No. of Recommendations: 5
With even a 500K investment if the ultimate version could increase your investment income by only 0.5% it would pay for itself.That "if" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
The value I got out of StockScreener123 and P123 when they folded SS123 into P123 was the backtesting.
After you've backtested enough you hit the spot of diminishing returns. You've identified screens that don't work so well and screens that work well. What do you need after that? Nothing.
(Just found this note from an old post I saved:
"https://boards.fool.com/i-emulated-this-screen-usi...
I emulated this screen using Portfolio123. From May 2020 to this month it performed superbly. For the 5 years prior to May 2020, it had a cumulative return of 0%.
Taz ")
I ran a backtest on SS123 on a screen that worked great in the late 90's tech boom. Turned out that it only worked good in that tech boom. Outside of that one period it was a total loser. Good to know.
One downside of backtesters that have hundreds of possible rules is the risk of tweaking the knobs until you get a result that matches the data it was trained on but is the equivalent of shooting at the side of a barn and then drawing targets. That is one thing I saw at P123 with people selling subscriptions to blackbox screens.
What little backtesting I do now can be done by GTR1.
You don't need to run dozens of screens that use handfuls of criteria.
One or 2 or 3 broad market indexes, 3-5 actively managed monthly/quarterly screens that have only 4 or so criteria.
Frankly, the last few years it has been almost impossible to beat the S&P 500.
A quote:
"Everything you need to know about successful trading and investing is on the web, gratis. There are no secrets. The rules of the game are known for each of the major market approaches – momentum, value and statistical arbitrage.
...
The main edge you need is called discipline. There are multiple market approaches that have been proven to work (momentum and valuation driven)..."Right now I have only one paid investment subscription. Called "CEFs: Income + Opportunity" $320/yr I only for pay that because he does all the legwork sussing out the data, so I don't have to do it myself. The dividends are killing me at tax time, though, so I may quit sooner or later.
