Stock Doctor

So_Cynical said:

Fair to say you haven't been lucky so lets go with unlucky super bad timing for star type stocks, 12 months ago they were very popular as bond/income proxy's, now not so...timing is really very very important, December last year was a great entry for many stocks (Mining - Coal - Oil - Gold) the type of stocks that dont get stars.

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Timing seems to be at the core of my problems. I lost count of the amount of times I would buy into a gold/green star stock and within 1 week it suddenly falls off a cliff and loses10-50% of it's value for "no particular reason". Compounding this frustration was the fact that often the stock doctor analysts weren't able to tell me why this happened and the stock retained it's rating. And to make matters worst when I decided to apply a stop loss, the next day the stock magically bounces back 15% or more, again for no particular reason. This happened constantly, and seemingly with no logic, reasoning and against the tech. analysis. I made so many poor entry/exit timing decisions that it was basically a travesty by the end. And after going into the red another $1500 on the final day of my ill-fated trading experiment, I got online the next morning, sold everything, and by the afternoon the stocks of course had made a sudden and incredibly powerful recovery. For no particular reason.

I tried securities for a year, after researching it for two, and my conclusion is that the only people making money in this game are insiders and those in the financial markets. For the rest of us, even with the likes of Stock Doctor, you're basically reading tea leaves. I'm sure the average punter armed as well as I was probably wouldn't do quite as badly, but there you go.

tippergreen said:

Timing seems to be at the core of my problems. I lost count of the amount of times I would buy into a gold/green star stock and within 1 week it suddenly falls off a cliff and loses10-50% of it's value for "no particular reason". Compounding this frustration was the fact that often the stock doctor analysts weren't able to tell me why this happened and the stock retained it's rating. And to make matters worst when I decided to apply a stop loss, the next day the stock magically bounces back 15% or more, again for no particular reason. This happened constantly, and seemingly with no logic, reasoning and against the tech. analysis. I made so many poor entry/exit timing decisions that it was basically a travesty by the end. And after going into the red another $1500 on the final day of my ill-fated trading experiment, I got online the next morning, sold everything, and by the afternoon the stocks of course had made a sudden and incredibly powerful recovery. For no particular reason.

I tried securities for a year, after researching it for two, and my conclusion is that the only people making money in this game are insiders and those in the financial markets. For the rest of us, even with the likes of Stock Doctor, you're basically reading tea leaves. I'm sure the average punter armed as well as I was probably wouldn't do quite as badly, but there you go.

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I think the core of your problem is using business performance to enter a stock but using price performance to exit. You've got to pick one or the other. As you observed, stock prices will move 10%-15% for no particular reason and using a stop loss without any other technical analysis seems doomed to failure.

I’ve been using Stock Doctor for a few years. I find it useful in three ways:

1. Identify stocks that, after more research, I might buy
2. Analysts reports on covered stocks
   
3. Quick at-a-glance view of financial health

I do my own research and I don’t make buy/sell decisions purely on the basis of Stock Doctor - but it’s always important to get a second opinion.

I’ve also tried similar offerings such as Team Invest’s CI and Skaffold (which originated from Roger Montgomery). Stock Doctor compares well. For the record, I really like CI, but it’s way more expensive.

I would also note that Stock Doctor is best suited to long term fundamental investors. It doesn’t predict short term swings in price - nothing does.

WaySolid said:

Does anybody have any feedback on Stock Doctor?

I think the $50 trial for one month (refundable off the purchase price if you buy) is a tempting choice as the software looks excellent from the demo's I have seen.

WaySolid

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I have used Stock Doctor for a couple of years and am about to renew subscription.

There are millions of pieces of data there which I don’t use or pretend to understand.

The way I use it is to take their rankings, Star – Satisfactory – Marginal and use these to create my universe of eligible stocks. The ranking also affects my position sizing; Star ranked stocks can have a larger position size than Marginal

Their ranking of Early Warning or Distress probably keeps me out of a couple of dud trades per year.

Then I apply fairly simple trend following techniques for entry and exit using weekly charts.

Its probably not much help if you want to trade short term.

Works for me, might not work for you

Cheers Ian

Good day everyone,
I am new to share market investment and have been interested to sign up with Stock Doctor.
Could anyone please provide advise on what sort of technical filter you apply for the selection of stocks?
Thanks

samved said:

Good day everyone,
I am new to share market investment and have been interested to sign up with Stock Doctor.
Could anyone please provide advise on what sort of technical filter you apply for the selection of stocks?
Thanks

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Hi samved, sorry it's taken me so long to reply

I'm still using the "original PC" version of stock doctor and have not installed the stand alone charing application for PC, but I assume that the charting application in the original PC version is the same as that in the stand alone PC version currently available. I haven't started using the technical filters of the web based version of Stock Doctor yet, so I don't know if the below can be translated over into the web application and/or whether this can be done in the current stand-alone charting software.

Here is a technical filter I run from time to time. It is basically a very crude upward momentum scan which scans for bullish MACD and filters for a multiple moving average upward price trend (along similar lines to the Guppy multiple moving averages charting technique and similar).


