A.7 Developmental Activities (Current and Planned)

This is (a small part of) our current “To Do” List:

Mutual Fund Report (MUTFUNDS): (1) Implement better signal algorithms for funds that short: Gold, Oil, Real Estate, and specific geographical regions (e.g., Japan, Korea), (2) Improve accuracy of ETF Decompositions, (3) Add more funds and fund families, (4) Consider using our Short-Term (Grail System) signals to assign a mutual fund Score, rather than the Intermediate-Term (STAR System) signals.

Portfolios: (1) Develop a portfolio tracking and comparison program that will accurately compare the performance of the 6 10-stock portfolios currently available (L/10, P10H, P10N, P10C, P10E, P10U, VARPORTD). This will permit an evaluation of the relative performance of each of these 3 categories of portfolio (Preprocessor-based, Grail System-based (S/T), Intermediate-Term-based (I/T)), (2) Develop a 'shorting strategy' that can be used to provide additional gains when the non-shorting PORTSTAT portfolios (Classes “N”, “C”, “E” and “U”) are largely in cash.

Grail System: (1) Develop a program which will back-extrapolate price/volume data for a stock in such a way that recently-introduced stocks can be accurately modeled. Our current methods for generating Grail System models currently require data going back until at least 8/16/02. This would allow, for example, the ability to model the Emerging Markets ETF, EEM. (3) Finalize the 'differential' signals (and their new Report) to try to compare the anticipated relative performance of various pairs of indices represented by ETFS, e.g., QQQQ vs. SPY, QQQQ vs. IWM, QQQQ vs. DIA, etc.

Documentation: Continue weekly updates to both Tutorials (Part1 and Part2).

A.8 Report Availability

Remember that our Reports are generally available by 100am CST, although sometimes later, but should always be available well in advance of the Market opening. If you have not received the Forecast by email prior to the market Open, then please double-click on the link http://www.schulenberg.com/download/LATEST.ZIP (or use the button in the upper left hand corner of our website) to download the latest available file and unzip it; Windows should automatically take care of this, and if you select the Extract All option then you should only have to supply the password one time. Then, read the file named 'forecast.htm'. *** Make sure that this file is dated for the upcoming market day; if not, then it means that for one reason or another the report has been delayed and you should try again later. The file 'forecast.htm' contains the same text (this document) that would normally be supplied in the evening’s email. You can also click on the link http://www.schulenberg.com/download/ to see if the new report file has been uploaded (hit REFRESH occasionally to monitor the status of our download area).

*** Bear in mind that we can send your email to two or more email accounts. If you wish to be sure of always getting your notifications, then you might want to consider taking out a free email account with Hotmail, MSN, Google's Gmail, etc. Just let us know what your alternate email address is. Note: We have had problems with Yahoo email servers in the past since they will reject an entire mailing if there are too many Yahoo email accounts in the distribution list. Therefore, we do not at this time recommend using Yahoo as your alternate email address.

A.9 ZIP File Downloads (Report Archives) and Passwords

The complete Strategist Newsletter Report packet (Reports 1-10, including this document) is available late each evening (or in the very early morning) on our website: http://www.schulenberg.com/download/LATEST.ZIP

*** Note that it is important to verify that the LATEST file truly is the 'latest'. When you receive the evening email (this document), then you can be certain that it is the latest report archive – the one for the next market day. Still, it is always advisable to verify this by checking the report dates within the archive (e.g., the 'data' date in the PORTSTAT, SIGNALS, or 'forecast.htm' file. If you are monitoring the download area on our website (via the link http://www.schulenberg.com/download/) then you can also be certain that the proper file has been uploaded by looking at the creation date on the LATEST.ZIP file – or by verifying that the correct 'dated' file has been uploaded (the one with the format SSMMDDYY.ZIP).

In addition to the 'LATEST' file, all of the recent report archives are contained in 'dated' ZIP (compressed) files using the naming convention SSmmddyy.ZIP where mmddyy is the most recent market date. In other words, the Zip file named SS011707.ZIP contains the reports based on the closing data for 1/17/07, and is thus intended to provide guidance for the following market day (1/18/07). If you use Windows XP then you already have the necessary support to unpack such ZIP files; if not, you can download a free copy of an unzipping tool like WinZip from http://www.download.com/. Remember that Windows provides an easy way to extract ALL reports in a single operation (with the need to specify the password just once) -- just look for the ‘Extract All’ option.

At least 3 days worth of ZIP files will be maintained on the website, and you may download them any time you wish.

All Strategist zip files (the ones starting with the letters ‘SS’) are password protected, and passwords are generally valid for a period of one month. You will be given the current password when you become a subscriber, or if you have been started on a 30-day Free Trial.

There are also several days worth of “Free” report archives. These are time-lagged by 3 market days, and have names like FFmmddyy.zip, where the initial ‘FF’ signifies that the files are “free” – and thus not password protected. If you are NOT a current subscriber you can nonetheless look at these files to keep track of new developments.

The Newsletter ARCHIVE files (.zip) will always be available on the website before 7am EST each trading day morning. Usually the reports will be ready by 1am CST, but this is not always possible. Although the reports for Monday "could" be generated earlier, it's best to let the data optimize over the weekend and so, in general, we will upload the reports for Monday late on Sunday evening.

You can always use the link http://www.schulenberg.com/download/ to see a list of all available downloads ... and thus be in a position to know when a new report archive has been uploaded.

A.10 Problems and Resolutions

In this Section we summarize recent discussions of problems, fixes, and workarounds:

(1) Problems with Expanding the Downloaded Report Archives: We have received a recent update from a subscriber who had been having problems expanding the daily report archive (LATEST.ZIP). In this case the problem was due to his use of an “anonymizer” add-on for his Browser. If you are doing 'anonymous' browsing using such a product (Anonymizer, Ghost Surf, etc.), and you are having problems with unzipping the download file, then retry the download with the anonymizer turned off. Our earlier suggestion to 'reboot' is also valid; this has been the source for some similar problems in the past.

(2) We still find occasionally that some subscribers fail to receive our Forecast emails, and there is rarely an explanation for this. However, please remember that these emails are NOT ESSENTIAL; the daily report archive file contains the full text of the email in a file named 'forecast.htm'. The main purpose of the email is to make it clear when the report archive is available for the next day's market. If you DO NOT receive the email, then simply follow these steps:

Step 1: Click on the standard link http://www.schulenberg.com/download

Step 2: Set this URL (website) as a Favorite in your browser

Step 3: Monitor the list of files (hit Refresh occasionally) in order to watch for the appearance of the proper 'dated' Ssmmddyy.ZIP report archive. The date should be the same as the market day that has just ended.

Step 4: Alternatively, watch for the file LATEST.ZIP to get updated; it should have a date and time that is well 'after' the previous day's market close since we are rarely able to get the reports out before midnight Houston time.

Step 5: Double-click on the correct file to download it; enter the current password to get its contents expanded (specify the 'Extract All' option), and then examine the forecast.htm file to ensure that it is dated for the next market day. If so, you are all set.