Last week’s daily screens tilted to the sell side again. The final score for the week was 125 Sells to 82 Buys. This was the third straight week with a plurality of sells. Prior to this 3 week run, buy signals had held the edge for 3 weeks.
On Friday April 8 alone, there were 11 buys and 41 sells, portending a soft start for this week.
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The screen results come from a universe of approximately1200-1500 stocks daily that meet the criteria of trading above $6.00, and with average volume greater than a million shares per day. The final numbers show the number of stocks with at least one buy signal or sell signal during the week.
I start the weekly process by screening for daily buys and sells from Monday through Thursday. I then rescreen that output, for additional signals in the progression on Thursday and Friday. The final lists this week resulted in 8 chart pick candidates on the buy side and 15 on the sell side.
I reviewed the charts from the final output visually. From that review, I chose 1 buy and 2 shorts to add to the list, shown on the table below (subscriber version).
Last week we started with 9 picks on the list. 5 were buys, 4 were short sales. Three picks hit their trailing stops and were closed as of the stop price. Including those and the picks still open at the end of the week gave us average gains of 5.3% with an average holding period of 11 days.
Picks closed out in March had an average gain of 4% with an average holding period of 20 calendar days. The percentage gain is based on 100% cash positions, with no margin and no use of leverage or options. The use of leverage and options will magnify both gains and losses.
Likewise, it would be nice if we could annualize these numbers, but reality doesn’t work that way. Some months have what traders euphemistically call “drawdowns” — losses by any other name.
This week we will start with 9 picks on the list including the 3 new ones. 3 are buys. 6 are shorts.
The new picks, along with picks that remain open, and those closed out last week, are shown on the table below (subscriber version only). Charts of new and open picks are below that.
Technical Trader subscribers click here to download the complete report.
