Another in the (paper) win column

HPOL broke out of consolidation today:






This allows me to move the stop up just above my purchase price. Now I wait for the trend line to catch up.

Check out the day BABY had:






I like to see the faster movers creating some space. They announced an acquisition the market liked. BABY helped my portfolio gain a bit over 1% today.

No activity on the buy or sell side today. The portfolio was stable for a day! I should get some cash cleared in my IRA tomorrow - enough for one position. So, I'll be going shopping tomorrow. Everything on my watch list has been flying lately, so I don't know whether I'll find anything with a decent price tag or not.

I'm toying with the idea of moving from drawn trend lines to EMA lines to follow my trends in the future. I'd use crossovers in the lines to determine buy and sell signals. To do this, I'd probably just pick out a bunch of the most liquid stocks that tend to trend and trade them full time. I'd always be either long or short each of them.

The problems with EMAs are not small. First, I need to determine the number of days to use for each line for optimal signaling. For this, I need to backtest several combinations. The problem is, I can't seem to find a backtesting software that doesn't either break the budget or come with strings attached. Frustrating to have the entire internet at my disposal and be unable to find a tool like this that I'd actually feel good about paying for. I'm not interested in a subscription, but I'd pay for a good piece of downloadable software. Hmmm.

Second, stocks don't always trend up or down. They spend a lot of time moving generally sideways. This would cause a lot of wipsaw buys and sells. That's why I'd need to trade quite a few positions.

I don't have this all figured out yet. Just thinking out loud. I may just stick with what I'm doing.