The VectorVest Triathlon Challenge was a three part competition involving the use of the VectorVest BackTester, VectorVest RealTime Derby and the VectorVest Automated Portfolio Manager. The Challenge began with a one-year BackTester competition which ran from March 31, 2010 to March 31, 2011. The second event, using the RealTime Derby, ran from June 1, 2011 to July 31, 2011 and the third event, using the Automated Portfolio Manager, ran from August 1, 2011 to October 31, 2011.

A complete summary of performance results for each competitor for each event is shown in the VectorVest Triathlon Challenge Results Page. You may access this page by clicking on http://www.vectorvest.com/Triathlon/

The Top Three Winners and attendant information for each event are given as follows:

OVERALL TRIATHLON WINNERS.
First Place:..$2,500 Award to T-01-DS-PW-LS with a gain of 314.58%.
Second Place:.$1,500 Award to T-02-DB-PW-LS with a gain of 290.64%.
Third Place:..$1,000 Award to T-04-RT-PW-LS with a gain of 253.06%.

STAGE THREE, Automated Portfolio Manager Winners.
First Place:..$1,000 Award to T-10-JL-DEW-LS with a gain of 39.04%.
Second Place:.$..750 Award to T-06-RM-PW--LS with a gain of 27.01%.
Third Place:..$..500 Award to T-23-SC-DEW-LS with a gain of 25.08%.

STAGE TWO, RealTime Derby Winners.
First Place:..$..750 Award to T-38-RW-DEW-LS with a gain of 11.77%.
Second Place:.$..500 Award to T-17-RW-DEW-LS with a gain of 10.92%.
Third Place:..$..300 Award to T-01-DS-PW--LS with a gain of 5.17%.

STAGE ONE, BackTester Winners.
First Place:..$..500 Award to T-01-DS-PW-LS with a gain of 324.99%.
Second Place:.$..250 Award to T-02-DB-PW-LS with a gain of 307.24%.
Third Place:..$..125 Award to T-03-DB-PW-LS with a gain of 258.37%.

The biggest total winner was T-01-DS-PW-LS with awards of $3,300.00.

The top three most consistent winners, i.e., those achieving gains in all three events, were:
First Place:..$250 Award to T-13-LP-DEW--LS with a gain of 190.29%.
Second Place:.$150 Award to T-14-GB-CALL-LS with a gain of 183.73%.
Third Place:..$100 Award to T-15-DS-NONE-L with a gain of 178.99%.

All contestants who did not win a cash award will receive a $50.00 VectorVest Savings Certificate which may be applied to any VectorVest product or service. For more information and insight on any of the 50 Triathlon portfolios, please watch this week's shocking "Strategy of the Week" presentation, "Triathlon Winners."

Today we are pleased to announce the winners of the first event in the 2011 VectorVest Triathlon Challenge. In this challenge, participants compete in sequential events using the VectorVest BackTester, RealTime Derby and Automated Portfolio Manager. The goal is to achieve the greatest percent gain of a hypothetical $100,000 portfolio in each event. Separate cash awards will be made to the top three winners of each event and Grand Prize Awards will be made to the three participants having the highest total gain for all three events. The results from first event, the Backtester Competition, which ran from March 31, 2010 to March 31, 2011, have been verified.

The First Place Winner, gained a stunning 324.99% with 49.92% winning trades and had only a 12.11% drawdown. Commissions were $11,701.20. The creator of this entry, will be identified as "DS" and he will receive a check for $500.00. He used "El Cheapo Cheapos" to buy long in Up markets and "Sinking Sectors II" to sell short in Dn markets. He used the Primary Wave to signal market direction, and used a 10% Gain, 20% Loss exit criteria for his long positions and a 15% Gain, 10% Loss to exit his short positions.

DS has been a VectorVest subscriber for about 2 years and lives in Orange, Texas. (I lived there in the early '70s and enjoyed it.) When asked if he would actually trade this system with real money, he answered that he has come up with a trading system using the Simulator and Variator, but if he had some extra money, he would trade it in a heartbeat! I admire his confidence and I'm going to give it a try. But you, my dear reader, should see how well it works in the upcoming RealTime Derby and Automated Portfolio Manager Competitions before you bet big bucks on it.

