<FOOLISH WORKSHOP>

Bad News/Good News

by David Forrest ([email protected])

Breckenridge, CO (Jan. 8, 1999) -- Fools, I have some bad news. After several years of publishing our weekly database of stocks, Value Line, Inc. has requested that we stop publishing the weekly database. This does NOT mean that we won't continue to do the work and publish rankings and returns. We will. We just won't be able to publish the weekly list of the Timeliness #1 stocks. According to Value Line, they consider the Timeliness #1 stocks very proprietary and have asked us to respect their copyright. We will certainly comply and try and cut a deal with Value Line that would allow us to resume. Until then, this is the last week we can publish the complete database.

Now for some good news. It was a great first week for some of the screens. Right out of the gate, the Spark 5 returned 7.08% in just three trading days. Keep in mind that we calculate returns as of the close on Wednesdays. Just for fun, I thought I'd bring out the compounding clown and tell you that if Spark 5 keeps up the pace of the first three days of the year, a $10,000 investment would be worth more than $1.6 million at year's end! Of course, this is ridiculous and an unfair comparison, but it is fun. :)

Starting next week, we'll be listing an even better metric by which to measure Workshop screen performance. As I mentioned last week, we'll start measuring the total performance of the Value Line 100 stocks. If you sold the deleted stocks and bought the added stocks, how would the VL 100 do? We'll see starting next week.

Finally tonight, there's another screen being talked about out on our message boards. As most of you know, the majority of exceptional ideas come from our community members and their collective imaginations. Some of the folks out on our message board have devised a wrinkle on the Keystone approach called the Keystone Veterans approach, a.k.a. the KEV 5. For those of you who aren't out on the message board, we'll be looking closely at this approach next week. The basic idea is that you'd buy and hold the stocks that have been in the Keystone rankings the longest. For those of you who'd like to look back, you can find all of the archives for rankings here. If you don't want to wait for my investigation of the KEV 5, check out this post and the subsequent posts on the subject.


Have a great weekend.

Bogey

Check out the latest file updates for the Workshop:
New Rankings | Workshop Returns | New Database