Changes to High Growth Stock Investor Software

March 1, 2010 - Build 18507 replaces build 18489

New trading system - Larry Connors - High probability etf trading

The Connors and Alvarez book, "High Probabiltiy ETF Trading" addresses investors who want to trade their own ETF portfolio. In this release, HGSI has implemented all 7 long strategies and all 7 short strategies as SmartGroups and as Warehouse and Charting views, filters, combo ranking.

The book is high recommended in order to fully understand the setups, entries and exists.  The book is now available in both hard back and soft back.  Both are described and available in our book section under High Probability ETF Trading

For more details on this release review the PDF document under What's New on the HGSI website.

For information about Larry Connors visit TradingMarkets.com.

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January 4, 2010 - Build 18489 replaces build 18282

Charting

NEW:

• Bollinger Ribbon chart indicator
  This indicator is the same as the HGSI Bollinger Bands indicator except it provides options to display the Bollinger Bands as a color coded ribbon. You can choose one of two options to annotate the chart with colors to show the location of %B in relation to the upper and lower Bollinger Bands.
  
  
• Kahuna chart indicator
  A specific use of Bollinger Bands as a volatility indicator developed by Ian Woodward. The indicator looks for significant moves of the 1-Day % change in Bollinger %B.
  
  
• Historical Volatility chart indicator
  Charts the price fluctuation of a security. Values are expressed as a percentage with the percentage representing the amount of standard deviation from the mean averaged over the time period selected. Higher percentages indicate more extreme price fluctuations. Buy/hold would look for low volatility, day/swing traders would look for high volatility.

ADDED:

• Ribbon option for the Force Index chart indicator.
• Ribbon option for the % A/D (JAD) chart indicator.

CHANGED:

• Eureka indicator Arms Index default from <= 0.60 to 0.63
• Phoenix indicator Arms index default from >= 2.50 to 2.43

warehouse data fields and filters

VOLATILITY  (CHARTING INDICATOR)

• % ATR (Average True Range)
  The % ATR value is the result of taking the current HGSI 10 day Average True Range field divided by the last close. The % ATR is useful for identifying high volatility stocks from low volatility stocks. E.g. a % ATR of 5.35% would indicate that a stock had a current day significant price movement, i.e. a stock closing at $67.31 x 0.0535 is a $3.60 move.
• Historical Volatility 10-Day
• Historical Volatility 100-Day
  Values are expressed as a percentage with the percentage representing the amount of standard deviation from the mean averaged over 10 days or 100 days. Higher percentages indicate more extreme price fluctuations. Buy/hold would look for low volatility, day/swing traders would look for high volatility.

WILDER RELATIVE STRENGTH  (CHARTING INDICATOR)

• Days Up Wilder RSI 2-Day
• Days Dn Wilder RSI 2-Day
  Number of consecutive days a 2 period RSI has moved up/down
  
  
• Wilder RSI 2-Day
• Wilder RSI 2-Day-1
  Value of a 2 period RSI today and the previous day
  
  
• Wilder RSI 4-Day
  Value of a 4 period RSI
  

BOLLINGER BAND  (CHARTING INDICATOR)

• Days Since %B CO Bandwidth
• Days Dn since %B CO Bandwidth
  Number of days since the %B crossed over the Bollinger Bandwidth.
  
  
• Bollinger %B 5-1
  Normal HGSI Bollinger %B but using a 5 day and 1 standard dev.
  Useful for shorter term moves.

ELDER FORCE INDEX  (CHARTING INDICATOR)

• Force Index 2DEMA
• Force Index 13DEMA
  Existing HGSI Warehouse fields that are now color coded GREEN for values > 0 and RED for values <=0

VOLUME FIELDS

• % Pr Ch Hi 1-Day
• % Pr Ch Lo 1-Day
  The 1 day percent change from the prior day close to today’s high or low.

• Average Dollar Volume 20DMA
  ADV is the total value, expressed in US Dollar of a security traded over a 20 day period. It is the last close times the current day volume averaged over a 20DMA
  .
• Max Volume 21-Days
  Min Volume 21-Days
  21 DMA Vol
  These three fields can be used individually or together, e.g. you want stocks with a 21 DMA Vol of 150000 but don’t want stocks that have volume that is skewed because of a high/low volume day during those 21 days.
  
