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Long term info sources

PostPosted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 1:14 pm
by Doug Coulter
I use a number of free and not-free sources to learn daily information and long term strategies. It's my intent to list them on this thread and as usual -y'all chime in, no way do I get them all myself.

William O'Neill, founder of Investors Business daily. Get any book he wrote. They're all good. His "commandments" for trading are about it, though he's very historically based, and a different situation might require tuning his numbers a little. Very good on the basics. I used to subscribe to their paper, but the right-wing-extreme wingnut commentary turned me off too badly, and heck, I'm a conservative (not a Republican, though I used to be before the idea made me throw up on myself -- which both parties do at the moment).

Curtis Faith, a member here who we gotta goad into posting more. His books are also good -- how to think, rather than what to think today. I like that approach better, as things change, and books don't. They are good, and document a very successful strategy set. Not the one I use, but....there's more than one way that works. If you're willing to do the work required, the money managment rules shown here are darned good.
originalturtlerules.pdf
Turtle rules. Turtles rule!
(270.62 KiB) Downloaded 426 times

This stuff works best in a definitely trending market, not so well in a "Trading range" market. So adapt accordingly. The turtle strategy allowed for some really serious drawdowns in your stake, which I personally object to, but it sure worked for them (with a ton of leverage).


Google finance is your best friend, and free. This one I have up all day, every day, and I put a watchlist portfolio in there so as to get relevant news for a few things I'm usually watching. Their comparison feature is killer for selecting the best stocks in a sector -- just type them all in, and vary the timescales and learn. Can't be beat.
A little laggy for a day trader, which is why I use my realtime data in TD Ameritrade for that. But otherwise awfully good. And you can get log plots there which are what you want. Linear doesn't tell you the percent you're going to make on a trade, it's idiotic that anyone uses it. Do I care if a stock that costs a dollar goes up 10c, or one that costs 100 dollars goes up $10 -- nope, I size my positions in bucks, not number of shares, and 10% is 10%. They do autoscale, sadly. You have to learn to read past that. And the fancy charts use flash, which stinks but...I'd guess that's mainly to make them hard to screen-scrape with a bot.

INO, home of market club, has info on things like futures, dollar, metals, commodities, and it's free. Market club is not, but I'm a member there. Market club is a timing service, and has a lot of good training material, worth it in my opinion, and one of a very few that are. Adam Hewison is a straight dealer in information, like Todd. He has no axe to grind, and isn't telling you to guy what he wants to sell, like nearly every other pundit or talking head.

Map of the market is a heat map of what's going on now. A great way to get the zeitgeist of now. And often as not, what's red today is green tomorrow (mean reversion). Good quick way to see the general drift of things.

Option pain is if nothing else, interesting. It's based on the idea that options are a zero-sum game, and the game is rigged so most options expire worthless (good if you sold them). I'm not sure if their idea that the markets are manipulated to make this true is correct on a longer term basis -- it could be option pricing itself changes to match reality near expiration, but...interesting.

These guys were good when they were free. Reports on what the big funds are buying and selling so you can ride along with the moves they generate. No longer free, so I don't use them anymore, but I thought I'd give the link.


I post a lot on Seeking Alpha, an interesting place. Lots of diversity there, so be warned -- not everyone can be right! I usually enjoy a few authors over there and we have some fun discussion. Mostly I hang out in "macro view" as that's an interest of mine. That really long term stuff has little to do with daily trading, but is nice to know what's over the horizon for other reasons. Inflation Trader, Karl, and Cullen are authors I read, as well as that other Doug (short). Don't always agree, and no one is always right, but its always better to read smart people than dumb ones. Green Faucet had a similar thing, but devolved into ETF salesmen and cheeleaders, yuck.

I use MarketWatch and Bloomberg for time wasting....nuff said. You can count on either one to come up with a bullsh*t reason why the market did what it did -- and then maybe the real reason a few days later (but you have to dig and remember to), without mentioning they were wrong the few days before. Typical talking heads, find something -- anything -- to create some "content" and keep the clicks coming. I do find these useful in terms of getting a feel for the little girls in the herd -- so I can be contrarian to them. But you really have to have discipline to not be swept into the BS and get carried along in it -- to your great loss.

It's actually been proved in tests that to the extent you watch these talking heads (bloomberg, cnbc and so forth) that your profits go down. A distraction. These are the guys (like Cramer) who are wanting you to buy what they want to sell, so the price stays up while they are getting out....and who depend on your short attention span to not notice their selective memory that ignores all the bad advice they've handed out.