Category: 2 – Technical Trader

Since the last report two weeks ago, before our half-season break, four picks hit their stops. All were longs. Ironically, the only remaining pick is a short, and it has a minimal gain. I tightened the stop on it. For some odd reason, I suspect that it will get taken out. 😉

The current screen from charts as of the close on Friday, July 9, had a whopping 139 buys and 13 sells. Two of the sells were inverse funds, making the final score Bulls 141, Bears 11. But the kicker is that 7 of the sells were bond funds. There were only 4 equity sell signals out of the total 152 signals. That’s mind boggling.

I took a little vacation last week, so no weekly figures to compare. Before the break, they had been lopsided on the buy side. The market has made surprisingly little upside progress, given the surfeit of buy signals. There’s a lot of noise, and not a lot of direction in these signals.

The enormous bullish spread on Friday would normally suggest thrust, and a new upleg, meaning that this rally would be likely to run for weeks. But, once again, I wasn’t impressed after eyeballing all 152 of the charts with signals. Most looked to be of the rangebound whipsaw variety. I didn’t see that many that appeared to be in an early upmove setup. There were only 5 charts I liked enough to add to the list for this week.

Here are the picks I liked from Friday’s raw data. They’re all longs. The stop levels also represent no-go prices if the these long picks open below their stop.

Table in subscriber report.

This table summarizes recent list performance. Current charts of new picks are below.

Get the newest pick and review charts of existing picks in today’s report. Technical Trader subscribers click here to download the complete report. 

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Yet again, whenever I pick a few shorts to add to the list, the market smacks me upside the head. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. It’s like our permabear friends, whose names I’ll withhold out of respect for the dead, who have been warning for 12 years that the market is about to crash. They will be right one day. Well, every few months I’ll see a few short picks that I like and add them to the list. We’ll probably keep losing money on them, but one day, I’ll be right. You’ll see! 😆

Good grief, though. I’m beginning to wonder if this will ever end.

The list had an average performance of -0.2% on an average holding period of 6 calendar days, including a couple that got stopped out.  I’m adding two longs this week.

The current screen from charts as of the close on Friday, June 25, had 48 buys and 7 sells. Two of the sells were inverse funds, making the final score Bulls 50, Bears 5. I am adding two of the buys to the list for this week. They are highlighted in green in the chart below.

The bulls won every day last week, of course.  For the past 5 trading days, there were 244 buys versus 48 sells, a spread of +206. That’s the biggest bullish tilt since +218 on May 20.

But the character of this is different than the last two times there was a triple digit buy side advantage. Both of those rode the back of one big thrust day. This time it’s just been a steady roll higher. It feels like an end stage move, rather than an initial thrust.

Get the newest pick and review charts of existing picks in today’s report. Technical Trader subscribers click here to download the complete report. 

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Every week I run technical stock screens covering all NYSE and NASD stocks trading above $6 and averaging more than 1 million shares a day. This typically results in between 15 and 50 charts to review visually. I’m looking for low risk, high reward price structures, which I’m not smart enough to program into the screening process. But it’s ok. I like to look at charts. 

Existing picks, all longs, held up pretty well in last week’s selling. 3 of them dipped below their stops, with gains in two of the three. The newest pick, XXXX (subscribers), added last Monday, did surprisingly well.

As a result, list performance rose to an average of +4.2%, up from +0.2% the week before, on an average holding period of 16 days. The percentage change assumes cash trades, no margin, no options.

Every week I run technical stock screens covering all NYSE and NASD stocks trading above $6 and averaging more than 1 million shares a day. This typically results in between 15 and 50 charts to review visually. I’m looking for low risk, high reward price structures, which I’m not smart enough to program into the screening process. But it’s ok. I like to look at charts. 

My picks from the screens are churning along with the market. 3 picks dipped below their stops, with losses in two of the 3 resulting in a flat performance for the list overall.  List performance slipped to an average of +0.2%, down from +1.0% the week before, on an average holding period of 13 days. The percentage change assumes cash trades, no margin, no options.

It’s boring as hell.  All there is to do is to keep nibbling on charts that look promising. I managed to find one pick among Fridays’ screen output of 43 signals that looked good enough to add to the list this week. The idea is that when the market finally starts to move, we’ll have picks on the list that are positioned to take advantage.

The current screen from charts as of the close on June 11, had 28 buys and 15 sells.  That was the first time last week that buy signals had the edge. For the past 5 trading days, there were 95 buys versus 116 sells, a spread of -21. That compares with last Friday’s -37.  This is down from a peak of +218 on May 20.

However, there’s been no momentum breadth thrust to the downside either. So we wait for an impetus one way or the other. The market has simply drifted and churned, with most charts ambiguous, and few showing clear impetus either way. We’re looking at about 1300 stocks that meet minimum price and volume criteria, and only 43 generated signals either way. Booooring.

2/16/21 Every week I run technical stock screens covering all NYSE and NASD stocks trading above $6 and averaging more than 1 million shares a day. This typically results in between 15 and 50 charts to review visually. I’m looking for low risk, high reward price structures, which I’m not smart enough to program into the screening process. But it’s ok. I like to look at charts. 

Prices continued their rangebound churning last week. 2 picks dipped below their stops. Both were slightly profitable.

List performance slipped to an average of +1%, down from +2.4% the week before, on an average holding period of 14 days. The percentage change assumes cash trades, no margin, no options.

The stopouts left just 4 picks on the list. All are longs, and 3 look ok to hold, with stops adjusted based on trigger lines in the charts. Xxxx looks less favorable, so I have tightened the stop to near Friday’s low.