the Trade-Radar + TradingStockAlerts blog

It's been about a week and a half since I wrote the first Tech Bellwether Earnings Scorecard post . Since we are still in the midst of a busy earnings season, I thought it was time for an update. Below I have listed some of the big names in the tech world along with comments on whether they beat expectations, posted losses or gains and whether they provided positive forward guidance. Company Earnings Comments VMWare (VMW) revs up 42%, earnings beat by $0.10 weak guidance Texas Instruments (TXN) beats by $0.09 guides well below consensus, announces layoffs EMC profits down 40% year-over-year no guidance offered Altera (ALTR) down 12% sequentially but beats by $0.01, guidance: next Q earnings down 15-25% Sun (JAVA) beats lowered expectations (non-GAAP positive earnings of $0.10 vs GAAP loss of $0.28) provides no guidance Yahoo (YHOO) posts loss, revenue down a bit y-o-y but beats on non-GAAP basis Q1 guidance light, no full year guidance offered Qualcomm (QCOM) beats on re...

Once again we've come up with several interesting stock suggestions based on the results of combining two of the stock screens that we ran this weekend at TradeRadar. Being somewhat under the weather and distracted by the Super Ball prevented me from posting this on Sunday but hopefully it's better late than never. We executed the usual weekend Alert HQ process ( read about this weeks results ) and generated several lists of stocks based on our special screens including: Bollinger Band Breakouts, Trend Leaders and Cash Flow Kings (you can download these lists at the Trend Leaders page ). Trend Leaders represents a collection of stocks in strong up-trends. These stocks are registering strong signals using Aroon analysis, DMI and MACD. They are also above their 50-day exponential moving average. To obtain the list of Cash Flow Kings we calculate the free cash flow yield of all the stocks we scan and pick the ones whose yield is 50% or greater. The "Leadership Screen" Al...

Four down weeks in a row = worst January in decades. Stocks didn't exactly plunge this week but a nice little rally faded away on Thursday and Friday as investors received more bad economic news. Among the items that moved the market the most: consumer confidence hit a record low while continuing claims for jobless benefits hit a record high, new home sales fell to an annual rate that was the lowest since record keeping began in 1963, durable goods numbers were approximately twice as bad as expected, GDP for Q4 of 2008 showed a slowdown of 3.2% but it would have been over 5% if there wasn't such a buildup of unsold inventory. Analysts now expect the current quarter to be even worse as the economy experiences more layoffs and faces working its way through all this inventory before production begins to ramp up. The Federal Open Market Committee met this week but it was a non-event. The bond market didn't even perk up much when the comments about the Fed buying long-term Treas...

This post is to announce that the latest list of free stock alerts is up and available at Alert HQ . Each week we scan over 7400 stocks and ETFs looking for fresh BUY and SELL signals. We apply a combination of proprietary and standard technical analysis techniques to identify those stocks that are beginning to move. Our goal is to identify stocks or ETFs that are undergoing reversals, either to the upside or to the downside. Wait, there's more... We also use the Alert HQ process to generate more free lists of stocks and ETFs The first byproduct of the Alert HQ process is the Trend Leaders list, our collection of stocks in strong up-trends. These stocks are registering strong signals using Aroon analysis, DMI and MACD. They are also above their 50-day exponential moving average. This week's list is now available at the TradeRadar site on the Trend Leaders page. As another byproduct of the Alert HQ process we have generated a list of stocks that have broken either above the...

The advanced numbers for December 2008 Durable Goods were released today and they were considerably worse than expected. The headline numbers were as follows: New orders for manufactured durable goods in December decreased $4.7 billion or 2.6 percent to $176.8 billion. Shipments of manufactured durable goods in December, down five consecutive months, decreased $1.4 billion or 0.7 percent to $191.3 billion. Unfilled orders for manufactured durable goods in December, down three consecutive months, decreased $10.3 billion or 1.3 percent to $803.2 billion. Inventories of manufactured durable goods in December, up seventeen of the last eighteen months, increased $1.3 billion or 0.4 percent to $343.5 billion. This was at the highest level since the series was first stated on a NAICS basis in 1992. As we always do, we will focus on the tech sector, looking at the summary category of Computers and Electronic Products and updating our charts with the December data. The following chart shows how...

Google just released earnings. As usual, search advertising showed strong growth year-over-year as well as sequentially. Things were not nearly so good for AdSense. From the earnings release, Google had this to say: Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $1.69 billion, or 30% of total revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2008. This represents a 4% increase over fourth quarter 2007 network revenues of $1.64 billion and a 1% increase over third quarter 2008 network revenues of $1.68 billion. Only 1% over the previous quarter? That seems pretty light for Google. But look at the chart below (courtesy of HowToNotMakeMoneyOnline.com ). AdSense revenue has not been growing significantly since the end of 2007. Yet it is also clear that AdSense makes up a big chunk of Google revenue: 30% as of the most recent quarter. So what has caused AdSense revenue to stagnate? Certainly there is no lack of opportunity. With the continued proliferation of blogs and web sites t...

Bashing the ProShares UltraShort ETFs seems to be a favorite blog topic these days but it has also incited a few defenders of these ETFs to respond. To review, those who dislike these ETFs have pointed to the fact that they do not seem to have come anywhere near delivering the expected result of double the inverse of the underlying index. Indeed, they might not have shown any gain at all even if the underlying index lost significant value. Evaluating the arguments -- Let's take a look at the following scenario: buy an UltraShort ETF when the corresponding long index ETF falls below its 200-day simple moving average. We looked at four pairs of ETFs as described in the following tables. The Start Date corresponds to when the index ETF fell below its 200-day MA. Standard Deviation is included as a measure of volatility. This first table shows the results using ETFs that correspond to two major market averages. QQQQ QID SPY SDS Start Date 1/9/08 1/7/08 End Date 1/16/09 1/16/09 Initial ...