The Second Place Winner, gained 307.24% with 52.83% winning trades, but experienced a 24.88% max drawdown. Commissions were $15,721.00. The creator of this entry will be identified as "DB" and he will receive a check for $250.00. DB also used "El Cheapo Cheapos" to buy long in Up markets and sold, yes I said sold, "Worst Performing Contra ETFs" in Dn markets. He also used the Primary Wave to signal market direction. He used a 10% Trailing Stop on his long positions and a 50% Gain, 25% Loss to exit his Contra ETFs in Dn markets.

The Third Place Winner, gained 258.37% with 51.95% winning trades, but had a 26.76% max drawdown. Commissions were $15,681.20. DB, the same person cited above, was also the creator of this entry and he will receive a second check for $125.00. DB used "El Cheapo Cheapos" again to buy long in Up markets and sold, yes I said sold, "Buying Contra ETFs" in Dn markets. Again he used the Primary Wave to signal market direction and a 10% Trailing Stop to exit his long positions. He used a Rec = "B" to exit his Contra ETFs in Dn markets.

In reporting the performance of the Triathlon entries in forthcoming Competitions, the contestants will be identified as follows: The First Place Winner will be designated as "T-1-DS," the Second Place Winner will be designated as "T-2-DB," and so on. The T stands for Triathlon, 1, 2, etc., stands for the entrant's standing in the Backtester Competition, and DS, DB, etc., represents the initials of the creator of the entry.

Since T-1-DS uses both Bullish and Bearish Strategies, they will be designated as "T-1-DS-L" and "T-1-DS-S" in the Derby Competition and in the UniSearch Tool. Strategy T-1-DS-L will be operative when the market timing signal is Up and T-1-DS-S will be operative when the market timing signal is Dn.

This system will allow you to easily track the performance of any Triathlon Strategy in the Derby and examine their search criteria in the UniSearch Tool. As noted in last week's essay, we will show the three top Derby performers in the Views each day and show a cumulative performance report of the top three Triathlon Leaders at the end of each week. We will also create a web page each week which will show the standing and cumulative performance of all 50 portfolios.

The Score Sheet will look as shown below:
..Current...Portfolio....Backtester....Derby L....Derby S...Grand.Total.
...Rank......Identity......%G/(L).......%G/(L).....%G/(L).....%G/(L).....
....1.........T-1-JD.......100.06........X.XX......(0.79)......99.27.....
....2.........T-2-JD........67.42........X.XX......(4.31)......63.11.....
....3.........T-3-JD........41.79........X.XX......(0.18)......41.61.....

In regard to the high commission costs shown in the winning portfolios, I'm reminded that we're not trading in your grandfather's stock market anymore. A high frequency trader makes more trades in the blink of an eye than these portfolios had in a year.

As a final note, I just want to say we were blown away by the creativity and performance of the entrees to this competition. While we are showing only the top three Backtester performers in this week's "Strategy of the Week" presentation, we plan to show many more great investment ideas as the year unfolds. We will send a $100.00 check to the creator of any entry we use who has not received an award. On behalf of everyone here at VectorVest, we thank those of you who entered the Triathlon Challenge and give our heartiest congratulations to the Triathlon First Event Winners.

P.S. If a two or three hundred percent gain in one year doesn't spike your interest, I don't know what will. Visit the VectorVest University to see how Mr. Dan Misch, Director of Retirement Strategies, proves that these Backtester results are really true. They are all end-of-day strategies, so anyone could emulate these "Triathlon First Event Winners."

As noted in last week's essay, we had received a trading system submission to our $1,000.00 Award Challenge which looked like a winner. The submission we liked the best came from Mr. William Cook of Mission Viejo, CA.

The challenge for the $1,000.00 Award was issued in my essay of August 13, 2010. It was based upon the observation that from August 18, 2009 to August 13, 2010 the VectorVest Tote Board showed that the "Bottom Fishing in Rising Industries" Strategy had a cumulative gain of 104.99% with an Efficiency Factor, EF, of 24.81%. VST Mighty Mites, another great performer, gave a cumulative gain of 85.50% with an EF of 24.48%. These phenomenal performances were achieved during a period in which the Price of the VectorVest Composite gained 13.04%.

The problem here is that it would have been difficult to replicate the performances of these Strategies in real life. One would have had to buy the top 10 stocks returned from the Strategy at the market's close each day, sell them at the next day's close; then repeat the process every trading day. We're talking about 4,980 trades over the test period of 249 trading days. That sounds like a whole bunch to me. So the challenge was "to send in a practical, feasible trading system for capturing the profit potential of these great Strategies." We believe Mr. Cook has submitted the best system for doing what we asked so far.

