What do you like best about TradeGuider?

The stock scanner. I use it to scan through my whole universe of stocks, looking for stocks that are strong or weak. It enables me to see opportunities I would otherwise have missed and often it will flag a stock that I wouldn’t normally have considered. This one facility on its own has more than paid for itself in a very short space of time. I have a lot of software and I can safely say that this is the most consistently correct stock scanner I have ever seen.

How does TradeGuider help you save time in your daily trading routine?

Well, as I said before, to me the stock scanner is a fantastic time saver. For me to trawl through the stocks manually by applying various line studies would take me ages. Even if I was just to look at the constituent stocks in the S&P 100, it would take me ages to select the strongest or weakest stocks. When I run the scanner, I end up with a list of the 10 strongest and weakest stocks, which is great. The stock scanner takes a little longer to run through it’s analysis than most other scanners, but the results are well worth the little extra wait. The way I see things, it would take me several hours to do the same sort of sophisticated analysis by hand, so I’m very happy to wait a minute or two! People seem to be hung up about having the results of a scan in two seconds. My reasoning is that if it only takes 2 seconds, it’s not much of a scan!

How easy is TradeGuider to use?

Well, if a neophyte like me can use it, I guess most people can <laughs>.

Exactly how do you use the program?

I download my data from Worden (TC2000) every evening and then let TradeGuider run through the top constituent stocks of the Dow, S&P and NASDAQ. I don’t bother with the Russel – it’s not liquid enough. If I look at the top 100 stocks in the NASDAQ and S&P, I know I’m going to get some good results.
Every weekend I’ll let TradeGuider loose on scanning the full S&P, NASDAQ and Dow Jones stocks to see if it comes up with any surprises. I never fail to be impressed by the ingenuity of their stock scanner – it’s so accurate at predicting weakness or strength in a stock. It’s amazing really! Once a week, I also run the system against the business sector indices and compare them against the major indices. This is a fantastic way of spotting sector rotation and leaves me ideally placed to take advantage of changes in sentiment early on.

How well have you done with the program?

It depends from year to year – no two years are the same and it’s amazing to think how the personality of the markets change over time. I’ve had TradeGuider, and its predecessor, VSA, for the last 10 years now. Every year I have been profitable. Prior to having TradeGuider, I was a bit in the dark. I’ve tried out lots of other software, but this is the one that works for me consistently. I wouldn’t be without it now. Over the last 10 years, my results have varied from 35% in a poor year to over 200% in a good year. As long as I’m in profit, I don’t really care. For me, this about having an edge that can be exploited over time. I know my strategy works when using this software and this gives me the security I need for me and my clients when the hard times come.

How much do you have invested?

I think that is my own private business! I don’t keep all funds in stock and balance off with both cash and gold. It’s been hard over the past couple of years, so I have to be sensible about the ratio of money held in stock and sterling.

Would you recommend this program to a friend?

Absolutely! I have recommended the program to a number of my friends. When the bottom dropped out of the market three years ago, quite a few of my friends decided to take there redundancy cheque and actively invest it. I had no problem in recommending your program to each of them. I regard it very highly!