Method

How every mark on this site is computed

Three rules, one price convention, one read a day. Everything a reader needs to check a date against a broker chart.

The three rules

A daily rule compares a fund's close with the simple average of its last N closes, that close included, for N of 50, 100 and 200. The fund is above when the close is higher than the average, below when lower. A close exactly on the line keeps the side it had, and a first reading on the line counts as below.

A cross is the close that changes the side. The date printed everywhere on this site is that close's date, never the day the site noticed it.

Confirmed on 3 closes

The confirmed variant changes side only after three consecutive closes on the other side, and its cross date is the third close. It exists because the raw rule is noisy by construction: across 100 funds the median fund crosses its 200-day 8.3 times a year, and 68% of those crosses come within 14 days of the previous one. Three confirming closes cut the median to 3.4 a year; a 1% price band would be a different rule for every asset class, so it is not offered.

The price convention

Closes are split-adjusted and not dividend-adjusted: the series a broker chart shows. This matters more than it sounds. Of the 100 funds, 63 have at least half of their 200-day cross dates in only one of the two series, and on income funds the two series share almost no dates. "Verify against your broker" holds only on the unadjusted series, so that is the one used, and every fund's page says how many of its dates would move on the other.

Data and timing

Daily closes come from Yahoo Finance daily closes. A bar dated today is read only after 5:00 pm New York time, when the official close is final; the daily job runs at 6:30 pm Eastern and again at 7:30 pm, and a check at 8:30 pm emails the site's keeper if neither run read the close. Pages refresh within minutes of a run. The dateline under the masthead names the last close every page reflects.

A session that fails to read cleanly (a missing fund, a hole in the series, a jump no trading day makes) is recorded as an error, the site's keeper is told, and no side changes until the next clean read.

The record on each fund's page

Each rule, raw and confirmed, is shown beside holding the fund over the fund's own listing: the yearly rate (compound), what $1,000 became, the worst fall from a running high, and the share of sessions spent in the fund. The side is read on the unadjusted close, as everywhere on this site; the return is taken on the dividend-adjusted close, so distributions count for the rule and for holding alike. A change of side takes effect at the next close, and a day out of the fund earns nothing: no money-market interest, which flatters every rule a little and is left out on purpose. Compare the yearly rate across funds, never the dollars, because the spans differ; the "since" year sits on every table.

It is a record, not a verdict. Most rules on most funds end below holding, and the table says so where it is true. Whether a lower worst fall is worth a lower rate is the reader's question, not the site's.

Counts and averages on the pages

Crosses this year counts crosses dated in the current calendar year. A year, on average is the fund's total crosses of a rule divided by the years since its first reading. Sessions is how many closes in a row the fund has been on its current side.

What this site is not

It publishes the same market data for everyone and gives no advice. "SCHD closed below its 200-day average" is a fact about a price series, not a suggestion. The person who runs the site may hold some of the funds listed and never trades around an alert.