the Trade-Radar + TradingStockAlerts blog

I've been dabbling with applying some of our Swing Signals algorithms to weekly data. This past weekend I came up with an interesting stock that generated a Strong BUY signal. The company is Energy XXI (Bermuda) Limited (EXXI). Background -- The company engages in the acquisition, exploration, development, and operation of oil and natural gas properties onshore in Louisiana and Texas and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.As of June 30, 2009, it had proved reserves of 53.1 million barrels of oil equivalent, as well as operated or had an interest in 274 producing wells on 148,784 net developed acres. With all the negative publicity around companies that drill in the Gulf of Mexico, it's a bit of a surprise to see a company like Energy XXI beginning to register gains in its stock price. What seems to be happening is that investors are beginning to discriminate between deep water drillers and shallow water drillers. Energy XXI drills in waters only 100 feet deep. The company ten...

This post is to announce that the latest list of stock alerts is up and available at Alert HQ . Each week we scan over 7200 stocks and ETFs looking for fresh BUY and SELL signals. Stocks staged a strong rally this week led by financials of all things! All the major indexes showed respectable gains as earnings season is turning out to be decent despite some mixed results in the Tech sector. Oil dropped a significant amount this week and that accelerated the rotation we had seen from energy stocks to other sectors and provided another big boost to the stock market. As a result of all these positive feelings running rampant through the markets, we have a big change in what we are seeing in the TradeRadar daily signals. For the first time in weeks we have more BUY signals than SELL signals. We actually have 65 BUY signals and only 31 SELL signals based on daily data. Unfortunately, the signals based on weekly have not been so quick to turn around. We have only 7 BUY signals and 22 SELL sig...

I have written previously on NII Holdings (NIHD) in a post titled " NII Holdings bounces off bottom - can it keep up the momentum? " The company sells Nextel-branded cell phone service in Latin America including Brazil. The company recently reiterated that it sees no slowdown in sales and the stock responded by continuing to climb. In an article entitled "1.2 Billion Mobile Subscribers!", eMarketer discusses how cell phone use is growing in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). The article says that cell phones are increasingly the primary on-ramp to the Internet for users in these countries. From a marketing standpoint, the Internet companies with solid mobile offerings will benefit. Yahoo! (YHOO) has made a point of focusing on mobile perhaps even more than Google (GOOG) has. We will see the two companies continue their rivalry on cell phones and maybe there will be an opportunity for Yahoo! to gain some ground. Getting back to NII Holdings, howev...

Everyone knows the current environment has been hard on financials, especially those that have any involvement in residential mortgages. There are a few firms that are managing to use certain company-specific advantages to hold their own and even prosper. Ocwen Financial (OCN) may be one of these. Background -- Ocwen Financial Corporation is a business process outsourcing provider to the financial services industry, specializing in loan servicing, mortgage fulfillment and receivables management services. The company currently operates within two lines of business: Ocwen Asset Management - comprised of the Servicing, Loans and Residuals and Asset Management Vehicles segments The Servicing segment provides outsourced loan servicing for subprime loans but does not own the loans. Many of the loans are actually securitized and owned by trusts. The Loans and Residuals segment does hold loans for resale. Asset Management Vehicles holds loans as investments and does securitizations. Ocwen Solu...

I have been writing about the TradeRadar software on a regular basis lately but I have not spent much time discussing my results using the software. The Track Profit & Loss page of the TradeRadar site shows the results for the stocks that are in our trading portfolio. Note that the ETFs were not chosen using the TradeRadar software but all the stocks were. The good news is that all but one of the stocks (and one ETF) are, as of today, showing gains. Obviously some have done better than others. All of these stocks have, at one time or another, shown up in an alert list from the Alert HQ process where we scan almost all the stocks on the NYSE, the AMEX and the NASDAQ every weekend looking for BUY and SELL signals. Having used Alert HQ to weed through all the stocks in the general market and provide a short list of investment candidates for the week, I then had to evaluate each one in turn to determine which ones to actually buy. This is easier said than done and it is why I have sta...

