the Trade-Radar + TradingStockAlerts blog

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.

Before I get into the E-Zones I want to introduce users of TradingStockAlerts to the Trade-Radar blog. This blog has been in existence for over 10 years but, having experienced "blogger burnout", it has been quite a while since I added any new content. In any case, since Trade-Radar LLC owns and operates TradingStockAlerts.com and I wanted to tell users about improvements to the E-Zone System, I thought I would bring back to life the old blog and tie it to TradingStockAlerts. So, welcome, readers, I hope you find new posts (or old ones) useful. Now, on to the E-Zones. The E-Zone System was first devised some years ago, prior to the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Since its inception, markets have become ever more fast moving and volatile, with high-speed algorithm-driven trading, ETFs, etc.  It was time to revisit the E-Zone System and ensure that is was still effective in today's environment. To that end, we undertook a rigorous back-testing effort to identify po...

I'm sure you have noticed that the Trade-Radar software has not been able to download data since around May 16th. An updated version of the software is now available that solves the problem. To get the new release, you can simply go to our Update page at http://traderadarsoftware.com/downloads/update and grab a copy of the full installation package. We have added a few extras to this latest release including some new charting features and the facility to notify you when a new version of the software is available. If you encounter any further problems or have any questions, let us know by clicking the Contact Me link at the bottom of this page and sending us a message. Thank you for your patience.

If you have started to encounter problems downloading data into Trade-Radar Stock Inspector, you are not alone. Have you seen the program hang up when it reaches about halfway through the download process? Help is available! We have detected some changes in data format of intra-day data from Yahoo and we have assembled a patch file that resolves this problem and will hopefully prevent it from happening again in the future. Click this link to our patch download page and follow the instructions. You will just download the TradeRadar executable file and copy it into the folder where you originally installed the program. Please feel free to email me if you have questions or issues. Use the Contact Us link at the bottom of the download page.

Development of the original TradeRadar Stock Inspector software was begun back in the days before Windows 7 and Windows 8 were available. As these newer versions of Windows have become more popular, we have heard from some users that they are having problems installing and running TradeRadar on their newer PCs. The good news is that TradeRadar will work just fine on Windows 7 and Windows 8. All you have to do is adjust the Windows Compatibility Settings to ensure TradeRadar runs as intended. It is recommended that you can apply Compatibility Settings when running the initial installation; however, it is also possible to apply Compatibility Settings after the program has been installed. Prior to installation After downloading the install program, go to the folder where you have stored the TradeRadarStkInsp_7_Setup.exe or TradeRadarStkInsp_7_PRO_Setup.exe executable. Right-click on the executable file and select Properties. Click the Compatibility tab. Adjust the Compatibilit...

End of an era! This site was started way back in 2006/2007 to showcase my blog posts and the Alert HQ buy signals and sell signals. Alert HQ grew to include other kinds of stock alerts including Swing Signals, Trend Busters, Trend Leaders, Cash Flow Kings and more. In the meantime, I built a sister site, TradingStockAlerts.com and I started using some of the same Alert HQ content over there. As a result, I am discontinuing the Alert HQ data here at Trade-Radar.com The good news, however, is that all the Alert HQ signals and stock screens are still completely free. In addition, the pages have been enhanced so that you can hover over a stock symbol and a small chart will pop up so you can get a quick look at the stock's recent price action. If you click on a symbol it will take you to a page with plenty of financial and technical analysis information (still free!) as well as a larger chart that you can play with in terms of adding or deleting indicators, moving averages, etc...

Yes, at long, long last a new version is available! I am very please to be able to announce that Stock Inspector Version 7 is here and it is guaranteed to make finding Buy and Sell signals simpler. The major new features in this version significantly improve the ease of use of the program and add valuable new functionality. Here is a quick overview:  New Watch List and Watch List Reports plus Automated Data Download and Signal Generation Watch List functionality has been added: Click a checkbox on the Dashboard screen to designate a stock to be on the Watch List Ability to run unattended Batch Load updates for all Watch List stocks - downloads latest stock data and fundamentals and automatically generates up-to-date Buy/Sell signals viewable in Watch List reports Two reports have been created to monitor the results of data loading and signal analysis Watch List – All Signals Report : shows the result of analysis from the point of view of bo...

