the Trade-Radar + TradingStockAlerts blog

One of the first things I like to check every weekend is the ETF Trend Performance week-over-week report . It gives a great summary of what happened to more than 300 ETFs with respect to change in trend. (It is currently available at the free preview of Alert HQ Premium.) Some weeks, ETFs in certain sectors dominate the top spots or the bottom spots and in other weeks it's a mix. This week it's pretty clear who the biggest winners and losers were. The winners -- Financial ETFs held the top four spots this week. The following chart is from the report: Change in Trend Score Symbol Name Current Trend Score Change in Price Percent Change in Price 3 UYG ProShares Ultra Financials ETF 5.5 4.05 6.71 2.25 IYG iShares Dow Jones U.S. Financial Services Index Fund 4.25 2.55 4.67 2 RKH Merrill Lynch Regional Bank HOLDRS 4 4.02 5.05 1.5 XLF Select Sector SPDR Fund - Financial 4.7...

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...

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...

Today I'd like to feature a stock that appeared in one of the screens at Alert HQ Premium . The screen is titled "Value and Growth Report" and, as the name implies, we look for stocks that embody the best of both worlds: value and growth. How the screen works -- Using daily and weekly data, we look for stocks that are in up trends or have broken out above their trend lines. Trend lines are constructed using the daily high prices. A stock must rise 5% above the trend line to trigger a BUY signal. Out of this group of stocks on the move we identify those that have "reasonable value" characteristics according to the following criteria: PE between 0 and16 PEG between 0 and 1.2 Price-to-Sales less than 2 Debt-to-Equity less than 1 EV to EBITDA less than 10 We then filter for those stocks with earnings and revenues that have shown improvement both year-over-year and sequentially and whose EBITDA is the same or greater compared to the previous quart...

I have written recently about the ETF Scorecard at Alert HQ Premium (the free preview is still available, so check it out). This report ranks over 300 ETFs according to how strong their trends are. To complete the ETF picture, I have created two reports that shows how the rankings have changed week-over-week. I offer you the ETF Trend Performance report and the ETF Price Performance report . Let's take a look at the ETF Trend Performance report. The ETF with the worst performance this past week is the iShares Lehman 20 Year Treasury Bond Fund (TLT). This ETF's ranking fell by 3 points. Given that the maximum score is only 6 points, this was a significant drop, indeed. Also at the bottom of the performance rankings this week there is the Vanguard Long-Term Government Bond ETF (VGLT), score down by 2.75 points, and the Vanguard Long-Term Corporate Bond ETF (VCLT)  and iShares GS iBoxx Investment Grade Corporate Bond Fund (LQD), both down 2.5 points. Looking at the ETF Pric...

I was reviewing the BUY signals on the Ebb and Flow Report (available at the Alert HQ Premium free preview site) and came across a small cap Chinese company called China Biologic Products, Inc. (CBPO) The fact that it was on the Ebb and Flow Report means that on the weekly chart the company seemed to be undergoing an upside reversal. The report also showed that the company's Price to Free Cash Flow and Cash Flow Yield were both attractive, it's PEG was a mere 0.2 and Price to Sales suggested the stock was somewhat of a bargain at the current price. Here is the weekly chart upon which the Ebb and Flow Report BUY signal was based. You can see the bounce off the lower Bollinger Band which contributed to the signal. Fundamentals -- Looking to dig deeper into the financials, I entered the symbol into the Trade-Radar Stock Inspector software and checked the Fundamental Analysis tab on the Dashboard. Every single LED was green except the one for Market Cap. At only $258 mill...

Sometimes widening your outlook yields some surprises. Case in point: evaluating how strongly certain ETFs have been trending lately. Take a look at the free preview of Alert HQ Premium . There are two reports so far that focus on ETFs. The more limited report, the Style and Sector ETF Scorecard , focuses on the most well known sectors and styles such as large cap, small cap, value, growth, etc. There are a total of 30 ETFs that are representative of these styles and sectors. This report has EEM, the iShares MSCI Emerging Index Fund, as its top performer (with the highest possible score of 6.0) followed by EFA, the iShares MSCI EAFE Index Fund and IWM, the iShares Russell 2000 Index Fund, both ranked at 5.5. This is consistent with what we've been hearing -- first, that foreign stocks are more in favor than U.S. stocks and second, that a simple U.S. stock index is a decent investment. ...