A convenient and efficient way to track sell stops has been on many readers’ minds. Tom had this to say:

How can I get a fund or ETF price automatically downloaded into my personal investment spreadsheet?

I have Schwab and Fidelity, but I have not found a way to do this from their websites. There must be some software, program, or website that will pick up this info and put it into a spread sheet on your PC.

For many years, I have used a simple way to get that task accomplished. I have set up “My Yahoo” as a personalized page to track daily news events. Part of that set up includes a listing of funds/ETfs that I currently own and follow on a daily basis.

The funds/ETFs are listed by ticker, date, price and change for the day as the table above shows. It also includes a feature that lets you export this list to a spreadsheet, neatly arranged in columns to be copied and pasted wherever you like.

In your spreadsheet, you could use Tab1 to paste in all data, as I do, and use Tab2 to have your current holdings listed and formatted. By linking the prices in Tab1 to Tab2, you only need to go though one copy and paste process and your holdings are instantly updated.

Afterwards, I simply view my column titled high price to see if it needs updating, which I do manually. This obviously only comes into play during a market rally when new highs have been made.

Here’s what my matrix looks like using an actual purchase and a sell stop that got triggered:



[Double click to enlarge]

The columns are pretty self explanatory. The “High” column needs to be updated when prices make new highs, while the “Action” column is programmed to alert me to any changes in the status. In other words, when the 7% sell stop level has been broken, the “Hold” switches to “Sell,” giving me an easy identifiable alert when looking at a large list of items.

While I use other custom data bases to track these sell stops for a large number of funds/ETFs, this spreadsheet along Yahoo’s export feature is simple and effective and requires minimum time on your part once it is set up.

My latest No Load Fund/ETF Tracker has been posted at:

http://www.successful-investment.com/newsletter-archive.php

Our Trend Tracking Index (TTI) for domestic funds/ETFs has now crossed its trend line (red) to the upside by +7.52% keeping the current buy signal intact. The effective date was June 3, 2009.



The international index has now broken above its long-term trend line by +12.24%. A Buy signal was triggered effective May 11, 2009. We are holding our positions subject to a trailing stop loss.

Charles Schwab Corp. has finally entered the crowded Exchange Traded Fund arena as MarketWatch reports in “Schwab lists first ETFs:”

The financial-services giant, which boasts nearly 8 million brokerage accounts, listed four ETFs on the NYSE Arca exchange. The ETFs, which are baskets of securities that trade like individual stocks, feature low fees and represent a clear challenge to industry heavyweights State Street Corp., Vanguard Group and Barclays Global Investors, which is being acquired by BlackRock Inc.

“Investors should welcome Schwab’s entrance into the ETF universe,” he added. “While there’s nothing earth-shattering about the exposures offered by the new Schwab ETFs, the relatively low expenses that Schwab plans to charge should at least keep the big boys in the industry honest.”

[Emphasis added]

I always welcome new products in the ETF marketplace, especially when they are being introduced with lower costs to investors. Even though, I use Charles Schwab & Co. as custodian for my clients’ assets, I will not immediately jump at these new offerings.

My reasoning is the same for all newly created ETFs. I want to see price history for some 6-9 months so that I can better evaluate the trend. At the same time, I want to make sure that enough interest has been created so that the volume has increased to acceptable levels.

To invest in any unproven ETF with low volume is simply asking for trouble. The bid/ask spreads are high, and you may not be able to liquidate your holdings quickly without too much slippage in price.

In other words, you are giving up control, which is something we as trend followers try to avoid.

Reader Tom had this comment:

A provoking question I thought about is: How do I get a fund or ETF based on your TTI? An ETF or fund with the return of your Domestic TTI of 8.53% would be nice.

Tom is missing the purpose of the Trend Tracking Index (TTI). It is designed to determine market direction so that we can easily identify whether the overall long-term trend is up or down. Nothing more and nothing less.

The TTI does not have a return. The percentage stated is simply its current position above or below its trend line, which changes daily with the market movement. It does not represent any gain or loss.

To see how domestic ETFs have fared since our latest Buy signal on 6/3/09, simply reference the StatSheet. If you look at the latest issue, you will note the second column from the right titled “Since 6/3/09.” That represents the performance for this cycle.

To sum it up, use the TTI first to determine market direction and then the StatSheet to select funds based on momentum rankings. Keep in mind that it is not always advisable to pick the top ranked funds/ETFs. While they will give you great firepower, if the markets move your way, they will also give back any gains the fastest when a pullback occurs.

I personally always drop down in the fund/ETF pecking order to find those that give me the best of both worlds: Decent gains and some resistance to sell offs.

One look at the chart tells you that yesterday could have been a real bad day in the markets. An early rally of 145 points in the Dow was completely wiped out as the markets briefly dipped into negative territory as a result of a sharp sell-off in the financials.

Things looked pretty bleak at that moment; however, decent economic news proved to be the savior and a rebound and pulled the major indexes out of the doldrums. Uncertainty about market direction is bound to continue especially in view of the Fed meeting and Friday’s all important employment report.

I took the opportunity today to liquidate those holdings which had triggered their preset sell stop points during last Friday’s drubbing. Only time will tell if this move is in sync with the overall trend. If not, and the markets resume upward momentum, I will look for new entry points. For the time being, I am comfortable with a little less exposure to equities.

As an aside, Mish at Global Economics wrote a nice piece titled “Is Debt-Deflation Just Beginning.” It’s a bit lengthy but well worth the read if the deflation/inflation scenario is of any interest to you.

I am in the camp of those who believe that deflation will be with us for years to come, before any inflationary scenario can actually play itself out.

In response to a recent post, reader Don provided this feedback a week ago:

This is in response to “How High Can We Go“, and the current overbought condition of the market. John Hussman has a superb article on this, which you can read here.

In terms of how to deal with the current market, instead of just making sure that one has stops in place because it’s likely that the market’s going to roll over soon, I think one should have stops in place all the time–including, and perhaps especially–in those markets in which it appears least likely that they’re going to roll over.

[My emphasis]

Yes indeed, the article by John Hussman is a worthwhile read.

Take a look at the highlighted sentence again. I want to make sure that there is no misunderstanding. Whenever you initiate any position (other than money market), you need to track your trailing sell stops no matter what the appearance of market behavior tells you.

Reader Don seems to imply that he does not have stops in place for those holdings that don’t appear likely to roll over, as he puts it.

That is not correct. If you are working with sell stops, the rule simply is to “track sell stops for all positions all of the time.” Never get caught without one, because you don’t know when and where the next shoe will drop.