I wanted to provide warning that the Alerts Plus+ feature on this site will be discontinued by the end of this month. The content, however, is currently available and will remain available at our sister site TradingStockAlerts.com For those of you who follow the Dividend and Value alerts (Reasonable Value Trend Busters, Dividend Growers, Reasonable Value Dividend Growers, etc.) or the Special Reports (Over-Valued Over-Bought, Ebb & Flow Report, Value and Growth, etc.), you will be happy to know that they are all still running at  TradingStockAlerts.com . The alerts and reports listed above are all under the "Stocks to Watch" menu item and you can go directly to them at the PremiumAlerts Stocks to Watch page. Alerts Plus+ also has a selection of alerts dedicated to ETFs. These have also moved to TradingStockAlerts.com. They can be found under the "ETFs" menu item and are all listed on the PremiumAlerts ETF Analysis page. The good news here is that ther...

You may know that Trade-Radar Stock Inspector uses financial data from Yahoo! Recently Yahoo! started adding nearly up-to-the-minute price and volume data to its historical data download. Later in the evening, after the trading day is over, Yahoo! seems to add a second entry for the same day (maybe it's after-hours trading data, they don't say). In any case, all this can cause some inaccurate results in Trade-Radar. Download the fix right away! We've built in a way to get around this problem and the new version of Trade-Radar Stock Inspector is now working as it should. Plus we've fixed a couple of minor bugs while we were at it including the dreaded Error 9 (Subscript out of range) error related to occasional problems in the trend analysis functionality when viewing the charts . Just go to   this special download page   and get the newest version now. Some readers who are signed up for the Trade-Radar Software Users Group will be receiving an email with this same i...

We are about to begin another earnings season so I thought it might be a good idea to review how the most recent earnings season turned out. I have focused first of all on earnings growth; ie, the change in quarterly earnings on a year-over-year basis. The change was converted into a percentage growth calculation in order to compare growth rates across multiple quarters. For 4Q-2011 (results for 4th quarter 2011 as reported during 1st quarter 2012) the numbers are as follows: Out of our universe of roughly 5600 stocks that we follow (ETFs are excluded for the purposes of this analysis), 1445 companies showed earnings growth in the most recent quarter that exceeded the earnings growth registered in the previous quarter. This means that 25% of companies actually showed earnings growth acceleration. That seems to be to be pretty solid results. To widen our net a bit, I then looked at stocks who did not have accelerating growth but whose earnings growth year-over-year was at least st...

E*TRADE recently rolled out commission-free trading of a select group of ETFs from Wisdom Tree, Global-X and Deutsche Bank (db-X funds). No doubt, this is in reaction to a similar move that Charles Schwab made last year and that proved popular with investors and investment advisors alike. In any case, this is good news for investors who happen to have an E*TRADE account. Not only does this reduce trading costs, it provides a wide-ranging set of ETFs that can be used to construct highly diversified portfolios. ETFs include target date funds, currency funds, numerous single-country and global ETFs and an interesting set of style-based ETFs. Examples of the styles available include dividend focused, earnings focused, small cap, mid cap and large cap and combinations of the above. The one drawback is that U.S. sector funds are largely absent. For example, there are no tech ETFs available. The main question, though, is whether these ETFs are good investments. I can say that many...

The Durable Goods advanced report for September 2011 was released on Wednesday. I like to dig into the Durable Goods report because it can be useful for seeing how tech in aggregate is performing and how the sector may perform in the future. I always focus on two particular measures: shipments and new orders. Let's see how it played out last month. Shipments --  I generally give less importance to Shipments since this is a backward looking measure reflecting orders that have been confirmed, manufactured and shipped. It's similar to earnings reports -- it's good to know but the data is in the past and we're more interested in the future. The following chart shows how September shipments looked for the overall tech sector: Results for the overall tech sector were a bit weak but take a look at the next chart which tracks the Computers and related products segment: Results here were actually quite good and, to make things even better, the previous month wa...

Since August, the market has been in a funk, plunging at the end of July and then range-bound, more or less moving sideways for two months. The top of the range is notated in the chart below by the horizontal magenta line in the daily chart of SPY, the S&P 500 ETF. On Friday, however, we finally got a decisive move out of the range and above the magenta line. The question on everyone's minds is: does this breakout have staying power? Activity in Europe is still the wildcard and is pretty much unpredictable so in this post we'll just stick to the the technicals as we see them. The view from Alert HQ -- For those readers who are new to TradeRadar or who don't remember what this is all about, the data for the following charts is generated from our weekly Alert HQ process. We scan roughly 6200 stocks and ETFs each weekend and gather the statistics presented below. In this first chart below we count the number of stocks above various exponential moving averages a...