Mr. Cook is a long-term user of VectorVest who first subscribed in 1998. He left VectorVest for a while; then re-subscribed in 2005. We met at a VectorVest event years ago, but I can't recall the meeting. Nevertheless, his approach to meeting the challenge was novel and easy to understand. To decide when to buy and sell stocks, he used the VectorVest 7 version of the Market Timing Graph which shows pricing data as Candlesticks. He would go long when he saw two consecutive green candles plus an up follow-through day and go into cash when he saw two consecutive red candles plus a down follow-through day. He also used a five-stock portfolio with no Stops and he claimed an 82% gain with 110 trades.

We also received another submission which challenges Mr. Cook's candlestick system, but it has some unusual techniques that require the Simulator to implement. We plan to modify and test both these systems so that end-of-day traders, i.e., the infamous Midnight Cowboys, could use them. In the meantime, we like Mr. Cook's ideas enough to share them with you, so we're sending him a check for $1,500.00. Thank you, Mr. Cook, for Cook's Candles.

COOK'S CANDLES.
For the complete story on how this new trading system works, visit the VectorVest University to see Mr. Todd Shaffer, Manager of Research, explain and illustrate this week's interesting "Strategy of the Week" presentation, "Cook's Candles."

Congratulations to Mr. David Price of Columbus, Ohio for achieving the 2nd Prize Award of $100,000 in CNBC's Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge. Fantastic! How did he beat all but two other guys in a contest of over 254,000 contestants?

Of course, he used VectorVest. According to David, VectorVest was the catalyst that sent him to the top ranks of the contest. He implemented the Stalwarts strategy, buying the top four stocks when the contest began on May 12, 2008. He said that Stalwarts kept his portfolio moving up and moving down, but staying in the top 25 ranking. Then when the market started moving down, he sold out of his Stalwarts picks and just selected stocks "hit and miss." This approach sent him down to 31st place in the overall contest.

Then, he said that when I wrote about the consolidation pattern on Friday, July 11, 2008, that was enough for him. He spent a good deal of time testing the five strategies that I recommended to go long with on the 16th and said that he liked Odd Fellows Long and Pirates Long. He then selected Pirates Long because the stocks it returned were mostly financial stocks, which everyone knew had been beaten down the worst. So he bought Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Wachovia and Regions Financial on the 17th and by the end of trading on the 18th when the contest ended, his portfolio had climbed from $1.8 million to $2.8 million, leaving him in third place and winning $100,000.

Wow! What a story. We're very happy for you David, and we're extremely proud that VectorVest helped you become a $100,000 Winner.

A GREAT TRY.
On June 12, 2008, Dr. Sarosh Quereshy was in 1st place in the CNBC contest and said it was because of VectorVest. He too was using Stalwarts and he did very well until the big correction occurred the week before the end of the contest. He fought back from 116th place to 10th place using bank and financial stocks as the contest end was nearing. His portfolio was up 38% in the last week of the contest, but he still didn't win! Ouch.

Dr. Quereshy says that if that had been his IRA, he would be retired now. Nevertheless, it must have been a great thrill to come so close to winning. Our compliments go out to Dr. Quereshy on A Great Try.

STOCKS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT.
Many of you have noticed that we have put a new feature on the Home Page of our website called "Stocks You Should Know About." This feature highlights "Best Performers > $1.00" when the Dow Jones Industrial Average is going up and "Worst Performers > $10.00" when the Dow Jones Industrial Average is going down. You have also asked for the strategies we use to find these stocks. Here they are:

Best Performers > $1.00: Price (Split Adjusted) > $1.00, AvgVol > 100000, %PRC > 2, REC = B, RV > 0.90, RS > 0.90, Sorted by RT*CI Desc.

Worst Performers > $10.00: Price (Split Adjusted) > $10.00, AvgVol > 100000, %PRC < -2, REC = S, RV < 0.90, RS < 0.90, Sorted by RT*CI Asc.

These strategies will be placed into the UniSearch Tool this evening. As far as the website goes, these strategies are being run on VectorVest RealTime every 60 seconds, but with a 15 minute delayed signal. If you actually have VectorVest RealTime, you can run them on a refresh cycle time of your choice with actual, real-time pricing. If you don't have VectorVest RealTime; then visit www.vectorvest.com to watch a fascinating display of Stocks You Should Know About.