I have used serveral internet services to find stocks meeting certain standards or develop ranking systems. Most are limited, particularly in the area of simulations. However, there is one service that does more, but it has additional cost issues.
The basic package of the competitor costs $645 a year and is an online version. You can find all sorts of fundamental factors and technical factors. You can develop a ranking protocol and then do a simple search for total return over the dates for the entire database. There are no stops. It also includes a portofolio manager and a portfolio trader that permits you to do a more complete study of your ranking system with inclusion of market timing dates if you want to take that approach. It also has some limited stop capability. However, it is a manual approach and time consuming.
To get a better graphing package there is an add on charge. The basic package has basic chart.
This particular competition now has a new add on, a simulator, that is quite powerful. Unfortunately, when it first came out, it was about $2,000, and I believe it is still near that price. However, it is very automated, and gives you all sorts of information about the ranking system, dates, market timing dates can be used, statistics, etc. Far more complete than provided by portfolio123 in terms of capabilities You can automatically evaluate a group of ranking systems. Users like the simulator but it is costly.
Many users often focus on stocks costing less than $10 because this is where the greatest total return seems to occur. With these types of stocks market timing becomes more critical. However, the service can be used for large caps, longer term investing.
You can do long and short trading with ranking systems.
With portfolio123 one has a basic simulator which is better than the basic system in the competitor. Unfortunately it is somewhat clunky. It does not easily permit analysis by market dates if one is interested in using market timing with low cost stocks. It can not do shorts.
I believe portfolio123 is OK for basic ranking and long trading only. I have not investigated significantly its potential for lower priced stocks re market timing. However, the company really needs to be more proactive in terms of getting its features to be more competitive, particularly when one is buying the high end service. It needs to have more technical analysis capabilities.
I like competition in the marketplace and it appears that portfolio123 and the competitor are the ones to use now if one wants simulation of strategies on the net. Obviously, there are off-line packages that are very powerful that can do the same thing but they require downloading data. I just hope portfolio123 keeps improving quickly. It would be nice to see a list of enhancements with expected implementation dates.
What’s your problem? It sounds like you’re not making any $$ with Portfolio 123, maybe if you go spend $3000. you will. I have the feeling that once you “investigate significantly its potential” you’ll still have the same problem.
Why do people get upset when you suggest improvements relative to competition? Portfolio123 is a fine service but as others have noted in other sections some improvements are needed. And yes, I can design and use models that make money.
If you pick one of the proven portfolio-s and trade religiously, the profits will pay for your subscription manifold. The first one or two months could be a bumpy ride, and discouraged me in two of my earlier attempts.
I think the power of p123 is its focus.
Its power is the ease and speed with which you can create and test ranking systems, add trading rules and back test their effectiveness and most importantly, the ability to walk through
the decisions of your sim and learning from it. The visual ordering of information is an amazing feat of software design. No equals.
By helping you focusing on what you need to do to be successful and not cluttering yourself with thousand charts (which are available for free anyway and only confuse you) and market signals, p123 focuses you to good solution.
And the biggest thing about p123 is people-power.
P123 is actually powered by at least half a dozen forumer-s (in addition to p123 staff on role). These have learnt and taught and built upon each other so well. At least every half threre is a breakthrough that either doubles the annual return (it was 40%, 50%, 100%, now we have sims with 150-170% annual returns).
No other standalone tool can enable this mastermind creation.
Even though the backtesting is the feature that attracted everyone here, you will realize that great breakthroughs have been made here by people who shut their thinking and started
listening to the data (Denny’s systematic one-at-a-time investigation of buy/sell rules, Dan’s systematic one-factor-at-a-time analysis of stock factors and formulae) have resulted in what we see to be industry-changing ways in investing.
Bottom line: p123 does not have a competitor (doing its powerful features) yet.
Your concern/expression is definitely welcome. Marco and team have to write a good faq addressing these concerns and a good brochure., highlighting how this service compares to competitors.
They can use your post as one of the starting points.
I was sure you will see these things for yourself in a short while but wanted to provide pointers.
Please do not take other forum-ers comments as rebukes, consider them as testimonials from people who have seen the
value of the tool and made money.
PS: I do not work for p123. I am also an awed user.
Sorry if my reply to you last night was a little terse. I spent several years searching for the perfect website that would solve my trading dilemas. I finally figured out it was not the wrong services I was using, it was me. I am now comfortable in what I am doing, and I have found a home.
If you need to explore further, go ahead. You need to solve this uncertainty of yours. Don’t focus so much on how things could be better, but how you can succeed with what you have. But if you go somewhere else, I have a feeling you’ll be back.