Blog: Alvarez Quant Trading

From the Volume and Mean Reversion post, a reader sent a suggestion to instead use the ratio of 10 day moving average of the Close times Volume divided by the 63-day moving average of the Close times Volume (CV10/63). I had not tried this before and wanted to see how well it would work. First […]

Overall, I have had very little success integrating volume into any of my strategies. Either volume would have no predictive value or if it did, using it reduced the number of trades too much to be worthwhile. It has been a long while since I have looked into this and I had some new ideas. […]

A common question I get is whether mean reversion is still working. My response is I am still trading a mean reversion strategy but the edges seem to get smaller. Over the year I have investigated this. I was asked again recently and wanted to investigate again. Here are the results of my 2022 investigation. […]

I am drawn to ETF rotation strategies. What likely draws me to them is that in general, these are simple strategies that do not trade that often. My goal with these strategies is to match buy and hold with less drawdown. What follows is a strategy I have known about for a while and tested […]

In my last blog post, Using Historical Volatility for Parameter Adjustment, I tested using historical volatility to determine trade rules. While reading the July 2022 Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities, I came across an article, “Is It Too Volatile To Trade?” by Perry Kaufman. I always like his work so I was interested to […]

The AllocateSmartly website often has interesting posts. Recently I was reading the article Trending Fast and Slow and thought about other ideas to test. The article is based on research on trading the SPX and depending on the current historical volatility one would either use a 12-month or a 1-month lookback to decide whether to […]

Given the current rise in inflation, there has been a lot more interest in assets that do well during these times. Gold is one asset that is frequently brought up as an inflation hedge. I have also seen more lately about combining these two into a portfolio. Testing Notes The test range is from 1970 […]

While talking to a trader, he mentioned an article in the December 2021 issue of Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities about Benford’s Law. I had read the same article and was wondering how it could be applied to my trading. Benford’s Law is often used to look for fraud. I am sure I am […]

I’ve been writing this blog for nine years now. Sometimes I am amazed about topics I have not covered and this is one of them. When developing a new strategy, these are the indicators I likely test: RSI, Historical Volatility and Internal Bar Strength (IBS). I had a reader send me an email pointing me […]

I’ve been seeing lots of seasonality type charts on the S&P500 where they take the average return for each day of the year and then create a return curve for the year. The chart often ‘shows’ the sell in May and buy in November flatness of the returns. And then the holiday end of the […]

A member of The Crew recently asked me about the January Effect and if had I done any research on it. I had not. I have tested the December effect, which is buying the worst stocks of the year on December 1st, Should You Buy the Best or Worst YTD Stocks. From Investopedia, ‘The January […]

I just got back from a long vacation in Iceland (highly recommend visiting). As usual, when people discover what I do, they ask me about the markets. Several people were worried that the markets are too high. Then I read that the 20-year return of the SPX from 2001 to 2020 was way below the […]

A reader recently suggested leaving the limit orders for a mean reversion trade on for a couple of days. Typically, these orders are good only for one day unless the stock sets up again. I did not think that this would help but as I always tell my consulting clients when they ask me if […]

For the mean reversion strategies that I have created in the past and are trading now, they typically enter at the next day’s open or wait for a further pullback intraday before entering. My current mean reversion strategy, which enters on a limit down, was doing great until a few months ago when the performance […]

Probably like a lot of you, I am an indicator junkie. Whenever I read about an indicator I have not tested and makes some sense, I got to try it out. Now, most of the time they turn out to not be useful for my strategies. While reading the April 2021 Technical Analysis of Stocks […]

My last post on Different ranking methods for a monthly S&P500 Stock Rotation Strategy generated lots of emails on other ideas to try. Below are the results of these ideas Base Rules Backtest from 1/1/2007-12/31/2020. Buy It is the last trading day of the month Stock is a member of the S&P500 index Stock is […]

Recently for my own trading, I have been researching rotational strategies on both the weekly and monthly timeframes. The most common indicator that I use for ranking stocks is Rate of Change (ROC) of the closing price. I read about using Rate of Change on the EMA to rank stocks. I liked a small twist […]

In my previous post, Adding candlesticks to mean reversion setup, we looked at how various candle patterns could help individual trades. Now we will see how those results translate to a portfolio. And why I usually only do portfolio level testing. The Strategy Setup Rules Stock is a member or was a member of the […]

My preferred chart style is a candlestick chart but I have never investigated candlestick formations to see if they can help provide an edge in my trading. I recently ran into this blog post, Do Candlesticks Work? A Quantitative Test Of 23 Candlestick Formations, where he did his own investigation. Even better he shared the […]

Should you avoid trades that have recently gapped? What if you are trading a mean reversion strategy and a stock has recently had a large gap? Is that a good trade to take? Avoid? Does it depend on the direction of the gap? I did research on this about 15 years ago. Let’s see what […]