You don't have to get out after you make your 2% for the month. You can use stop losses or trailing stops and let them run. Another way to think of it, is you need .5% a week. On a $20 stock you need to pocket .10 a week after commissions. If you can't do that, you probably shouldn't be in the markets.
I explained this to my brother who is a newbie as far as the markets, and starting with less than $10,000 in a roth, after less than a year he is up over 35%. And he's doing that a little bit at a time playing the big boring slow moving stocks. Kind of like Zeev in slow motion. <g> Like watching paint dry. But if he consistantly keeps doing what he's doing, he'll easily in 20 years have a million without ever adding another penny to it. And then if after he "retires", he only makes say 1% a month, that would be $10,000 a month of free cashflow without touching the principal. In 20 yrs you should still be able to live on $10,000 a month.
Your idea is a kind of interesting screening method to look for stocks to play for any particular month or time of year. And then adding even just a little bit of intelligence to it, instead of a straight mechanical method, should possibly do even better. As far as intelligence, say look over the list of top 10 picks for a month and throw out those that only made the list becasue of one or two years they did explosively good and aren't likely to repeat that. Also give more weight to closer years than farther out years. Then look at the charts of the remaining candiates and do some simple TA on them. And last, maybe stick your wet finger in the air to see what the markets as a whole are doing. That might give you a better edge than just a straight mechanical method.
You so far only looking for long side candiates? We are in a bear market. We could look for stocks that do particularly bad in certain months. Instead of just looking at the top of your list, we could also look at the bottom of it. I guess I'll wander over to your board and see what you've come up with for possible May plays. It's certainly worth at least a look see as a possible screening method.
-- and don't have two nickels to rub together .... I am off to the races and must post my Derby Trial picks by 10:00 a.m. --
Either you keep spending your winnings or it doesn't sound like the horsies have been to kind to you over the years. <g>
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