on the 5th). The 7th wasn't the high in QQQQ for January but it was 50 cents or so off, it was 2 weeks later before the down move in QQQQ started.

 

1st Feb 2010 - 4 buy signals - 3 days before the February low in QQQQ (on a closing basis)

 

9th Feb 2010 - 7 buy signals - 2 trading days after the intraday low in QQQQ during February 2010

 

2nd Mar 2010 - 4 buy signals - 1/3 of the way into the QQQQ rally from the February 2010 low

 

16th Mar 2010 - 5 buy signals - 1/2 of the way into the QQQQ rally from the February 2010 low

 

22nd Mar 2010 - 8 buy signals - 2/3 of the way into the QQQQ rally from the February 2010 low

 

28th May 2010 - 6 sell signal - QQQQ rallied for 3 days then down $2 below close of 28th before rally continued

 

4th June 2010 - 5 sell signals - QQQQ dropped a few days then rallied back up beyond price at 4th June

 

1st Sept 2010 - 10 buy signals - QQQQ rallied hard until 8th November before correcting

 

11th Nov 2010 - 7 sell signals - QQQQ corrected by $3

 

1st Dec 2010 - 10 buy signals - QQQQ rallied until 18th January 2011

 

10th Jan 2010 - 7 buy signals - Preceded a short 4 day rally

 

Clearly as per the S&P 100 study these clusters are worth paying attention to in relation to the index. Maybe if I get 7 or more in one day in an index I trade the index.

 

QQQQ with cluster signal dates marked (Red = sell signal clusters / Green = buy signal clusters)

[Perishabull]

DBDT indicator buy signal on SNDK (Sandisk) today

 

 

SNDK (3 month)

 

This is SNDK with Linear Regression channel trendlines with the inner 68% from mean lines plotted (to represent 1 standard deviation from mean - see Bell curve chart posted a while ago).

 

Also the volume is plotted in profile accross the chart (in blue) with the yellow shaded section representing the price range where 68% of the trade volume took place. The horizontal red line intersecting the volume profile is the price level where most of the trade took place over the last 3 months ($48.2), also known as the Point Of Contol (POC) in market profile analysis.

 

So, in today's trade we can see that the price jumped up through the lower standard deviation Linear Regression Channel (LRC) line and back into the belly of the bell curve (inside the 68% trend zone). In addition to this, today the price moved above the POC on higher volume and closed near the highs. These factors, in context of the 3 month price action, and coupled with my DBDT indicator buy signal may suggest further upside to come.

 

To trade this I purchased March 55 strike calls, and offset the time decay (theta) and risk by selling the same number of Mar 60 strike calls. My minimum target price is $55 by March 18th, although dependent on price action I may shoot for $57.5. Of course it may not even break new highs, which it must do in order to be a decent trade.

 

 

This is the option risk profile for the vertical call spread. If it got to $57 at any point it would make 300%, $56 in 2 weeks (unlikely?) then 200%, $60 by expiry then it's 800% (highly improbable).

 

I'm attracted to the NASDAQ buy signals since the stats I ran showed those were the best (at least historically)

[Perishabull]

 

FXI

 

Closed the FXI trade today for gain of almost 2 times amount risked. It's close enough to my target of $41 today...

 

Probably could have played it better if I bought a put spread with wider strike prices (I used 41/43). Hindsight is 20/20 of course.

[Perishabull]

Couple of intraday signals on Nasdaq today

 

Sell at 3.10pm, buy at 7.10pm

 

 

First the sell, then the buy signal on today's E-Mini Nasdaq chart

 

 

Both of these were failed signals today (not traded)

[Perishabull]

I've just done a quick review of the trades taken since the start of the year, had I held on to each of them for just a few days more I would have been up 20% from the start of January until now - incredible. My account is up, but nowhere close to 20%. Very bittersweet, makes me sick just thinking about it.

 

This is not looking back to see what the maximum value of each trade might have reached and cherry picking, if I did that it would be somewhere north of 35%. There's no point in working out the figure for that.

 

I haven't worked out the exact % but I don't think I had much of my account at risk at any one point. It might have been 5% - 7% with the rest of the cash dormant. I have snatched at profits, probably a remnant from my past trade selections that were very poor, those are ones I made before I developed my DBDT indicator.

 

Pluses

 

Stunning calls from my DBDT indicator

 

GDX sell 3rd January

GDXJ sell 4th January

BHI buy 5th January

X sell 6th January

FSLR buy 10th January

FCX sell 13th January

FXI sell 18th January

GDX buy 27th January (still active)

 

also IWM buy on 26th January (still active)

 

Negatives

 

Closing trades too early

Focusing too much on short term price action rather than trends

Capping potential profit from trade by unnecessarily using vertical spreads or using vertical spreads with strikes too close together

Buying front month options instead of second month out

Not trading signals on day they are generated

Not setting price / profit targets at trade outset

[jsr]

Hi perishabull ... Did your system give a signal for GDXJ today? Or any other stocks for that matter ...