I set the following parameters:
Long = 65
Short = 15
Signal = 35

Here is how I use it. From time to time, I run a filter that creates a watchlist for all companies currently with a "strong" or "satisfactory" financial health score. I then run the above filter on that watchlist to give me a short list of stocks in uptrend. The parameters are set-up to use against the daily price and because I generally analys the market from a weekly perspective, I set the filter to search through the last five day's data. I then eye-ball the charts of those companies thrown up by the scan. I generally refer to weekly price charts and then if there is chart that looks interesting, I will look at daily and monthly charts and then, if still interested short list the company to look into the fundamentals on the stock doctor website.

I've been reluctant to post that code because I really threw it together one weekend years ago, don't use that often, and I can't remember why I chose those MACD parameters (65,15,35) and whether a knowledgeable technical analyst would consider them suitable. Also, as mentioned above, I'm still using the old PC based version for this and don't know how it translates into the web based app and/or the stand alone charting software.

It's crude but it works in filtering stocks with upward momentum. Below are the results from running the fiter today:

Code
ABA
ABC
ALU
AMI
ANN
AOF
APD
APO
APX
AQG
AQZ
ARB
ASX
BPT
BWP
BWR
CAR
CCL
CDA
CHC
CMW
CPU
CQR
CSL
CTD
CVC
CWN
CWY
CYB
DXS
EGG
EHL
EQT
EZL
FPH
GDF
GDI
GMG
GOZ
GRB
GTY
GUD
HIT
IAG
IDR
IDX
IEL
IFM
IFT
IGO
IOF
JIN
KMD
LEP
LIC
MAI
MAQ
MGX
MQG
MRN
MWY
MYE
NAN
NBL
NEC
NGI
NHC
NSR
NST
OCA
OCL
OMH
ORA
ORG
OSH
PLG
PMV
PWH
REA
RHP
RMD
RRL
RSG
SCG
SCP
SDA
SDF
SDG
SHL
SKC
SMR
SNZ
SOL
SRH
SRX
SSL
SUN
UNV
VGL
WES
WHC
WOW
WPL
WTC
ZEN

Tinhat,
thanks for the detail response.

In your response I only confused with your following parameter settings.
'I set the following parameters:
Long = 65
Short = 15
Signal = 35'

On stock doctor, study for MACD parameter requirements are 'Fast MA Period, Slow MA Period and Signal period'. To match with your explanation, it looks like your Long parameter sets to SD's Fast MA Period and your Short parameter sets to SD's Slow MA Period. With this assumption, I set the study for MACD to MACD(15,65,35) which signifies 15 as fast MA period, 65 as Slow MA period and 35 as Signal period. Please correct me if I am wrong. Thanks!!

samved said:

Tinhat,
thanks for the detail response.

In your response I only confused with your following parameter settings.
'I set the following parameters:
Long = 65
Short = 15
Signal = 35'

On stock doctor, study for MACD parameter requirements are 'Fast MA Period, Slow MA Period and Signal period'. To match with your explanation, it looks like your Long parameter sets to SD's Fast MA Period and your Short parameter sets to SD's Slow MA Period. With this assumption, I set the study for MACD to MACD(15,65,35) which signifies 15 as fast MA period, 65 as Slow MA period and 35 as Signal period. Please correct me if I am wrong. Thanks!!

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Hi, yeah, that sounds right. My technical analysis skills are non-existent but I recall that what I wanted to do was apply a MACD filter to the daily data but with the parameters adjusted to resemble what it would look like applied to weekly prices, if that makes sense. I actually got the basics of this momentum scan from another stock doctor user on their investor network discussion board.

I suspect that Lincoln doesn't offer an equivalent to the technical filter functionality that is in the old desktop PC software which I don't think is available from them any more. This is one of the reasons I haven't swapped over to the new stand alone charting program and don't use all the online analysis features. I like the old technical analysis filter which you can write you own code for. An alternative would be to use something like amibroker for technical analysis scans.

The chart below is a proxy for the technical filter:



You can see why WPL comes up in the scan results: each MA is higher the next longer MA and the MACD signal is currently positive.

For those who have used Lincoln Stock Doctor: although it's not strictly an educational product, would you say that Stock Doctor has made you a smarter investor overall? Say by reviewing how they analyse a stock, videos or podcasts available to members, ability to chat with analysts, etc, etc?

I joined a local SD group just for fun about 17 years or more ago. I had many disagreements with the local SD guru and the group became more interested in my methods and how charting worked to the point the guru challenged me to see who would have the best results over a month. After a couple of weeks of being well ahead, I left and quite few of the group wanted me to start a separate group on technical analysis.

I have not looked at SD since so possibly it may be to my liking a bit more now if the analysis has improved substantially.

sichy said:

Thanks Tinhat! Very concise and enjoyable read. Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed review.

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Good analysis as I am thinking of joining, undergoing a trial. It certainly looks comprehensive and offers much more than others I use/have looked at. Morningstar has been my staple for many years and it provides comprehensive and detailed coverage of the main stocks on the ASX but omits some that I would have thought they should cover. Their fair value valuations are conservative and have always been my guide. Stock Doctor offers a lot more but is expensive. I am still evaluating.