Trailing stops are a simple way to exit a trade. The idea is you buy a stock and then trail your stop loss a little way below it as the trade goes on. This way you can let the trend continue in your favor but lock in your profits once the stock turns round. The […]
strategies
Should You Buy Low Priced Stocks?
Some investors believe that lower price stocks produce better investment returns than higher priced stocks. It’s always tempting to look at stocks trading under $10 in the hope of finding a ten or twenty bagger. In some ways this makes sense. Higher priced stocks are often larger and more mature businesses that grow more slowly. Low […]
10 Trading Strategies For A Bear Market
Interest rates are low, taxes are low and the stock market is firing on all cylinders. The current bull market is already the longest in history and just a few percent away from being the largest in history. But bull markets cannot last forever. Some time in the not too distant future a bear market […]
26 Stock Market Strategies That Beat Buy And Hold
Profitable stock market strategies are not easy to come by. One proven path is to seek out stock market anomalies. A stock market anomaly is a rate of return or investment strategy that seems to defy the efficient market hypothesis. Today, most investors agree that markets are fairly efficient even if they don’t believe in […]
Investigating Skewness And The Lottery Effect In Stocks
The lottery effect explains our willingness to accept poor odds for a chance to win a huge sum. It’s why millions of us play Lotto or the PowerBall despite huge odds of one in 292,201,338*. We don’t mind spending a few bucks for the chance to win a gigantic sum, even though the odds are […]
Testing The Half Day Reversal Strategy
While browsing Quantpedia I came across another interesting trading strategy called the Half-day Reversal. This is a short-term, mean reversion strategy that buys the worst performing stocks in the S&P 500 and holds them overnight. The indicated performance is 57.7% per annum with a Sharpe ratio of 3.03. These are incredible numbers so let’s put […]
How To 10x Your Momentum Returns
The backbone of personal finance is to save more than you spend and invest the proceeds. The most common advice is to put your money into cheap index funds each month with a simple allocation split. But what if you want to try something more adventurous? Index investing may only provide returns of six or […]
Why Professional Traders Don’t Use Stops
There’s a lot of conflicting information on the web when it comes to stop losses. Recently I saw a YouTube video explaining that professional traders don’t use stop losses because doing so alerts market makers and algorithms to where their orders are. This is mostly nonsense especially in liquid markets with thick order books. The […]
How To Get Data From Quandl With Python Or Excel
For systematic traders, your choice of data source is important. There is no shortage of options ranging from free end of day data to subscription only real time feeds. System timeframes, markets and budget all play an important role in choosing providers. In this post we are going to take a look at a relatively […]
Beware YouTube Trading Videos
I rarely watch trading content on YouTube but last week I clicked on a forex video that caught my attention. Soon enough, I had fallen down a rabbit hole. My feed was taken over by trading videos and in between were advertisements for signal services and chat rooms promising quick and easy profits. YouTube has […]
Dollar Cost Averaging – How To Double Your Money Every 10 Years
The idea behind dollar cost averaging is simple. Every month invest a set amount of money into the stock market. When the market is high, you’ll be able to afford fewer shares and when it’s low you’ll be able to buy more shares at a lower price. Over time, the stock market moves up, your […]
Trading The Uptick Rule – Can You Make Money Buying Stocks After A 10% Drop?
The uptick rule is a short selling restriction that says you can only short sell a stock on an uptick. In other words, you must wait for a stock to trade a tick higher before you can short it. This rule was first introduced in 1938 to promote market stability and investor confidence. However, the […]
Can you make money with a VWAP trading system?
Some intraday stock traders say that if they could choose only one technical indicator it would be the VWAP. I find that VWAP is not necessarily a holy grail and traders disagree with the best way to use it. In the rest of this article, I test two very simple VWAP trading systems and present […]
Should You Buy The Dip When Volatility Picks Up? (Answer – Not Necessarily)
This week we have seen a mini crash in the stock market indexes and an implosion of several short volatility ETNs. Mood in the stock market has quickly turned from exuberance to fear while some investors are ready to ‘buy the dip’. Conventional wisdom suggests that the best time to buy stocks is when there is […]
Should You Buy One Day Pullbacks Amid Consecutive New Highs?
Last week the guys at Quantifiable Edges presented an interesting trading edge which buys one day pullbacks in the S&P 500 during strong up trends. The exact rules are described as follows: