Jul

31

Trading Ideas for Friday

By Teresa | Filed Under Trading Ideas | Leave a Comment

The stock scan conducted after the close on Thursday found 43 winners and 39 losers. Click on the column headers below to sort the list of winners.

The scan is designed to find stocks that are current “in play”; criteria includes price movement, range and liquidity (500,000 shares on the day, 20-day average volume of 1.5 million shares). The entire list has been ranked and sorted relative to performance against the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ 100 indexes. Please refer to the podcast for background information.

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Jul

30

Trading Ideas for Thursday

By Teresa | Filed Under Trading Ideas | Leave a Comment

The stock scan conducted after the close on Wednesday found 95 winners and 23 losers. Click on the column headers below to sort the entire list.

The scan is designed to find stocks that are current “in play”; criteria includes price movement, range and liquidity (500,000 shares on the day, 20-day average volume of 1.5 million shares). The entire list has been ranked and sorted relative to performance against the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ 100 indexes. Please refer to the podcast for background information.

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Jul

29

Podcast: A Higher Low in the Making?

By Pete | Filed Under The Podcast | 4 Comments

WSJ described today’s action as: “The Dow Jones Industrial Average bounced higher by 270 points Tuesday thanks to strong gains in financial stocks, including a surge of more than 14% in component Bank of America. The rally reclaimed the losses experienced in a steep selloff Monday that had also been paced by banking and brokerage shares. Merrill Lynch jumped 8% after it disclosed more credit-related write-downs and plans to sell more stock late Monday. The rally was aided by a another sharp decline in crude-oil prices. The front-month contract on the Nymex fell $2.54 a barrel, or 2%, to settle at $122.19, its lowest settlement since May 6.”

The market is schizophrenic. We’ll take a look at some charts and market sentiment indicators in today’s podcast. My special guest is my client Rex. Sorry if the volume is not so balanced today.

  • Right click ON THIS LINK and select “Save Target/Link As…” to save the MP3 file to your computer.

Articles mentioned in today’s podcast:

  • Hedge Fund Veteran Sees A Shakeout Ahead (includes video)
    He said hedge funds are ultimately a great investment despite the risk with which the vehicles are traditionally associated. “The reality is the vast majority of hedge funds frankly are considerably less risky than owning a large, diversified portfolio of common stocks,” Duff said. “Perception and reality aren’t always the same.”
  • Hedge Fund Manager Describes Rock Bottom
    One by one, John Devaney sold his treasures, hoping to forestall what was in the end inevitable. He sold his Renoir and his Gulfstream, his home and his helicopter. Even his cherished yacht — gone. But on Wednesday Mr. Devaney, who made and then lost a fortune trading mortgage investments, finally called it quits. He shut his hedge fund, and told his investors that all their money was gone too.

Charts mentioned in today’s podcast:


S&P 500 Index, Daily Chart


S&P Financials Sector SPDR, Daily Chart


Crude Oil, Pit Trading, Daily Chart

Objective Market Sentiment Survey

The InVivo Objective Sentiment Survey tracks the number of buy and sell signals generated by InVivo Universal Stops amongst the constituent stocks of the S&P 100 and NASDAQ 100 indexes.


IniVivo Objective Sentiment Survey

Other stories worth watching from the market sentiment perspective:

  • Economist Cover Headline “Unhappy America”
    Nations, like people, occasionally get the blues; and right now the United States, normally the world’s most self-confident place, is glum. Eight out of ten Americans think their country is heading in the wrong direction. The hapless George Bush is partly to blame for this: his approval ratings are now sub-Nixonian. But many are concerned not so much about a failed president as about a flailing nation.
  • A Deposit-Protection Primer
    It has been two weeks since IndyMac Bank was seized in the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history, and even much healthier banks still are getting calls from customers worried about the safety of their money.
  • Merrill Writedowns Could Be Watershed For Banks
    Merrill Lynch’s latest effort to shed its subprime debt could set the standard for a final round of writedowns in the financial sector.
  • Home Prices Fall in May, Erasing Four Years of Gains
    Prices of U.S. single-family homes plunged at a record pace in May from a year earlier, with each of the 20 regions monitored showing annual declines for a second month, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case Shiller home price indexes reported on Tuesday.
  • Cayman-Registered Hedge Funds Exceed 10,000
    At the end of June, there were 10,037 hedge funds and fund-of-hedge-funds registered in the offshore tax haven, up from 9,413 at the end of 2007, according to the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA).
  • Tough Times For Hedge Funds
    According to a survey by trade publication EuroHedge, there has been a sharp slowdown in launches of European hedge funds. New European funds raised a total of $10.8 billion, down from $15.5 billion for the first six months of 2007 and the lowest first-half figure since 2004.

The Peter Lynch Moment

We talked about Chuck E. Cheese, CEC Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:CEC) in today’s podcast.


CEC Entertainment, Daily Chart

  • According to Reuters CEC is rated by Wall Street analysts a 2.29 which equates to an “Outperform”.
  • CEC Entertainment Q2 earnings beat Wall Street
    Chuck E. Cheese kids’ restaurant chain parent CEC Entertainment posted better-than-expected quarterly results as an enhanced marketing plan and efforts to increase the number of birthday party reservations and fundraising events paid off, boosting its shares 9 percent.

I will spend the rest of this week answering email and reader comments. Thanks for the patience.

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