Hey - Tyler's got an online version of his legendary newsletter now!

Check it out...Craig helped him...

http://www.kohtz.org/tyler/

Tooting my own horn (again)

Here's an email from my accountant's office...


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From: Jan Westerman [mailto:jan@geacpa.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 5:29 PM
To: Eric Hunzeker
Subject: RE: (removed for privacy)

Thanks, Eric – Fantastic Spreadsheets!!

-------------------------------------------

I am surely the greatest ever...and what I sent her was so simple relative to what can be done...boggles the mind!

Out! - (btw...still getting the excel-based stock trading system fixed...stay tuned.)

Apologies (to whoever) for lack of posts

I was gone over a long weekend at a friend's wedding in the Smoky Mtns in TN. Beautiful (where the tourism craziness hasn't completely taken over).

Anyway...i'm still getting some of the new wrinkles worked out in my Excel-based stock trading system.

I did fart around with a solver-based NCAA tournament bracket picker, but i've got to add in some heavy randomness, skewed by factors associated with the stats...those upsets are just not predictable, you know...(the bracket i picked based upon my judgement as well as one where i flipped a coin for each matchup are not statistically different from the solver-picked one.) Next year, right?

working on repairs to the excel-based trading system

This is taking a bit...trying to optimize the way in which the web queries gather and format the data...stay tuned...

By the way...

I've got some killer ideas for a Excel solver-based, optimized NCAA basketball tournament bracket picker, based upon this years stats, head-to-heads, and each school's historic tourney performances...if you'd like to hear more about it, comment...

later

Oh crap! I found a major problem with my excel-based trading system

Turns out that the web query i was using to get the daily data, aggregate it, and then send it to an Access database for storage and complex querying was not using the same OPEN, HIGH, LOW, CLOSE, VOLUME data that is used by the web service (MSN Money's website) that i was using to track the performance of the stocks i was told to buy.

Here's the long and short of it...the OPEN data point i was getting was a calculated value based upon the CLOSE plus/minus the daily change, which is calculated based upon yesterday's CLOSE NOT today's OPEN. Crappy!

That means that the buy signals i was getting, which i wanted to be stocks that gap-opened yesterday and traded on heavy volume, closing near their highs, was not completely true. I was getting more buy signals than I should have been, which explains some of the crappy performances.

I'm getting this fixed and adding in a down-side, balancing trade query...stay tuned...

Decent day (for what the overall market did)

I bought four stocks today, and one i sold at a small loss, but the others were all mildly up, but not to the point where i would sell them (per my rules).

I haven't gotten my downside play rules fine-tuned enough to get them in action yet, but will try to on Monday.

out

Got pummeled today on the trader system

Today was not good. Three trades...three losses...I wiped out the prior two days' gains, too.

I'll be modifying the strategy a bit (not the rules, mind you...i've not given them a chance to prove their on or off). I'm going to apply the inverse of the rules I'm using to identify stocks to get a nice daily uptick to identify stocks that should drop, so that i can short sell them, and insulate myself against overly up or down overall days.

We'll see how that goes.

Quick Excel VBA solution for a friend today

Today I helped a friend devise a quick and easy method of marking entries in a long excel list with a date stamp in the column directly left of the entry. However, if the entry was an edit of a prior entry, the date stamp that was placed there before had to stay put.

Here's the quick of it...

Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As range)


' This macro runs everytime a change is made to any one or more cells in a worksheet.
' The changed cells are defined at "Target".
' Right now this is not written to handle it if you were to change (delete, for example) multiple cells at once.

'We'll specify that we only care about changes made in column "B" or "2" as it's known in VBA.
If Target.Column = 2 Then

' If the change is made to a cell (or more) in the column specified, then we check to see if
' it had been stamped before. If not, we stamp it, otherwise we don't.
If Target.Offset(0, -1).Value = "" Then
Target.Offset(0, -1).Select
Selection.FormulaR1C1 = "=today()"
Selection.Copy
Selection.PasteSpecial Paste:=xlPasteValues, Operation:=xlNone, SkipBlanks _
:=False, Transpose:=False
Selection.Offset(1, 1).Select
ActiveSheet.Calculate
End If
Else
End If


End Sub

Another fair day for my Excel-based Technical Stock Trading System

Had two system-dictated buys-then-sells today. One was a loser (NOK) and one was a nice win (SCM). Overall the daily return was over .44%, which again, if replicated over and over, yields one heck of an annual return.

Had a good day with the Technical Trading system

Today's picks generated by my Excel-based technical stock trading system were three out of four winners, generating an after commissions (but before taxes) daily gain of nearly .8%. Heck, if I can repeat this day after day...I'll really be onto something.

Now...of course...a technical trading system is only as good as the rules you create to find stocks and when to buy and when to sell, etc. But the system I've developed can be duplicated and new rules implemented.

I might even share some of the rules tips I'm learning as I go.

What is this all about?

I am the Excel_Geek. I’ll use Excel to do just about anything.

Need something done in Excel, but don't have a clue how? I'll do it for $50.

Crazy, eh?

I've done Excel projects worth thousands, so why only $50?

1. The challenge.

2. It builds my library of "already done that" solutions.

3. It's fifty bucks. Got $50? <<click & submit a project>>

Wow! I've got a blog!

I am arguably the biggest Excel geek the world has ever known. With exception of pivot tables (for which I'd say I'm only an expert) I pride myself at being able to use Excel to do just about anything. Just ask me...I'm surely the greatest ever!

Oh, by the way, I've also got many other interests, which will surely take up more of this blog that you'd expect.