  
• Vol Ch 5-Dy
  Last close volume minus the volume 5 periods ago

OTHER FIELDS

• 3 Day Low
  The lowest low closing price of the last 3 trading days.
  Can be useful for short term traders setting a sell-stop.
  
  
• % Cl/5 DMA
  % change from the 5 day moving average price to the last close

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July 30, 2009 - Build 18282 replaces build 18132

Charting

NEW - Percent Change Indicator

This new indicator plots the percent change of each security in a group of securities. It can also be used to plot a single security.  Click here for the image to accompany the following text.

The "HGS Percent Change" view used for this charting example shows two charting windows, "Group Percent Change" and "Selected Group Security". The Add-on for HGSI Basic (Filters-Views-Combos) - 7/30/09 has been updated to include this view. From your HGSI Toolbar > Information Button > Learning Center > Add-on's.  Follow the instructions.

The Group Percent Change window has the indicator options setup to plot the top 6 securities of any group that is selected, comparing the securities to each other on a percent changed basis. Up to 10 securities could be plotted but it gets a little busy. This window also has a second instance of the Percent Change indicator. This second instance of the indicator is setup with options to plot a specific security as an overlay for additional comparison purposes. In this case the S&P 500.

This example of plotting a group, uses the Warehouse to fist rank the group. The group is then transferred in the ranked order to the Charting window by pressing the Warehouse Charting icon. The Percent Change indicator will plot the top 6 securities from the ranked list but changes the order so the security with the greatest percent change is plotted on top.

The Selected Group Security window, is also using the Percent Change Indicator. In this case the indicator options were set to display the S&P 500 as an overlay with any security that is selected from the security list drop down. The option window is not shown in the attached image example.

Details are in the Help system under Charting Indicators > Percent Change

Charles D. Kirkpatrick Investing With "Relatives" Methodology

NEW - Growth Portfolio

In his book Beat The Market, Kirkpatrick implements three different portfolio's, Value, Bargain and Growth.  The Value and Bargain were previously implemented in HGS Investor.  This release adds the Kirkpatrick Chart Pattern warehouse column and filter for the Growth portfolio. 

Purchase his book from our Investing-Books catalog.

IMPROVED - Several changes were made to the processes that are used to create the universe of stocks that are valid for the Kirkpatrick PSR Rank, Kirkpatrick EPS Rank and Kirkpatrick RS Rank.  These changes expand the universe of stocks allowed by the Kirkpatrick methods.   

IMPROVED - A problem with the delete list not showing stocks that have dropped out has also been fixed.

IMPORTANT: If you are a current user of the Kirkpatrick methods using HGSI, you will want to download and install the latest Add-on from the HGSI Learning Center.

From your HGSI Toolbar > Information Button > Learning Center > Add-on's. Select the HGSI Basic (Filters-Views-Combos).  Follow the instructions.   You may also want to download the latest PDF instructions for using HGSI with the Kirkpatrick method.  HGSI Toolbar > Information Button > Learning Center > Charles Kirkpatrick Investing

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March 8, 2009 - Build 18132 replaces build 18084

Charting

NEW - Phoenix Indicator

Phoenix is the latest indicator developed by Ian Woodward. It is based on the ARMS index formula developed by Richard Arms.  The Phoenix indicator looks for high ARMS index readings of >= 2.5:1; advances to declines of <= 0.63; advancing to declining volume of <=0.33.  When these conditions occur the chart is annotated with a vertical bar, it indicates that the bears are in control and the direction is down.  Phoenix is the opposite signal to the Eureka signal developed by Ian Woodward.  Eureka signal indicates that the bulls are in control and the direction is up.

Warehouse Fields /Filters

NEW- Force Index 2DEMA
NEW- Days Since Force Index 2DEMA CO
NEW - Days Dn Since Force Index 2DEMA CO

NEW- Force Index 13DEMA
NEW- Days Since Force Index 13DEMA CO
NEW- Days Dn Since Force Index 13DEMA CO

Force Index, developed by Dr Alexander Elder, is an HGSI Charting Indicator that combines price movements and volume to measure the strength of bulls and bears in the market. 

