the Trade-Radar + TradingStockAlerts blog

An ETF I wasn't familiar with showed up on the ETF Trend Performance Report at Alert HQ this weekend. At the top of the list, with an improvement of 2.5 points out of a total of  6 possible points was the PowerShares XTF: Dynamic OTC Portfolio (PWO). This ETF is not based on the typical market cap weighted passive index. PWO is based on the Dynamic OTC Intellidex. This is an "active" index that selects holdings based on a variety of investment criteria including fundamental growth, stock valuation, investment timeliness and risk factors. In other words, this ETF is an actively managed fund, whether managed by computer or by a human investment committee, the literature does not say. In any case, the goal is provide alpha beyond what the typical ETF would offer. The following diagram, from the PowerShares Dynamic ETF prospectus shows how the selection process is handled: The 5-year return of the Dynamic OTC Portfolio ETF may not be especially impressive when compare...

Now that the Fed has rolled out QE2, many investors are surprised that bonds have been struggling, especially the longer maturities. Those ETFs that hold 20 and 30 year Treasuries and corporate bonds, for example, have been especially weak. While this has resulted in higher yields it is having the unfortunate effect of decreasing the capital gains that investors have enjoyed after a multi-month run-up in prices. This is making life complicated for dividend and income investors. Among the features of the Alert HQ Premium site there are several stock screens that focus on dividends. In particular, I will be identifying those stocks that just raised their dividend during the previous week and yet are still more or less in the value stock category. The following list is from this weekend's screen: Symbol Name Last Price EV to EBITDA PE Ratio Price to Sales New Dividend Yield New Annual Dividend Old Annual Dividend AFSI AmTrust Financial Se...

You may be a aware of some of the controversy surrounding for-profit schools like Apollo Group's University of Phoenix. The U.S. Department of Education intends to review financial-aid practices at the school. Many for-profit education companies face federal scrutiny because almost 90 percent of the companies’ revenues derive from funds from the Title IV federal aid program. Many of these funds are disbursed to the schools as government-guaranteed student loans. Essentially, the schools can't lose if students fail to finish their degree programs or default on the loans. The schools have been accused of marketing too aggressively to sign up students and get their hands on the Federal student loan money with little regard for the students or their potential to actually benefit from the programs being offered. The difficulties many students have in obtaining the jobs the schools led them to expect has also led critics to contend that the for-profit schools are simply in business...

This weekend's report on reasonable value stocks that increased dividends in the last week included two stocks. The one I'd like to focus on is Alliance Resource Partners, L.P. The symbol is ARLP. The company just raised its dividend from $3.24 to $3.32 which works out to a forward annual dividend rate of 5.5% which, in these days of zero interest rate policy, is not too shabby. As the title of this post suggests, the company is engaged in the production and marketing of coal for utilities and industrial users. They also provide systems and services for the mining and transportation of coal. I alluded to the fact that the company qualifies as one of my "reasonable value" stocks. With a PE of 8, a PEG less than 1, Enterprise Value/EBITDA less than 6, Price-to-Sales less than the average for both the sector and the S&P 500, the stock certainly can't be considered particularly over-priced. In terms of growth, y-o-y revenues increased by 37% and y-o-y ear...

Just a couple of days ago I wrote a post about the newest release of the Trade-Radar Stock Inspector software (read: Trade-Radar Stock Inspector update -- especially important for those who track weekly and monthly data ). As the title suggests, that post focused on improvements in the processing for weekly and monthly data. This post is a follow-on to explain how to correct old price data that may contain errors from back before the latest release. Note that stocks with weekly data in the database have the suffix "-W" tacked onto the symbol in the "Stock Symbol" dropdown. Similarly, stocks with monthly data in the database have the suffix "-M" tacked onto the symbol. Even if you are not sure if you have erroneous data, it is easy to just get rid of it and get fresh data. Here are the steps to take: Select the stock or ETF you wish to fix and click the "Search Database" button If the chart is displayed, click the Exit button at the top righ...

It has sort of been an event driven week. The mid-term elections were held Tuesday and the Republican surge occurred as expected. Since this was not exactly a surprise, market reaction was just modestly positive. On Wednesday, the Federal Open Market Committee finally announced QE2 and provided the details of how it would be implemented - carefully and with restraint. Markets barely budged until Thursday, when stocks finally put on a strong follow-through rally. Friday, the Non-Farm Payroll report was published and surprised everyone with a relatively strong gain in private employment. Perversely, the market reaction was a big "ho hum". So Thursday provided a big gain and every other day in the week provided just small gains which in total, though, added up to a pretty strong week for the stock market with the S&P 500 up 3.6% and the Russell 2000 up 4.7%. Does that mean we no longer have to worry about the deteriorating breadth that we were seeing for the last two weeks...

This is a quick post to let all of you know that a new version of Trade-Radar Stock Inspector is available.  We are up to version 6.0.10 now. What has changed -- I received an email from a trial user the other day who said that he was encountering an error when he tried to enter a symbol for a stock on the Bombay stock exchange. It seemed to work fine for daily data but the program blew up when trying to get weekly or monthly data. In solving this problem (the field that contains the symbol had to be made larger in the database), it got me started looking at how the program processes weekly and monthly data. And this led me to fix a few other things. You may not have noticed that the program attempts to pull in intra-day data when the markets are open and you are retrieving daily data. It does a similar thing when looking at weekly data and monthly data. Where the problem occurred is that a new record was created for mid-week or mid-month data, leading to extra data points ...

Consistency is tough to achieve. The following table of stocks comes from a list of those companies that reported during the month or so that comprised earnings seasons in Q1, Q2 and Q3 of this year. The screen uses the following criteria: The company beat earnings estimates each quarter There was an increase in year-over-year earnings each quarter There was an increase in year-over-year revenues each quarter The company offered upside guidance in Q1 and Q2 Symbol Name Sector ALTR Altera Technology ANAD Anadigics Technology APH Amphenol Capital Goods APKT Acme Packet Technology BWA Borg Warner Capital Goods EMN Eastman Chem Basic Industries ETN Eaton Technology FFIV F5 Networks Technology HITT Hittite Microwave Technology INTC Intel Technology IPGP IPG Photonics Technology LXK Lexmark Technology LZ Lubrizol Basic Industries OFIX Orthofix Health Care PII Polaris Inds Capital Goods ...

Do two data points make a trend? Breakouts by power semiconductor companies are starting to establish a pattern. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about ON Semiconductor (ONNN) in a post titled " ON Semiconductor -- on a roll as it breaks out ". Today we have a breakout by Power Integrations (POWI) that is worthy of notice. The stock has appeared on our Trend Busters list based on weekly data. Here is the weekly chart: Note the breakout above the bearish trend line. If you look at a chart based on daily data, you will see that the stock is challenging its 200-day moving average. A little nudge and a bullish trend could be confirmed. Background --  Power Integrations, Inc. designs, develops, manufactures, and markets proprietary, high-voltage, and analog integrated circuits for use in high-voltage power conversion. Their ICs are used in TV set-top boxes, DVD players, desktop computers, liquid crystal display monitors, and power adapters for notebook computers as well as...