New Robot model ?

[manucastle]

XOP seems a good choice. To be a little more detailed Natural Gas seems to have a good volatile future. Would UNG be a possibility as well ?

Here is some insite why :-

=====================
Breaking story.

Maran Gas, a Greek shipping entity, are about to place a huge order for 8 LNG tankers.

http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/...option=com_con...

Eight is huge for a couple of reasons
1. That's about a $1.6B order
2. It involves two shipyards
3. Through late May 2011, 16 vessels had been ordered YTD.

FWIW, Maran Gas had switched 3 VLCC orders into LNG tanker orders earlier this year, and its existing
operational fleet consists of 5 LNG tankers and 2 LPG tankers

http://boards.fool.com/breaking-stor...-29339135.aspx
===================================

Trev

[Pascal]

XOP seems a good choice. To be a little more detailed Natural Gas seems to have a good volatile future. Would UNG be a possibility as well ?

Here is some insite why :-

=====================
Breaking story.

Maran Gas, a Greek shipping entity, are about to place a huge order for 8 LNG tankers.

http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/...option=com_con...

Eight is huge for a couple of reasons
1. That's about a $1.6B order
2. It involves two shipyards
3. Through late May 2011, 16 vessels had been ordered YTD.

FWIW, Maran Gas had switched 3 VLCC orders into LNG tanker orders earlier this year, and its existing
operational fleet consists of 5 LNG tankers and 2 LPG tankers

http://boards.fool.com/breaking-stor...-29339135.aspx
===================================

Trev

Both UNG and USO have underperformed the underlynig commodities, because of the contral roll-over.



NG went from $10 to $5, but UNG went from $100 to $12
Oil went from $120 to $100 while USO went from $100 to $40.

UNG and USO are good only for short trades.

Regarding the LNG tanker issues, they are probably also a consequence of cheap money.
I would not be surprised to see overbuilding at some point.. infrastructure can hardly match the demand cycle. It often overshoots it by a very wide margin.



Pascal

[andrew125]

What about OIH? This would be akin to GDX but for oil.

[grems8544]

What about OIH? This would be akin to GDX but for oil.

HOLDRs are incredibly efficient in cost -- OIH is $8/100 shares. This is the good news.

The bad news, for some, is that HOLDRS require a minimum 100-share lot to open, which could preclude their usage for folks wishing to employ strict money management techniques with a large-holding portfolio, e.g., no one positions occupies greater than 2-5% of a portfolio. @ $152/share, this implies a minimum position of $15.2K to open. This could be outside the size of what folks would want to commit in forward testing their own behavior of the robot. On the other hand, some folks only invest 2-7 positions per $100K, so this could fit well.

I think something with an odd-lot capability would be received better by subscribers, but of course, this is subjective.

Regards,

pgd

[senco]

Late to the thread, chiming in - and joining the choir: Low correlation to the current robots (I was glad to see GDX and not SPY as the second one), enough volume so as not to see high spread, and underlying stock tickers making it fit to the methodology.
Best if we have several robots where the equity curves are not highly correlated, and the best way to get there before the robots are completed is to look at low-correlated underlying ETFs.
Concurring with earlier posts, probably XOP (Oil & Gas) should be next. And if we could see more in the future ( :-) ) - XLV (Healthcare), XLP (Staples), and XHB (Builders) might be contenders.

I place lower importance on the availability of x2 and x3 ETFs for the specific index or industry group. With the way margin requirements for leveraged ETFs are calculated now seems to me there is no advantage to trading those vs. creating leverage by margin (except in the context of non marginable retirement account). Also I am not sure how the peculiarities created by the daily reset of leveraged ETFs will affect robot results.

Pascal, Billy - thanks for your great work, and keeping us all in the loop.