These new Warehouse "Chart Indicator" fields let you filter for various combinations of the Force Index.  For example, a very strong stock/ETF would have a positive Force Index 13DEMA above the zero line for several days and a positive 2 day Force Index above the zero line.. This combination would be confirming a move higher.

Another example of a strong stock/ETF would be a positive 13DEMA above the zero line and a negative 2DEMA below the zero line indicating a pullback.  This combination would indicate a chance to buy as it breaks higher.  The reverse process would be for shorts.

Other

REMOVED - Reuters from "More Info From Web"
ADDED - FinViz to "More Info From Web"

UPDATED - Industry Monitors Exchange Traded Groups

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December 27, 2008 - Build 18084 replaces build 18077

This is a maintenance release.  It fixes the problem in build 18077 released on December 15, 2008 with computing rolled up fields in indexes like EPS Rank, RS Rank, PSR Rank, ERG, etc.  There are no functionality changes.  This release can be installed into your current HGS Investor folder.

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December 15, 2008 - Build 18077 replaces build 17881
This is a major release.

Charles D. Kirkpatrick Investing With "Relatives" Methodology
We are pleased to announce our business relationship with Charles D. Kirkpatrick II.  Charles is President of Kirkpatrick and Company Inc., Kittery, Maine. A private corporation specializing in technical research that publishes the Kirkpatrick Market Strategist advisory newsletter. Kirkpatrick & Company advises leading investing institutions on equities, bonds, currencies, commodities, and the economy. Charles has appeared on CNBC and Wall Street Week. He is coauthor of Technical Analysis: The Complete Resource, now the required text for the Market Technician Association's (MTA) technical analyst certification program and used in many university investment classes.

In his new book Beat The Market, Kirkpatrick uses three principal methods for selecting stocks.  He calls them "relatives"

• Value (EPS Rank)
• Growth (RS Rank)
• Price Strength (PSR Rank

In this release we have implemented the Kirkpatrick "relatives".  These ranking fields are constructed differently than our HGS EPS, RS and PSR ranking. The new Kirkpatrick fields can be found in Rankings section of the Warehouse and Filters.

• Kirkpatrick EPS Rank,
• Kirkpatrick RS Rank,
• Kirkpatrick PSR Rank

Purchase his book from our Investing-Books catalog.

Industry Monitors Exchange Traded Groups

ETF's and ETN's have been separated and groupings rearranged to provide more meaningful classifications for HGSI Group indexing purposes.  Inverse ETF's and ETN's have been broken out for those who want to play the long and short side of the market.

Add-On's

Add-On's are optional files that are downloaded for installation into the HGSI software. The next time HGSI is started, the add-on files will be recognized by the HGSI software and imported into the appropriate HGSI system. 

This new feature removes the requirement to download a new copy of HGSI software into a separate folder to obtain updates from Woodward and Brown, Charles Kirkptrick and others. When new changes are available they can be downloaded, installed and automatically imported the next time HGSI is started.

Add-On's simplify the HGS Investor software making it easier for new customers.  We now ship a much smaller number of Filters, Views, Combos with HGSI. If more capability is needed just download the appropriate Add-On.

Add-on's are currently available for Woodward and Brown and Kirkpatrick Filters-Views Combos in the Learning Center. When you are running HGSI, click the Information button and select Learning Center.

Heikin-Ashi Candlestick Charting Indicator

This HGSI Charting Indicator has been added.  Look for it in the Charting indicators under Others.

The heikin-askhi method (heikin means "average" or "balance" in Japanese, while ashi means "foot" or "bar" is a visual technique that eliminates irregularities form a normal chart, offering a better picture of trends and consolidations.  Just by looking at a candlestick chart created with this method you get a good idea of the market's status and its strength.

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April 23, 2008 - Build 17881 replaces build 17873
This is a maintenance release.  There are no new features.

Fixes several HGSI system software performances issues.  No actions are required by the user except to implement this release.

Implements the name change in the HGSI Designer Reference Groups for the industry groups from "Industry Monitor's 200" to "IM Industries".  This change was pre-announced in the April 15, 2008 Announcement.  Action may be required if you use any 3rd party software that refers to the old group name of "Industry Monitor's 200"

The industry group changes that were also in the April 15, 2008 announcement to be effective on May 1, 2008 will take place with the daily data update the evening of April 30, 2008. Here is the link to the announcement. 

