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Inverse Lizard Tail

I copied this Lizard tail out of Stockcharts. I would like to make it inverse (Kangaroo Tail) to sell stocks. I tried changing everything to make the query inverse, but it doesn't seem to work;

//Lizard Tail
and [today's close > today's open]
and [today's low < yesterday's min(9, low)]
and [today's open >= [[today's range*0.75]+today's low]]
and [today's close >= [[today's range*0.75]+today's low]]

//Kangaroo Tail High
and [today's close < today's open]
and [today's high > yesterday's max(9, high)]
and [today's open <= [[today's range*0.75]+today's high]]
and [today's close <= [[today's range*0.75]+today's high]]

How do I do this?

Thanks;
CH

Best Answer

  • gordgord admin
    edited August 2014 Answer ✓
    Yes inverting a scan that is currently getting lots of hits will not often get hits in the current market. IE; bull scans in a bull market will get lots of hits but bear scans won't and vise versa.

    However in this case its more of a logic error. In inverting a scan you can't always just invert everything; high to low, open to close, min to max. I find its best to draw out the scan graphically and note what its actually looking for. Here's an example of JWN which I caught running the standard Lizard Tail scan.

    Note: I created the inverse chart using excel and plotted it using a user defined index.





    The logic problem is with the range criteria.

    and [today's open <= [[today's range*0.75]+today's high]]
    and [today's close <= [[today's range*0.75]+today's high]]

    With these two clauses we are asking for the open and close to be less than 75% of the range, ABOVE THE HIGH, which will always be true and thus these clauses filter nothing.

    What we really want is the open and close to be in the lower 25% of the range, thus the following criteria should work.

    and [today's open <= [[today's range*0.25]+today's low]]
    and [today's close <= [[today's range*0.25]+today's low]]

    cheers, hope this gives you some new ideas
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