For those who read this blog on a regular basis, you may notice that for the first time in months our trading portfolio contains no ultra short ETFs. Last week's market action caused them to hit stops with some profits booked and, unfortunately, some losses booked as well. As discussed in this past weekend's post " Markets jump - stocks poised for more gains? ", it looks to me like Mr. Market is trying to sound the "all clear." This is despite the fact that I still feel the economy has problems and that financial stocks, in particular, have a long way to go before they really deserve the trust of investors. (Indeed, financials took it on the chin in today's trading) Nevertheless, if there is one thing I have learned while on my journey as a financial blogger it is that the market moves as it sees fit despite the economic backdrop or what the experts are saying about it. The famous quote "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain l...

Cirrus Logic (CRUS) is a semiconductor manufacturer focused on mixed-signal and analog integrated circuits used in consumer and industrial markets. The company specializes in various audio/visual applications, DVD recorders/players, home theater systems, analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, embedded microprocessors, etc. Cirrus Logic was identified a couple of weeks ago in our Alert HQ market scan as a BUY. Since then it has gained well over 20%. Just take a look at the chart below. There appear to be several recent drivers for the excellent stock performance. An SEC investigation in the company's stock option practices was concluded with no recommendations for enforcement actions. The company is closing a Chinese subsidiary, Caretta Integrated Circuits, thus removing a management distraction. The stock was upgraded by an analyst at Thomas Weisel Partners. The call was based on a report that Wolfson Microelectronics, a competitor of Cirrus, wasn't selected by a m...

Littelfuse (LFUS) has showed up as a selection in our Alert HQ lists twice now. The first time was in February based on daily price performance data . Just recently it popped up in our scan based on weekly data. LFUS exhibits a classic chart showing a prolonged decline culminating in a reversal to the upside. Why the reversal? What is driving this run-up in the stock's price? Background -- Littelfuse, Inc. manufactures and sells circuit protection and electrical fuses for the electronic, automotive, and electrical markets in the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. It offers electronic circuit protection products, such as fuses and protectors, positive temperature coefficient resettable fuses, varistors, polymer electrostatic discharge suppressors, discrete transient voltage suppression (TVS) diodes, TVS diode arrays and protection thyristors, gas discharge tubes, power switching components, and fuseholders, blocks, and related accessories. In the electronics market, the company su...

Yesterday I was stopped out of my position in the ProShares UltraShort FTSE/Xinhua China 25 ETF (FXP). I managed to obtain an 18% gain on the trade in FXP but this is actually a pretty lousy result because there were other opportunities to sell at a much better price. Why didn't I? Because I ignored my rules for trading. Trading is not like buying and holding for the long term. Nevertheless, both types of investing should be pursued with a set of rules, a discipline if you will, that guides your decisions. The rules may be different in these two cases but you should define your rules and stick with them. Unless, of course, they seem to get you into trouble on a regular basis in which case perhaps they should be revised. First, let's talk a little about the rules I try to follow. They're pretty simple and not particularly original but they are what I use. Here they are: Stops should be employed at all times. Support and resistance levels should be looked at in order to deter...

As many readers may know, I have been running a scan of about 7200 stocks each weekend looking for TradeRadar BUY and SELL signals based on daily data. I have been making these signals available on the Alert HQ page of this site. Today, I ran the first scan based on weekly data. As this is still in a beta stage of development, i.e., working but with potential for further improvement, I thought I would make this first list available for free. Here goes. This first table is a list of all BUY signals: Symbol Name Last Price Signal Strength Aroon Indicator ABFS Arkansas Best Corporation $35.20 60% Strong Up trend - Up: 100 Down: 45 Osc: 55 MKSI MKS Instruments, Inc. $21.84 76% Strong Up trend - Up: 100 Down: 55 Osc: 45 PRAA Portfolio Recovery Associates, Inc. $47.82 77% Strong Up trend - Up: 100 Down: 55 Osc: 45 WRLD World Acceptance Corporation $34.09 61% Strong U...

