the Trade-Radar + TradingStockAlerts blog

I would like to announce that there is another training video available. This one shows how you would go about generating a TradeRadar SELL signal. Like our first training video for the BUY signal (click here to view that video now ), this one is a WMV file that will play in Windows Media Player. Viewing both videos should prepare you to use the TradeRadar software and add a new tool to your technical stock analysis toolbox. View the SELL signal training video now!

A pattern has been developing where TradeRadar generates a BUY signal and then, within a few months, a weak sell signal is generated. The signal appears weak (Signal Strength indicator less than 60% or 70%, Kurtosis not high enough) because the the reversal is not abrupt. What about those stocks that move up nicely and then run out gas, dropping little by little until the profits are all gone? I have just seen this happen with PacificNet ( PACT ) and TradeRadar never flashed a solid SELL signal. I believe the issue here is that the TradeRadar engine generates its best signals when there are more than eight months of daily data available. When you have less data to work with, the solution is to reduce the amount of filtering. The default value is 5 days. Try 3 or 4 days. Not only will the Signal Strength increase, the Kurtosis will also increase. At that point the Dashboard may flash the three green lights that indicate a solid, actionable signal. As two examples, I have been reporting ...

First, I would like to thank all of you who have downloaded the TradeRadar software. As you have probably discovered, it is quite different than many typical stock market indicators and takes some getting used to. I would like to offer some tips and tricks that I have accumulated from my experience using the software. Keep up to date on the releases - I have added a number of features that make it easier to use and I recently fixed a bug in the Signal Strength calculation for SELL signals. Full installs and upgrades are available on the Download page. Interpreting the indicators on the Buy-Sell Indicators screen - the Dashboard is intended to help evaluate how good the BUY or SELL signal is by using a red/yellow/green scheme to provide a quick determination at a glance. This is a ballpark estimation. You may not agree with the color indicated. For example, a Signal Strength of 55% may be good enough for you but TradeRadar characterizes that as yellow (caution). That's OK if you...

Ok, I finally sold my last few shares of SanDisk ( SNDK ). Having posted a list of bottom-fishing candidates for this month's pick a few days ago, I expected to choose one of them as the Pick o' the Month and immediately put the money to work. As I mentioned in my post yesterday, however, I have fixed a bug in the Signal Strength calculation for SELL signals in the TradeRadar software. The new version gives the same SELL signal ( click here to view full size) on the QQQQ but now it looks strong enough to give me the confidence to act upon it. QQQQ sell signal. As a result, I turned around and purchased the ProShares UltraShort QQQ ( QID ). The "Ultra" classification means they are trying to achieve twice the daily performance of the associated index; in this case, the NASDAQ 100. So if the QQQQ is going to go down, QID should start moving up and moving up smartly. I have been considering doing this for a while, at least since mid-December when TradeRadar first st...

The latest version of TradeRadar has been released. It is easier to use and has a bug fix that will make your SELL signals more accurate. New Features Corrected a bug in the Signal Strength calculation when generating a SELL signal Added ability to click on a point on a chart and set that point as either the Window Start or Window End Full install and upgrade available Special Instructions for Current Users Only Warning - If you have downloaded TradeRadar before and you elect to download and run the full install, be sure to back up your database to a different folder. You may use the Backup feature from within the TradeRadar software for this. The installation will over-write your existing database. When the installation is complete, copy your old database over the new one. You may use the Restore feature from within the TradeRadar software to do this. Upgrade - If you are a current user of TradeRadar and you do not wish to run the full installation, there is an upgrade available. T...

The TradeRadar software has been updated and is available for free download. The newest feature allows the user to directly retrieve historical prices from Yahoo from within the TradeRadar software. No more manual downloading and loading of CSV files; it all works automatically as long as you have an Internet connection. Click the button and you are immediately able to begin using the charting functions to generate buy/sell signals. Further refinements have been made when loading historical price data from the Yahoo or MSN Money sites. Existing data is now over-written if date ranges overlap; ie, errors will no longer be displayed if a new file contains prices for dates that are already in the TradeRadar database. In addition, the TradeRadar Help file has been improved. The new version is bundled with the TradeRadar software download and is also available for viewing from both the Download page and the Features page.

The web site pages that augment this blog are in pretty decent shape now and I have made some improvements to the blog itself. The screenshots of the TradeRadar application are in place with explanations of what each screen does. I have deployed the Tracking page where I keep the status of past TradeRadar picks updated. You will see a ticker with the latest prices and a table describing the current situation. Here is where I will admit to failures and revel in successes. For those of you who have downloaded the TradeRadar application, I intend to update the Help file soon and will be posting it on the Download page. It should be ready within the next week. I have also added some cool new tools to this blog. Those of you who have visited lately may have noticed the Trade Radar Stock Consultant form in the left sidebar. The Stock Consultant site provides automated technical analysis of stocks and options including charts, timing indicators, support and resistance, etc. I have joined an ...

