The Daily Workshop Report
by Robert Sheard (TMF Sheard)

LEXINGTON, KY. (Feb. 25, 1997)

You asked for it, you got it. Well, at least in some form or other.

Many of you have wanted to see the month-by-month history for Unemotional Growth, and while I'm not able to post the entire stock-by-stock history with rankings and prices for all 120 months, what I've done is post the monthly totals for both the five-stock and ten-stock versions in a "permanent" archive in the Workshop data section.

I assume some of you with more math acumen and time than I have will be able to supply us with the Sharpe Ratios for these samples. Please forward them to me and I'll revise the file to include them as well. This will give us a growing history, now into its eleventh year for the model. I'll update it periodically to include 1997's returns.

For those of you concerned about the weakness of the Unemotional Growth performance of late, pay particular attention to the 1992 returns from February through June, where the model lost in four of the five months and still posted a gain for the year of more than 38%.

In more current news, the obvious big story for Workshop stocks is the hostile take-over bid launched by APPLIED MAGNETICS <% if gsSubBrand = "aolsnapshot" then Response.Write("(NYSE: APM)") else Response.Write("(NYSE: APM)") end if %> for READ-RITE CORP <% if gsSubBrand = "aolsnapshot" then Response.Write("(Nasdaq: RDRT)") else Response.Write("(Nasdaq: RDRT)") end if %>. As news leaked of the hostile bid late yesterday, our star performer Applied Magnetics started a decline. Down some $3 a share yesterday, it's down another $5 a share today. We may see that stop-loss test triggered yet on this one. Remember that APM's closing high was $59, so the 25% trailing stop we discussed as a test case last week is at $44.25. We'll keep watching to see how the stop and the takeover bid play out. (If you missed this discussion, check out the past reports archive for last week.)

Correction: Last night I incorrectly identified China's late leader as Deng Xiao Peng. It should have been spelled Deng Xiaoping. No offense was implied; I apologize if any was inferred.

Don't forget the Thoroughbred Stock Challenge. The March game is right around the corner and I'm accepting entries up until the opening bell on Monday, March 3. If you're entered in the Winter Quarterly contest, you must enter again for March to keep your quarterly entry current. You can choose the same stocks if you like, of course, but you must submit an entry for the March contest to stay in the hunt for the quarterly title.

Monthly Growth Screens
     (Jan. 3 to present)
  22.39%  Relative Strength  
  17.06%  YPEG Potential  
  15.24%  Low Price/Sales  
   8.55%  S&P 500 Index  
   3.59%  Investing for Growth  
  -9.67%  EPS Plus RS  
 -12.44%  Unemotional Growth   
 -12.80%  Formula 90  

Annual Value Screens
     (Jan. 1 to present)
   9.76%  Dogs of the Dow  
   9.14%  Dow Jones Ind Avg  
   6.97%  Beating the S&P  
   6.10%  Dow Combo  
   5.40%  Unemotional Value  
   5.40%  Beating the Dow  
   3.87%  Foolish Four