The Tasgall Group

Here’s the new batch of PowerRatings setups for Thursday, 7/13 plus an analysis of how the stocks with PRs from Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are stacking up thus far… (more…)

This post discloses the next batch of PowerRatings for the 7/12 and comments on the results of yesterday’s PRs: (more…)

Here’s stocks with a PR of 9 today: NTG, ILE, IDCC (down 21% yesterday!), FSII, ENZ, DXPE, COGO, ASPV

Here’s stocks with a PR of 1 today: AD, GGXY, LSCP, SBIT

Note that COGO (down 5.72% yesterday) and ASPV (down 5.00% yesterday) were rated 9’s yesterday, so these are worth watching since they’ve been 9’s for 2 subsequent days.

FMD had a PR of 9 on 7/7, 7/10 and currently has a PR of 8 today 7/11. Just check out it’s 5 day chart to see just how bland it’s been…although it could be argued that it’s just a coiled spring. Quicksilver, do you see a chart pattern in FMD?

This will be the most juicy post thus far regarding PowerRatings. I signed up for the free trial (required a credit card, so I used one that’s set to expire on 7/31/2006–ha ha). I went straight to see the top 25 stocks with PowerRatings. They are posted below: (more…)

In response to the comments from Data Set #1 post, I have created a second data set to lookup the PowerRating on each of the 500 stocks (large cap) in the S&P 500. I will bring a print-out of my findings to the upcoming Tasgall meeting and this will be the topic of my discussion. A summary of my findings are below: (more…)

Well, I didn’t get much data that was worthwhile from Trading Market’s PowerRatings system. Since the free tool that they have available allows you to plug in one by one the stocks you’re interested in, I ran 3 separate screens from another site to create a bag of stocks to use. I just picked a random stock screening site and used their built-in screen to search for the best Value stocks, best Growth stocks, and stocks with Recent Brokerage Upgrades.

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Every day, Trading Markets has a web link to Everything you need to know for day-of-the-week. Consistently in the past week, nothing’s been out of the 3, 4 or 5 range, which based on their site means that none of their indicators are leaning in any particular way on these stocks. While they don’t tell you want indicators are used in the PowerRating formula, I’ve found that you cannot get a PowerRating on any stock that hasn’t been trading for more than 200 days. A “How To” for PowerRatings can be found here. Based on their studies which have been back-tested to 1995 (yeah, I know, it’s relatively easy to find something that would have worked if you only knew about it), stocks rated 9 or 10 have on average been the S&P 500 over the next 5 days by a better than 14-1 margin. The success rate? Unsure, and there’s a paucity of information that I could find by searching for independent testimonials, independent commentary, or external reviews of the PowerRatings system.

Make no mistake, there’s something slightly shady about this since everything on the site points to standard glitz and glam to make things look so easy. What I’ll do over the next month is come up with several batches of stocks (let’s say 30), get PowerRatings on this batch and see how the do after 5 days. I’ll do this as many times as I can and report the results here.

My daily routine is non-existant, mainly due to my investment choices thus far. As you both know my focus in on asset allocation coupled with dollar cost averaging within me and my SO retirement accounts. One account gets 2 installments per month, the another gets one installment per month, and our IRAs get one installment per year which I try to market time as much as possible within a range of 1-2 months in the year. My investment options are self limited at this point to index funds, since that allows me the ability to minimize expenses and go along with the research that shows that index funds out perform 80% or more of the actively managed funds. Since I cannot invest in many of the excellent actively managed funds anyway within my employer sponsored retirement accounts, I don’t bother looking too hard at the actively managed funds–not a good use of my time. (more…)

An excerpt from John Mauldin’s e-letter:“The market was already up 120 points when the Fed made its announcement and then roared ahead almost another 100 points. So it was not all Bernanke. In fact, I tend to think it was more likely end of the quarter gamesmanship, with funds working to move their favorite stocks up, moving into stocks that will look good in their portfolios and dumping the dogs. If XYZ stock is up 10% for the quarter, you want some of it in your portfolio to show investors you were on top of it. Of course, you don’t have to say you got to the game late.

End of the quarter rallies are common. Any old excuse will do. My bet is that whatever the Fed did would have produced a rally, short of stating that they had decided a recession was in order.”

Interesting stuff and good to keep in mind. I need to create a calendar with items like “End of quarter games might cause a rally–don’t read anything special into a suddent 100+ plus gain!” and other similar friendly reminders.

We discussed at our 2nd Tasgall meeting two two articles, one from Fortune and another by Dr. Fahlenbrach, regarding whether Founder-CEOs could serve as a first-pass filter for determining whether a stock is a potential long-term buy. Based on Fahlenbrach’s research, it appears that Founder-CEOs make up approximately 10-15% of the overall market. Thus, using Founder-CEOs as a first-pass filter to limit the number of stocks up for long-term investment consideration is a potentially effective tool, although it’s clear that additional filters would also need to be employed before making an investment in a company. (more…)