WEALTH-LAB.COM

Simple technical analysis has been available on the Web for two years, but full-bore analysis and trading systems using programming conventions have eluded developers until now.


FIGURE 1: WEALTH-LAB.COM. It's an online technical analysis community where you can design unique trading systems to share with others.

In his failed quest to find commercial charting and systems testing software that provided the flexibility to express detailed trading rules or test systems in a thorough manner, Dion Kurczek started writing his own tools. This led him to realize the vast potential of Web applications, which led to the creation of wealth-lab.com, an online technical analysis community (Figure 1).

The site resembles popular trading software such as TradeStation and MetaStock. In addition, users develop trading systems and share them with others who have similar interests. Since this is a Web application, the code for systems created in Wealth-Lab is written in Wealth-Lab Scripting Language (WLS).

A glance at the homepage reveals there is a wealth of information on the site. Several features are worth mentioning, and all can be accessed from the links on the left-hand side of the homepage.

One of the more interesting features is the section called "Noteworthy signals," which you can access directly from the homepage. It lists the top 10 signals based on the systems created by members of the community. These systems are run through a simulator on a weekly basis and ranked by risk-adjusted returns. By clicking on the stock symbol, you will see the price charts and a display of the trading results. If you have a specific stock in mind, enter that ticker symbol, and the results for that specific stock will be displayed. If you want details about the system, just click on the system name and you will be diverted to the page where the script code for the system is disclosed.

FIGURE 2: TRADING SYSTEM RESULTS. Results of trading systems are displayed in chart and tabular form. Users can analyze the success of the system and implement it in any stock of interest.


A trade log of all trades executed by the community member who created this system will also be displayed. An example of what you might expect can be seen in Figure 2. The table displays the system results versus buy and hold. It shows profit/loss amounts, profit per bar, total trades, total winners, and total losers.

Another interesting feature available on the site is the market call feature, where you can buy and sell stocks with a virtual account starting out with $10,000. Take advantage of the portfolio management tool that tracks all your trade executions. A list of portfolios with the highest "WL Worth" is available for viewing.

Other features on the homepage include Wealth-Lab news, market commentary, trading system rankings, market call leaders, and widely held stocks. The Wealth-Lab news section keeps you up to date on new features added to Wealth-Lab. The market commentary includes commentaries by technical traders and analysts. The top 10 Wealth-Lab trading systems for the Dow Jones industrials, Nasdaq 100, and Isdex (Internet stock) indices are listed under trading system rankings. The top 10 portfolios are listed on the homepage along with the top 10 widely held stocks in these portfolios.

The ability to create your own trading system and share it with others is what has attracted users to this site. For those not proficient in scripting, a tutorial is included to familiarize you with the language. Kurczek plans to expand this area to increase novice user traffic.

Some sections on the site are still under construction. At present, Wealth-Lab only includes analysis for stocks but plans to include futures and options. Access to the site is currently free, but once the site is fully developed, some sections may involve a fee.

-- Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan
Technical Editor


DAILYSTOCKS.COM

This Website is a compendium of links to other sites. The links are a mixed bag; some don't work, while some just go to a homepage that leaves the user to figure out what to do next. However, the organization of the links makes this site better than others. Topics (Figure 3) lead to a list of the URLs. Seventeen topics ranging from market numbers to upgrades/downgrades are available, and each broad area has three to 20 links.

FIGURE 3: LINK ORGANIZATION. Seventeen broad categories bring you just about every area of research you'd like to see. On the downside, technical sites are in short supply.

Though the site has a definite fundamental bias, technical information is available. Market numbers has an item called "breadth indicators," which has a link that provides a summary of the usual suspects --  highs, lows, up volume, and so forth --  but adds the Arms index. The market numbers topic also has a link to price-gap alerts. The alerts are generated automatically every 20 minutes during trading hours and rotate through the Nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and American Stock Exchange (AMEX). The price-gap alerts feature is a subset of other alerts that are offered for free; for example, Equis provides a summary of stocks crossing above and below their 200-day moving average on double volume.

Calendar, another of the 17 topics, identifies a site listing each company and stock buyback. Calendar also has a link that allows you to enter the company symbol and get the earnings date. You can also get a comprehensive list of stocks splitting through another list of links, but not all of them work.

The listing of charting services on the home page is limited to BigCharts. While looking at Calendar and the subtopic "Stock splits," I came across www.stockpoint.com, an interactive charting site with the ability to plot six indicators (Bollinger Bands, relative strength index [RSI], fast stochastic, moving average convergence/divergence [MACD], price rate of change, and on-balance volume [OBV]), show yields, dividends, and simple moving averages. This is an example of the gems you can run across while using Dailystocks.com. You might hit a wall from time to time, but with a little creativity, you'll find something just as useful.

A feature prominently identified in the upper-left corner of Dailystock pages is Gigablast Research, which is a feature that provides an impressive list of sites for getting fundamental and technical data for a selected symbol. There's a menu to choose from, and the selection of Gigablast gives a comprehensive list. Gems pop up like technical buy/sell indicators from Barcharts, which provides buy/sell/hold recommendations using Bollinger Bands, moving averages, MACD parabolic price/time, and commodity channel index (CCI).

The best source for a list of charting services is Classic. This leads to teaser URLs -- sites where the specific research of a vendor -- say, VectorVest -- is applied free to the symbol of your choice. The page is presented as perhaps 75 URLs, all ready to respond to your query about a specific symbol. The major headings, like DailyStocks itself, are extensive:

The technical analysis feature leads to CBS MarketWatch's page, which has a solid charting capability (Figure 4).

FIGURE 4: TECHNICAL CHARTING FOR PPD. Dailystocks is weak on technicals but leads to CBS MarketWatch, which is strong.


In all, I thought Dailystocks.com showed good judgment in its site choices. While writing this review, I used a number of links. I found out Dailystocks is fun! There's a fair amount of Yahoo! and CBS MarketWatch links, but CNNfn and Bloomberg, among others, are there as well. I was pleasantly surprised by new finds such as the price-gap alerts, but disappointed when one of the Internet's best stock screeners, Finder on Moneycentral, was not mentioned. This site will work well for both fundamentalists and technicians who are starting out on the Internet.

-- Dennis Peterson, Staff Writer

Originally published in the December 2000 issue of Technical Analysis of STOCKS & COMMODITIES magazine. All rights reserved. © Copyright 2000, Technical Analysis, Inc.

Return to Table of Contents