Immediate definition
In plain words — Screw and Bolt is the case Hurst uses to show the entire path: select a stock, wait for a condition, enter, update risk, and exit. It is a historical example with a known outcome, not a promise of performance.
The case occupies the central portion of Chapter 8. The market had been judged favourable for a short long-side operation; the 1 November 1968 scan brings Screw and Bolt Corporation into the candidate list. The book then follows the position to 2 January 1969 and reports a 49.7% net gain in 57 days.
Why it entered the shortlist
The stock had spent about fifteen months between 8 and 14, risen to 18, and then pulled back for five weeks towards 14–15. Hurst reports 1,663,000 shares and average weekly volume near 30,000. The sequence of cumulative four-quarter earnings — 0.83, 0.66, 0.41, 0.43, 0.51, and 0.72 — was read as a recovery.
On the weekly chart, the book identifies average components of 18, 9.2, and 5.2 weeks; the daily chart adds a 9.9-day component. Their projected low windows overlap during the next three weeks. This “nest of lows” prepares the wait for a timing signal.
The plan before entry
The ten-week half-span average provides a potential-versus-risk check. To turn, the future price would have to exceed the observation six weeks earlier, identified at 17½. The distance from a low near 14½ is treated as half the move, producing a central objective of 20½. The book therefore compares about six points of potential with roughly half a point of initial risk plus commissions.
On 6 November, a valid trend line break leads to the reported purchase at 15½ and an initial trailing loss level at 14⅛. On 6 December, the turn in the ten-week average updates the estimate: conjunction at 18⅛, a symmetric move, and a 21–23 prediction zone.
Management and exit
Price reaches the zone in December and then exceeds it. Hurst reads the acceleration as a blowoff because price is above the zone, above the projected envelope, and near the temporal end of the 18-week cycle. After another line is drawn under the daily lows, the book records the exit on 2 January 1969 at 23⅞.
The 49.7% in 57 days is a reported case result. Its conversion to 318% per year is a simple linear projection: it does not represent twelve realised months and does not account for changing opportunities, liquidity, or capital.
What a modern verification would need
Historical volume does not reconstruct bid, ask, depth, or slippage. An observed quote does not guarantee a fill; a stop becomes a market order and may execute away from its trigger, while a stop-limit may not execute. Ticket, timestamp, quantity, commission, and all alternative signals would be needed to reproduce the trade to modern standards.
The case remains valuable as an anatomy of the method: it shows which pieces
of information Hurst connected and in what order. One winning example selected
for a book, however, cannot estimate the procedure's success rate.
Source-checked certifies fidelity to the historical source, not replicability
of the performance.
Sources
- J. M. Hurst, The Profit Magic of Stock Transaction Timing, Prentice-Hall, 1970, Chapter 8, pp. 127–135 and Figures VIII-2–VIII-5 — primary case source.
- SEC Office of Investor Education and Advocacy, Executing an Order — routing, price movement, and execution quality.
- SEC Office of Investor Education and Advocacy, Stop, Stop-Limit, and Trailing Stop Orders — trigger, execution price, and non-fill distinctions.
Links
- Cyclic market state — preceding context.
- 1968 experiment — the system on a wider sample.
- Price tracking — from condition to fill.