Yesterday, I shared a post on one of the discussion groups on Empire Avenue about my latest Empire Avenue programming and trading strategy. (Read more below the fold.)

I am now downloading my portfolio every day using the Eav API. I load it into a spread sheet and do some calculations.

I calculate the average earnings per share. Today, the EPS for my portfolio is 6.38, up from 6.09 yesterday. I then calculate the value of the shares I hold of each investment and the value they hold in me. I divide there EPS by my portfolio EPS and use that as a factor to figure out how much I want to invest in them relative to what they invest in me.

As an example, (e)CALL has an EPS of 14.23 for my timeframe. That is 222% of the average, so I take the value of holdings of my stock (currently 2895 Eaves) and multiply it by 2.22 to come of with the goal of my holdings, or 6450 Eaves worth). That works out to be about 85 shares, so I've bought more shares in them to reach that level.

I also bought (e)CAHEINECKE and (e)LINUXARIA today using that strategy. At some point, I may use a similar strategy to dump underperforming stocks, but currently, I don't have a lot of stocks that I'm ready to write off that way.

So, are you doing any interesting trading strategies?

This receive a bunch of interesting comments and questions, and here are some of my responses to these comments and questions:

I started off by noting that it is registered as an app. It isn't really a big issue to register to get an API. I encourage others to do that and I have a few PHP based programs that I'll share with anyone interested.

Others talked about their strategy simply being produce good content or buying fresh faces. To these, I replied:

The way I see it, boosting engaging network activities, is a prerequisite to any successful strategy. My approach is a slightly more quantified version of the 'invest in shares with high ROI'. At other times, I've gone strictly for the players with the highest earnings per share. From a pure investment strategy, that might make more sense. On the other hand, it is important to keep investors happy, by both getting high earnings and reinvesting in them. I did participate in Pendapalooza, which brought a bunch of new investments into my portfolio. Also, at times, I look at who (e)CHRISVOSS has invested in. He tends to pick fresh faces, and I select those with the highest earnings per share.

Some people didn’t know a lot about APIs or PHP. People wanted to know if they could run my program and how well I’ve tested it. To these, I responded:

Application Programmers Interface. The EAv API is a set of calls that can be used for programmers to get to EAv data. I've written my portfolio application using the EAv API to dump out my current portfolio. I then bring it into Excel where I do further analysis. At some point, I move more of the excel analysis into the PHP program.

PHP - An open source programming language, good for web apps. It runs on most platforms, including Windows XP. I currently run it on a Linux server. It is not currently accessible to others, although I may get around to that. I can share the source code with anyone that wants to run my program or modify it for their own purposes. To run it, you would need to get your own API key.

I have only done testing of this for my own use right now and not cleaned it up for others to use. I may do more of that at some point, but mostly, it continues to be a work in progress.

I ended off recognizing other good buys, and offering my code to anyone interested:

For anyone who wants to get access to the code, let me know and I can zip it up and share it. I'll combine a bunch of this into a blog post and eventually share more information, links, etc.

So, that is where things are at right now. To see some sample data, check out my portfolio as well as a limited version of Chris Voss’s portfolio. If you want to download a tarball of my first php programs and some sample data, use this: ea api 0.1 (It is a gzipped tarfile.

If you’re interested in other portfolios, let me know.