I've always been interested in the stock market.  In 1998, I happened upon the May issue of a magazine called Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities.  Given my background in computers and my longtime interest in the stock market, I began to experiment with some of techniques in the magazine.  I had always looked for technical ways to understand the market even when I was very young.

One article called Automated Support and Resistance by Mel Widner, Ph.D. caught my eye.  The article described a very interesting set of oscillators called the Widener Support and Resistance Oscillators (WRO/WSO).  By accident, I implemented the analysis technique slightly incorrectly and noticed something that really amazed me.  The graph signals actually seemed to predict the move of the underlying stock price.  They didn't just track the stock as it moved up or down as most indicators do.  I applied the oscillator to a lot of stock histories before I began to use it as a basis for trading.  One interesting thing that I found was that the WRO/WSO signals coincide mostly with MACD buy and sell signals if not on the same day within days of each other.  What's most interesting about that is that they are based on different data and calculations.  MACD uses only the closing price while WRO/WSO using highs, lows, and closing prices.

The original oscillators were designed to compare the closing price of a stock 4 days ago to the highs or lows of the previous 9 days of trading.  Instead of using the close from 4 days ago, I used the last close.  The oscillator is calculated by keeping track of the last 6 higher highs or lower lows and generating an average ratio of the highs (or lows) to the closing price.  The calculation generates a quantized number between 1 and 100 in steps of 100/6 so there are only 7 possible values for each of the indicators.

At first I developed simple spreadsheets in Excel and manually downloaded data from AOL and used cut and paste to generate the graph of the oscillator.  Eventually I began to develop tools to help automate the downloads and analysis.  Most recently, I've been automating the gathering and analysis of the data as well as the updating of this website.  The proliferation of stock information on the internet has made data very accessible for this analysis.  I started out with hand analyzing about 100 stocks.  With some programming, I now analyze about 8,000 individual stocks everyday.  The purpose of this website is to share that analysis with anyone who's interested.

The New Look will make this site easier to navigate and more pleasing to use. This entire site takes advantage of many of the new features of Microsoft's .NET platform. Nearly all of the graphics are original and were created using many of the powerful features in .NET. In addition, the site is very modular allowing me to update and change it more easily. You'll notice that the site is more dynamic than the previous version and will become even more dynamic and configurable as I make future enhancements.

For the time being, I am hosting it with second provider to get used to .NET. Eventually, the stockhaven.com domain will be moved over to .NET. Please consider this a beta site.

I hope you will enjoy the new site!!!

Stock Graphs - Dynamically generated graphs.  You can select which stock or index to display in the graph by either clicking on the indexes or stocks on the right side or entering a stock ticker in the "Symbol" field on left side of the page.

Market Indexes - On the right side of the screen are the major indexes' Buy/Sell signals.  Dates with deeper green and reds indicate more recent signals.  The Major Index table is an easy way to get a read on the overall market direction.   If you are using Internet Explorer, you can view a graph of the index by clicking in the background area of that index.

Market News - Market news headlines appear on the bottom of the home page. 

Stock Links - These are links I've found in my search for useful stock market information and data.

Market Links - These are links to the major stock exchanges.  You can find useful information about the stocks that trade on the various exchanges.

Daily Stock Analysis is a screen of the Buy and Sell signals for the current week.  The screen filters the stocks according to the criteria below.  The stocks are also grouped according to their market capitalization (large, medium, and small).  They are also sorted by company name within date within signal.

Raw Full Stock Analysis is a comprehensive analysis of all stocks I can get historical information for.  It is a text file which can easily be loaded into an excel spreadsheet for analysis.  The columns are symbol, last signal, signal date, days since last (signal), signal price, (latest) close price, (latest) close date, percent change (since signal), previous signal, days since (between previous and most recent signal), previous price (price at time of previous signal), previous change (change in price from previous signal to most recent signal).  You can use it to look up your stocks to see where they stand.

Daily Analysis Archive - Historical Buy/Sell signals for reference.  In the future I hope to be able to track actual performance of each signaled stock. 

Hyperactive Stocks are those that trade a large percentage of or many times over their float.  The float is the amount of shares outstanding that is not owned by insiders or institutions.  A smaller float generally means that a stock may be more volatile and have exaggerated moves either up or down.  These stocks are tracked on a month-to-date basis with previous months' listings available.  Most of the stocks which appear on this list are technology stocks or have had significant news announcements recently which affected the stock price.

Industry/Sector Analysis - Stocks are categorized by industry and by sector.  The stocks are analyzed by grouping them together (weighted by market capitalization) into their respective sectors and industries and also by market cap (large, mid and small cap).  The two listings show overall industry/sector Buy/Sell signals and also by market capitalization.  The deeper greens and reds show the most recent signal changes.  You can drill down from a sector or industry to find stocks within that group.  The listing within the group includes the most recent 15 buys and sells within market capitalization.  The format is the same as the daily screen but none of the additional screening criteria have been applied so that all of the stocks within the industry/sector will appear for reference.