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March 9, 2008 - Build 17873 replaces build 17599
This is a major release.

COMMENTARY ABOUT THIS RELEASE:

With all the volatility in the markets it is difficult to make some reasonable money. The High Growth Stock Investing Team wanted to do something about this to help our customers. We set a goal to produce a investing methodology (not a black box) by complimenting our unique HGSI charting market indicators Bingo, Eureka and Hindenburg Omen that signal changes in market direction with an equally unique HGSI charting stock indicator that would signal changes in a stock's direction. If this goal could be achieved we would be able to provide more powerful tools to our HGSI customers. The result would be a suite of highly customizable indicators to enhance each customer's unique investing style, even in volatile markets like this one.

What better way to design this new charting indicator than to ask customers who are active in using HGSI in very creative ways for their own personal investing. Several HGSI customers were asked if they would accept the challenge of working together as a team to design this new indicator. After several months of detailed work on their part, the High Growth Stock Investing Team is pleased to report that they were successful! Their results have been implemented in this release.

The team was comprised of Robert Minkowski as the Team Leader, assisted by Jeffrey Scott, Dave Steckler, Lou Powers and David Galardi. If you read the HGSI Yahoo Bulletin Board these customers will not be strangers to you. All of them will be at the March 29, 30, 31, 2008 workshop where attendees can meet and interact with them to find out first hand exactly what they did.

The  new charting indicator is named Bongo. It adds one more piece to the puzzle for a suite of indicators that work together as a system of indicators. The suite consists of the Hindenburg Omen (market top), Bingo (oversold market or stock), Eureka (market bottom a.k.a "base low") and now Bongo Signal (stock upward or downward bias).

(What's in a name.   "Bongo" means "brain" in the Tanzania language of Swahili. It is used to describe people who are naturally ingenious in how they solve problems, such as our customers and HGSI staff.   In the English language it means 1 of 2 small connected drums played using 2 hands.  The Bongo Indicator is ingenious... it can produce 2 different signals, daily and weekly; each signal can indicate 1 of 2 directions, an upward bias or a downward bias turning point.) --Bongo

CHARTING INDICATORS

NEW - Bongo Signal
The Bongo signal is used for signaling an upward or downward bias for stocks. It works equally as well for market, sector and industry indexes. The signal is determined by the value relationships of 3 different Wilder RSI's and a moving average. The result is annotated on the chart as a vertical red or green bar. Red indicates a downward bias. Green indicates an upward bias. The default variables for each of these component indicators can be changed for fine tuning.

Unique to this indicator is its ability to compute the signal for a daily value or a weekly value.  The weekly indicator is much smoother and will hold the signal longer.  The daily value has more noise and may be suitable for active swing traders.  

IMPROVED- Bingo Market
The market index for the NYSE/NASDAQ/AMEX is signaling an oversold condition.   The signal is determined by value relationships of 3 other component indicators: Wilder RSI, Bollinger %B and HGSI proprietary Accumulation/Distribution. The signal is annotated on the chart as a vertical dark grey bar.   The default variable for each of these component indicators can be changed for fine tuning.  The Bingo Market signal is considered confirmed when used with and confirmed by the Eureka indicator.  

IMPROVED- Bingo Stock
Stock is signaling an oversold condition. The signal is determined by value relationships of 3 other component indicators: Wilder RSI, Bollinger %B and HGSI proprietary Accumulation/Distribution. Signal is annotated on the chart as a vertical light grey bar.  The default variable for each of these component indicators can be changed for fine tuning.

IMPROVED - Visual Filter Backtest (VFB)
Visual Filter Backtest is a very compute intensive indicator that is driven by a filter.  This improvement now runs the VFB indicator on multiple threads.  Technically this means the VFB code has the ability to split itself into two or more simultaneous tasks allowing the computations required to be completed more quickly.  This is especially true if you have dual core or more processors in your computer.  There is nothing you need to do to take advantage of this improvement.     

