One of the most interesting presentations to be made at our Tampa Two-Day
Investment Seminar will be that of "Finding the Best Strategies." What this means, in truth, is how do we find the strategies we use in the Model Portfolio?

Although I'll go through the details in this essay, you may read my essays of November 22, 2002 and March 18, 2005 for additional information. A demonstration of this technique is also given on CD No. 4 of the current Seminar CD Set. Here's how it's done:

Step 1. Assuming we are going long at the onset of an upwave, we simply go back and select long strategies from the list of "Strategy of the Week" illustrations. For example, on Friday, October 21, 2005 we said, "We are in cash and prepared to go long with one of the following strategies if the market moves up sharply on Monday.

1. Top VST-Vector Stocks_____________10/21/05.
2. Rising VST Stocks_________________09/30/05.
3. Best Stocks Under $20.00__________09/09/05.
4. FWS - Favorites___________________07/29/05.
5. FWS - Sparklers___________________07/15/05.
6. Best New Highs/BMB________________06/03/05.

Step 2. Sure enough, the market went up on Monday, October 24th. As I recall, the Futures were up nicely, so we began to think we would go long. By 10:00 AM, the market was doing well, so we ran each strategy shown above and got on Yahoo!Finance to see how the stocks from each strategy were doing.

Step 3. We simply selected the strategy that had the most stocks going up the fastest. Once we made this selection, we entered the market, around 10:30 AM. Well, that was simple enough, but how did we select those six strategies in the first place?

Basically, we begin the selection process by using Quick Test. For an upwave, we would run each long strategy as of a low point defined by the Price of the VectorVest Composite. Then we would use Quick Test to check the strategy's performance to the succeeding high point. As mentioned in my March 18, 2005 essay, this takes some time to do manually, so we use QuickSim, which is in the Simulator, to get the job done in just a few minutes.

As far as selecting strategies for "Strategy of the Week" illustrations, we try to illustrate the best long strategies during an upwave and the best short strategies during a downwave. So all you have to do is refer to the "Strategy of the Week" illustrations when Finding The Best Strategies.

P.S. You may now see a demonstration of this week's "Strategy of the Week" on the VectorVest University.