the Trade-Radar + TradingStockAlerts blog

The advanced report for Durable Goods for June was released Wednesday and it contributed to a drop in the market that day. Indeed, headline numbers were disappointing (especially since this is supposed to be a manufacturing led recovery): New orders for manufactured durable goods in June decreased $2.0 billion or 1.0 percent to $190.5 billion Shipments of manufactured durable goods in June, down two consecutive months, decreased $0.7 billion or 0.3 percent to $195.0 billion. This followed a 0.7 percent May decrease.  Unfilled Orders.  Unfilled orders for manufactured durable goods in June, down following two consecutive monthly increases, decreased $0.1 billion to $802.9 billion.  This followed a 0.3 percent May increase. Inventories.  Inventories of manufactured durable goods in June, up six consecutive months, increased $2.8 billion or 0.9 percent to $308.2 billion.  This followed a 1.1 percent May increase.  Transportation equipment, up six consecuti...

Having spent the day working on renovating a bathroom I confess I don't have the energy to get too deeply into another post tonight. Still, I wanted to share the the weekly charts from Alert HQ. The view from Alert HQ -- The data for the following charts is generated from our weekly Alert HQ process. We scan roughly 6040 stocks and ETFs each weekend and gather the statistics presented below. In this first chart below we count the number of stocks above various 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). Last week I opined that this chart looked "bottomish." After this week's strong performance (major indexes gained more than 3% and the Russell 2000 gained 6.6%) this chart is now looking downright bullish. Do you realize that we now have roughly 50% of stocks above their 50-day moving average? That's the best level we've seen in the last...

In case you haven't noticed, agricultural products, grains in particular, have been putting on an impressive rally. Take a look at this chart of the Dow Jones - UBS Grains Index: If you're looking for a way to participate in this rally, I have the following list of ETFs courtesy of ETFdb.com : Symbol Name DBA PowerShares DB Agriculture RJA ELEMENTS Rogers Intl Commodity JJG iPath DJ-UBS Grains TR Sub-Idx COW iPath DJ-UBS Livestock TR Sub- JJA iPath DJ-UBS Agriculture TR Su GRU ELEMENTS MLCX Grains Index TR UBC UBS E-TRACS CMCI Livestock TR CORN Teucrium Corn FUD UBS E-TRACS CMCI Food TR ETN UAG UBS E-TRACS CMCI Agriculture T AGF PowerShares DB Agriculture Lon Another way to play this is to look for some of the better fertilizer and agricultural chemical companies. I have written previously about CF Industries Holdings (CF) and came to the conclusion that it was...

So how can a stock be on both the Trend Leaders list and the Trend Busters list? To review, the Trend Busters lists consists of those stocks or ETFs that have simply broken a trend line while the Trend Leaders list includes those stocks that are exhibiting bullish performance according to MACD, Wilder's DMI and Aroon analysis. After running Thursday night's Alert HQ process, I have a stock that is on both of these lists and is also passing the screen for Reasonable Value. This company is RLI Corporation (RLI). Here is the chart : I've drawn two trend lines in blue: a longer term trend that is sloping upward and which RLI seems to be following and a shorter-term downward sloping trend that the stock has broken through to the upside. The fact that RLI has burst upward out of the wedge formed by the two trend lines is another positive which suggests the stock could hit $59 before too long. All in all, pretty bullish performance. Why is RLI considered Reasonable Value?...

The first two weeks of earnings season are in the books so it's time to take our first look at which sectors are doing well and which ones are - uh - "underperforming". The chart below breaks down each sector's earnings reports into five different categories and gives total stocks that have reported thus far. Sector Earnings Beats Y-o-Y Earnings Increases Y-o-Y Revenue Increases Upside Guidance Total Providing Guidance Total Number of Stocks Reporting Basic Industries 11 11 15 2 6 16 Capital Goods 37 34 40 7 17 47 Consumer Durables 27 28 26 6 16 33 Consumer Non-Durables 21 18 18 1 13 28 Consumer Services 33 36 43 2 30 49 Energy 9 9 12 0 2 18 Finance 48 47 20 0 3 84 Health Care 24 21 26 6 22 32 Miscellaneous 8 7 10 0 7 13 Pub...

This post is announcing that Tuesday's Swing Signals, Trend Leaders, Trend Busters and Gap Signals are now available at Alert HQ . All are based on daily data. It's been a while since I wrote a post highlighting the latest Alert HQ signals but I want to remind everyone that we have been putting up the Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning signals regularly without interruption. Today we have the following: 25 Swing Signals -- 23 BUY signals and 2 SELL signals. 87 Trend Leaders , all in strong up-trends according to Aroon, MACD and DMI. We have 35 stocks that are new additions to the list and 43 that fell off the previous list. 15 Trend Busters , of which 11 are BUY signals and 4 are SELL signals. 125 Gap Signals -- stocks with upside or downside gaps or gaps that have been closed. 75 are bearish gaps and 50 are bullish gaps. The view from Alert HQ -- Over the weekend I wrote that Friday's market action was so bad that it seemed th...

This weekend's Reversal Alerts based on weekly data turned up an interesting BUY signal for an ETF I had never heard of before. The symbol is IGOV and the ETF is the iShares S&P/Citigroup International Treasury Bond Fund. The S&P/Citigroup International Treasury Bond Index ex-US is a market value-weighted index designed to measure the performance of treasury bonds issued in local currencies by developed market countries outside the U.S. Holdings include bonds from Japan (fully 25% of the fund), France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Canada, Australia and even the problem children like Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal. Credit ratings are mostly in the AA to AAA range. Maturities are mostly short to intermediate with roughly 75% of holdings falling into the 1 to 10 year maturity range. Regardless of the exposure to problems in Europe, this ETF has been on a roll since early June when a  multi-month downtrend reversed to the upside. The chart of daily data follows: Th...