Subject: Re: Back in
Very heartening to hear that, given the shellacking that MI has taken the last 5-6 years.
I started back up a few months ago, somewhat tentatively to try to get the trading details down at IB, which is challenging.

Yes, IB can be a bit unfriendly at first, for sure. But I wouldn't go back for the world, now that I'm used to it. I'm trying the "basket" feature for the first time, but it's a bit scary.

As for MI screens, yes, there has been some "falling flat" effect in recent years. Maybe even more than the usual "screen was overtuned and didn't work after publication" factor. One thing I have found anecdotally is that final sorts were a big problem. A lot of screens that seem terrible in recent years are actually not bad if you look at a depth of 2 or 3 times what was originally intended. Also, dividend payers are out of their very bad stretch! For now, anyway.

But I never stopped developing and tracking screens, so the ones I'm running are ones the at seem that they might still have some value: they have held up for a while since invented. And I have very modest goals. If I can do a little better than the average stock over a decade, that's not so bad. By having modest goals you end up picking screens that aren't aggressively overtuned and they seem to hold up better.

Jim