Stockscores.com Perspectives for the week ending August 22, 2010
Avoid Problems to Make Profits
In this week’s issue:
Weekly Commentary
Strategy of the Week
Stocks That Meet The Featured Strategy
As investors, our natural inclination is to seek out stocks that have good qualities. We look for reasons to buy the stocks we are considering and often forget to look for the negatives. Since there are thousands of stocks to consider and almost all of them can have some reason for buying them, it may be better to reverse how we approach the analysis of stocks. Looking for reasons not to buy a stock will emphasize a higher standard for the stocks you do buy and will help to improve your overall market performance.
Here is a list of common reasons I use to throw a stock out of consideration:
Too Much Volatility
Volatility is uncertainty. Virtually every good chart pattern that I use to find winners demonstrates a break out from low volatility. The narrower the range before the breakout, the more important the breakout becomes. If the stock’s price is moving all over the place before it makes a break through resistance then there is a much greater chance that the breakout is false and will likely fall back. Ignore stocks that have a lot of price volatility before the break out.
Not Enough Reward for the Risk
A stock can go two ways, up or down, after you buy it. If the upside potential is not enough to justify the downside risk, then you should ignore the opportunity. I like stocks to have at least double the upside potential for the downside risk. That way, you don’t have to be right even half of the time to make money, provided you are disciplined of course.
Lack of Optimism
Fundamentals do not matter. It is the perception of Fundamentals that matter. If investors are not showing some optimism about a company’s prospects then it is likely that they are not paying any attention to the company’s fundamentals. Look for rising bottoms on the chart as an indication that investors are optimistic, if there aren’t any, leave the stock alone.
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No Abnormal Behavior
The stock market is efficient most of the time. That means that you can not expect to consistently beat the stock market because all available information is priced in to the stock and your success at predicting new information can only be random. To beat the market, we have to look for break downs in market efficiency. I find that the best way to do this is look for abnormal behavior in the trading of a stock because it implies that there is significant new information playing a role in the stock’s performance. I don’t consider any stock that lacks abnormal behavior in its recent trading.
Too Far Up
The higher a stock goes, the riskier it becomes. I don’t like to chase stocks higher. If I look at a 6 month chart of a stock and it has made more than two steps up, I don’t consider it. A one day run of substantial gains is not a concern; I want to ignore stocks that have been in upward trends for some time. Look for stocks that are breaking from periods of sideways trading, not up trends.
Lack of Liquidity
The more often a stock trades, the easier it is to get in and out of it. Stocks that are not actively traded tend to have wider spreads between their bids and asks and it can be difficult to move in and out of the stock. Don’t consider stocks that don’t trade every day and they should trade at least 50 times a day but more is better.
Mixed Messages
I always try to look at a stock’s chart on more than one time frame. If the message is not the same on both charts, I leave them alone. When day trading, look at the daily and intraday charts. When position trading, look at the daily and weekly charts.
Any time you think a stock has great potential, give this list a look and see if any of these factors show up. If so, it may be a good idea to move on and look for something else.
A couple of recent features from the daily newsletter are still worth considering. Each showed some abnormal market action that tends to come early in upward trends. My focus with these picks was on lower priced stocks that have a greater tendency to be uncorrelated to the overall market, given the difficulty in predicting where the general market is likely to go in the future.
I found these stocks using the Stockscores Market Scan tool, seeking out stocks that were trading with abnormal volume and breaking through 15 day resistance. This is a scan that I like to do daily.
1. PEIX
PEIX broke to the upside from a rising bottom on Tuesday, trading abnormal volume in the process. Support is at $0.46.
2. ABAT
ABAT first broke to the upside on abnormal volume on August 10th but failed to hold its highs of the day and settled back toward support. A few days later, it bounced off of its support price and rallied higher again. For most of this past week, the stock has pulled back but started to show some buying interest again on Friday afternoon. Support at $3.45.
References
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Tyler Bollhorn started trading the stock market with $3,000 in capital, some borrowed from his credit card, when he was just 19 years old. As he worked through the Business program at the University of Calgary, he constantly followed the market and traded stocks. Upon graduation, he could not shake his addiction to the market, and so he continued to trade and study the market by day, while working as a DJ at night. From his 600 square foot basement suite that he shared with his brother, Mr. Bollhorn pursued his dream of making his living buying and selling stocks.
Slowly, he began to learn how the market works, and more importantly, how to consistently make money from it. He realized that the stock market is not fair, and that a small group of people make most of the money while the general public suffers. Eventually, he found some of the key ingredients to success, and turned $30,000 in to half a million dollars in only 3 months. His career as a stock trader had finally flourished.
Much of Mr Bollhorn’s work was pioneering, so he had to create his own tools to identify opportunities. With a vision of making the research process simpler and more effective, he created the Stockscores Approach to trading, and partnered with Stockgroup in the creation of the Stockscores.com web site. He found that he enjoyed teaching others how the market works almost as much as trading it, and he has since taught hundreds of traders how to apply the Stockscores Approach to the market.
Disclaimer
This is not an investment advisory, and should not be used to make investment decisions. Information in Stockscores Perspectives is often opinionated and should be considered for information purposes only. No stock exchange anywhere has approved or disapproved of the information contained herein. There is no express or implied solicitation to buy or sell securities. The writers and editors of Perspectives may have positions in the stocks discussed above and may trade in the stocks mentioned. Don’t consider buying or selling any stock without conducting your own due diligence.