It is one year later from when I made the statement that I would do 300% better than the S&P. During the period of 8/1/07 and 8/1/08 I made 23 trades which resulted in a 12.5% return - including round turn commissions. The S&P was down 13.4% during the same period.
All trades were long.
All trades were made on stocks on the NASDAQ, AMEX or NYSE. They all had daily volume of greater than 100,000
My model used no proprietary information to make trading decisions - all my data came from Yahoo Finance. No $99/month newsletters were used.
All trades were put in before the market open. No trades were put in during market hours. All the trades I put in were posted the night before on this site. Nothing up my sleeve. In fact, there were some positions I would have done better with, but I couldn't get to the site that night to post - so I had to get in or out a day late.
Here are the final stats:
% Trades Successful = 57%
Average Gain of successful trade = 20.2%
Average loss of unsuccessful trade = -16.3%
Stats weren't that great, huh? Well that was always my point. This year was one of the most volatile markets I have remembered. Next time you plop down a check for fees on your money manager's desk, think about how little he or she has to do to make a respectable return on your account. I'm no genius people - I'm just a guy who can incorporate some common sense into a mathematical model and code it.
I'll start up a new project if anyone is interested. Make a challenge. I am thinking something along the lines of 5 x times market and I must hold each position greater than 90 days? I don't know - all ideas are welcome.
