Skip to main content

Alert HQ for the week ending 2-22-2008

The latest lists of stock alerts are up and available at Alert HQ.

It was a messy week on Wall Street and the result can be seen in this week's alerts. A mere eleven BUY signals and only one SELL signal.

On the buy side, it is hard to say there is a trend but we do see a couple of energy-related companies, a couple of tech companies and a uranium company.

Interestingly, this week's lone sell signal continues last week's trend: it's a bond fund.


Enhanced alert process rolled out this week

The TradeRadar signal process is all about trend reversal. To enhance our alert accuracy, I have added several new tests, the results of which are also recorded for each stock in the alert file. Before I get into them, I would like to review the current data that is provided in the alert list.

As can be expected, I provide the stock symbol, name, the exchange on which it trades, the last price and the signal strength of the TradeRadar signal. I have also been indicating whether a stock's 20-day moving average has crossed its 50-day moving average. This last is not a requirement to be included on the list but it does give confirmation that a move is strong if the cross-over has been detected.

With this week's list, I am adding two new indicators: DMI and Aroon. Both are useful for determining trend direction and trend strength.

DMI, also know as the Directional Movement Indicator, is used to evaluate the strength of a current trend. There are three components to the system. The average directional movement index, or ADX, determines the market trend. When used with the other two components of the system, the up and down directional indicator values, +DI and -DI, the DMI can be used to confirm the TradeRadar signals.

We don't reject a stock if the DMI is unclear or going in the wrong direction but we provide our DMI reading in the alert list so you will have one more data point to consider.

Aroon is an indicator system that can be used to determine whether a stock is trending or not and how strong the trend is. When Aroon(up) dips below 50, it indicates that the current trend has lost its upward momentum. Similarly, when Aroon(down) dips below 50, the current downtrend has lost its momentum. Values above 70 indicate a strong trend in the same direction as the Aroon (up or down) is under way.

Aroon is now used as a test criteria when generating our list of alerts. This means if a stock generates a TradeRadar signal but fails the Aroon test, it will not be included in the alert list. We do provide the Aroon readings that we got for each stock that does make our list.

My expectation is that these enhancements will make the TradeRadar alert lists that much more reliable.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Brazil - in a bubble or on a roll?

A couple of years ago, no one recognized the real estate bubble even though it was under everyone's nose. Now, analysts and bloggers are seeing bubbles everywhere they look. One of them, they say is in Brazil whose Bovespa stock market index has doubled in the last 12 months. Does the bubble accusation hold water? I don't think so and here are 7 reasons why Brazil is by no means a bubble economy: Exports have held up over the past year thanks to demand from China for Brazil's soya exports and iron ore. This was helped by the the Brazilian government's drive to improve trade links with Asia and Africa. Export diversification, spurred by a more active trade policy and increased focus on "south-south" trade under current president Lula, helped mitigate the decline in demand from OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries A "sensible" economic framework has been in place since the 1990's. This has included inflation

Trade Radar gets another update

Some of our data sources changed again and it impacted our ability to load fundamental/financial data. In response, we are rolling out a new version of the software: 7.1.24 The data sourcing issues are fixed and some dead links in the Chart menu were removed. So whether you are a registered user or someone engaged in the free trial, head over to our update page and download the latest version. The update page is here:   https://tradingstockalerts.com/software/downloadpatch Contact us if you have questions or identify any new issues.

Interactive Ads - Google one-ups Yahoo again

Google's ( GOOG ) press release describing the expansion of a beta program for what are being called Gadget Ads has again shown that Google is unparalleled at melding technology and advertising to benefit its bottom line. Gadget Ads are mini-web pages or "widgets" that can be embedded within publisher pages. I have written in the past on Yahoo's ( YHOO ) Smart Ads and how, by more precisely targeting site users and adjusting ad content accordingly, they provide a much desired evolution of the banner or display ad format. Though Smart Ads and Gadget Ads are not really the same, I think it is fair to say that Google has seen the challenge of Smart Ads and has chosen to leapfrog Yahoo by rolling out its own update to the display ad format. The evolution of the Gadget Ad -- One of the trends on the Internet over the last year or so involves software developers creating "widgets" which can be hosted within web pages and blogs. Widgets can be pretty much anything