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While at the Las Vegas Traders Expo a few weeks ago I went to a "bull-pen" presentation for TradeMiner. I ended up buying the software for $197, which included free data through 2016 (data is usually $60/year).
I was intrigued because it focuses on two of my favorite things in trading: historical probabilities and seasonalities. When I saw it I noticed it produced a lot of similar statistics like at MRCI, which I've seen some trader friends use quite successfully for seasonal timing of their trades.
I currently just use their version for stocks but I can also use the Futures and Forex versions as well, which I will probably get to later.
It basically does two main things (at least, that I use it for)
1) Mine hostorical data for when the best times of the year to buy/sell certain instruments.
2) Compare the seasonal setup with historical cycles and patterns that match the current market using their neural network capabilities.
Number ONE is pretty easy to understand. Below is an 18-year historical performance on the stock symbol MLM from November 2nd to January 5th. You can see almost every year it makes a gain, with little drawdown, except for 2009, and that was intra-season, not the close of the period.
Number TWO is a little more esoteric. There isn't much info about this part, but basically, once you pick your seasonal favorites, you run it through their "Neural Network", which takes a while to grind through. From what I understand the neural network step compares the historical periods to the current market conditions and cycles. It then shows a probability of succeeding this year based on how the current market matches up to the markets of the historical data. I don't know if this just looks at the instrument, or the market overall (like SPX) or both (probably). It then gives you a probability descriptions like "High", "Medium", or "Very Low".
So ideally, if you want to go LONG, you want a high score, a bullish trend, and a good probability.
I've been using it for a few weeks and haven't closed out any trades yet, so I can't speak for it's effectiveness at helping me make more money.
There are other features that can track the stocks you choose but I don't really care about that, I just use a spreadsheet. I'm allocating $5k to each position, hence the strange position size (share) numbers.
If you're looking for short trades you want a low score, a bearish trend, and (I think) a bad probability. I think all of their metrics are benchmarked upon making money being long stocks so if you're looking for shorts I guess you want everything to be bad.
I was a little disappointed there doesn't seem to be a lot of "best practices" or how best to apply the data to actual trades from the company, they just give you the tools. I think, at a minimum, it is best used as a way to determine a long-term cycle bias for lower time-frame trades. Maybe there's an online community of users out there somewhere. I don't know right now.
Has anybody else used or tried this? I figured for a couple of hundred bucks if I can get one good trade out of it then I'm even.
My original plan when starting to do this was to just enter and exit on the recommended dates. However, I'm thinking now of something like setting a profit target 2x the average gain, with a stop loss at 2x the average draw-down. If I get 1x average gain I set my stop to break-even. Exit on the recommended exit date if I'm still in the position. Or, I may combine this with some low-risk, high-reward butterfly optioin strategies too, which sounds more interesting to me. Since flys are usually low probability directional trades, if you can stack the odds of getting a directional move in your favor they can be more effective with a little help maybe from TradeMiner.
As far as how I find the trades I like, for longs entries I need a score of at least 4.0 or higher, the trend to be bullish, and the probability to be good. I haven't taken any shorts yet. The main part of my portfolio, based on my own trading systems, is heavily weighted to the short side right now so I'm using this to hedge that a bit. Plus, this is a bullish time of year so I wanted to have some more long exposure.
I can keep you up-to-date on my progress with this if you guys like.
yes please,
some time ago I had a chance to look at a couple of videos on this software, but never been able to take the time try it.
It does look very interesting.
I look forward to your posts on TraderMiner.
With regard to futures, do you perhaps know what is the shortest timeframe it can be used on?
How does it handle important intraday news releases?
Does it stay in the market across the releases, or out? or is it always out?
Thanks
Interestingly, TM reports seasonal strength from both Lowes (LOW) and Home Depot (HD) starting this Wednesday, Nov 11th.
I ran them through the neural network: HD's probability was "High" and LOW's probability was "Very Low"
I'm going to look to trade flys for this one...
I often check IBD ratings for stocks to see if their rankings help support the trade. I'm not big on fundamentals for short-term trading but I just like to have as much wind at my back as possible. Both HD and LOW look pretty good at IBD, except for HD seems to be under institutional distribution lately, could just be hangover from the big August down move. The metric measures the last 13 weeks of institutional activity.
Just for the sake of discussion and of comparison against lines, charts, indicators, ecc... and
NOT for criticizing the tool, which I like, I wish to attach some charts on the two stocks:
Fisrt and most important both stocks are a few days ahead of earnings (risk up!)
HD_BB_and_ICHI chart
FastMcGinley, KST, RSI2, Fisher, Trix, all pointing down;
Strong divergence with Trix;
HD_rsi chart
Fast and Slow RSXC (kind of Jurik RSI) pointing down just coming out form overbought territory;
LOW_BB_and_ICHI chart
FastMcGinley crosses belw Slow McGinley, KST, RSI2, Fisher, Trix, all pointing down;
divergence with Trix;
LOW_rsi chart
Rsi indicators appears as flat, overall.
Conclusion, I would use this toll in conjunction with some chart analysis and lines
Did you take the two trades?
Best.
Just to clarify, I'm not opposed to using charts, as they can provide some increased/decreased levels of confidence in the trade. I was just pointing out there are more ways to trade than solely looking at charts. And, for me, I don't find looking at a chart very useful if I don't have any historical probabilities of a particular chart setup or price action pattern or other quantitative data that would sway me. For example, I can see price levels where many would believe is a S/R level, but that doesn't tell me how likely that S/R level will hold. I find large unfilled gaps more interesting/concerning than S/R levels. Also, I take note of breakouts of consolidation, or find certain topping/bottoming patterns more informative, but not in a quantitative sense so I often take them with a grain of salt.
I entered the HD trade this morning (a day late, at a lower price too), but not the LOW trade because of the weaker neural network probability. Plus, these 2 stocks are highly correlated so I just picked the best of the two. I peeked at the HD chart, noticed we were coming off of all-time highs, which worried me a bit, but that doesn't mean it can't go higher, and the trend has been up up up.
Using your charts, that seems to point to a short-to-near-term bearish direction, you can use this HD seasonal tendency maybe to look for long signals in your chart indicator set and use it that way: as a longer-term swing trading context instead of just straight-up holding the stock during the recommended period. I think that would be a useful way to implement this data. As for me, I'm still experimenting with this.