This post is to announce that the latest list of stock alerts is up and available at Alert HQ . It was an eventful week on Wall Street with major averages finishing more or less where they started despite significant volatility. The financial sector fell again but the rest of market managed to at least tread water. Tuesday's huge rally was undone by Friday's decline after news of the Bear Stearns bailout. Still, there were a few signs of hope as the market has still not broken below the January lows. We had less negativity in the overall market this week so thankfully we didn't have a repeat of last week when we had no BUY signals at all. As a result, this week we have an alert list of four BUY signals and one SELL signal. Later this weekend I will be writing another post to describe my analysis of the market statistics the Alert HQ software has generated and to discuss the performance of some of the picks from past weeks.

Allis-Chalmers Energy (ALY) formally announced their Q4 and full year earnings. Things were pretty much as they said they would be back on January 31 when they presented their preliminary unaudited results for 2007. Here are the final numbers: For the fourth quarter of 2007, the company earned $5.8 million, or 16 cents a share, compared with $10.4 million, or 40 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue in the quarter rose 25 percent to $143.8 million compared to $114,898 million a year earlier. On an annual basis, the company earned $50.4 million versus $35.6 million in 2006 Revenue in 2007 came in at $571 million compared to 2006's $311 million. Management's message on Q4 is as follows: "as we reported in our January 31, 2008 press release, our results in the fourth quarter were affected primarily by weakness in demand for drill pipe in the Gulf of Mexico due to the hurricane season and the departure of rigs to the international market, start up costs and low utilization of...

In tinkering with my Alert HQ software, I came across Allis-Chalmers Energy (ALY). The stock has been on a straight path downward since last July but is now starting to rally. It exhibits the characteristics that make the software identify the company as a BUY. Background -- The following is from the company's web site: "Allis-Chalmers Energy Inc., is a Houston based multi-faceted oilfield services company. We provide services and equipment to oil and natural gas exploration and production companies, domestically in Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Utah, Wyoming, Arkansas, Alabama, West Virginia, offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, and internationally primarily in Argentina and Mexico. The Company operates in six sectors of the oil and natural gas service industry: rental tools; international drilling; directional drilling services; casing and tubing services; compressed air drilling services; international drilling; and production services. Providing...

Back on January 27 when I rolled out the first Alert HQ list of stock picks, one of the stocks on the list was Volt Information Sciences (VOL). The stock closed at $17.45 on the Friday just prior to running the analysis. It is now at $19.10, up almost 9.5%. It was up over 2% today. So what's up with VOL? It peaked at about $40 just over a year ago and had been carving out a ragged down hill trend since then. It hit its low point on December 4th and shortly afterward gapped up on an earnings report. Background -- The company has four lines of business: Staffing Services - includes temporary/contract personnel employment, consulting, outsourcing and turnkey project management Telephone Directory services - publishes independent telephone directories, as well as provides telephone directory production, commercial printing, database management, sales, and marketing services; and licenses directory production and contract management software systems to directory publishers and others. ...

It was a gut feeling as much as anything, but it seemed to me that financial stocks were ready for a bit of a resurgence. Watching the UltraShort Financial ETF (SKF) jump and then proceed to plunge on Tuesday was the first tipoff. Seeing that behavior begin to repeat Wednesday morning convinced me that perhaps financials were ready to make a real move up. Since I had no idea whether this would be a sustained move or not, I elected to open just a small position in the ProShares Ultra Financial ETF (UYG) in mid-morning. It was then a pleasant surprise to see the hard-charging financials lead the market upward in the late afternoon on news that New York State's insurance regulator was encouraging banks to support bond insurers. Combined with Tuesday's surprise rate cut and another rate cut expected when the Fed meets next week, it does seem like a few factors are now falling in line to support the financials after their long decent from their peak last summer. Having gotten in at ...

