Last week’s daily screens tilted to the buy side, going against weakness in the market averages. The final score for the week was 97 Buys to 37 Sells. That reversed 3 straight weeks with a plurality of sells. Prior to this 3 week run, buy signals had held the edge for 3 weeks. Cycles!
However, on Thursday April 14 alone, there were just 6 buys and 33 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 the previous Friday through Thursday for the holiday shortened week. I then rescreened that output, for additional signals in the progression on Wednesday and Thursday. The final lists this week resulted in 67 chart pick candidates on the buy side and just 8 on the sell side. Slim pickings for shorts this week.
I reviewed the charts from the final output visually. From that review, I chose 4 buys and no shorts to add to the list, shown on the table below (Non subscribers click here for access).
Last week we started with 9 picks on the list. 3 were buys, 6 were short sales. Five 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 2.8% 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. Picks closed out in April so far have had an average gain of 1.8% with an average holding period of 11 days.
It would be nice if we could annualize these numbers, but reality doesn’t work that way.
The percentage gain is based on 100% cash positions, with no margin and no use of leverage or options.
This week we will start with 7 picks on the list including the 4 new ones. 6 are buys. 2 are shorts.
The new picks, along with picks that remain open, and those closed out last week, are shown on the table below (non-subscribers click here for access). Charts of new and open picks are below that.
Technical Trader subscribers click here to download the complete report.