Value Stocks - This is the newest addition to the stockhaven stock selection methods. Value stocks are those stocks which are undervalued in their industry and sector as well as within the market overall. Two major criteria are used to determine their valuation: One is price to earnings ratio (P/E). As a rule of thumb, this should be less than 100 divided by the prevailing interest rate (e.g., 5% rate should equate to a 20 P/E or less). The second measure is the P/E to earnings growth rate (PEG). This is the ratio of P/E divided by a company's long-term earning growth rate. A PEG of around 1 or less is considered good.  The PEG is a means of determining if a company's P/E ratio is reasonable given its earning growth prospects. 

Only undervalued stocks, which represent buying opportunities, are currently shown on the value page.  In the future, overvalued stocks and statistics on these value picks will appear on this page.

First, a quick note about investment risk.  Investing in stocks carries a degree of risk.  You should fully understand that you can lose money investing in stocks as easily as your can make money.  The information on this website is informational and does not represent specific recommendations to buy or sell stocks or other securities.  It is meant to enhance your ability to recognize market trends and activity more easily.  You should fully research any prospective investments and seek advice from a licensed investment advisor before making any investment decisions. 

The Daily Stock Analysis is a good starting point for finding stocks which are likely to move up or down depending on the signal.  What I've found works best is to have a fairly short term outlook of about 4 to 8 weeks.  I generally look for a 12 to 15 percent rise in that timeframe.  My experience has been that about 2 out of every 3 stocks picked this way gain 12-15% in that timeframe.  The ones that go down usually eventually go back up.  You should establish a stop loss criterion before buying a security to hedge against a large negative swing in price.  Although I provide sell signals, I've found that this technical indicator is a better buy signal than a sell signal. I have been experimenting with enhancing the signal to determine tops and bottoms of trends. 

I don't strictly use just the indications from the Daily Stock Analysis page, however.  I do do some additional research when selecting stocks.  I usually use information from Yahoo and look at the following: (1) Is the stock followed by analysts and has the average recommendation gone up/down in the past week -- I look for a change in the same direction as the signal, (2) Is the company profitable?  (i.e., high profit margin, positive return on equity/assets, low or no debt, decent amount of cash on hand), (3) What are the share volumes? A float that is much less than the outstanding shares and a high short ratio mean that a stock is less available and more likely to move easily, (4) Does the stock have a reasonable P/E ratio? (less than 30 is great, less than 20 even better).  It also helps if you know something about the company.  Things like if they generally do better doing certain times of the year or if the company is doing something new and unique or has new products or services coming out shortly.

I also confirm my signal by checking the MACD (Moving Average Convergence / Divergence) signal.  A good source for this is ClearStation.  You can also get graphs of stocks that site.  If ClearStation shows a recent buy or is about to show a buy that confirms my buy signal.  The same thing goes for a sell.  It's also a good idea to look at recent news stories and check available research either from public sites or from your broker. I will be provided combined indicators in the near future.

Another good stock screener is available for free from Market Guide.  It's called StockQuest.  It allows you to screen stocks based on fundamental information.  A weekly refresh of the fundamental data is available for download from the Market Guide site.

As with all stock market investing, there's no such thing as a sure thing.  I think my system is pretty good and I've had a very high success rate picking stocks this way.  You should always invest according to your level of experience and tolerance for risk.

It's been over four years since I started putting my stock analysis results up on the web.  STOCKHAVEN.COM marked the 3rd (and hopefully last) URL that I've used to share this information with everyone.  I plan to continue to gradually add features to make this website useful to everyone and teach myself more about web development.

Personalized Portfolios with daily/weekly/monthly, buy/sell signal E-mail - This is my next major project for this website.  I want to allow anyone to track the stocks they are interested in and get e-mailed analysis results daily as soon as they are available. 

More Interactive Graphing Features- Graphing is an important part of understanding what the technical indicators are saying and how they work.  I will be upgrading the interactive graphing capabilities on this website over time.  I'll also may make available some free software which can be downloaded to help understand the indicators. 

Fine-tune Trading Strategy -  Of course, I'll continue to experiment with new technical indicators and possibly combine them to further refine the signals themselves and the ways they are applied. Some historical statistics on the track record of the signals will be available soon.

Model Portfolios - Provide some model portfolios (similar to the Motley Fool) which highlight different approaches to selecting stocks

Additional Statistical Measures - Whenever I think of a new way to present interesting market statistics, I'll make them available on the website.

Automated News Analysis - This might sound somewhat farfetched but I intend to develop tools analyze news to see how it impacts stock prices. I expect this to take some time. Initially, there will be simple techniques such as mood analysis of articles but I eventually hope to build an artificial intelligence agent which will sift through the large amounts of news information and highlight news that can impact a stock's price. I also hope to be able to do historical analysis of news to see it's impact on stock price movements. Look for something in the summer of 2002.

Free Service - So far, I've provided this technical analysis information for free.  I expect to make money off the results of my analysis not this website.  But you should always remember -- you get what you pay for! =)

Please send any suggestions or ideas you have for this site.  Also, let me know if the information here is helpful.  Just send me e-mail at: tino@bellatlantic.net