Super Stock Picker Forum

Thank you very much for helping me making money. I started trading 5 years ago. I tried different ways and I am lucky that I finally found superstockpicker last year. For my experiece Superstockpicker is the best. For example: I picked win.to, up over 160% and i am still holding it. most recently I followed superstockpicker and bought tth.to, up 20% in a few days. Also, I bought iex.to 3 days ago, today it jumped  over 35% so far at this time.

Again, thank you very much!

Best Regards,

Jeff

The truly eerie thing about the picks is how often it has caught huge moves to the upside.  At first I thought it must be a coincidence but it seems to be happening with regularity.  iex.to up over 50% today.

I had more winners than losers from my past experiences with superstockpicker . And I was able to cut the losses for the losers. TH.TO was another great pick from superstockpicker. Superstockpicker picked  TH.TO last October at around $2.5. I bought it but sold out shortly after. TH.TO is selling today at 9.27. (I don't know when superstockpicker suggested selling, I sold out before superstockpicker's  sell recommendation, because I had to go out of town and was unable to check the the stocks or emails, so I wanted to be on the safe side and sold TH.TO. I wish I still had this one. Imagine the price increase from $2.5 to $9.21 in about 3 months time!!!!) I came back after the new year and started follow superstockpicker again: I bought tth.to and iex.to from the recent recommendation. both great winners. And I think both of them will go much higher. iex.to may take some to digest today's huge gains (above 50%) while tth.to is ready for next ride. we may have a great week next week with tth.to.

What I am trying to say is, superstockpicker is really doing a good job.

take care and happy investing
Jeff

Started a small portfolio with the stock picker just before the market dipped.

So far annualized real return is  4 1/2%.

Jury is still out.

Now at the end of month 2.  I have rolled over about 1/4 of my invested portfolio and while we had a slight dip into negative territory real return is now at 5%.
 
While the return is currently a bit on the low side when compared to my usuall expected result it is squeaking in very slightly better over the last two months than the part of my portfolio that is 'ignoring' the stock picker.

I follow the V2 and have a year to date of about 5%. A far cry from the 32% quoted performance and about the same as the TSX.

Hello bryanmcn and DCA,

Very interesting to hear about your real life feedback.

Would you like to tell us about your way to use our recommendations?

We assume that the portfolio is always fully invested and unbalanced. Do you try to keep close to that rule or do you trade another way?

Were you keeping cash when the portfolio have been rising? Were you under-weighting  a big performer?

I usually have some cash although there are times when I am fully invested. If a portfolio has only a couple of stocks, then I will size my position according to the volitility of the stock and the amount I want to risk. So ,yes, I may be underweight on some high performing stocks. Your high performers often trade at under $2. Stocks that trade under $5 will not get the weight of a higher priced stock because of the increased risk. I am not one of the very few traders that can stomach a 40% draw down so I use stop losses as well. Stops will help me sleep at night but I may miss out on a big move after a shakeout.

To put things in perspective - I got a 50% gain on FNI which represented in real dollars a gain of $10K for me but that represents only 5% of my total portfolio.

If you add up all the gains and losses on your individual transactions they will NOT equal to your total gain or loss in your total portfolio because you will have cash from time to time. Cash is a valid position. 

Hello SSP,

     First of all it should be noted that I am reporting only realized returns after all commissions, fees, interest, etc.  I have also been following the stock picker for around two months so most gains are currently in unrealized state.

     I would not base an investment decision to follow or not follow the stock picker on unrealized gains but as of today the anuallized gain assuming all unrealized gains are realized would be ~53%.

     I am also charging the SP portfolio "interest"  at my average trailing return on all investments (stocks, GIC, bonds, etc.) currently at around 26%.

    As for my portfolio weighting:  I am mainly following all the Ultimate portfolios.  When a stock appears in the Price momentum weekly I start watching (if not already.  There has been an overlap between my stock picks and the stock picker).  As the stock appears in UV1 I buy $5K.  Some stocks I have already held and some I have bought more or less based on other factors.  Then as the stock appears in each succesive portfolio I buy the same number of shares as the first week.  This achieves a similar weighting to the SP.

Regards,

DCA

Hi DCA
Are you saying that your year to date gain (realized and unrealized) is about 18%?
I keep a spread sheet with total dollars in each of my investment accounts. The percent gains are calculated monthly based on the value of the accounts.
Quotes of percentage gains, average percent gains, anualized gains can be very misleading. Take a simple example - you have two buys and two sells. You gain 50% on the first position and loose 30% on the second. Average gain is 50-30/2 = 10% right?
WRONG! Say you started with $10K. The 50% gain gets you to $15000. Then the 30% loss gets you to $10,500. Thats a 5% gain, not 10%.
What do you have in your account now, what did you have on Jan 1, what is the difference divided by what you had on Jan 1 - Thats your real year to date return. Period.
Do the the people at SSP get the kinds of returns they quote on this site in their own accounts?
Why not handle your reporting the way most people trade? Assign a set amount of dollars in a pretend account then buy and sell stocks based on the amount of cash available. Your buys and sells would have to indicate number of shares but other than that, it would be the same process.

Hi bryanmcm,
     No, that would be an inaccurate statement.  I have only be following SP for two months.

     The real return has been 3.4% of current invested total.  I never count unrealized gains for tomorrow they might be unrealized losses.  (Revenue Canada shares this attitude also!)

