Skip to main content

Alert HQ for the week ending 7-11-2008

This post is to announce that the latest list of stock alerts is up and available at Alert HQ. Each week we scan over 7200 stocks and ETFs looking for fresh BUY and SELL signals.

This week's market action showed that wherever the financials are, indexes go down. The Dow and the S&P 500 showed 1.7% and 1.9% declines. Financials make up a significant percentage of those indexes even though their weight has been reduced compared to other sectors. Where the financials do not predominate, indexes actually saw some gains or at least a very small loss: Midcap 400 up 0.1%, Russell 2000 up 1.4% and the NASDAQ down only 0.3% on the week.

Nevertheless, it is a tough market for holding stocks. With rumors swirling around Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, investors have been especially skittish. As a result, markets have traded in wide ranges each day. Throw Iran/Israel and the price of oil into the mix and you have the makings of a spicy stew indeed.

As I have been saying for weeks now, the market turmoil is making it difficult to find good stock alerts on the BUY side and is putting tremendous pressure on previous BUY signals. This week we see at least a slowing of the carnage as, based on daily data, there are only 21 SELL signals. This is two thirds less SELL signals when compared to last week and, with 9 BUY signals this week we increased the number of BUY signals by one. Before we get too excited however, we need to keep in mind one data point does not make a trend. Also this week, we have 2 BUY signals and 23 SELL signals based on weekly data.

What to do with all these SELL signals? If you are not disposed to trading on the short side, you may take a contrarion approach and look through our list of SELL signals for good companies that are beginning to trade at bargain prices. Build that watchlist and be ready to move when price levels are attractive.

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.

Unlock Stock Market Profits - Key #1

This is the first in an ongoing series of articles where I discuss what I feel are keys to successful investing. It is based on a post that provides a summary of the ten keys that individual investors should use to identify profitable stock trades. ( Click here to read the original post ) There are two basic steps to investing. First, you need to find stocks that seem to have some potential. Then you have to determine whether these stocks are actually good investments. There are many stocks that at first glance look interesting, but further research reveals that there are too many negatives to warrant taking a position. This first post in the series starts at the beginning: getting good investment ideas. Key #1: If something special is happening to a stock, it will be reflected in some kind of unusual activity in the markets. As individual investors, we will never be the first to know; however, unusual activity can be an early sign that allows us to follow the Wall Street professional