 

 

Cheers

 

 

[Perishabull]

I crossed the Rubicon today and sold the E-Mini Nasdaq futures at 17:33 following a sell signal on my DBDT indicator, just closed out at 18:30 for an 8 point gain. My initial target was 2355 in the futures which it has now just touched a couple of times so I closed it too early. Never mind - that was my first futures trade.

 

 

 

With the two failed signals yesterday (I have never seen that before) the probability was the next would be a good one and I was right.

 

 

Sell signal at 17:05, then I sold short 0.5 points from the high of the day (so far anyway...), I got back from work at 17:25 and price was floating around the same level so the opportunity was still live, thankfully.

 

 

 

 

Now thats what I'm talking about

 

[Perishabull]

Hi perishabull ... Did your system give a signal for GDXJ today? Or any other stocks for that matter ...

 

 

Cheers

 

I checked GLD, GDX and GDXJ - no signals. I don't get the day signals that often, I scan through 200+ charts a day looking for them. I've yet to go through the S&P100, NASDAQ and some commodity stocks today but will do before the close.

 

My system only catches some changes in trends, so I can use it to get into a trade but not to get out.

 

Mubarak is about to make a speech shortly, if he steps down we may see a rally later...

[Perishabull]

Just spotted a buy signal that was earlier today on S&P500 at 2.50pm

 

For anyone recently following my blog here my indicator is in black with SPY overlaid in blue. A double bottom in my indicator is a buy signal.

 

 

 

E-mini S&P futures with vertical red line marking 2.50pm

 

 

That was a buy signal 1 point from the low of today's trade. This follows the familiar pattern of signals in the early part of the trading day, whilst I am sitting at my desk at work............

 

So today, two signals, a buy signal at 2.50pm within 1 point of the low in the S&P500 and a sell signal at 5.05pm less than 2 points from today's high in the NASDAQ. For me this is really special, I've invested the last couple of years time studying the markets, and a lot of work and late nights creating this indicator and it's capable of stunning days like this...

 

 

 

 

-----------------------------

No signals on stocks today

[Perishabull]

NASDAQ sell signal at 7.30pm, sold NASDAQ futures 4 mins later at 2377

 

 

It was 10 minutes and a few points away from the high of the day, which was good....but the profit-taking I was looking for before the close didn't materialise. Closed at 8.55pm for a very modest profit. There's no way I'll ever hold a futures position through a weekend, or not exit the position before a market close.

 

Today in a word - moribund. A scratch is better than a loss I suppose.

[Perishabull]

A look at TNX - 10 year interest rates.

 

Indicator signal chart (Weekly basis)

 

TNX with buy and sell signals

 

It's worth pointing out that the 11th January sell signal would also have been a sell on the standard chart as it also double topped then.

 

Pretty good, the October low in 10 year rates was signalled as a buy, (a sell in the 10 year futures), two days after the low for the year. Impressive however look at the corresponding 10 year futures below.

 

10 year futures with corresponding buy and sell signals

 

For some reason the October low in year rates wasn't the high in the 10 year futures.... Can anyone explain that to me please? I'd love to know.

 

The first signal was a loser but the other two, were pretty much dead on.

 

I could maybe use IEF (iShares Barclays 7-10 Year Treasury ETF) to trade 10 year interest rates.

 

 

IEF with signals

 

The sell on 12th October was 2 trading days after the high for the year.

[Perishabull]

After looking at the weekly TNX signal chart with favourable results I thought I'd take a look at some more weekly signal charts. Until today I haven't looked at any weekly signal charts, only day and intraday time frame. Immediately I found a weekly sell signal for the S&P 500 (SPY), generated just a couple of days ago on Friday, interesting.

 

SPY weekly signal chart (2 year)

 

I've marked the other signals that were given, I actually looked at all signals for the last 5 years and these were the only ones, they are pretty rare on the weekly charts so it's coincidental that I checked today. The signals are;

 

Sell signal 25th September 2009 - Failed signal

Buy signal 2nd October 2009 - Correct signal

Buy signal 27th August 2010 - Correct signal

Sell signal 11th February 2011 - ?

