October 5, 2011
Investor’s Business Daily founder, Bill O’Neil is rarely interviewed, so it was a pleasant surprise to see a two part conversation on Kevin Marder’s Marketwatch column. Bill dispensed his usual pearls of investing wisdom; stick to the rules, work hard, be optimistic, cut losses at 8%. This is all the usually stuff which has kept thousands of CANSLIM investors out of trouble, especially during these volatile times. Bill also gives his take of the current market as well as stock ideas
September 28, 2011
October 2011
Figure 1. September Finviz Leadership Stock Screen
This month, the Finviz Leadership Stock Screen is being introduced. This is a screen of the market’s leading fundamental and technical stocks and can serve as a guide for watchlist ideas and general market health. Market leadership is key to healthy bullish rallies, so the number of stocks making the screen, the better. Figure 1 shows resulting stock tickers in a 1 month performance heat map- green showing positive gains for the month, and red negative. Currently, only 10 stocks have made the screen, which is low and a warning to market weakness. Figure 2 confirms this as the major indices have zig zagged between support and resistance levels rather violently in September, with poor accumulation on strong price days- a sign of weak insititutional support.
Figure 2 Market slop and chop through September, with low accumulation on up days
The hot holiday item for this year will be the tablet, but don’t expect AAPL (Apple Corp) ipad or the numerous Google based Android offering (Samsung, LG, Coby, Sony, etc) to have stellar sales. They will have to move over for the new kid in town, after AMZN (Amazon.com Inc) game changing announcement of its $200 Kindle Fire. The $499 ipad and the $400+ Android tablets will now need to slash their prices to keep up with Amazon’s heavily subsidized tablet entry. The Fire is not about hardware, and about the company’s push into consumption services such as music, movies, apps, TV shows through $79/year Amazon Prime; not to mention books and shopping. All this equates to a seriuos threat to AAPL (Apple Corp) itunes and ipad.
Figure 3
AMZN (Amazon.com Inc) stock has held up well and bucked a downward market trend during the month of September, and completed an 8 week, cup with high handle formation. While a 33% price retrace from the cup’s low to the pivot may be deep, there are very good signs of accumulation throughout the formation, and especially on the right side of the pattern. This makes AMZN (Amazon.com Inc) the stock to watch for October, but invest cautiously in this wild and crazy market.
June 23, 2009
July 31, 2008
I’d like to see the rally prove itself before diving in, but am willing to nibble and nimble. Keep in mind if today ends as a distribution (lower close on higher volume than yesterday on the DOW, S&P500, New York, NAS), then this rally will have a high probability of failing. However, if this rally holds, look for leadership in the railroads, biotechs, solars (maybe).
CANSLIM guru Gil Morales likes the action in the computer services in recent newsletters, a group I missed in my scans. These include IBM, ACN, and IT.
July 30, 2008
That’s me on page A4 of today’s IBD. The AP photographer was shooting these at the same time my SKF was tanking, so this was the best smile I could muster up. While I have my 5 minutes of fame, I like to thank some folks. God, mom, Susana, Rachel, Sarah. And the pros who help me keep an eye on the market: Covestor, IBD, Gil Morales and his newsletter service www.gilmoreport.com, Gary Kaltbaum’s Investor’s Edge radio show www.garyk.com.
July 30, 2008
The NASDAQ scored an 11th day follow through yesterday, a timing signal which IBD uses to determine a new market rally. For those not familiar with FT’s, here are a couple facts. No market rally has started without it, and it has a 70-80% success rate. But don’t stop reading yet, FT’s work best when it occurs on days 4 – 7 of a rally attempt, so an 11th day FT is failure prone. The market has also been going through wild swings lately, so I am mildly bullish at this point.
July 22, 2008
Today is the 6th day of a rally attempt and the market can go either direction; even both ways if volatility picks up. Former leaders; oils, ferts, techs are breaking down and a new crop of leaders are just starting to emerge; biotechs, truckers, industrial machinery. Keep an eye on SNHY, FLS, ODFL, JBHT, OSIP, CELG.
July 18, 2008
OK, I really blew it with my SKF trade. I had two successful trades then let emotions kick in. Greed, pride, all the stuff that kills investors. The good news, I do know where I went wrong. I also successfully applied a CANSLIM day trading technique which worked and would have protected me had I followed the rules. Here’s a rundown on how it works:
1) Study a chart and get to know it daily price volume characteristics. I’ve used SKF. The financial’s are under pressure, it trades very violently, but followed a buy on weakness sell on strength pattern. So my strategy was to buy off of support then sell as it came through resistance. See my SKF chart.
2) Monitor market conditions. We continued to be correcting. Financials, housing, were leading the market down. Accumulation was picking up on the SKF and it was about to complete the right side of a cup formed from 3/17.
Things I missed. SKF started going parabolic on 7/11, and was up 11 out of the last 13 days. The NASDAQ tested support on 7/15. The Put/Call equity ratio was approaching 1. These signs indicated an SKF top and increased chances of a market turnaround.
So what, I had my biggest one day loss ever. No one is prone to losses, and I’m in good company. Best of all, I learned a valuable lesson which will equate to future profits. There was way more important things in life than money.
June 24, 2008
The last of our very thin leadership, ferts and oils, is breaking down today. One or the other has carried the market on certain days, but today, for the first time since earlier in the month, everything is down. Compound this with the fact that laggards are todays leaders, the home builders and banks, and this all adds up to a classic bear market. And this one could be huge!
May 22, 2008
6 distribution days on the DOW and S&P, with back to back days has changed the tone for this market. Also note the one day change leadership stocks. What a difference a day makes. Now is the time to get out and raise cash.
Investor’s Business Daily Briefing.com
Leadership Stocks 