God, I hate it when my trading associate Landis is right!  He keeps throwing these conventional nuggets at me and I listen because I take in every market noise going on around me.  I rarely act on what I hear, but I'm always open to the possibility that there might be some truth in the endless qucking.

Anyway, I seem to have been down the turnaround Tuesday path before, and I didn't uncover much.  But now that we're honing in on stock market action of the last five years, yeah…Landis, I reluctantly have to report that you're rightâ€"if today is Tuesday, you do well to go opposite whatever Monday's action was (from the prior close).

Here are the results of being long on Tuesday following a down day, or short following an up day.  The following is the last five years of data when opening a position at Tuesday's open and closing the position at Tuesday's close.

Art Collins is the author of Market Beaters, a collection of interviews with renowned mechanical traders. He is currently working on a second volume. E-mail Art at artcollins@ameritech.net.