SYMM was stopped out on a loss of the lows of my entry candlestick. The play is not totally dead, given it held the 20-day MA into the close - but I was particular in my stop placement. The trade closed for a $460 loss on a 1,000 share lot.

Once again, I am using the first 8 bullish lightning picks from Madd Money from February 6th. Unlike yesterday's performance, the stocks from the Trade-Ideas scan outperformed mine, and JC's picks. If it wasn't for CKNN it would have been a white wash for Trade-Ideas. If one was to remove CKNN from the list, the average return would bump up to 3.22%. Whereas taking TESOF out of my picks, only pushes the average return to +0.64%. JC had the weakest set of picks - so I'll take some comfort from that. However, the markets outperformed all the three sets of picks. The DOW was the clear winner following today's big gains.

I am still working on a new Trade Ideas scan to test for the next couple of months. I am happy with my original scan, I just want to try something else. Just a quick post to make note of SI (drawn from the original scan). Nice flag breakout, with good risk:reward. SI

I have included my own newsletter picks, and the first 8 lightning round picks of Jim Cramer from Friday (from Madd Money ), February 3rd. For both sets of picks I have used Monday's open price as the 'entry price'. Unfortunately, I was unable to post last Monday's Trade-Ideas picks during trading hours - so I am using the closing price as the 'entry' price, giving mine and JC's picks a full trading day advantage. All three sets of stock picks underperformed the market on average, and none of the stock sets were able to generate an overall profit. JC and I recorded a 50% win, with my Trade-Ideas scan underperfoming, with a 38% win. However, the Trade-Ideas stocks had the lowest standard deviation in returns (0.02%), compared to the more volatile picks of my own (0.07%). Individually, my newsletter picks brought greater gains, but also bigger losses, compared to the Trade-Ideas selection. FYI, JC's picks had a standard deviation of 0.05%.

I have taken KGC as an example, but other mining stocks are in a similar situation. Speculative money is fast exiting the sector, but the sell off has pushed prices down to the 50-day MA. Looking at the chart for KGC, the chief difference between now, and the previous 50-day MA test, is the state of the MACD. Short term, expect more downside - but watch how the MACD behaves, if it starts to indicate a potential bullish cross, then KGC will be a good intermediate term play (3 weeks - 6 months). KGC

Value players stepped up to the plate in Friday afternoon trading, to push the markets into green territory. The short term picture favors the bulls, but with supply at the previous two reaction highs, it will be much harder for intermediate and long term traders to benefit. Adding insult to injury was the meager volume - the Big Money was not buying into the late day rally. What of the individual markets? The NASDAQ closed inside the Fibonacci retracement area, but finished the week below its 50-day, and 20-day MAs. Technicals remained weak. The NASDAQ 100 ended Friday with a bullish harami, bouncing off the lower Bollinger band. But, the 20-day MA crossed below the 50-day MA (a mini-'Death cross'), and with the 200-day MA below it looks like we will see a test of the latter average, before we see any meaningful rally develop. The Dow failed in its second attempt to close above 10,940 resistance, which was so troublesome in December, and could be the basis for a reversal he

Another comparison, this time including the stock picks drawn from the Trade-Ideas scan. As before, I have sourced Mad Money picks of Jim Cramer to Madd Money . In order to do the comparisons I restricted the number of stocks in each group to the lowest common denominator (i.e. my 6 picks). I used the first six stocks from the Trade-Ideas scan, and the first six stocks from Jim's lightning round from the Madd Money site. The comparison is for the closing price of November 30th, to the closing price of February 10th. Points of note: [1] All markets are above November levels, but are well off their highs (no surpises there). But we are looking at a bull market for this time period. [2] The Trade-Ideas picks gave the most consistent returns, while Jim's picks gave the highest average returns. [3] Unfortunately, the returns from my own picks suffered because of the two short plays: ITMN, and NVT. Excluding the two short plays my average return for the period jumps to 15.65% - b