Skip to main content

What theme is emerging from this market carnage?

With the market practically crashing again I wondered if there were any industries hiding stocks with strength.

Poking around in the Industry Inspector at our sister site TradingStockAlerts.com actually did yield a little theme in an unexpected area.

I sorted the list of industries according to percentage of stocks above their 50-day moving average. At the top of the list was the Consumer Services/Automotive Aftermarket industry which contains only one stock: Monro Muffler and Brake (MNRO).

Re-sorting to look for industries with stocks showing bullish MACD and up near the top was the Consumer Services/Motor Vehicles industry. Among the three stocks in this segment is Midas, Inc. (MDS), otherwise known as Midas Muffler.

These stocks seem barely affected by the recent downturn but the simple reason is strong earnings. Both companies rolled up increases in sequential revenues and earnings. On a year-over-year basis, Midas disappointed a bit on revenue but shined on earnings while Monro did well in both revenue and earnings.

The theme that may be emerging here is that consumers, impacted by falling markets, disarray in Washington and Europe and a stagnant job market, are getting increasingly skittish and are restricting their expenditures. Rather than risking getting financially extended in an uncertain economy by taking on an auto loan, many are fixing their current car. Truth be told, this is looking increasingly like the more prudent move.

This kind of caution about making large purchases due to fears of a potential recession can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. For investors, however, it does suggest that certain companies that help consumers extend the life of big-ticket items, or other companies that offer rock-bottom prices for consumers forced into frugality, will be the beneficiaries of this situation.

What industries or sectors do you think might fit this theme?

Disclosure: no positions in any stocks mentioned in this article

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