LON:AVON | Robbie Burns - Trade Entries

26th Oct '21 by m3taphysics

76 comments 4052 reads

Hello,

I have been trading for some time now and I am a fan of the robbie burns "the naked trader" books, I've also joined in on a few seminars and found them really informative. I've read a wide variety of other investment material too, from technical analysis, through to warren buffets fundamentals. I've also studied level 2 in reasonable detail and follow it to see if I can get any glimpses of buying activity in shares but one thing that is really bugging me is that Robbie appears to get excellent trading entries very often.

My trade entries always seem to be terrible, I have a nack of picking the wrong time to buy a share, get stopped out too early, or it moves sideways for some time.

I was wondering if anybody has given any thought into how Robbie manages his trade entries? I still havent grasped this from his books. A few examples of his recent trades (taken from his website):

Sureserve

SUR

5000

69.84

06/10/2021

This buy was after a two week share slide to 69p, the following day the share rockets 11% on a trading update. Would something like level 2 show increased activity which could have lead to this share buy?

Another pick:

Watches of Switzerland

WOSG

500

949.10

1100

870

30/09/2021

Again, around 10 days of share slide, then purchased, then a 9% share jump the day after.

Avon Protection

AVON

225

1775.80

2100

1650

21/09/2021

And another - share price rises 3% and 6% a few days after.

888

1000

390.00

550

350

13/09/2021

434.00

28/09/2021

440.00

An example again, a solid entry and an almost perfect exit before the shares proceed to tank after.

Could this be that he has such a large following it actually drives share price? I did think this, but sometimes the shares do not move and obviously there are losing trades in the list, I just picked these as examples.

Any advice or tips or maybe some thoughts would be great.

Ashley.

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AnonymousUser1782684

31st Oct '21

Retrospectively QM stocks will produce the best returns. No doubt. But looking forward, will the "overpriced" momentum stocks continue this trend? There is a reason why value investors buy the dip. Think March - April 2020. I'm good with the QV concept but straggling to get my head around the QM.

But then again, we've $TSLA , $MSFT and alike that just keep giving.

jd123

RayStraw could you advise what criteria I need to exclude VCTs on his Screen? Thanks

Rusty2

I’m not sure what you are asking. But I think it should be picking individual stocks not trusts and I’m not aware of Robbie Burns investing in VCTs.
Should the Guru screens not follow, as far as possible, how the guru invests?

You seem to be mixing the UK with the US markets. The stockopedia results are very different, QM is the top performing in the UK, followed by momentum, this is different from the US results, see the performance charts. On the Top 25 in each with quarterly rebalancing, then Value the in the US since inception and over 5 years, QM as I said earlier is well behind. In the UK it is QM then followed by M.

Yes it’s a good point, in a bear market, I think the results will be very different in the UK. You can see what happened with the Canslim guru screen when momentum reverses.

AnonymousUser1822519

You would need to add a rule excluding "Investment Banking and Investment Services" in the Profile->Industry Grp section. Before you can add rules however you need to create a copy of the screen, and then click on the edit button. Then you add the rule from there. In this case, a rule for Industry Grp, is already added that excludes "collective investments" so you just need to add "Investment Banking and Investment Services" as an extra item in the list. There aren't that many VCT's companies in the list and the list is small anyway, so I don't think this exclusion is that neccasary. But for learning, that is how you would do it.

RayStraw isn’t the current screen showing 4 VCTs and a Trust, wanted to see if I can remove these as standard?

I can see 5 VCTs and 2 trusts. Not sure how you can exclude them automatically.

Thanks, @Rustbucket. Yes, different markets, different results. I suppose different countries will house different types of companies, e.g. techs mainly in the US.

And as you noted, a lot will depend on whether we're in a bull or bear run. It seems that momentum stocks are good while the bull party is on. But when the party is over they can fall like a ton of bricks. A bit like musical chairs, no one knows when the music will stop. But then again, you don't want to miss out on a bull run.

Jim Brin

1st Nov '21

I got into stocks and shares through Robbie. He scans with his criteria and then works out a fair value price for stocks that meet his metrics. He then monitors the daily price moves and pulls the trigger...he does the same for breakouts.

In the Sureserve example above there was no serious selling during the slide down and could have been retail profit taking and/or broker manipulation to seek liquidity at the 75-77p level, it certainly reacted strongly to the level.

m3taphysics

same, Tesla has saved my ISA this year. If I sell….

