As a "Buy and Hold" candidate, RBD has performed exceptionally poorly. A quick glance at the long-term chart on page 83 shows the long downtrend in gruesome detail. Regardless of dividends, this stock has been a losing proposition for years.

Take a look at this, though. RBD's average daily volume is about 100,000 shares. Every so often, RBD volume abruptly increases - a lot. For the purposes of this exercise, a Volume spike is defined as any daily volume over about 1.8 million shares. Such spikes are marked by blue bars at the top of the chart. The idea here is to buy when a spike forms after a downtrend and Sell when a spike forms after an uptrend. Because many of you do not have access to the market during the day, the returns and entry/exit points shown here are based on buying or selling the day AFTER the signal. Following these signals would have given a compound return of almost 500% in just 4 trades over 12 years. Plus any dividends, of course! This, on a stock that is worth a mere fraction of what it was way back in 1997!

See how this absurdly simple "system" kept you out of RBD for years at a time as the downtrend ground inexorably on. (There were no volume spikes from mid 2005 right through to the end of 2008, for example). Interesting eh?

The latest huge volume spike flagged an excellent 65 cent entry point into RBD. At well over 9 million, this spike was RBD's third largest ever.