Introduction Many money management professionals take advantage of various hedging strategies to avoid being whipsawed by the markets and to avoid losing money in down markets. They may use combinations of swaps, options, futures and derivatives to offset risk and to generate returns when traditional investments are losing value. Some of the investment tools used by these professionals are now available to the public. There are several companies that have developed families of mutual funds and ETFs that bundle all these exotic vehicles into easy to understand funds that track common indexes. I will focus on two companies, Rydex and ProShares, as I describe a strategy that will allow you to invest and profit like the professionals. Both companies have products that track, as a minimum, the Dow, the NASDAQ 100 and the S&P 500. What is interesting and pertinent to our discussion here is that they also have funds that track the INVERSE of the associated index. For example, if one fund...

With the market in uncertain territory lately, the buy signal for FCEL did not come through. The stock has been mostly down for the past week and TradeRadar clearly indicates this is not the time to buy. As for the other two picks I have posted about, Generex (GNBT) and Eight-by-Eight (EGHT) have both slowed their advance. Generex continues to put out press releases about successes it is having with its new drug delivery systems and Eight-by-Eight recently announced that Office Max will be carrying it's products. The news is decent but the charts are weakening. An analyst announcing that he still has doubts about EGHT effectively killed a bounce-back in the making in that stock this week but I am still rating it a hold if you had purchased at the time TradeRadar gave the buy signal. I am still holding GNBT, as well.

As I said in my previous post, it would be prudent to watch this stock for a few days. Well, it sure got hammered today as the entire stock market had its worst day in months. Caught in the down draft, FCEL moved in the wrong direction and the TradeRadar signal didn't get to a level that provided any confidence in going long. I have previously stated that charts are great but you should pick stocks that have reasonable business fundamentals. FCEL is lacking in this area and has registered a string of losses over prior quarters. This could be a time when I am proving the rule rather than finding an exception to it. We'll keep watching but I am already losing confidence.

Doing a little post-Thanksgiving stock hunting and I came across this one at Bernie Schaeffer's site. It's getting some high call option activity and the TradeRadar buy signal looks pretty good (just beginning to signal a buy on 11/20/06 at $7.05). This trade is playing out right now; this is not a back-test. Buying it anytime within the last week or when the market opens Monday would be the agressive approach. Waiting a bit to see how things look over the next few days or so might be more prudent. Note that the red signal line is just barely below the green trigger point. Seeing that signal go a little lower would provide more confidence. Let's keep an eye on this one.

Here is another stock that I actually spent money on. The signal was given by the TradeRadar system around 8/18/2006 at less than a buck. The stock is currently closing in on $2 a share as we approach Thanksgiving. It has nearly doubled in three months. I have been testing the refurbished TradeRadar system on some volatile, inexpensive small caps and this one is working out pretty well. Note that the stock itself has a certain fundamental interest. It is involved in providing low cost VOIP services to small and medium size businesses. VOIP is a trend that is accelerating. My own opinion is that charts are great but the underlying stock should still have a good story and solid business potential. The company's products are now being handled by a major office products chain and the stock is beginning to move to the upside.

Here is a view of what the system looks like. Note the red peak in the lower chart. This indicates that a low has been hit. The horizontal green line intersects the red peak. Where it intersects on the right side of the peak (the trailing edge, as the engineers would say), we have a Buy signal. This Buy signal is clearly earlier than that provided by the 20-day EMA moving above the 50-day EMA, for example. That is the benefit this system attempts to provide, an earlier signal that is still reliable. To make it interesting, I did put a few dollars on this one though a bit later than the date the system indicated. I consider this signal to be "decent" because the peak is kind of sloppy at the bottom which also causes my Signal-to-Noise indicator to be a bit weak. In any case, if you had bought when the signal indicated (at $1.69 on 8/24/06), you'd be sitting on a 20% profit today, two and a half months after entering the trade. I'll provide more information on...

I am a middle aged guy who has been trading stocks for more than 20 years with various degrees of success. I have an engineering degree and an MBA so I have an interesting mix of the technical and the economic in my background. Years ago I was fooling around with Visual Basic (a programming language now somewhat obsolete) and trying to develop a good application for tracking my trades and doing charting. This was way before much of this functionality became available via the web for free. As part of the charting exercise, I began to run stock prices through various kinds of equations to see what the charts might look like. (For those of you who like the math details, I just considered the closing prices as simple time-series data and wrote code to process the series using different kinds of functions that might commonly be found in a college calculus text book). I stumbled upon two functions that seem to provide signals whenever there is a reversal in the direction of prices. One...