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One of my neighbors, a doctor who is always asking me for the holy grail, asked
me to look at VectorVest for him.
They offer a totally free trial (your money back if you ask for it within 5
weeks) so I accommodated him.
On a scale of 1 to 10, with ten being the high, I would rate the program a minus
6, and that's after I spent 6 hours of my time to actually interview Dr. Bart.
Problems:
1. Their track record on timing is highly suspect. I couldn't even come close
to getting their figures when I followed the exact same sequence as shown on
their tutorial video.
2. Most of the issues in their database, over which you have no direct control,
are 4 letter equity issues of a highly speculative nature, little float, and
liquidity that is almost nonexistent.
3. The number of issues which are added and deleted each and every day make it
impossible to determine what their historical results are. While it's not easy
to see the symbols of the issues which are dropped a cursory review of the data
base before and after daily updates shows that the ones dropped are the worst
performers -- many of which were the stocks that were previously picked as
preferred investment vehicles by one of the canned screening programs that are
included.
When using any of the screens, which are user chosen, these poor performers are
never selected currently in any of the "back tests" that you supposedly can make
to show how good these canned screens work, but of course they were actually
there when your chosen starting date is selected, and they would have been there
in real life and in real time.
4. The icing on the cake was a review of the actual buy, hold, and sell ratings
which are generated each day for each of the issues on the database. I didn't
make a comprehensive analysis of all the issues for there is no way to export
any of the daily rankings and accompanying prices to a spreadsheet, but if the
analysis made of 10 randomly chosen issues are indicative of the balance, then
Dr. Bart's mathematics in the selection and management process are totally
suspect. Many issues had sells only after a long period of decline and
substantial price deterioration, only to be frequently the subject of another
buy, and another decline like the first before the second sell.
Lastly, my responses to pointed questions about both the structure of the
program and recommended ways of using it were, more often than not, responded to
with the type of remark one would suspect might be the sign of a smart ass. His
attitude is that anyone who questions either the program or its results must be
too ignorant to understand what he, a Ph.D., has conceived.
Save your money, unless you like to pay a big monthly stipend to play "what if"
games with a manipulated database, and the pay again to gain get both more
historical data of suspect quality and/or a few old cut and dried technical
indicators.
I long ago concluded there was no holy grail anywhere, but in my opinion this
one could be HOOEY.
Richard Funkhouser
ps The doctor thinks its neat!!!!
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