Howdy All! Okay, I took the plunge on clickvolume, and have been paper trading for a week using small amounts to see if a poor trader like myself could really make a profit after commissions.
The software scans stocks from the NYSE, Nasdaq, AMEX, FTSE100 & FTSE250. Whomever said that it's based on moving averages is right. After each trading day, the software shows potential buys and shorts, up to ten for each exchange, but some days there are no candidates that fit the criteria for some exchanges. There's an extremely simple to use bar chart showing whether a stock is in an uptrend or a downtrend. One thing to note: there is absolutely no customization on the web site when you log in. For stocks you're watching, you need to enter each one to view it. It would have been nice to have an area where you could save stocks that you're watching, and bring them all up immediately for inspection.
I've got a couple of fake portfolios going, and trading very small amounts of stocks hasn't been profitable yet, with comissions eating up a lot of cash and all the profits. A certain number of the stocks picked by the system turn out to be misses, but it gives you a decent idea of when to dump the stock, so losses have been mimimal thus far. Paper trading American stock options on investopedia.com has been a bit better, because of the greater leveraging--at least, I'm in the black! Of course, the misses are lot more devastating: I lost 60% in one day with one of the put options--and all the short stock picks by the system for that day were wrong--ouch!.
My current impression is that it's an interesting tool that could be useful for traders--not investors--to quickly draw attention to trends in the markets and individual stocks. However, it's not really a tool for a day trader. The system is designed for you to use it once or twice a day for a few minutes, and that's it. If you rely on it, your strategy should be based on holding instruments for a certain number of days, as opposed to hours or weeks. Oh, and it's definitely not the Holy Grail, if such a thing exists, but so far, I'm fairly impressed.
