Some Blog Site

Last week, I posted the results of a week of gathering stock picks from a technical analysis site. This week, I am posting the results of the second week of that effort. This week shows how those stocks have fared a week later, without any changes to the portfolio.

Also, I corrected the earlier numbers. The values for 2 Days, 3 Days, and 1 Week were added instead of averaged, so the returns were greater than they should have been (e.g. 5 stocks returning 5% each does not mean you will get a 25% return). That error does not affect the results in that the point of the exercise is to compare analysis methods. As long as the methods were compared using the same calculations, the comparison will be valid. But the error would affect the secondary part of the exercise, which is to see how the analysis methods perform against the market itself.

So here are the this week’s results:

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.

“He who increases his wealth by interest and usury Gathers it for him who is gracious to the poor.”
– Proverbs 28:8

I had the problem for the past several years of picking at my cuticles. It was a bad habit, just biting one’s nails, but at the other end of the nails. It seemed harmless for a while, until a couple of weeks ago.

Here, for your viewing enjoyment, are pictures of my nails after the attack of the nail fungus. There were some nails that were infected and some that were not. The nails that were not infected were the nails whose cuticles I hadn’t picked in a while – the healthy cuticles. The nails that were infected were the nails with the damaged cuticles. So if you’re looking for a reason or motivation to stop the unhealthy habit of pulling or peeling or cutting or otherwise hurting your cuticles, take a minute to examine these photos.

In order to protect the squeamish – those who are reading the blog for other reasons and don’t appreciated being confronted with medical photographs – I am showing small black-and-white thumbnails (get it, thumbnails!) or preview pictures. Those who do want to see the larger, full-color version can click on the previews.

I didn’t know it was a fungal infection when it started, because it started under the skin at the base of the nail bed. It wasn’t until that part grew out that I saw what happened. Now the new nail is pushing out the old one, rather, the nail is continuing to grow as normal. The infected part is gradually being clipped away and the new part is growing in fresh, albeit soft and with a matte finish, as opposed to hard and semi-gloss that my nails used to be.

I recently had to deal with the government, and part of that involved completing an application. The application could be via phone, paper form, or online form. I chose online form, as I thought it would be the easiest and fastest. I chose poorly.

Although most of my life is up-to-date, my home entertainment is still in the Neolithic period (I was going to type Stone Age instead of Neolithic period, but I can’t). I have dial-up internet access and broadcast TV – broadcast analog TV, on a cathode ray tube. The broadcast TV part means that the federal government is going to improve things, which means my life gets disrupted. I have to buy a digital-to-analog TV signal converter, otherwise my TV won’t work next year. But the government decided that, since they’re going to make a boatload of money on this deal, they would be nice and subsidize converter boxes for the masses.

So I went to the government site to order two coupons. The site looks nice, but it is a horrible site. I entered my information and clicked the Submit button. What happened? The form cleared my information. Was my information submitted? Do I need to re-enter it? The site had earlier mentioned to remember my confirmation number, but I got no confirmation number. Do I need to wait for a confirmation number? Is my submittal being processed? No feedback whatsoever, so I waited a few minutes (the site had said that the submittal could take a few minutes), tried again, and the same thing happened.

It turns out that the site does not play nicely with browsers other than IE. I was using Firefox, like any good internet user should. The reason I am writing negatively toward the government website dtv2009.gov is not because it just didn’t like Firefox, but that the website people should know that and either fix it (preferred) or warn users that the website is bad and won’t work with their browsers (not preferred, but still better than just not working and not caring why). So I used IE and got my confirmation number. The End.

It seems a common American male experience to have Gillette send you a razor on your 18th birthday. Of course, they want you to use that razor and keep buying blades for it.

It think the competition, mainly Schick, should send out razors on men’s 19th birthdays. “By now, the razor you got on your 18th birthday is getting old and worn out. Why don’t you use this one instead?”

It’s the razor industry equivalent of bidding on the Price is Right. Gillette bids $800, and Schick bids $801. I suppose the equivalent of bidding $1 would be sending the razor on someone’s first birthday and hoping they have it 14 or 16 years later.

“In that day the Lord will shave with a razor, hired from regions beyond the Euphrates ({that is,} with the king of Assyria), the head and the hair of the legs; and it will also remove the beard.”
– Isaiah 7:20

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

Ah, football talk in July… Unfortunately, it has to do with Brett Favre’s unretiring. I had hoped this would not happen, and now it is time for another warning: don’t do it, Brett.

Stay retired, be a man of your word.  How do you want to be remembered?  You’re in a good spot now, having taken the Packers to the playoffs in your final year.  Leave it at that.

“But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath; but your yes is to be yes, and your no, no, so that you may not fall under judgment.”
– James 5:12

Yesterday I bought a reel to store my 100′ extension cord. Until yesterday, it had been sitting in a less-than-neat pile. But now it is organized.

While I was setting up the cord reel, I noticed a warning on the label. It said to unroll the cord before use.  I initially thought “why bother with that?” Isn’t the point of the reel to keep the cord in a nice coil? Why not let it stay coiled, like the garden hose does? It doesn’t complain at all. Then the lessons of how to make an electromagnet came to mind, and I thought there might be something to it.

There is some argument about whether it is induction causing the issue or just the normal heat associated with voltage drop for such a long wire. Normally the heat would be able to dissipate along the surface area of the cord. With the cord wound tightly however, there is much less surface area. Normal household loads for a moderate time should not cause any problems. But I would still be careful not to let any metal go into the core of the cord reel.

“He covers {His} hands with the lightning, And commands it to strike the mark.”
– Job 36:32