WAREHOUSE AND FILTERS
Note:  All these new fields are in the Warehouse and Filter data fields section for Chart Indicators > Other

NEW - Bongo Weekly
This is a Yes/No field indicating the current directional bias of the Charting Indicator - Bongo Signal
Yes means the indicator is signaling a upward bias.  It is colored green
No means the indicator is signaling a downward bias. It is colored red

NEW - Bongo Daily
This is a Yes/No field.  It is the current directional bias of the Charting Indicator - Bongo Signal
Yes means the indicator is signaling a upward bias.  It is colored green
No means the indicator is signaling a downward bias. It is colored red

NEW - Days Since Bongo Daily
This is a numeric value field.  It tells you how many days ago the Charting Indicator - Bongo Signal occured.
0 means the Bongo signal happened today
Blank means the stock didn't have 19 periods of data to compute the Wilder RSI fields.
Blanks will not sort to the top of the column.  They are always kept on the bottom.

NEW - Days Since Bongo Weekly
This is a numeric value field.  It tells you how many weeks ago the Charting Indicator - Bongo Signal occured.
The Weekly Bongo signal can oscillate back and forth throughout the current week causing the Days Since Weekly Bongo numeric value to also oscillate.
0 means the Weekly Bongo signal changed today.
Blank means one of the following:
The stock doesn't have enough weekly data to compute the Bongo (19 weeks)
The stock does have weekly data but there are no "real" bongo signals
Blanks will not sort to the top of the column.  They are always kept on the bottom.

What's a "real" signal? For the charting and the warehouse the bongo signal doesn't start until one of two bongo conditions (Yes,green/No,red) are actually met. If a stock never has the three wilder numbers in the correct order and never closes above it's 9 day moving average, then we don't start the bongo. We wait for a "real" bongo yes/no signal before starting. This can cause large gaps on the left of the chart but this is a better choice than "assuming" a yes/no before the first "real" signal shows up.

NEW - Days Since Bingo Stock
This is a numeric value field. It tells you hwo many dys ago the Charting Indicator - Bingo Stock signal occured.
0 means the Bingo signal happened today
Blank means the stock didn't have 66 periods of data to compute the A/D indicator
Blanks will not sort to the top of the column.  They are always kept on the bottom.

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December 27, 2007

This is a minor maintenance release to fix a problem reported with exporting multiple levels of user groups..

The title bar of the High Growth Stock Investor now shows the folder name and path to the HGS Investor that is running. This should help customers who have multiple copies of HGS Investor to know what copy they have actually started.

Two new Warehouse fields shown below have recently found to be useful in filtering for stocks that are setting up in a Bollinger Band squeeze in proximity to these moving averages. When the squeeze is on, price movement can be significant.

WAREHOUSE AND FILTERS

NEW - % Cl/4 DMA - % change from the 4 day moving average to the last closing price.

NEW - % Cl/9 DMA - % change from the 9 day moving average to the last closing price.

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November 17, 2007

SmartGroups

NEW - S&P 500 SECTORS - The 500 stocks of the S&P 500 are listed in the 10 sectors used by S&P. These are not the Industry Monitors sectors and the classification into the S&P 500 sectors are not done by Industry Monitors, they are done by S&P.  The S&P 500 by sector is provided for those customers who primarily trade the S&P 500 stocks and need to see them organized by S&P Sectors.

CHANGE - HIGH GROWTH STOCK PICKER - Groups have been reorganized from 5 different style folders (Dividend, Growth, International, Specialty, Value) into the top level High Growth Stock Picker folder. This change makes it much easier to compare the indexes of all the investment styles. The various styles of investing are still identified but not in separate folders. No changes have been made to the filters and combos that generate these groups.

CHANGE - ETF BY FAMILY - Six new ETF families have been added (Adelante, Ameristock, Elements, iPath, Market Vectors, SPA)  A general purpose category of "Other" has also been added for stragler ETFs.  The groups have been reorganized from individual ETF family folders (BLDRS, iShares, Powershares, etc.) into the top level "ETF by Family" folder. The various families are still identified but not in separate folders. This change makes it much easier to compare the indexes of all the ETF Families.

CHANGE - ETF BY INVESTMENT CATEGORY - Groups have been reorganized from individual ETF by Investment Category (Bear, Blend, Growth, Intl, etc.) into the top level ETF by Investment Category folder. The various investment categories are still identified but not in separate folders. This change makes it much easier to compare the indexes of all the ETF investment categories.