18th Nov '21

Anyone know how this one was bagged? ITV, in a huge downtrend, 3 days later announces a record ad revenue!

ITV

10000

105.50

145

03/11/2021

Its incredible. Couldn't see a pattern here at all. Maybe just assumed 105p was value and got lucky?

Some perspective:

And finally, day before results on UP GLOBAL

Up Global

UPGS

3000

170.20

210

140

01/11/2021

I am wondering in this case can he see unusual activity the day before. Or took a punt buying into the potentially bad results?

Maybe he had some idea the results would be good and saw value based on current price?

gus 1065

Re. Itv (LON:ITV) , here is an extract from Robbie Burn’s newsletter of November 11th.

“At the online seminar last week I was doing some screens for new shares and the one that kept popping up on a few screens was ITV.

So we did a lot of research on it and it seemed on all angles very undervalued. So I bought some live on the day and we did a trading plan, when to exit if there was a share price downturn etc.

Well, that paid off as yesterday a very confident statement was produced with profits back over 2019 levels.

One thing to also enjoy while waiting for the long waited for bid is the very large dividend of 5% plus. Bit more than you'd get in the bank. I am going to stay with ITV unless it really starts to sink again. My guess is any bid will have to be well over the 200p mark.”

As you can see, looks more of a macro view on the merits of the company rather than a technical view on what the charts are telling him. RB has been discussing ITV for years as a possible bid candidate and has been in and out of the share, invariably selling at the top and buying towards the bottom.

On Up Global Sourcing Holdings (LON:UPGS) he had this to say in the same newsletter.

“ I flagged it was going to update to those of you who get the email and given it had gone down so much on logistics fears I bought some before the statement. Sadly for me I didn't have the courage (what a wimp!) to buy in size.

The statement seemed to show things weren't as bad as some feared and the shares have been running up. See previous updates for comments on this one but it seems like a very decent company that's well managed.”

Again, to paraphrase, “I like the company, it was knocked back on poor market sentiment so it looked cheap and I bought some (maybe not enough)”. Not sure there’s any magic sauce - he’s just good at picking decent companies and buys them when they are cheap.

Gus.

The Phoenix

Robbie does know about 25-30 shares very well one of these is Itv (LON:ITV): he will take an informed punt ahead of results and it was on things like BBC website a few days before that record amounts were being spent this year on screen advertising.

If you look on the trade history on his site you will see over the years he has been in and out of Itv (LON:ITV): numerous times its an old friend of his.

Well Musk has been selling, Tesla, I tend to follow large directors sales.

US large caps can behave like UK small caps, look at $TTD in the last 2 weeks, I do hold some although I sold too early, good results and prices can shoot up, but if miss forecasts then can get hammered. Their market is much more structured than here, regular quarterly updates etc. Maybe why Stockopdia does not work so well on US stocks?

Thats awesome gus, thanks for the heads up

19th Nov '21

Since 1998, Mr Burns has made 3 million tax free from trading in an ISA and spreadbetting. That equates to 100,000 a year. That doesnt include whatever he makes from his books or seminars, which I'm sure is quite decent. Of that 3 million, how much I wonder came from publishing his trades which no doubt increased his winnings, like the Simon Thompson IC effect but probably to a lesser degree, and Musk to an even lesser degree who can move markets with a tweet. ST would easily be a millionaire(maybe he is) if he bought the shares he tips beforehand, if he is even allowed too.

Mr Burns has made a lot of money, but I'm not sure if that amount would qualify him as a market wizard? Maybe it does, may it doesn't. But as Mr Burns only publishes his trades and not his trading(complete) strategy than perhaps its a lost cause trying to speculate on it, or trying to mimic his trading style based on this speculation. As noted his Guru screen's returns are not particularly great. Still, the discussion is interesting at least.

I'm sure he is a lovely bloke though:)

The Guru screen does not mirror or even come close to his trades, it does not even use his strategy of stop losses. ST performance is not published apart from his annual bargain shares. I don’t think it’s very good, he has had a number of total losses. Yes the market makers will mark the shares up when tipped. He is not allowed to buy them, part of IC rules.

Lucky dip

one of my repeated mistakes are selling my expensive stocks and regretting it for months as it becomes even more expensive!

Robbie Burns - Trade Entries

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M3taphysics

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