Alan Brochstein's  Instablog

I launched My Own Analyst as a subscription-based blog 19 months ago in order to interact more with my Invest By Model subscribers in a scalable way. While there are many features that make the service highly valuable to those who subscribe, and you can learn more about them here, the most popular one is the "short-term trades".

I refined my approach in February and began to offer up to four at a time, with a fixed target and stop-price as well as a two-week limit. I tend to set the trades with 10% upside and 2.5% downside (4:1), so it's no surprise that I end up with lots of small losses and some big winners. We have had a few stops get blown overnight (and I calculate those losses from the open, which is below the stop), and maybe one gap-up that exceeded the target. The results have been quite strong since February, with an average return per trade of about 0.9% (not including cost of the service or commissions). To put things in perspective, this works out to a 43% return assuming no more than 4 trades at a time (since February).

Here I include all of the trades since Labor Day. Note that the performance has been a bit below the typical returns but still better than the market. Note that I made a couple of trades with much higher-than-normal upside (and downside), and neither worked out. Buy and hold on the S&P 500 since Labor Day is about 3.8%:

(click to enlarge)

If you are interested in learning more or receiving a free trial for the rest of the month, please direct message me and include your email address. I will respond with log-in information if you want to do the trial.