the Trade-Radar + TradingStockAlerts blog

Here's why I think the Tech sector is currently undervalued: This chart shows the Average PE for all profitable tech stocks with a market cap of at least $300 million. The Average PE is compared to the NASDAQ Composite. The interesting thing is that even thought the NASDAQ Composite has moved up over the last few quarters as depicted in the chart, the average PE peaked after Q4 2010 earnings were reported and has declined ever since. It's true I've tossed out some of the really high PE outliers but even when they are included, the chart has the same shape as that shown above.  This suggests that Tech stocks today are anything but over-valued. Further supporting this thesis is that the second half of the year is often strong for Tech and many analysts are predicting that this year will be no different. Bottom line: tech stocks are undervalued and the coming seasonality puts the wind at their backs. Tech is likely a Buy right now. Disclosure: in the tech sect...

As earnings season has progressed, results have not been uniform across the semiconductor sector. In addition, sector analysts have not agreed on the future direction for chips. Here is a brief selection of items to give you a flavor of what’s been going on lately: Intel (INTC) started the ball rolling in earnings season by surprising everyone with a blowout quarter and positive forward guidance. Kulicke & Soffa (KLIC), a chip-equipment company, reported good earnings and a positive outlook Broadcom (BRCM) had a good quarter but offered dismal guidance Teradyne (TER) had a strong first quarter but warned the second quarter might be more challenging Novellus (NVLS) is pretty much in the same boat with Broadcom and Teradyne Applied Materials (AMAT) announced they are buying Varian (VSEA) so it’s clear that AMAT certainly sees potential in the chip sector This list is by no means complete but it illustrates that consistency is lacking in the sector. The situation is no bette...

Trend reversals can be classic Buy signals. I wanted to let everyone know that there is a post up at our sister site TradingStockAlerts.com that explains several ways you can use their Premium Stock Screener to find trend reversals. Not only does the post discuss finding the latest Trade-Radar reversal alerts and simple trend reversals (what we refer to as Trend Busters) but also ways of using Trend Performance in combination with a few other indicators. The post is " Stock Market BUY Signals – Five ways to find bullish trend reversals " and I highly recommend it. Read the post and go play with the screener. There are lots of variations you can apply to the basic setups discussed in the post. And remember, it's easy to get a free account that will give you access to the screener, let you save screener presets and save screener results to watch lists.

I have a stock screener setup that looks for stocks with several fundamental growth characteristics combined with two technical characteristics. Here's how it looks: Company is profitable; ie, PE above zero Quarterly YoY sales growth positive Quarterly YoY earnings per share growth positive Return on Equity over 20% Debt to Equity ratio under 1 Stock's performance is 5% above the S&P 500 MACD just turned bullish To this list I added one more criteria: price should be under $5. Two stocks popped up: Full House Resorts, Inc. (FLL) - a company in the Consumer Services-Misc. Amusement & Recreation sector InTest Corp. (INTT) - a company in the semiconductor automated test equipment sector Since I tend to be most interested in tech stocks, let me focus on inTest. inTest specializes in the hardware that interfaces between probes and the chips being tested. It also offers thermal testing equipment including test chambers. At a market cap of $42 million, they fa...

A couple of weeks ago I started writing about my new investing site, TradingStockAlerts.com , and encouraged readers to check out the new Premium Stock Screener . I'd like to take this opportunity to let you know that I have made it easier than ever to access the screener and other password-protected parts of the site. When I set up the Premium Stock Screener , I required that users register at the site in order to use it. I offer a free account but I now realize that I was making an unnecessary demand on potential users. After all, creating a login is a pain in the you-know-what and we all have too many logins and passwords to remember these days anyway. It turns out that things can be much simpler and easier and I'm excited to share with you how much better the setup is now. First of all, you now have a simple choice of what to do located at the top right of the page: If you are new to the site, you would click the Register link which would take you to the Join! p...

While the spotlight has been on Tyco International (TYC) and the Wall Street Journal's report of a takeover bid by France's Schneider Electric, a company with a similar name has been quietly working on a reversal. Formerly known as Tyco Electric, the company now called TE Connectivity (TEL) is in the process of potentially staging a bullish trend reversal. The stock has closed for two days in a row above the downward-sloping trend line I have drawn in blue on the chart above. Encouragingly, the move has been on increased volume. What is nice about this stock is that it does not seem to be over-priced so it could have some room to run. Looking at some of the valuation numbers, we see the stock easily has a "reasonable value" profile. Trailing PE of 13 and forward PE of 10. Price-to-sales of 1.26, PEG of 1.04 and ratio of Enterprise Value to EBITDA of only 7.35 In terms of growth, TEL has been doing OK. Year-over-year quarterly revenue increased by 10% and earn...

Say what you will about the effectiveness of the Dodd-Frank legislation and all the new regulations the law ushers in. One thing is becoming clear: it's going to be a benefit to the IT and consulting industries just as Sarbanes-Oxley was. According to the magazine Wall Street Technology, capital markets firms are expected to spend some $44 billion on IT in 2011 and a large part of this 6% increase over 2010 is due to Dodd-Frank. These companies are looking to put systems in place to enforce compliance and implement controls. Even as interpretation of the regulations continues to evolve, the companies know they need to begin ramping up their IT efforts. Furthermore, many companies are more focused on risk management than they ever used to be as a result of having the fear of God, so to speak, instilled in them during the Great Financial Crisis. So there are some IT professionals who will be hired as a result of this. But the greatest benefit will go to the consulting and audit...