[isatrader]

Attached is my updated custom breadth charts that I do based on the daily point and figure double top breakouts and double bottom breakdowns.

Totals for the week:

+227 double top breakouts
-396 double bottom breakdowns

-169 net breakouts - breakdowns

                           

[isatrader]

Attached is the updated NYSE and Nasdaq Advance Decline Breadth Charts, including the cumulative AD line, momentum index, cumulative AD volume line, 10 Day AD oscillator and the McClellan Oscillator and Summation Index.

                                       

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Attached is the updated US New Highs - New Lows Charts

               

[isatrader]

Below is the Percent of Stocks Above their 150 Day Moving Average table in each sector, which is ordered by overall health. Also attached is the visual diagram of the 9 sectors and the two major exchanges that make up the sectors that shows a snapshot of the overall health of the US market.

Note: the overall sector average is at 54.16% currently and declined -5.22% since last week, with Financials, Technology and Consumer Discretionary having the largest declines.

       

[isatrader]

An interesting podcast interview with Mark Minervini on the IBD website this week. Good discussions about position sizing, focusing on 2 to 4 positions instead of diversifying and being uncorrelated with the market etc. See episode 10: https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/KM97202...6840956954

[IanW18]

An interesting podcast interview with Mark Minervini on the IBD website this week. Good discussions about position sizing, focusing on 2 to 4 positions instead of diversifying and being uncorrelated with the market etc. See episode 10: https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/KM97202...6840956954

I enjoyed this interview - thanks

[pcabc]

An interesting podcast interview with Mark Minervini on the IBD website this week. Good discussions about position sizing, focusing on 2 to 4 positions instead of diversifying and being uncorrelated with the market etc. See episode 10: https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/KM97202...6840956954

A couple of things I noticed there with regard to number of positions and position sizes:

With regards to the number 10-12 was tops for a very large portfolio, so I think 2-4 was nearer the bottom end, so perhaps I did not take away the same message as yourself, but I think lower rather than higher numbers of stocks was the takeaway.

Secondly, it appeared to me from the interview that you would end up in those large positions by scaling into your really good performers, and you'd also be looking at selling part positions when you felt it was a appropriate.  So rather than just buy and then sell when appropriate you'd be doing more buying and selling, as conditions dictated, of a smaller number of positions.

The logical outcome to me on the discussion on position sizing, given the example that a stock buy worth 10% of your portfolio with a 10% stop loss would lead to a risk of 1% of your portfolio, is that if you did not scale in to a stock then you'd end up with 10 positions if you went fully to stocks.  But with scaling in you could go larger and presumably wait for later continuations or pullbacks to enlargen the position and still control risk.  I presume the trick here is to see how a position evolves and whether you'd be content to enlargen your position.

At least that is my take on the interview.

[isatrader]

A couple of things I noticed there with regard to number of positions and position sizes:

With regards to the number 10-12 was tops for a very large portfolio, so I think 2-4 was nearer the bottom end, so perhaps I did not take away the same message as yourself, but I think lower rather than higher numbers of stocks was the takeaway.

Secondly, it appeared to me from the interview that you would end up in those large positions by scaling into your really good performers, and you'd also be looking at selling part positions when you felt it was a appropriate.  So rather than just buy and then sell when appropriate you'd be doing more buying and selling, as conditions dictated, of a smaller number of positions.

The logical outcome to me on the discussion on position sizing, given the example that a stock buy worth 10% of your portfolio with a 10% stop loss would lead to a risk of 1% of your portfolio, is that if you did not scale in to a stock then you'd end up with 10 positions if you went fully to stocks.  But with scaling in you could go larger and presumably wait for later continuations or pullbacks to enlargen the position and still control risk.  I presume the trick here is to see how a position evolves and whether you'd be content to enlargen your position.

At least that is my take on the interview.

A few notes from the position sizing section of the interview:

- largest position sizes 20-25% total exposure.
- worse to be overly diversified compared to overly concentrated
- His general guidelines not more than 8-12 positions, and very large up to 15. But most will be partial positions.
- On average he's only in the market 50% of the time and on average is only 50% invested.
- 25% to 50% overall exposure until he has positions that are working.
- Strategy when coming back from a 100% cash position like the most recent Stage 4 was to take only 2 to 4 positions of 5% to 10% size and then if they start working then taking larger positons of 15% to 20%, and then feeding the better names to increase their overall size.

So my take away from what he said is that generally he wants to get to around 15% to 25% overall size per position in the names that are working well, but is not 100% invested very often at all, so by that when he is 100% invested he'll likely have 2 to 4 bigger positons and the rest would be partial that weren't working as well. But the majority of the time he'd be more focused until they start working and he can then increase size and number of positions.

[pcabc]

A few notes from the position sizing section of the interview:

Thank you, that was so much more thorough than what I had covered.