
Test your stock-picking skills with instant feedback. Most common word from my users: "addicting". - ssanders82
http://www.inspectd.com
======
emmett
I'm currently at the top of your leaderboard after issuing nothing but buy
orders for about 5 minutes. I didn't even read the charts.

This confirms my opinion that chart reading is nonsense.

~~~
joshwa
...or we've stumbled on a really good investment strategy:

1\. buy a random stock

2\. hold for 20 days

3\. profit!

currently #2 on leaderboard before I got bored.

I wonder what the capital gains impact would be...

I suppose it's rather like investing in an index fund, with a bit more
volatility :)

~~~
henning
Often times mechanical trading strategies discussed in papers that use fancy
math and algorithms don't consistently beat buy and hold.

~~~
byrneseyeview
You'd assume that the average algo strategy does worse, if only because it's
an average portfolio plus extra transaction costs.

------
ssanders82
I just launched on Saturday and have already had more than 10,000 trades
"executed". Your comments are much appreciated. (Note: if you think reading
stock charts is a bunch of crackpot hooey, feel free to flame.)

~~~
mdemare
Reading stock charts is a bunch of crackpot hooey. I'm nr. 2 on your site with
my highly sophisticated "always buy" strategy.

However, it might be an excellent tool to help technical analysts (gamblers)
discover their own lack of skill.

I like your execution - it is indeed addictive.

~~~
hugh
I'm no expert, but it seems to me that reading stock charts is just a
particularly unsophisticated form of statistical arbitrage, and that it
_might_ work provided that nobody else in the world is doing it.

Real statistical arbitrage firms, as I understand it, work by looking at the
historical variation in thousands of asset prices at once, putting them into
an enormous covariance matrix, and using dozens of very smart mathematicians
and millions of CPU hours to figure out which assets are likely to be
currently underpriced.

That's how folks like Renaissance Technologies got rich. Unfortunately, as
soon as the secret got out, other folks started doing it as well, and pretty
soon the mispricing of assets got smaller and smaller, so they're in an arms
race to find more and more sophisticated algorithms.

So I guess the point is that if mispriced assets are that hard to find when
you have a hundred PhDs and a supercomputer, you're not likely to do very well
just by looking at whether a squiggly line is currently above or below its
recent average. All the easy money has already been vacuumed up.

------
brianr
This is really cool!

The main problem right now is that since the market is long-biased and there's
no concept of time in the rankings, it's easy to get to the top by always
clicking "Buy". It would be cool if you could make the rankings actually
reflect a confidence score of how well a user is beating the market.

I'm not very strong on the statistics, but here's a possibility: for each
trade, calculate the user's excess return against the market, represented by
an index fund: (user's return % - market return %), and multiply that by the
number of days. Then assign a confidence score using a t-test, maybe: t =
(excess return * days) / (sample variance / sqrt(number of days)), and look up
the confidence level based on the t-value. Finally, rank users according to
their confidence level.

Something else--since this is technical analysis, it would be cool if you
could include some other indicators on the chart, e.g. RSI, more than one
moving average, bollinger bands, etc. That could give you some cool metrics--
you could track how well each combination of indicators improves picks, by
user and in aggregate.

------
ojbyrne
The fact that someone named "RightClickCheater" is at the top of your
leaderboard (and way out in front) raises some concerns.

~~~
joshwa
That'd be right clicking to snatch the chart URL, which contains the stock
symbol and date parameters. Peeking into the future would certainly help one's
rate of return a bit :)

~~~
ssanders82
Yes, I thought of this but didn't think someone would go to the trouble to
look at the stock and date, then look up the price N-days after that, then go
back and trade it. Apparently I was wrong! I could solve this by dynamically
creating an image w/ PHP and trimming the stock & date, but my poor shared CPU
wouldn't like that...

~~~
technoguyrob
Just store their current stock symbol & dates as session variables, and make
the src of the image be a .php file which has the one liner:

<?php header("Location: <http://quote-web.aol.com/..>."); ?>

Then you don't have to use image processing (including actually reading the
image), and they'd have to become right-click-and-copy-paste-image-src-check-
in-new-tab-cheater! :-)

------
brentr
The concept is interesting. I, however, am not a fan of technical analysis.
It's been drilled into my head that technical analysis is a self-fulfilling
prophecy.

