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Bill,
Welcome to the list!
As others have suggested, probably the best way for you to segregate and
Explore your open positions and your "other" universe of stocks is to
use separate folders. A neat feature in the Explorer results is to
'Control-Click' those tickers in your exploration results that you have
decided to take positions in. Then by right clicking on the selection,
you'll see the option to "Copy security...." In the dialogue box that
pops up once you select this, there's a place to check off if you'd like
to delete the source security. This would be an easy way to move your
selections into a new folder--even possibly the longs into one folder
and the shorts into another. Then one day later, you can run
explorations on your long positions, short positions, and all the others
by choosing different folders.
Another possible approach would be to use the Experts feature. As you
view the charts from your Exploration, you can right click on the chart
and save it into your Favorites folder (or Long and Short subfolders if
you like). If you have written some trading signals like the 5/15/40
MAs and applied them to the charts in an Expert, you could just scroll
through your positions each day in the Favorites folder and visually
inspect the price/volume activity as well as your systems signals. This
is an alternative if you prefer to 'eyeball' the charts. (This is not
the preferred solution if you carry 200 or 300 positions at a
time.....<grin>)
Dave Nadeau
Fort Collins, CO
Bill Irwin wrote:
> Hello list members:I'm a brand spanking new MS owner (7.03 EOD) and
> I've just spent the last three days going over the Getting Started,
> DownLoader and User Manual. I have to say that, aside from some
> keyboard weakness in the Browse dialogue boxes, I'm impressed with the
> software's number crunching ability and, what appears to be (at this
> early stage), it's configurability for tuning. I'm far from being a
> technical expert (which will soon become glaringly apparent to you) so
> I'm feeling more than a bit overwhelmed at this point.After scanning
> the entire contents of these three manuals, and reading a good deal of
> them, I haven't seen any mention of where you tell MS that you've
> taken a position, so that it would know to alert you to exit. The
> only thing I can think off (at this early stage) is to attach an exit
> alert to a stock when you take a position and to remove the alert
> after you exit so that you aren't alerted when you're out.What I'm
> hoping to be able to do is to update prices daily, then run an
> Exploration across all the stocks that will alert for buy/short on
> stocks I'm out of and alert for exits on stocks I have positions in.
> Then review the alerts, make my trading decisions and book my trades
> for the next day. I know this must sound very naive to those of you
> who know MS but we all had to start somewhere, right?Perhaps some of
> you could give me an overview of your normal daily activities, aside
> from the arduous task of testing new systems and tweaking the
> indicators in search for the optimal system. I know I have a lot of
> work ahead of me just to get a basic understanding of the indicators,
> so for now, I'm just working with the canned ones. Getting a feel for
> how some seasoned users use the software each day would go a long way
> towards helping me know where I should be focusing my time at this
> point.I never expected MS to be a portfolio manager but I thought it
> should at least know which stocks I have a position in so it knows
> what and when to alert me.Thanks for any advise and suggestions you
> may be willing to share with me.New List Member Bio: I've been
> interested in technical analysis ever since I bought my Commodore PET
> 2001 (circa 1978) and became fascinated that this 40 column screen, 8
> Kb RAM, cassette tape I/O device could be programmed to follow my
> instructions. I typed in a program (Commodore BASIC) I found in a
> magazine that monitored stocks and enhanced it to (among other thins)
> be able to scale the chart so that the 18, or so, horizontal lines I
> had available would be fully utilized regardless of the unit value.
> It taught me how to be very frugal with my coding as every module had
> to fit within the approx. 6 Kb of code space I had available after the
> data arrays were loaded.The program used a 5, 15 & 40 week simple
> moving average and buy alerts were triggered when the 15 was below the
> 40 and the 5 crossed above the 15, indicating the bottom may have been
> reached. The buy alert operated the other way. There were no online
> data feeds in those days (at least not ones that the average mortal
> could afford) so I weekly keyed in the closing prices for the 50 - 60
> stocks I followed from the Saturday paper. The only criteria I used
> in picking which stocks to follow were: I had to be able to pronounce
> it; the annual high/low spread was around 100%, so I had stocks that
> cycled ... somewhat.Using this primitive system, and accounting for
> trade commissions, I was able to generate (on paper) an annual return
> of 30% - 35% over a 3 year period. This experience convinced me that
> even a simple mechanical system could, if emotions were eliminated,
> generate superior returns. I have no idea what the TSE market was
> returning in those days (1982 - 1985), but I doubt it was 30%. The
> problem back then was that what few programs existed were way too
> expensive for my budget (What budget? In those days it all went on
> beer!). This was way before Windows.I recently became a victim of
> corporate downsizing (anyone been following GAC.TO for the last 2
> years?) and lost my job after 15 years of continuous employment -
> exactly 1 1/2 years after my previous employer was acquired by Geac.
> The reasonable severance I was able to negotiate has given me both the
> time and the funds to finally see if I can really do anything
> meaningful with technical trading. After browsing all the indicators
> described in the MS manual I feel inclined to build my old 5, 15 & 40
> MA system and see if it can still generate 30%, and forget about the
> steep learning curve I know awaits me!Actually, I'm hoping that over
> the next few months I can build a reasonable understanding of some of
> the indicators and develop proficiency in MS so that I can paper trade
> to a point where I have some degree of confidence in whatever "system"
> I come up with. An unrealistically optimistic scenario would be me,
> in 6 months, responding to my wife's questions about when am I ever
> going to get another job, by stating that I'm making more money
> trading than I was in my old day job. I know. I hear you all
> muttering, "What a dreamer this guy is!" I would like to get there
> some day and I know it won't happen in 6 months.Anyway, I plan to be a
> regular reader of this list, in addition to some technical trading
> newsgroups, and would welcome any suggestions you might be willing to
> toss my way - especially those things you've learned that made you
> say, "Now, if I'd only learned this when I first got into TA
> trading..."Profitable trades,BillBill-Irwin@xxxxxxxx
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