Some Blog Site

Thus begins a recurring feature here at Some Blog Site – an analysis of Technical Analysis.

For those who don’t know, Technical Analysis is the study of stock charts and the process of choosing which stocks to buy based on what the price has done and is doing, not necessarily using any other information about the company.

I used the Stocks Scans page from stockcharts.com. It lists a table of the various exchanges versus the various indicators. I had seen these and wondered how well they worked. So I thought I would chart the results for a while, rather than experimenting with my money. This series of posts will update how well the various indicators are doing over time.

I limited the experiment to only the NASDAQ and NYSE. I’m sure there are some stocks or funds to be had at the other exchanges too, but I wanted to keep the experiment simple. Each day for a week, I would run the scans and collect which stocks were listed for that day. After the scans were run, I removed the stocks that were either below $1 in price or below 50,000 shares of daily volume. I used the closing price as the purchase price, and added the stock to the list of stocks in the imaginary portfolio. If an indicator were bullish or “Buy”, then the portfolio would pretend to buy the stock. If an indicator were bearish or “Sell”, then the portfolio would pretend to short sell the stock.

At the end of each day, I would also collect the closing prices of all stocks in the portfolio. These were compared to the purchase price to get the gain for the period. After the one week was done, I stopped adding stocks to the portfolio. But from here on out, those existing stocks will be tracked and the performance of the technical indicators will be observed.

This chart is not not exactly represenative for various reasons.
1. The stock scans are run at the end of each trading day. Therefore the purchase price that this chart uses is the closing price. But after the market closes, you can’t buy the stock at that price anymore.
2. The stocks are not weighted. So a $10 stock is going to have ten times the influence that a $1 stock does. This is not ideal, and does not represent how I would likely invest.
3. The indicators may need to be tracked for more than one week. Some indicators may oscillate, showing buy a stock one week and sell it the next. That means that the longer I continue this comparison, the less representative it will be.

NASDAQ

NYSE

This is not an offer to buy or sell any securities. Any information on this site is general in nature and is not intended to be financial advice for your specific situation. Trading stocks carries risks that should be discussed with a professional financial advisor. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Use at your own risk. This post was written in a facility that processes peanuts.

“Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest.”
– Matthew 25:27

It is the end of May, and I have not received my economic stimulus tax rebate check. According to what the IRS said, I should have received my money a few weeks ago. But I did, last week, receive a letter from the IRS saying that I will get some money. Not the money itself, just a letter describing the money.

Lewis Black had a comedy routine about this the last time there was an economic stimulus rebate thingy (around 2001). And I have to agree with him. Why not, instead of mailing people letters telling them they’re going to receive checks, just put the checks in the letters? That would save people some annoyance and save the government some money. How much money? It cost the IRS $42 million to send letters without checks in them.

“For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing.”
– Romans 13:6

 I have switched things around slightly.  Now the financial calulators have their own page, for better organization and cleaner names. 

“Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE,” says the Lord. “AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN; And I will welcome you.”
 – 2 Corinthians 6:17

The best way to get rid of debt is to pay it off. Another way to pay it off faster, other than rounding a payment up to the nearest hundreds, is to participate in a bi-weekly payment schedule instead of the normal monthly payment schedule.

To see the effects of paying 26 half payments instead of 12 full payments, try the bi-weekly payment calculator, which I added to this site today.

“So we built the wall and the whole wall was joined together to half its {height,} for the people had a mind to work.”
– Nehemiah 4:6

The best way to get rid of debt is to pay it off. The best way I’ve found to pay it off faster is to round up your payments to a nice number. In my case, I round to the next hundreds place, but you could round to the next tens place or thousands place, depending on your situation.

To see the effects of paying more than the minimum amount each month, try the loan acceleration calculator, which I added to this site this past weekend.

“Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.”
– Matthew 5:41

Recent news articles have mentioned that recent stock prices have been volatile. Or you’ll hear about the stock market’s being volatile. I always understood that to mean that the prices changed rapidly.

One example of that is Virgin Mobile (ticker symbol VM). I bought that stock upon a recommendation from a previously reliable person. I bought at $5.something on 3/27/08 and the stock is now at $2.13 (4/3/08) . Now that I have owned VM, I recall hearing my high school chemistry teacher tell me that volatile means “evaporates readily.” And that is a fitting description of my VM stock.

“Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”
– James 4:14

The Health Savings Plans (HSAs) that have recently become popular (because they only recently were passed into law) do have some problems. Maybe not problems…more like things that steepen the learning curve. These are some differences from the traditional HMO/PPO that people should know.

The plan (or insurance company or provider or etc.) does not pay for anything anymore. You pay. Under traditional plans, you would have some medical treatment or pick up a prescription and pay either nothing or a small co-pay. The medical service provider would then bill the insurance company who would then pay it. The insurance company may or may not have let you know what the cost was, and you may or may not have had to pay a portion of it.

Now, with an HSA, the medical service provider bills the insurance company, which tells the service provider to bill you for the service. You get a bill for the full amount and are responsible to send them a check or use your HSA-provided debit card to pay for items that need to be paid at time of service. All the insurance company does is track your expenses and negotiate lower rates for you. After a certain point though (“the bridge”), the insurance company does start acting more like a traditional insurance company.

Before, with a traditional plan, if it said that you had coverage, you had that coverage from day one. Now, with an HSA, you have coverage but the money in your plan is not there right away. For example, if your company’s plan states that you will have $1600 of coverage from your pre-tax contributions for the year, you do not get $1600 at the start of the year. The company can divide it and give you only $400 per quarter.

I think that is the real draw for company’s to push HSAs for their employees – it helps manage their cash flow. If employees have significant health-care charges early in the year, now the employee is responsible for the difference. You have $750 of medical expenses but only $400 in the account, then you pay the extra $350 out of your pocket. You can reimburse yourself from the account once it gets the next installment, such as the next quarter. But the employee is now handling the float. The company’s cash flow is more even and the burden of what is effectively a small loan is passed to the employee.

“if he does not lend {money} on interest or take increase, {if} he keeps his hand from iniquity {and} executes true justice between man and man, {if} he walks in My statutes and My ordinances so as to deal faithfully– he is righteous {and} will surely live,” declares the Lord GOD.”
– Ezekiel 18:8-9