Market Shares provide the facilities, you provide the intelligence.

To create a strategy you need to be able to articulate its intent. Sound difficult? It’s not! Break it down to the four cornerstones of Profile, Value, Risk and Momentum.

So, let’s step through the Process. Using the menu structure you would arrive at the Strategies>My Strategies screen and select 'Compose new strategy'. Step by step, we will work through the process.

The first step is fairly simple, it's the Profile area; give the strategy a name and a description. Then determine its source and purpose.

A quick tip - If you are considering submitting this strategy for publication in the Library, give some thought to the name and description fields; give it a name that easily identifies its intent, and in the description field use words that give other subscribers an understanding of how achieved it (without telling exactly how you did it).

The powerhouse of Composer is the increasing number of selections you can choose for setting both the 'Buy' and 'Sell' triggers.

They are proceeded with a bold blue 'V', 'R' or 'M'. These indicate their pillar representation group; Value, Risk or Momentum.

Combine these with the supplied descriptions for each criteria to focus your intent.

Once chosen, each criteria has a 'Buy' or 'Sell' option which is required to construct the strategy.

Click on the desired intent and the criteria will be added to either the 'Buy companies when' zone or the 'Sell companies when' zone.

A few tips.

• You can choose as many or as few criteria as you desire but you must use a minimum of one 'Buy' and one 'Sell' .
• The number you choose will affect the activity outcome; the more criteria, the fewer results
• There does not have to be an equal number of 'Buy' and 'Sell'. However, most long strategies (higher selling price compared to purchase price) will have more 'Buy' criteria than 'Sell' criteria.
• Some strategy authors prefer to specifically offset their momentum technicals (MACD, RSI, etc.). For example, if they include a weekly RSI 'Buy' trigger they offset it by setting a weekly RSI 'Sell' trigger.
• Until you become very familiar with each criteria, explore all their options (drop downs) to ensure you achieve the desired outcome.
  • You will discover a number of them have the option to benchmark or to compare to an absolute value of your choice.
  • Consider using the 'right click' mouse function on the level 1 navigation tabs of Assist>Glossary or Assist>Help in a new browser tab or window in order to gain a more thorough understanding of various terms and/or concepts.
  • You will find that a number of criteria selections will have a 'drop down' facility with 'better' or 'worse' options. Note:
    • Mostly in these selections 'better' will mean a higher value while 'worse' will mean a lower value, but
    • when a company PE criteria is chosen, 'better' will mean a lower P/E ratio (e.g. a P/E of 14.7 is better than a P/E of 15.3).
• If you have a specific desired criteria that is not currently listed, let Market Shares know by sending a note to .

The final step is to either save your work or cancel it.

Of course mostly, not only will you want to save your strategy, but you will want to run a back test in order to see the results.

To do this click on the 'Create and back test this strategy' button.

While the default dates are from the 1st trading day of 2004 to the last closing day, you can use the calendars to select whatever dates in between those extremes you choose.

Having chosen the dates, click the 'Back test this strategy' button and you will be directed to the Results screen. Your strategy will firstly appear in the 'Pending' section while it's checked for essential information.

A few tips regarding Back Testing.

• Expect to do quite a few back tests. Rarely (if ever) will you create the exact outcomes you intended achieving in your first time attempt.
• Use the My Back Tests>Autopsy>Trades for the relevant strategy to identify unusual profits and losses.
• Market Shares provides a powerful back testing tool to allow deep analysis of previous trades; simply 'click' on the company name of any trade of your choice and you will be taken to the Profile>Overview screen of that company for that trade date.
  • From there all 15 company perspective screens are available.
  • Try to identify the trigger that caused the trade. Hint - you can always go back to Autopsy view and use the triangular arrow next to the Strategy Name to review your Buy/Sell criteria (triggers).
  • Having identified the trigger that caused the trade, use the relevant perspective screen/screens to analyse and consider the information.
  • You may choose to use the 'For date:' facility (top right corner of any company perspective screen) to go back or forward a day/week/month in order to consider varying a value change to the triggering criteria.
• Having reviewed and tuned your criteria, consider using specific test periods to quickly identify whether or not you have achieved your desired intent. This will significantly quicken the process time.

The final stage is the processing procedure. You might notice your strategy moves to the 'In progress' section. It is set to update your screen each 90 seconds, but you can refresh your screen at any time by using your F5 key or clicking on your browser's refresh button.

That completes the strategy composing process. Click on the 'My Back Tests' link and then the 'Autopsy' link for the relevant strategy to analyse your work.