A tough week for stocks closed with a thud Friday. The new year got off to a bad start with a weak ISM Manufacturing report. That was followed up by a weak non-farm payrolls report that caught the market's attention and prevented investors from appreciating the reasonably decent ISM Services report. Note that rising prices were a theme in both ISM reports. This has investors worried that inflation will prevent the Fed from freely doling out rate cuts to save the economy. It was all too much for market participants and they sold stocks with abandon. As for the TradeRadar model portfolio, we were stopped out of our position in SanDisk (SNDK). But the carnage in the NASDAQ encouraged us to move from neutral on tech to a bearish stance. Accordingly, I initiated a small position in the ProShares UltraShort Technology ETF (REW). Here's the background on this decision. I have written a couple of posts on how the Durable Goods report over the last couple of months has led me to believ...

Yesterday I wrote a post describing my opinion on the direction of the markets. I focused on the S&P 500 and, after reviewing the chart situation, came to the conclusion that the most likely direction was down. Today we opened with gap to the downside and the index never recovered. The gap is clearly visible in the chart below which shows what happened to the S&P 500 SPDRS ( SPY ) ETF. Shortly after I saw the gap, I decided it was time to nibble on a few shares of the ProShares UltraShort S&P500 ( SDS ) ETF. Purchased at $55.13, SDS closed today at $56.08 for a quick little 1.7% gain. The chart now looks worse than it did Friday. Today's sell-off came on decent volume but not extraordinary volume. This implies we have not yet seen the kind of capitulation that marks a bottom. Note also how the MACD on the chart above is on the verge of confirming the bearish direction. It looks like SPY might have a bit further to fall. Disclosure: author is long SDS

Market Comments Markets staged a strong rally on Thursday that accounted for most of the gains seen this week. Interestingly, part of the impetus for the rally was an employment report from ADP that most analysts felt was largely overstated. The other incentive for investors was the announcement of the rescue plan for sub-prime homeowners by President Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson. I am not sure why this was such a strong catalyst for a rally when nothing that wasn't already known was presented. Markets took off anyway and we now have two weeks in a row where the major averages achieved gains. In other news that had an unexpected effect, OPEC held production steady and the US government reported a large draw-down in crude stocks. Instead of rallying, oil actually fell and finished the week down slightly. The anxiously awaited Labor Dept. payrolls number was announced Friday. Expected to be market-moving news, especially in light of the ADP number, the actual numbers indicate...

Starting in November, Generex Biotechnology ( GNBT ) has been quite volatile. That's about the time the company announced that its Oral-Lyn product had been licensed for commercial use in India. In October, a similar license was obtained in South Africa. The company is in the process of securing approvals to market the product in various Middle Eastern countries, as well. In mid-November, Wall Street Strategies, an independent stock market research company, published a report on the company. They pointed out that the India news was a distinct positive for GNBT and that the stock is a buy. In addition, their analyst provided a further opinion as follows: "Currently, Oral-lyn is in phase III testing in North America. We expect that approval would automatically make this a $5.00 stock, but once sales begin we think the stock could move even higher." This sounds good but investors should be aware that Generex has retained Wall Street Strategies to provide investor relation se...

The week started off poorly with a Goldman downgrade of Citigroup. Things went further downhill from there. Lowe's, Target and Freddie Mac added to negative tone. We got a little positive blip in October housing starts but the housing market remains far underwater. The Fed released the minutes from their last FOMC meeting and surprised investors by revealing the decision to lower rates was "close". They also provided an economic forecast for 2008 that predicted slower growth due to continued financial market turmoil. All in all, this week was pretty much like the last few weeks: volatile and in the end, depressing for investors. Against this backdrop, there has been a higher level of trading in the TradeRadar portfolio and the holdings have changed quite a bit. There were a number of disappointments delivered by TradeRadar stock picks, stops were hit and we have ended up with a more bearish set of investments. Let's look at what happened to these stocks, why we sold o...