Stocks went on another wild on Thursday (window-dressing?) and in an interesting turn of events the Dow finished up over 1% while the NASDAQ 100 finished down 1%. This was surprising to me since tech has been trading in a much more positive way than most other sectors or indexes. This could mean there is a buying opportunity coming up for the following stocks. These five companies are all profitable and their 50-day exponential moving averages are in the process of turning up. (Note that we found these stocks using a freely available preset for the Premium Stock Screener at TradingStockAlerts.com) Here are the five stocks, all of which were trading above their 50-day EMA as of the close on Thursday. I have included a quick take on their financial status, current valuation and technical outlook. CommVault Systems, Inc. ( CVLT ) -- This company has solid financials but is somewhat over-priced. Nevertheless, the stock is in an up-trend. It could be a buy on a pullback if you are co...

Here we go again. At the beginning of August SPY crossed below its 200-day moving average and made brutal downward move. Since that time, the ETF and many other indices and their associated ETFs have been tracing out what is know as a "bear flag" on their daily charts. This week SPY and the rest broke below the bottom line of the flag pattern. Here's what it looks like: The blue lines show the flag. The black oval shows where we ended the week. Despite a rally on Friday, SPY is clearly on bearish side of this pattern. Furthermore, a sizable gap was opened up on the way down. In addition, the bottom line of the flag pattern, formerly support, now becomes resistance. The expectation now that the breakdown has occurred is that SPY could fall another 10 to 15 points. With SPY about to test the low for 2011, we should see what some of our Trade-Radar market measures are telling us. The view from Alert HQ -- For those readers who are new to TradeRadar or who don...

As I was poking through the Alert HQ results of the last few days, one company’s name seemed to keep popping up: Standex International Corporation (SXI). Standex showed up on the following screens/reports at TradingStockAlerts.com : Reversal Alerts based on Daily Data   Value and Growth Report   Trend Buster Report    Reasonable Value Trend Buster Report   Furthermore, if you enter the symbol into the Stock Search function on TradingStockAlerts.com , you will see that Standex comes up as a BUY there, too Background -- Standex International Corporation is a small-cap diversified manufacturing company with the following five divisions: Food Service Equipment Group - manufactures commercial food service equipment for restaurants, convenience stores, quick-service restaurants, supermarkets, drug stores, hotels, casinos, and corporate and school cafeterias, as well as serves health science and medical markets.  Air Distribution Products Group - ...

Here is a quick list of value stocks that are breaking out in a bullish direction over their downward sloping trend lines. Symbol Name Sector Industry PE Ratio Price to Sales Price to Book PEG Ratio Enterprise Value to EBITDA CPX Complete Production Services, Inc. Energy Oilfield Services/ Equipment 13.92 1.19 2.46 0.66 5.24 FLL Full House Resorts, Inc. Consumer Services Services-Misc. Amusement & Recreation 8.52 1.13 1.26 0.43 3.07 HELE Helen of Troy Limited Consumer Durables Home Furnishings 9.47 1.04 1.3 0.84 8.38 HRS Harris Corporation Capital Goods Industrial Machinery/ Components 8.77 0.84 1.99 0.87 5.18 SUTR Sutor Technology Group Limited Capital Goods Steel/Iron Ore 3.81 0.12 0.27 0.22 4.73 TSTC Telestone Technologies Corp. Consumer Durables Tele- communications Equipment ...

The Durable Goods advanced report for July was released on Wednesday and the headline number surprised to the upside. This helped the market tack on some further gains beyond Tuesday's big advance. Besides its effect on a day's action in the stock market, the Durable Goods report is useful for seeing how tech in aggregate is performing. As of this report, the situation is mixed. I always focus on two particular measures: shipments and new orders. In July, the two measures were not consistent and this is worrisome. Let's see how it played out in July. Shipments -- I generally give less importance to Shipments since this is a backward looking measure reflecting orders that have been confirmed, manufactured and shipped. It's similar to earnings reports -- it's good to know but the data is in the past and we're more interested in the future. The following chart shows how July shipments looked for the overall tech sector: Results were actually quite good and,...

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...

After a week of epic volatility, stocks ended the week on a positive note; nevertheless, it wasn't enough to turn a loss into a gain. The S&P 500, for example, still ended the week down 1.63%. Last week I reviewed the moving average and trend analysis charts and declared that we were at bearish extremes not seen since the March 2009 market lows. Let's see what they say this week. The view from Alert HQ -- For those readers who are new to TradeRadar or who don't remember what this is all about, the data for the following charts is generated from our weekly Alert HQ process. We scan roughly 6200 stocks and ETFs each weekend and gather the statistics presented below. In this first chart below we count the number of stocks above various exponential moving averages and count the number of moving average crossovers, as well. We then plot the results against a chart of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY). The number of stocks above their 50-day EMA (yellow line) has impr...