Financial Astrology: Trading/Investment Strategies

Defining Investment Strategy

To open the Strategies window, select the Finance/Strategies/Strategies... menu.

Set the Data Search and the Investment Strategy criteria:

• Duration (Years) - number of trading years to be included in calculations starting from the current date and counted backwards.
• Ticker - the ticker of the company.
• Amount - investment amount.
• Commission per Trade - commission fees charged per each buy or sell trade by your broker.
• Strategy:
• Buy When
• Criteria - use the Criteria... button to select the event that should indicate the buy signal.
• Offset (Days) - how many days before or after the event the actual buy should occur.
• Sell When
• Criteria - use the Criteria... button to select the event that should indicate the sell signal.
• Offset (Days) - how many days before or after the event the actual sell should occur.
• % to sell: percent of the currently held position to be sold during the sell event.

Working with the projected Investment Strategy results

Once all the criteria have been defined, click the Calculate button. The table in the middle of the screen will be populated with the projected investment strategy results.

• To add the Projected Investment Strategy results to the Results table, click the Add button.
• Once results are added to the table, you can expand the corresponding Results row to see details for each trade event:
1. Date of the trade
2. Buy or Sell event
3. Price of the stock (Close of Day)
4. Amount available after sell or buy (hypothetical amount)
5. Number of stocks acquired or sold.
• Important: To save the Projected Investment Strategy results, click the Save button. It's highly recommended to keep saving your projected investment results, this way you can later compare them and will be able to retrieve them significantly faster without having to re-calculating the results each time from scratch.
• To export the Projected Investment Strategy results into a file, select the Export Type (Excel 97, Excel, CSV, or XML) and click the Export button.

Investment Strategy Information

The following information is available for each of the calculated Investment/Trading Strategy:

• Start Price - this is the initial stock price at the first trade. Note: The close of trading day price is used for all calculations.
• End Price - this is the final stock price at the time of the last trade.
• # Trading Days - number of trading days between the very first and the very last trades.
• Final Amount - this is the projected final amount that you would end up with had the Investment Strategy been employed over the specified Duration.
• Final Stock #: number of stocks owned before the final sell event.
• % Change: The percent value by which the initial amount would have increased or decreased after the final trade.
• $ Change: The amount in USD currency by which the initial amount would have increased or decreased after the final trade.
• Number of Buys: number of times the Buy trade has been executed.
• Number of Sells: number of times the Sell trade has been executed.
• Commission Loss: amount in USD that would have been lost due to commission on each trade charged by your broker.
• Change vs Buy/Hold: this is the difference between the amount you would haven lost or won using your strategy versus the the Buy and Hold strategy. Note: The Buy and Hold Strategy always assumes that the 100% Buy occurs on the first trading day and the 100% sell occurs on the last trading day.
• Change % vs Buy/Hold: same as the Change vs Buy/Hold but expressed in the percent of the change instead of the amount.
• Buy and Hold Strategy Details:
• Buy/Hold: Start Num Stocks: initial number of stocks bought
• Final Amount: the final amount after the sell trade.
• % Change: the percent value by which your position would have increased or decreased at the end of the final sell trade.
• Amount Change: the amount in USD by which your position would have increased or decreased (this is the final profit or loss).
• Statistics:
• # Buy/Sell Wins: number of times the Buy/Sell trades would have been winning (using your Strategy).
• % Buy/Sell Wins: % of winning Buy and Sell trades (using your Strategy).
• Sample Mean
• Standard Deviation
• Expected Deviation
• T Statistic

Editions

• The Strategies module are available in the AstroApp Financial Gold Edition.