 

And on the SPY chart

 

 

As a result of this I searched through all S&P 100 stocks and NASDAQ stocks and found 7 weekly sell signals on S&P 100 stocks that were also generated during Friday 11th Feb;

 

ABT

ALL

AVP

BA

GILD

HD

MET

 

and 9 weekly sell signals on NASDAQ stocks;

 

ADP

BMC

GENZ

GILD

JOYG

LINTA

MAT

MCHP

PCAR

 

 

This is quite interesting as I did studies on signals for both the S&P 100 and NASDAQ based on daily charts and those highlighted that where there were dates with clusters of signals in the same direction (eg only buy, or only sell, more than 6) then this was a strong signal for the direction of the underlying index. Now the studies did also show that sell signals were historically not as accurate as buys, but regarding the cluster signals I never had as many as 9 sell signals on one date. The implication here is that as there are more than 7 individual weekly sell signals on each of the SPY 100 and NASDAQ 100 it should be more significant a signal. I haven't studied weekly signals at all (since I only looked at the first one today) but since the indicator itself works on daily and intra-day time-frame charts it's not so much of a step to think it might also show validity on weekly charts.

[Perishabull]

I had a look at some other weekly signal charts, trying to pick a random selection GDX, PBR, JNK, X, FCX, SNDK.

 

GDX signal chart (weekly)

 

GDX 2 year chart with signal points (Red = sell / Green = buy)

 

 

No weekly signals on PBR

 

 

JNK signal chart (weekly)

 

 

JNK 2 year chart with signal points

 

 

JNK is also a weekly sell signal as of 2 days ago.

 

 

No weekly signals on X

 

No weekly signals on FCX

 

SNDK signal chart (weekly)

 

SNDK 2 year chart with signal point

 

 

and

 

 

CVX signal chart (weekly)

 

CVX 2 year chart with signal point

[drbubb]

Sell signal 25th September 2009 - Failed signal

I may consider shorting the futures if an attractive entry lines up during the week.

What was associated with the "failed 25 Sept 2009" sell signal?

 

I will post the same question on your Blog, and maybe you can answer it there.

[Perishabull]

What was associated with the "failed 25 Sept 2009" sell signal?

 

 

There were 3 weekly sell signals within the S&P 100 on 25th Sept 2009 when the failed weekly SPY sell signal was generated;

 

DVN

NKE

RF

 

Contrast to 9 weekly buy signals within the S&P 100 on 2nd October 2009 when there was a correct weekly SPY buy signal;

 

CVX

EXC

JPM

MCD

NYX

RTN

TWX

USB

WAG

 

 

Looking back at the study of S&P 100 cluster signal dates on daily timeframe charts;

 

1st September : 9 buy signals, this day signalled the end of the correction and the market rallied powerfully for more than two months

 

1st December : 12 buy signals, this day marked the end of the November correction

 

10th January 2011 : 7 buy signals, trend upwards in S&P 500 continued for a week

 

Where there were 7 or more on a single day that was a very strong signal for the index itself.

 

Similar to the cluster signal dates on the NASDAQ 100;

 

9th Feb 2010 - 7 buy signals - 2 trading days after the intraday low in QQQQ during February 2010

 

22nd Mar 2010 - 8 buy signals - 2/3 of the way into the QQQQ rally from the February 2010 low

 

1st Sept 2010 - 10 buy signals - QQQQ rallied hard until 8th November before correcting

 

11th Nov 2010 - 7 sell signals - QQQQ corrected by $3

 

1st Dec 2010 - 10 buy signals - QQQQ rallied until 18th January 2011

 

10th Jan 2010 - 7 buy signals - Preceded a short 4 day rally

 

The NASDAQ cluster sell signal date of 11th Nov 2010 is the only > 7 example I have where sell signals clustered and the index dropped.

 

Certainly where the buy signals cluster there is a strong correlation with these dates being great entry points to get long.

 

I'll be exiting my IWM and GDX trades this week, the ideal scenario will be a couple more days rally then I can consider a short on either SPY or QQQQ. I'll use options though, not so keen on overnight / weekend risk with futures.

[Perishabull]

HUI weekly signal chart

 

Very clear signals on this one

 

Buy signal 2nd October 2009

Sell signal 15th January 2010

Buy signal 10th June 2010

Sell signal 7th January 2011

Buy signal 28th January 2011

 

HUI 2 year chart with signal points

[Perishabull]

This is a performance chart comparing SPY, DIA, IWM and FXA

 

At the start of the chart SPY, DIA and IWM all start at the same point and as time moved on the difference in performance became more prominent however from about November onwards they have become even more correlated with little to separate them. FXA is also shown here in purple, it's correlated to the S&P500, and has now made a lower high, diverging from the indices.

 

 

This is SPY in black with FXA in blue

 

You can see a divergence between the two that has a resemblance to April last year.

 

 

E-mini S&P futures, EUR/USD, AUD/JPY, AUD/USD

 

This chart shows E-Mini S&P futures in blue, AUD/JPY in black, EUR/USD in green with AUD/USD in grey

 

There is a divergence between these currency pairs and the E-mini S&P futures, similar to April last year.

