Timeliness
Are these Scans and Alerts Ever Late?
The timing of a visit has some bearing on the “timeliness” of a report. The idea that our alerts are delayed or late is not correct. In fact, it is virtually impossible.
When we issue daily reports, our scans are performed each day after the market closes. We get the raw data about 2 hours after the close of market (it takes that long for vendors to collect, clean, and otherwise prepare the data for delivery). After we get it, it takes us up to 41/2 hours to apply our algorithms to it, and for some reports it may take an extra two hours. Therefore, if you visit our site before 5 p.m. (four hours after the close of market) you may be looking at yesterday’s reports, though we do sometimes get finished shortly after 4:00 p.m. (three hours after the close of market). In any event, the date of the report is posted on the report.
For example, the GAP signal generator of our StockAlerts subscription looks for stocks that have a low price TODAY that is higher than the high price YESTERDAY (plus other conditions have to be satisfied). It is impossible that the alert will be late because the equation simply looks at today’s low and yesterday’s high. It no longer looks at data for previous days. That is, the alert can be triggered by what happened TODAY and only by what happened today. This is true of all our alerts. However, a person may conclude that the alerts are slow if he visits the site before 5 p.m. because the alerts posted are probably still for yesterday, and not for today. All alerts are triggered by conditions that occurred TODAY. There is no way for them to be triggered late (the mathematics will not permit that, and the data we work on is fresh when we collect it).
However, we have programmed a few of our alerts to continue one day after the initial alert is given. As traders, we may want to know what happens to a stock the day after the initial alert. For example, if a short-term moving average crossed from below to above a longer-term moving average yesterday, and the short-term moving average is still above the longer-term moving average at the close of market today, the alert will be generated again. It will be generated the first day of the crossover, and remain a second day only if the short-term moving average is still above the longer-term moving average. This is intentional on our part, because we sometimes want further verification of the crossover event. What this means is that if you do not notice the alert on day one, but then notice it on day two, you may think it is a day late. You just did not take note of the crossover on the day it happened. If there are many alerts and you do not write the interesting ones down, you may see the alert again the next day. Then, when you look at the chart you may conclude that the alert was a day late because it should have been given yesterday. In fact, it was given yesterday but you did not take note of it then. Also, if you visit the site before 5 p.m., you may be looking at yesterday’s scan results. That means you may think the alert is two days late (because the original crossover occurred two days ago) even though it was never late at all. You would have seen that the alert was generated two days ago if you had looked. We do this, for example, with the Donchian 5×20 dual moving average crossover system and the 5x10x20 triple moving average crossover system in the StockAlerts subscription.
A person may think that because the market has been closed for two or three hours, the alerts posted are today’s alerts. For most sites, this may be true but it is not true for our site. Our alerts are not instantly computed as soon as the market closes. Also, they are not automated downloads. If they were, they would be the same as those on almost every other Web site. The algorithms we use are custom-designed and created in-house. There is no way for us to simply download the alerts from a vendor. It is true, though, that we will sometimes include common “cookie cutter” formulas in our reports. For example, some reports include a common RSI (Relative Strength Index) measurement. So, even though our reports are unique and created in-house, we might include with them an RSI reading or some other common measurement that a person might want to use for additional filtering.
We do not download any of our alerts. We have to take the time necessary to sort data, run our algorithms, generate charts and tables, and then post the information for visitors and subscribers. Look at the number of subscriptions we offer. It takes time to get it all ready. This is done by people. It is not an automated process. That makes us slower than most sites when it comes to completing our updates. It is physically impossible for us to get it done an hour or two after the market closes. Pay attention to the dates posted with the reports. They will tell you if the alerts are today’s or yesterday’s.
Most site operators do not have the mathematical knowledge necessary to create their own algorithms. That is why they download their “alerts” from vendors. In fact, the reason we create our algorithms ourselves is precisely because the so-called “alerts” available elsewhere are not acceptable to our own company traders, and because we have the ability to create algorithms that do the job for us.
We are experienced traders who have been trading for many years. We use our own alerts. Why on earth would we trade on the basis of old or untimely alerts? That would be insane.
For a short time, some of our reports were updated weekly. That is no longer true. All our reports are now updated daily.
The Valuator is the only item we currently offer that is not updated daily, because it was conceived and designed to be a monthly publication. Each issue takes far too many hours of work for it to be practical to issue it daily or weekly.