If everyone looking at a chart determines that the exit price should be $20
(let's assume the stock has shown a resistance level at that price) many
people would try to exit around $20. The assumption would then be that if
everyone does indeed believe that $20 is a ceiling, then everyone would sell
at $20 thus creating the ceiling.

I believe sound fundamental analysis is the optimal method of analysis, but
even that method has been called into question over the course of the last
eight months as many investors are learning that much of what is on the books
is either someone's best guess or flat out fraudulent at best.

------
Olgaar
The page doesn't factor in Splits. Entry Price: 52.00 (Mar. 8, 2000), Exit
Price: 48.88 (Apr. 5, 2000) Comes out to a 6% loss, but there was a SPLIT on
the 21st! I should be up nearly 100%.

~~~
ssanders82
Splits are factored in. The chart is showing adjusted prices so there's not a
huge gap after a split.

------
astine
I like the concept. While short term stock exchange is usually a risky waste
of money, this does help illustrate certain principles.

The number of people suggesting that 'always buy' works shows us something:
that the economy on average has grown over the past century. Reason being of
course that, when one person succeeds, he provides means for another person to
succeed. Thus growth begets growth, especially capital growth. Investing
broadly in the stock market is almost always sure to bring modest gains over
the long term.

------
dkokelley
Question, are the charts simply random charts from random companies recently
trading?

Where are they coming from? I see AOL is providing them, but how are they
selected for use in the site? This might explain the amount of users who seem
to be succeeding by clicking only the "buy" button.

Is there an algorithm that makes sure the gains and losses are evenly
distributed in the charts (less realistic), or are the charts completely
random (mimicking the experience a real stock trader would be presented with
the charts)?

------
maximilian
My only criticism is that its hard to tell where the stock was after the time-
window is grown after I click buy/sell. If i click back, then I can see, but
otherwise its kinda hard. If you could put a little vertical red line over the
image where I bought/sold the stock, it'd help figure out what happened. I
know you're just pulling a picture from yahoo finance, but since the time-
window change is always the same, the red line should always be over the same
spot.

------
Readmore
That is really cool. Keep up the good work, maybe add an API so I can test
stock picking programs against your data ;)

~~~
ssanders82
In the works; probably not free :(

~~~
sohail
Why would you say :(? It is a great idea and people would and should pay for
it. Fuck free.

------
icey
Hmm. Are you storing our passwords as plain-text? It's always disappointing to
see my password emailed to me after I've registered on a site. I picked it
out, I know what it is, but now I have to wonder how it lives in your database
since you don't seem to care about security at all.

------
nazgulnarsil
I'm curious as to what other people think of long valuation waves?
<http://www.zealllc.com/c2005/Zeal080505B.gif>

------
Alex3917
I found another way to "cheat." Change the length of time to 40 days, and then
click the buy button five or six times before the buy/sell/skip buttons change
to the "new trade" button.

------
fauxstor
Yeah, it takes a real genius to figure this one out. Just buy anything it asks
you about. Period. After about 40 trades, you'll have several million.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
All this technique proves is that I'm extremely unlucky.

------
ssanders82
Man I love the interweb. Pre-YC: 10,000 trades executed. 24 hours later:
75,000. Maybe PG wishes he had that phone call back. Just kidding :)

------
TrevorJ
Is there a way to tell what the company you are trading is? Or is not knowing
the point? I would never trade stock based solely on charts.

------
llimllib
wooo enough for the leaderboard in a few minutes.

Anyway, create an API and a bot competition! Don't give the link, and use a
timer and required open source to discourage cheating (still can't eliminate
it, ah well.)

EDIT: Oh man! your score isn't saved if you make an account. I would be in
second place.

------
Olgaar
$40M and now my eyeballs hurt... but my average return is just .02%.

~~~
Olgaar
Well $131M now. I find it's all about effective use of the 'skip' button.

------
sps
Seems like this might be a good Facebook app

------
jotto
i think matthias wandel's came first:

<http://chartgame.com/>

------
tel
What is that picture of?

And why?

