A.I.M. Users Bulletin Board

[SFSecurity]

Hi Clive, RE: cyclical graphic......

D#$%! that would be most useful to help visualize where we are likely headed so we could make smarter choices.

As an aside. I've been digging into the "Beyond the Random Walk" and two tidbits that seems to hold true today are his advice to sell stocks on Friday and buy on Monday to take advantage of the "weekend effect." This is not as big as it used to be due to after hours trading and somewhat reduced short selling but it might make as much as 0.25% in just three days. Not exactly chump change.

The other tidbit is to take advantage of short term price drift, often associated with dividend announcements, product releases, and similar publicity. What seems to be going on is a massive amount of very short term trading where they buy before market close , for ex-dividend date, so they "own" the stock to collect the dividend and then sell it the next day or so, pushing the price down. Some variation on this seems to happen with things like Apple announcements, etc.

My mother's account just got hosed this way. The broker/dealer bought MORL on the 29th of August and once it went ex-dividend it went down almost 8% in 5 days. Had the broker been a just a tiny bit swifter he would have held cash until 3-5 days after the ex-dividend date and then bought in. It is this kind of stupidity I'm trying to move away from but I know from past experience I can make the same kind of stupid mistakes so I'm dipping my toe in slowly.

Best,

Allen