May 06, 2006

Weighted Alpha

Every morning I generate a list of stocks that are currently, or were recently, on the barchart.com top 100 alpha list and have an average trading volume of over 500,000. These are the stocks that I trade every day. Nasdaq.com defines weighted alpha as:

The Alpha is a measure of how much a stock has risen or fallen over a one-year period. The original research was restricted to large cap stocks, so the corresponding rise in the S&P 500 index was subtracted; however, as there are a number of interesting stocks that do not fit well into any category, and others that fit into more than one category, the results are presented without subtracting any index.
Barchart.com takes this Alpha (measure of how much a stock has changed in the one-year period) and weights this, assigning more weight to recent activity, and less (0.5 factor) to activity at the beginning of the period. Thus the weighted alpha is a measure of one year growth with an emphasis on the most recent price activity.
A stock whose price has risen over the one-year period will have a positive Weighted Alpha. A stock whose price has not changed in the period will have a small Weighted Alpha and a stock whose price has dropped over the period will have a negative Weighted Alpha.
N.B. The Weighted Alpha is limited in the amount it may change from one day to the next, thus eliminating large price jumps from the calculation.

I just noticed that barchart.com has a list of the bottom 100 stocks ranked by alpha. This may be good to use for shorting.

Comments

Great post!! Thanks for replying!!!

Posted by: Brant at May 8, 2006 10:14 AM

There are a lot of stocks on that list. Is there anything else you filter by besides average volume? Or do you just try to trade as much of those as you can? I'm assuming with positive alpha, you go long, and negative, you look short, correct?

Thanks again,
B

Posted by: Brant at May 8, 2006 01:33 PM

I consider myself a "month trader". I discovered uglychart.com about 3 days ago. Over the last 4 years or so I've tried to refine my chart reading skills to pick good stocks to hold 2 weeks to 2 months. Low and behold most of my current favorites are high on the alpha list. This will save me alot of time vs screening by hand. I didn't know what alpha was until I came upon your fine site. Thanks for sharing.

Posted by: Tim at May 12, 2006 08:40 PM


Post a comment




Remember Me?




(you may use HTML tags for style)