     Do the SSP people get the returns posted on their site?  I do not know.  But in ten months I will know wether I do and wether I should continue to pay attention to their tips.

     In some trades I have done better than SP in others I have not done as well.  The closing price on the day of the order that SP uses is as fair as any system I could come up with.  As for commisions some people would be paying $100+ others $4.95 it depends on your volume and broker, so how can SP honestly include that?

Hello guys,

To answer your question about the returns we get, we enjoy nice returns in our account but not in the same order as what is on the site. The main reason for that is our account being too small.

To illustrate this point and to answer the need of real life examples, we have now open two threads that are virtual portfolios following the orders of the Price Momentum v2 portfolio. See them here:

• Virtual $5,000 portfolio (http://www.superstockpicker.com/forum/index.php?topic=183.0)
• Virtual $50,000 portfolio (http://www.superstockpicker.com/forum/index.php?topic=182.0)

Well for the third month it was quite a roller coaster!  We dipped slightly into negative territory and then zoomed up to ~69%, but we end the month at 14.92% realized for an average profit of 2.2% per trade.

We also hit the first rollover point with the time following the portfolio being the same (91 days) as the average hold time. (dollar weighted.)

This months ride down was primarily due to stopping out on Ruby.  This loss was offset by a nice profit on Mercator.

D

Month four and the roller coaster is a little calmer.  The roll over time has increased to 103 days with the profit rising to an average 6.1% per $ sold.

Anuallized return is now 40.2%

D

Month 5

    It is a good thing that I am reporting only real returns since if I included unrealized the return would have taken a beating this week.

    Ignoring that this has been a remarkably stable month!  Annullized return has risen slightly to 40.5%, profit still at 6.1% per $ sold and roll over time has returned to 90 days.

D

Month 6

    What a fun month!  SSP holding up remarkably well.  27.9% return, 5.2%/$ sold with a roll-over time of 99 days.

D

Month 7

     So this has been a month of buying (and not selling TIM!) which means that my reporting of the realized returns is showing not much change.

     23.55% return with the profit/dollar traded holding remarkably stable at 5.2%.

     The constant buying this month has raised the average hold time to 153 days!

     It is hard not to count those TIM eggs, but if the rooster ever crows it is looking good for the results.

D

Month 8

     This month we had a little selling, but only enough to hold things stable.

20.3% return.
5.2% per $ traded.
Average hold time now 187 days.

     It is looking like SSP is switching to a 'buy & hold' strategy.

D

Month 10

   ( I missed month 9)

Return 26.9%
6.9% per $ traded.
Average hold time 109 days.

Looks like a return to 'normal'

D

I (a newbie who has just started to take on the v4 portfolio himself, this morning) would like to ask someone to confirm that if the portfolio is cut to only a single stock... would the portfolio maintain a 100% invested position with zero cash - and risk taking a huge loss in the event that sole remaining position tanks for some reason? Would it not be prudent to maintain a minimum cash position at some point when there is unsatisfactory diversification?
Thank you kindly.

Yes and yes. One of the fundamental strategies in the SSP portfolio is zero cash. The other is to reinvest all proceeds from a sales into the remaining stocks in the proper proportion that they represent since they were purchased. In other words ... you buy more of the winners and less of the losers. This is particularly hard on ones gut, especially when TIM is up 500% (at the time of writing) and the portfolio says buy more!!

I think I have this right ... right? 

Hello bryanmcn,

Yes, you're totally right. We maintain no cash line and allocate the money in the open positions proportionally to their performances since the recommendation was issued.

The $50,000 virtual portfolio (http://www.superstockpicker.com/forum/index.php?topic=182.0) shows good examples of this mechanism. It is well behind regarding its updates but we'll do our best to restart from where we've left soon...

from the way i understand it - i believe you are right on the money!!

you beat me by 39 seconds lol!!!

I believe that what makes the SSP portfolios unique are these two strategies. I have long held that holding zero cash is not only unreasonable but also creates extreme risk and volatility when the portfolio gets down to one or two positions. Similarly, rebalancing the portfolio after every sell order increases the number of transactions and therefore the slippage due to transaction fees and our inability to get the exact price thatSSP gets.
That said, it IS theoretically possible to closely duplicate a SSP portfolio's performance if you trade at market price in the last few minutes of the trading day.
I would like to see the $50,000 virtual portfolio kept up to date. Ideally SSP would post the changes the day after a new transaction. That would lessen the chance of someone making a mistake in duplicating the transaction.
One last comment - Many of us feel compelled to take profits when a stock has doubled or tripled, thus reducing our drawdown risk. SSP takes the opposite approach. If a stock rises, it is targeted as a buy when rebalancing. Sell low and buy high. That is very different from what we "text book traders" have been taught.
The SSP portfolio's success seems to indicate that a change of thinking is in order!


   

I suppose this (SSP strategy) would go hand-in-hand with Dennis Gartman's sentiments ,which sounds something like....

"Do MORE of what's working, and LESS of what's not."

S.

So here we are at a year and a day since I started following some SSP picks:

Roll over is 90 days, return has averaged 7.1% per dollar traded for a total realized return after taxes, interest, commissions, etc....


27.9%

And oh what the heck as an end of the year counting of chickens:

unrealized pre tax is at 150% for the year.