GENERAL COMMENTS ABOUT HGSI ETF's

There are now over 625 ETFs that are organized in three different ways:

1. Industry Group "Fin-ETF" contains all the ETFs as a single list
2. ETF by Family contain all the ETFs group by family
3. ETF by Investment Category contain all the ETFs group by investment categories (Blends, Growth, Sectors, etc)

NOTE:  Exchange Traded Notes (ETN) are starting to appear mixed in with ETFs.  Where possible those securities have been flagged by including the letters ETN ETF as part of the name.  Using a filter with a rule for Company Name contains ETN should pull them out.

ETF Friendly names:  All HGSI ETFs now have friendly names that tell you the name of the security as opposed to "Rydex ETF" etc. Friendly names are not in the QP database they are a special feature of HGSI.

CHARTING

CHANGE - VISUAL FILTER BACKTEST - VFB charting indicator how has a Date Range selector. The choices are All, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, 5 years. When you pick a date range on a VFB indicator the computations are limited to that date range using the last day on the chart minus the number of years selected. With this option you can greatly increase the speed of annotating charts using the VFB indicator. (See HGSI Help Watznew for more details)

CHANGE - RELATIVE STRENGTH INDEX (RSI) - The indicator name has been changed from Relative Strength Index (RSI) to Wilder Relative Strength Index (RSI) to be more exact.

DESIGNER

NEW - TOOLS > GROUP INCLUSION REPORT- With High Growth Stock Investor, lists of stock symbols are kept in folders know as groups. The HGSI database can contain hundreds of groups.  With the Group Inclusion Report, you can determine if a symbols appears in more than one group and get the name(s) of those groups.

One use for this report is to identify stocks generated by the HGSI High Growth Stock Picker SmartGroups that appear in more than one of the 20 different styles of investing.  Each of the HGS Picker groups use different stock picking strategies implemented using different filters and rankings.  In the example below, all 20 High Growth Stock Picker SmartGroups groups were selected. Each of these groups can only contain the top 10 symbols from the list produced by the filter. Here you can see that ATW appeared in 5 of those High Growth Stock Picker groups, perhaps indicating this is a stock to look at more closely.

Another use would be for User groups that contain lists of stocks that were good performers and then fell out of favor. User groups are static, i.e. there contents do not change unless the change is made by the user.  In this scenario, you might to be watching for a resurgence of these stocks at a later date by including that group into the report along with the SmartGroup that previously selected those stocks.  SmartGroups are the opposite of User groups in that they change automatically every time you do a data Update.  By pairing a User Group with a SmartGroups you can watch for stocks returning to your favor.

TIP: By including a date in User Group names, you can tell when the group was created.  Group Inclusion will work with the HGS Reference Groups, SmartGroups, User Groups.

WAREHOUSE AND COMBO

NEW - TOOLS > CHOOSE/MAKE VIEW > MAKE FROM COMBO - Makes a view using the columns in the combo as columns in the view. It adds those columns to Name, Symbol, Raw Combo (we add the raw combo auto magically). The combo is auto magically applied and checked to "on" in the view

WAREHOUSE AND FILTERS

NEW - DAYS SINCE 50 DMA CROSSED 200DMA - Tells you how many days ago the 50 DMA crossed upward over the 200DMA. The data field displays positive numbers starting with zero. The larger the number, the further back in time the crossover occurred. A downward crossover appears as a blank in the column Securities with insufficient data also appear as a blank.

NEW - DAYS DN SINCE 50DMA CROSSED 200DMA - Tells you how many days ago the 50MA crossed downward over the 200DMA. The data field displays positive numbers starting with zero. The larger the number, the further back in time the crossover occurred. An upward crossover appears as a blank in the column. Securities with insufficient data also appear as a blank.
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October 27, 2007

Release 17465 replaces release 17457 to fix a minor bug associated with repainting the window when moving between windows. This bug had no impact on any data computations.

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SMARTGROUPS

"ETF by Investment Category"

"ETF by Family"

CHARTING

WAREHOUSE AND FILTERS

MISCELLANEOUS

Example: HGSI Charting Hindenburg Omen

Example HGSI Warehouse Index Indicator Fields