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Showing posts from April, 2011

inTest Corp -- looking cheap and threatening to breakout

I have a stock screener setup that looks for stocks with several fundamental growth characteristics combined with two technical characteristics. Here's how it looks: Company is profitable; ie, PE above zero Quarterly YoY sales growth positive Quarterly YoY earnings per share growth positive Return on Equity over 20% Debt to Equity ratio under 1 Stock's performance is 5% above the S&P 500 MACD just turned bullish To this list I added one more criteria: price should be under $5. Two stocks popped up: Full House Resorts, Inc. (FLL) - a company in the Consumer Services-Misc. Amusement & Recreation sector InTest Corp. (INTT) - a company in the semiconductor automated test equipment sector Since I tend to be most interested in tech stocks, let me focus on inTest. inTest specializes in the hardware that interfaces between probes and the chips being tested. It also offers thermal testing equipment including test chambers. At a market cap of $42 million, they fa

Working to overcome "Registration Reluctance" and gain your trust

A couple of weeks ago I started writing about my new investing site, TradingStockAlerts.com , and encouraged readers to check out the new Premium Stock Screener . I'd like to take this opportunity to let you know that I have made it easier than ever to access the screener and other password-protected parts of the site. When I set up the Premium Stock Screener , I required that users register at the site in order to use it. I offer a free account but I now realize that I was making an unnecessary demand on potential users. After all, creating a login is a pain in the you-know-what and we all have too many logins and passwords to remember these days anyway. It turns out that things can be much simpler and easier and I'm excited to share with you how much better the setup is now. First of all, you now have a simple choice of what to do located at the top right of the page: If you are new to the site, you would click the Register link which would take you to the Join! p

Tyco's are breaking out all over

While the spotlight has been on Tyco International (TYC) and the Wall Street Journal's report of a takeover bid by France's Schneider Electric, a company with a similar name has been quietly working on a reversal. Formerly known as Tyco Electric, the company now called TE Connectivity (TEL) is in the process of potentially staging a bullish trend reversal. The stock has closed for two days in a row above the downward-sloping trend line I have drawn in blue on the chart above. Encouragingly, the move has been on increased volume. What is nice about this stock is that it does not seem to be over-priced so it could have some room to run. Looking at some of the valuation numbers, we see the stock easily has a "reasonable value" profile. Trailing PE of 13 and forward PE of 10. Price-to-sales of 1.26, PEG of 1.04 and ratio of Enterprise Value to EBITDA of only 7.35 In terms of growth, TEL has been doing OK. Year-over-year quarterly revenue increased by 10% and earn

Dodd-Frank as economic stimulus?

Say what you will about the effectiveness of the Dodd-Frank legislation and all the new regulations the law ushers in. One thing is becoming clear: it's going to be a benefit to the IT and consulting industries just as Sarbanes-Oxley was. According to the magazine Wall Street Technology, capital markets firms are expected to spend some $44 billion on IT in 2011 and a large part of this 6% increase over 2010 is due to Dodd-Frank. These companies are looking to put systems in place to enforce compliance and implement controls. Even as interpretation of the regulations continues to evolve, the companies know they need to begin ramping up their IT efforts. Furthermore, many companies are more focused on risk management than they ever used to be as a result of having the fear of God, so to speak, instilled in them during the Great Financial Crisis. So there are some IT professionals who will be hired as a result of this. But the greatest benefit will go to the consulting and audit

How to track the latest earnings updates

Last week I wrote a post introducing my new site TradingStockAlerts.com and described some of the cool things the site's Premium Stock Screener can do. Today, I'd like to dig into the screener a little further and show how you can keep track of changes in sales and earnings as this upcoming earnings season unfolds. One of the major advantages of the Premium Stock Screener is that it provides a way to track changes: including but not limited to changes in trend, changes in moving averages and changes in various financial measures. Take a look at this video and see how easy it is to keep up with changes in earnings on a weekly basis. If this looks useful to you, please join us at TradingStockAlerts.com