 

 

I exited my long in SNDK earlier today as a result of a sell signal on SNDK today. After looking at the above charts, and in mind of the weekly DBDT sell signals on my indicator for SPY and stocks within the S&P 100 and NASDAQ I closed my long in IWM and now have puts on IWM.

 

I've only kept my long position in GDX as I have a long standing target on that of $59 by 18th Feb, it's not far away.

 

On 8th Feb VIX and VXO (Implied vol) had their low point for the year, lower than their lows reached during 2010 (On 12th April and 21st April respectively)

 

RVX

 

The RVX (Russell 2000 vol index) on the other hand, has posted a higher low.

[Perishabull]

Well I checked the S&P 100 and NASDAQ 100 daily charts and I have a glut of buy signals triggered yesterday, including on SPY;

 

ALTR

CELG

CERN

COST

DIS

DLTR

FCX

GENZ

LMT

MET

ORLY

SPY

TEVA

UTX

WAG

WMB

 

As a result I've closed my short in IWM. My short in CL will expire tomorrow, at a loss. I still have my long on GDX, a 57/59 put spread that I sold on 27th January so I'm looking for GDX to close above $59 tomorrow.

 

Clearly an unwanted situation, lots of weekly sell signals on 11th Feb then lots of daily buy signals yesterday. Many buy signals on one day is a great buy signal for the index and these historically have been great entries for longs. I'm as yet undecided on how to proceed. The sell signals typically have yielded far poorer results compared to the buys but I've never had so many sell signals on one day as I had on the 11th Feb, those sell signals were weekly signals that I haven't yet completed research on.

 

In short, a dilemma.

 

 

 

This chart shows previous cluster buy signals (daily signals) in green, all of those were excellent entries, apart from the first. A similar phenomenon was seen for cluster buy signals for stocks within the S&P100.

 

QQQQ with cluster signal dates marked (Red = sell signal clusters / Green = buy signal clusters)

[Perishabull]

Intraday trade on NASDAQ futures today

 

DBDT NASDAQ signal chart

 

Sell signal generated at 6.30pm today. I was watching this like a hawk today and sold the futures 15 seconds after the signal gave the go-ahead, what I'm doing nowadays is lining up the limit order with profit and stop orders included as OCO (One cancels the other) all together as the order entry so I just need two clicks to get into the market once the signal is given, with a 4 point stop and a 10 point profit target included. From my previous experience this seems to give plenty of room for movement, a 10 point profit target is a reasonable amount to shoot for I think. Perhaps as I gain experience I can amend these dependent on market conditions.

 

Here's the result

 

NASDAQ futures with sell and buy back points (vertical red lines)

 

So I sold at 2400, very close to today's high of 2400.75, although I couldn't see any contracts changing hands at that price, from the data I have it was 2400.50. I was looking for a 10 point move and it didn't come so I exited at 2395 (8.51pm).

 

 

Not exactly stellar but I'm very pleased with the precision, selling very close to the high and squeezing very close to the maximum available on that trade.

 

 

All in all a great distraction from what I wrote about in the previous post...

 

 

EDIT - Out of the 197,725 E-Mini NASDAQ contracts that traded today, only 3,754 traded at or above the 2400 print.

[Perishabull]

Well I checked the S&P 100 and NASDAQ 100 daily charts and I have a glut of buy signals triggered yesterday, including on SPY;

 

ALTR

CELG

CERN

COST

DIS

DLTR

FCX

GENZ

LMT

MET

ORLY

SPY

TEVA

UTX

WAG

WMB

.......

 

In short, a dilemma.

 

 

Dilemma resolved;

 

On the daily charts for S&P100 I have 5 more buy signals triggered today;

 

COF

DVN

KFT

MMM

CVX

 

and for the NASDAQ 100, 4 more;

 

FLEX

GRMN

ILMN

SYMC

 

and some more buy signals for these stocks/ETFs;

 

JNK

TLT

APC

DIG

ROSE

 

 

So that's 23 signals for stocks within the S&P 100 and NASDAQ 100 covering 2 days, a strong buy signal according to my system. I've only completed research on the daily signals and the buy signals historically were the most accurate so now that there are so many buys triggered I will have to listen and go long tomorrow in some shape or fashion.

[Perishabull]

I have a buy signal today on GDX.

..........

I'm playing this by selling put spreads.

 

GDX

 

On 27th January, for GDX I had a price target of $59 by the 18th Feb - it seemed very optimistic at that point, perhaps it still is ($1.75 to go) - long may the Gold rally continue

 

GDX closed at $58.98 today