Our Premium Access service has been mentioned several times the past few months. During that time you have had the opportunity to try out many of the features, and many of you signed up for the free trial period. As yesterday’s email to those individuals stated, that period ends tonight. Tomorrow most of the complimentary subscriptions expire, and you will need to subscribe to continue with your Premium Access level of service.
If you haven’t kept up with the blog postings on this, several of the features that have been added over the past few months will be by subscription only going forward. These include: backtests back to 2002, statistics by cycle including trade by trade results, historical data views from the pop-up calendars, the in-page pop-up charts, and more.
Is anything remaining free (aka advertising supported)? Absolutely! The traditional offerings of the site will still be free for your use. The fund performance views, the portfolios, the screener with 5-year backtests, and even the price alerts. All of this will remain free, supported by our great advertisers.
We sincerely hope you want to support the site and jump on over to the sign-up page. The monthly subscription is just $15.95, a very minimal amount. The sign-up page will ask you to log-in before subscribing to the Premium Access service. This way you keep your same user name, and all your portfolios and screens remain intact. It is an easy process.
We have some great users and look forward to providing you a quality product, and we have several planned enhancements for both levels of service that should make the site even better. Additionally, we are targeting some server upgrades that should improve site performance. If you have specific suggestions for the site we welcome hearing them.
In closing, we have an update for those of you wanting log-scale charting. That feature was tested today and should make the main screener page this weekend with further roll-out thereafter. This will not replace the current charts but will provide an alternative view.
I also want to point out a little-used feature that comes with Premium Access. That is a custom link that is positioned above the price chart on the left margin. Not many of you set this up when you registered for the free trial, but some of you that did have mentioned how convenient it is. You can set this link to point to any web address you like, but the idea is to point it to, for example, Yahoo Finance charts, or StockCharts, with a link such as http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=SPY. Then, when you access a price chart on ETFScreen, for any symbol there will be an easily accessible link to your specified page but with the symbol SPY replaced with whatever symbol you are viewing. The link above the price chart will look something like AAXJ at finance.yahoo.com, depending on the link you specify. We have provided several sample links for you in the registration process but have left it open ended so you can determine how best to use this feature. We recognize this breaks all the rules of internet marketing, where you try to keep users on your site, but if you are one of our Premium Access users we feel you deserve the best of all available tools. Try it out!
Is the popup calander next to current picks,now a part of premium access or is it still avalable on free site
Yes, historical data is a Premium Access feature. – Hugh
I hope people will step up to pay for premium access. High quality sites deserve the support of their users. There are many financial sites on the web that charge a lot more, and deliver a lot less.
Baltassar
Thanks for the words of support. We have some great users on the site and some interesting plans for new tools. The next few days we are testing a new server set-up that, if successful, will improve site response and set us up for our future growth. Have a good weekend. – Hugh
I have no idea what’s technically possible as far as tools go, but I have noticed that a lot of people like to screen starting from “all ETFs.” Not something I’d recommend, personally, but if somebody is going to do that it might be worthwhile to have “top n” and “bottom n” functions that would let you cut the list down relative to preliminary criteria, then do a second sort incorporating additional elements? “Top-n” and “bottom-n” functions work differently than sorts based on fixed values, which may return many or few choices depending on market conditions. Rtn-3mo > 0 is going to return a lot of choices when the market is doing well, but perhaps few or none if it has been doing poorly; whereas “Rtn-3mo Top 10” will always return 10. These are not interchangeable, obviously, which is why it would be nice to have both.
Baltassar,
Thanks for the input. The ability to have multiple sort rules within a screen definition opens up a world of possibilities, but it also adds computational load and complexity that has not been feasible to address until recently. We’ll add it to the list and see what we can do. It should work with our latest methods, but will take some programming work and maybe a different type of entry screen to reach it’s full potential. – Hugh
I have an additional suggestion for what might be a useful indicator: PPO, which is basically MACD normalized for price. MACD values are influenced by the absolute price of a security, which means its not possible to compare the MACD of two ETFs directly. PPO does allow this. It reflects the same “internal” momentum effect for a security, but then allows them to be compared with each other. This makes it a more useful screening tool, in my opinion. Not sure how hard it would be to implement. It is directly derivative of MACD, so if you’ve got that it seems like it should just be another step or two in the arithmetic.
I have been hesitant to sign up for premium access, even though I think the backtesting through 2002 is awesome. For me, adding privacy would make paying for premium access a no-brainer. Thanks so much if you are working on this!
We have been looking into this since it was mentioned earlier. While not completed yet, our quick review indicates an enhanced privacy flag would be a feasible addition. That said, we are currently focused on shifting to our new servers and adding a couple of new features to the screener, so this will most likely not be an addition that can be made in the next few weeks unless it happens to mesh with the work currently underway. Regards, Hugh
Hugh,
Could you add results to a series of variables at once with out having to manually do multiple tests? (e.g., Positions 1 through 5, or Holding 1 day through 3 months.) This would be a great incentive for Premium Access.
Let me clarify, you would like to be able to run all options for Positions or Holding Period (or some subset thereof) at one time? From the system standpoint it could be done I think. Let me know that I am understanding correctly and I’ll review the programs. – Hugh
That was quick.
Yes, I’d like to know if my etf screen works optimally with 2, 4, or 5 positions on 2, 4, or 12 week holding periods, without having to -edit screen -put in new variable -run screen etc. … at least for one variable at a time.
Are the international and sector strategy pages premium now? (Therefore no longer updated)
Thanks
These strategies have not been moved to Premium Access, they had just failed to be updated. I apologize for that, have just updated them, and will try to keep them updated in a timely fashion going forward. Thanks, Hugh