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Topic: Tracking recent stops |
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brettkeatingko
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Posted on: Jan 17, 2005 - 5:38pm
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Let me just start by saying I love this tool! I'm a new Power user subscriber and this lets me take a lot of the emotion and indecision out of my investing, and also helps a lot with finding new investing ideas.
I really like the Portfolio tool, which allows me to very quickly see what the tools think of my current holdings. I like to see if targets or stops have been reached after the close, since I know about those "stop sweeps" that can happen and hate to use automatic or trailing stops with my broker.
The stops these tools come up with are very good and have technical backing, and I like that they change as the stock rises. However they also change as the stock falls. Right now I have to manually keep track of the highest stop computed by the tools over the lifetime of my holding, if I want to have a mental trailing stop that moves upward and only uses values computed by the tool. Also would like to see this on the short side as well.
Being a software engineer myself, I think a simple way to prevent my having to manually track this, is to have the tools maintain a "highest stop over the last month" or "highest stop over the last week" or both. That would get me most of the way toward what I'd like in terms of tracking stops upward automatically.
Thanks!
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brettkeatingko
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Posted on: Jan 17, 2005 - 5:40pm
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Oh another thing...
I'd personally be fine with this only being a checkbox option for display in the Portfolio section, to avoid cluttering up the Consultant page.
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dan.chapmano3
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Posted on: Jan 20, 2005 - 4:16pm
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[Note: This message is just my opinion and is NOT investment advice,
please check with a registered investment advisor. ]
The trailing stops are currently calculated approx 12 times a day
(every 30 mins).
I could see the difficulty in keeping a mental stop since the
stop should only be moved up (in the case of the long positions)
and it is caculated throughout the day.
I personally use stops all the time.
The "stop sweeps" typically happen in the first 45-60 mins of
trading in the morning and can also hit cover stops as stocks
pop higher in the morning. I typically may temporarily pull a stop if the
premarket quotes show that it may get triggered or if the
futures are showing lower and the stop is very close.
Stops typically need to be kept fairly loose during the beginning to
mid point of a short term rally and usually can be tightened near the end of
the rally (T1, T2 or Breakout targets). Near the end of a rally,
peoples greed usually takes over and it takes alot to pry the
money out of the current holders hand. Just an observation.
To keep track of a max trailing stop may be difficult since there
are 12 adjustments per day and it depends on what time period
back you are looking. Some people may have bought yesterday
or the day before or the current day and hence need to track
the max stop from the time they bought it vs the max stop over the
last week or month.
Right now there is the capability to look back 1 or more days and
get the stop that is related to the close on that day.
Also you may want to look at the Stop limit % value as if the
stock has not moved much over the past few days you can
subtract the Stop limit % from the current price.
We'll look into it, but it may be hard to find useful without
a reference entry point.
Thanks,
Dan
[Note: This message is just my opinion and is NOT investment advice,
please check with a registered investment advisor. ]
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brettkeatingko
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Posted on: Jan 24, 2005 - 8:43pm
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Thanks for your reply, Dan. I get your point, keeping track of the highest over some past time period may not be so useful to your clientele in general.
Can you comment on how useful you think it would be to be able to enter a "buy time" in the Portfolio tool, which could be N/A for watchlist stocks, and have an optional field in the Portfolio display that provides the highest stop since the "buy time?" I don't know if this would be difficult to do, but would be my first choice over the other idea.
I think it would add tremedous value to the stops that are currently computed. If someone were inclined to trail a stop using only stockconsultant.com values, like I am (heh), it currently requires quite a bit of manual effort and vigilance. The values need to be tracked outside the site (like in a Yahoo portfolio or Excel sheet), even if the values are only checked daily.
Thanks for taking the time to consider it! 
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ontonyo2
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Posted on: May 1, 2009 - 10:31am
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how do we look back a day?
"Right now there is the capability to look back 1 or more days and
get the stop that is related to the close on that day. "
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dan.chapmano3
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Posted on: May 5, 2009 - 9:26pm
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On each page you'll see a pulldown box which will say "Current" for current data. You can select through that pulldown closing data for 1,2,3,4 etc. days ago.
On the "Consultant" page the pulldown is located in the blue "Results for xxxx" bar next to the current date and time.
Dan
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