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Hello list members:
I'm a brand spanking new MS owner (7.03 EOD)
and I've just spent the last three days going over the Getting Started,
DownLoader and User Manual. I have to say that, aside from some keyboard
weakness in the Browse dialogue boxes, I'm impressed with the software's number
crunching ability and, what appears to be (at this early stage), it's
configurability for tuning. I'm far from being a technical expert (which
will soon become glaringly apparent to you) so I'm feeling more than a bit
overwhelmed at this point.
After scanning the entire contents of these
three manuals, and reading a good deal of them, I haven't seen any mention of
where you tell MS that you've taken a position, so that it would know to alert
you to exit. The only thing I can think off (at this early stage) is to
attach an exit alert to a stock when you take a position and to remove the alert
after you exit so that you aren't alerted when you're out.
What I'm hoping to be able to do is to
update prices daily, then run an Exploration across all the stocks that will
alert for buy/short on stocks I'm out of and alert for exits on stocks I have
positions in. Then review the alerts, make my trading decisions and book
my trades for the next day. I know this must sound very naive to those of
you who know MS but we all had to start somewhere, right?
Perhaps some of you could give me an
overview of your normal daily activities, aside from the arduous task of testing
new systems and tweaking the indicators in search for the optimal system.
I know I have a lot of work ahead of me just to get a basic understanding of the
indicators, so for now, I'm just working with the canned ones. Getting a
feel for how some seasoned users use the software each day would go a long way
towards helping me know where I should be focusing my time at this
point.
I never expected MS to be a portfolio
manager but I thought it should at least know which stocks I have a position in
so it knows what and when to alert me.
Thanks for any advise and suggestions you
may be willing to share with me.
New List Member Bio: I've been
interested in technical analysis ever since I bought my Commodore PET 2001
(circa 1978) and became fascinated that this 40 column screen, 8 Kb RAM,
cassette tape I/O device could be programmed to follow my instructions. I
typed in a program (Commodore BASIC) I found in a magazine that monitored stocks
and enhanced it to (among other thins) be able to scale the chart so that the
18, or so, horizontal lines I had available would be fully utilized regardless
of the unit value. It taught me how to be very frugal with my coding as
every module had to fit within the approx. 6 Kb of code space I had available
after the data arrays were loaded.
The program used a 5, 15 & 40 week
simple moving average and buy alerts were triggered when the 15 was below
the 40 and the 5 crossed above the 15, indicating the bottom may have been
reached. The buy alert operated the other way. There were no online
data feeds in those days (at least not ones that the average mortal could
afford) so I weekly keyed in the closing prices for the 50 - 60 stocks I
followed from the Saturday paper. The only criteria I used in picking
which stocks to follow were: I had to be able to pronounce it; the annual
high/low spread was around 100%, so I had stocks that cycled ...
somewhat.
Using this primitive system, and accounting
for trade commissions, I was able to generate (on paper) an annual return of 30%
- 35% over a 3 year period. This experience convinced me that even a
simple mechanical system could, if emotions were eliminated, generate superior
returns. I have no idea what the TSE market was returning in those days
(1982 - 1985), but I doubt it was 30%. The problem back then was that what
few programs existed were way too expensive for my budget (What budget? In
those days it all went on beer!). This was way before
Windows.
I recently became a victim of corporate
downsizing (anyone been following GAC.TO for the last 2 years?) and lost my job
after 15 years of continuous employment - exactly 1 1/2 years after my previous
employer was acquired by Geac. The reasonable severance I was able to
negotiate has given me both the time and the funds to finally see if I can
really do anything meaningful with technical trading. After browsing all
the indicators described in the MS manual I feel inclined to build my old 5, 15
& 40 MA system and see if it can still generate 30%, and forget about the
steep learning curve I know awaits me!
Actually, I'm hoping that over the next few
months I can build a reasonable understanding of some of the indicators and
develop proficiency in MS so that I can paper trade to a point where I have some
degree of confidence in whatever "system" I come up with. An
unrealistically optimistic scenario would be me, in 6 months, responding to
my wife's questions about when am I ever going to get another job, by stating
that I'm making more money trading than I was in my old day job. I
know. I hear you all muttering, "What a dreamer this guy
is!" I would like to get there some day and I know it won't happen in
6 months.
Anyway, I plan to be a regular reader of
this list, in addition to some technical trading newsgroups, and would welcome
any suggestions you might be willing to toss my way - especially those things
you've learned that made you say, "Now, if I'd only learned this when I
first got into TA trading..."
Profitable trades,
Bill
<A
href="mailto:Bill-Irwin@xxxxxxxx";>Bill-Irwin@xxxxxxxx
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