| Guess the Stock Price |
After umpteen years playing with financial stuff and ...
>And being amused, right?
Yes ... it's all about amusement (for me).
I know with certainty that nobuddy can predict (with any consistent accuracy) stock prices .. say a month into the future.
Aaah ... but what influences your prediction, eh?
>Given what information?
Okay, suppose I gave you the weekly prices for the past 8 months.
I even plotted them for you.
Do you think you could guess the price 4 weeks into the future?
>Sure! I'd give it a try. You got a spreadsheet to play with?
Yes, it's here (just click on the picture to download the Excel spreadsheet):
Here's how it goes:
- You click the button called Another? and five years worth of weekly stock prices are downloaded and a random selection of 32 weeks is plotted.
- You move the slider to Guess the price 4 weeks after the last plotted price. (Your guess is shown as a green dot.)
- When you think you may have it, you click the button called Show me !!.
- The next 4 weeks of the stock prices are plotted and you sit back and pat yourself on the back.
The stock that's downloaded is, maybe, one of the DOW stocks or maybe something on the TSX ... and you're told what it is when you ask: Show me !!.
You'll get something like:
or maybe this: 
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>What good is the spreadsheet?
Did I mention the thing about amusement ... with financial stuff? >So, are you any good at predicting? I assume you use some exotic predictive algorithm, right?
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It's impossible, but the idea is to see what properties of the historical behaviour influence your guess.
Do you say: "Aha! The price has been 10% higher in the past, so I'll guess something like that historical price."
>I'd say: "I see it's goin' up by $1 a week, to I'll guess ..."
Good luck with the speadsheet.
