About 15 years ago, I was drinking espresso in the lobby of the vice consulate of Italy in Denver, CO.
That was what my friend called his living room — his wife’s diplomatic work was done from the house.
Legally, I left the United States and entered Italian sovereign territory when I visited him.
We were discussing momentum indicators and the importance of trends. He believed the long-term trend was the most important characteristic of a stock.
Nothing too controversial, to be sure. It’s what he said next that really surprised me.
He said short-term stock price changes are like flipping a coin.
Is This as Absurd as It Sounds?
About half the time, a flipped coin will come up heads and the other half it will come up tails.
It sounds absurd to think that this would occur in the stock market, with the endless variables going into each stock’s daily movements.
But he was confident that, over the course of a year, about half the time a stock will close up, and half the time the closing price will be lower than it was the previous day.
To demonstrate that this was true, he would pick two stocks. One was the biggest gainer in the past 12 months. The other was the biggest loser. Then he calculated the number of up days and down days for each.
Initially, he showed me The Williams Companies, an energy company which had a significant presence in Denver. That was the winner.
The loser was Eastman Kodak, another company with a local presence. (He taught me to always focus on local firms in presentations since the examples will stick with the audience.)
Despite their vast difference in performance, both had spent only about half the time of the past year rising or falling.
What This Year’s Biggest Winner and Loser Have in Common
I thought of this earlier this week when the True Options Masters team discussed win rates for different trading strategies.
We know that win rates aren’t very important to look at, for real traders. Despite the marketing value to them, most traders aren’t successful because of their win rates, but rather their risk management and ability to spot trends. More on that later.
When I brought up the above story, there was some doubt it was still true. We agreed to look at a test.
I sought out the biggest winner in the stock market over the past 12 months. That stock is Cassava Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: SAVA) which has gained over 3,780%. During that time, the stock closed up on 50.2% of all trading days.
Gaotu Techedu Inc. (NYSE: GOTU) is the biggest loser over the past 12 months, with a loss of more than 96%. It’s closed lower 53% of the time in the past year.
Strange, right? You’d think a stock with such an impressively good or bad return would spend most of its time in that direction.
This math even applies to meme stocks. GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME), one of Chris’ favorites and a headline-grabber from earlier this year, has been up on 50.6% of trading days in the past year.
There’s an important lesson in this data for individual traders…
A 50% Win Rate Is All You Need
You don’t need to be right a high percentage of the time to be profitable. Big gains are possible if you’re right even just half the time.
This lesson isn’t lost on hedge fund managers. In a recent interview, Steve Cohen said his investment managers are right between 52% and 55% of the time.
Cohen is someone who’s worth listening to. Between 1992 and 2013, Cohen’s hedge fund, SAC Capital, averaged annual returns of 25% a year for its investors. That’s an outstanding return to come out of two financial crises.
These gains debunk another myth that individual investors cling to. Individuals often look for low-cost investments. Cohen’s fund charged some of the highest fees in the industry with an annual management fee of 3% and 50% of the profits.
Even with those fees, SAC gained more than 70% a year during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. When the bubble burst, the fund delivered a 70% gain by shorting those same stocks on the way down.
SAC shut down after some of the managers in the fund were accused of insider trading. But Cohen wasn’t implicated in the wrongdoing, and he has proven he is still among the greatest investors of all time. In 2018, Cohen launched Point72 Asset Management and earned more than $1 billion in each of the past two years.
For over 30 years, Steve Cohen has been generating incredible gains for his investors and himself.
And he has done that by being right about half the time.
His performance is another data point showing that traders don’t need to be right 70% of the time or more. They can make large profits being right about half the time.
That’s an important lesson to learn, and one that many individuals refuse to accept, despite what the data shows.
So long as you’re managing your risk properly — not getting married to your losers and picking trades with conviction — those principles will serve you better than a fabled, flawless win rate.
Regards,
Michael Carr
Editor, One Trade
Chart of the Day:
Time for Boeing to Fly
By Mike Merson, Managing Editor, True Options Masters
(Click here to view larger image.)
BA has, understandably, had a rough go of things since the start of the pandemic. With far fewer people flying, both domestic and especially international, this has taken a toll on BA’s core business. As such, it hasn’t yet reclaimed its pre-pandemic highs.Today we’re looking at a chart of aircraft and telecom manufacturer Boeing (NYSE: BA).
However, the chart of BA is looking pretty bullish, at least for the midterm.
Since March, BA has been in a clear downtrend channel. Last week, though, it formed a higher low on the weekly chart — bucking the trend. That higher low also connects quite nicely with BA’s low last November, forming a symmetrical triangle.
This could be the sign of a revival and a new uptrend, especially as more and more countries have lifted their ban on the 737 Max.
BA is one to watch, especially if it maintains the triangle pattern after next week’s close.
Regards,
Mike Merson
Managing Editor, True Options Masters
