Don't Try This At Home

Suffering from the same lack of serviceable ideas as this guy (but not this one), we are putting together a little portfolio based on dreaded 'technical' indicators - one, in fact.

The culprit is a hand rolled item, using weekly data, that might give some indication as to the willingness of market participants to hold on to positions for more than five minutes at a time, say. Bounded by 0 and 100, the calculation does not result in anything that could be remotely described as 'momentum' or any other misapplied physical metaphor - 'up' and 'down' being other examples of this.

Longs
1). Insurer Mapfre (map.mc on Yahoo!) - 2.97€;
2). Software place Indra (idr.mc) - 16.69€;
3). Banco Popular (pop.mc) - 6.975€;
4). TV station Telecinco (btl.mc) - 8.845€.

Shorts

1). Energy infrastructure outfit Abengoa (abg.mc) - 20.825€;
2). Infrastucture constructor ACS (acs.mc) - 35.80€;
3). Bankinter (bkt.mc) - 8.745€;
4). Media company Prisa (prs.mc) - 4.115€.















The basic plan is long readings over 70 and short those under about 60 that were once above 70 - these latter not 'confirming' current repeat local maxima in the stock price. We'll pop up a progress graphic when we have a few days under the belt.

Readers, as always, are reminded not to take this as a recommendation.

The chart at the top of the page shows the line for Smith & Wesson for the last few years. Nice argument for a short position right about now - at least according to this plan.

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