Updating/weeding out the list

Today the market had very respectable and possibly encouraging gains. But judging from the volume on the major index ETFs, trading was not heavy enough to look at the day's action as a convincing change of sentiment in the market. This images shows a daily chart of the three majors since November with a 30 day Moving average. All of them have areas of likely resistance to overcome before any serious bullish posture could be entertained again. In addition to resistance levels from price action, the descending 30 MAs might just might provide another influential nudge to the down side.
It should be noted that they all are in a double bottom reversal pattern, but there are a few things to consider. 1) The pattern is meaningless until the resistance from the high between the two bottoms is broken. 2) A bullish reversal should come at the bottom of a bearish trend. The recent bearishness is really just the first breakdown of a very bullish trend and not yet a trend with lower highs and lower lows(I'm looking at SPY on a daily closing basis). So, looking for an upward "reversal" seems a bit premature.
(Click for a larger view.)


While the market is sorting itself out, this is an ideal time to rebalance our lists. Everyone should be working on a bearish watchlist. Despite the current state of things, I think we should always focus on the primary watchlist for the group as a bullish watchlist. After all, that direction is the ultra long term bias and nature of the market. Besides, many people may not be interested in or comfortable with shorting the market or trading bearish. When the market does resume its strength, we want to be ready with a list of well chosen stocks that are likely to be among the first and strong participants of a new rally. But first we've got to get rid of the current stocks that are less attractive at this point.
I mentioned a few thoughts about trimming down our list a few posts ago. Here's a complete run down on what I think should go and what should stay.
First: here's a look at the list and how it scores in the Investools Phase 1 and Phase 2 analyzer.


The simplest way to start is by getting rid of KBH, UNT and ZMH because they have a combined F/E score of less than 3.25. I'm a bit sad to see ZMH go, particularly as it continues to work on a new 52 week high. But the growth estimates is less than our ideal 20% and it is estimated to grow at a pace slower than its group this year and also in the next 5 years.

Also, because the Estimates score is forward looking, we'd prefer for that score to be the stronger of the two, if possible. For that reason, I'd also like to see CRDN, WCC, and BHI leave our list.
CRDN - Growth estimates are a low 7.5%. Also estimated to under perform its group this year and next. Set an alert on this one for when it breaks 62.50 and forget it.
WCC - Growth estimate is less than 20% and it is estimated to under perform its group this year and next. It's been in a range between 55 and 70 for about 9 months. Set an alert to notify you if it goes above 70 and forget it.
BHI - It is actually very attractive from a valuation standpoint. PEG is .45 with a P/E well under its group. But the most recent earnings miss and the current and next year's estimates for earnings growth well below the group look like red flags. The chart is a mess with the gap down on the recent earnings announcement. It has also not participated in the latest rally attempt in the Oil Services.

The others:
ICE - Has had an incredible run and the trend has broken. PEG of 2.19 looks a bit overpriced. I'll be looking for potential bearish entries on this on a bounce down from 135 or a break of 125.

NTAP - It had a strong reaction to the recent earnings announcement in February but couldn't follow through and with the market selloff on the 27th, it gave back all the gains from the earnings jump. 36 remains important support, recently confirmed by a nice hammer formation. But once that breaks, things don't look good. Again, this has a high PEG of 2.24. Institutions own 87% of the shares outstanding on this stock. Once they start selling, look out below.


HWAY - This stock has just been boring! The fundamentals are still quite good, but I'd like to get rid of it if or no other reason than that it trades well below an average 1 million shares a day. As a result, there's not a lot of open interest throughout the options chain.

VSEA still looks to be a reasonable valuation with strong fundamentals. So I don't see great fundamental reasons to take it off the list. But I'm nervous about the chart. It has seen great gains in the last 8 months. More impressive is the strength of its chart compared to the SOX index in the last 4 months and it is now working breaking recent resistance to an all time high. But the chart looks like it could be ready to roll over. It broke a long term trendline in January and rallied back up to find resistance on the underside of that line. It now looks to be in an ascending wedge, which tends to resolve to the down side. With a big bearish engulfing candle strengthening resistance at 50, a reversal could be at play here.


CWTR - Though the fundamental scores are still pretty good and the valuation is actually quite attractive, I think this industry comparison chart says it all. GONG!

RIMM is pretty expensive, but it has held up impressively in the recent market selling. We should wait to see what happens at the earnings announcement on April 4. Or maybe we should not include stocks over $100. Thoughts?

In Summary, here is my recommendation for the list:
KBH Cut
UNT Cut
ZMH Cut
CRDN Cut
WCC Cut
BHI Cut
ICE Cut
NTAP Cut
HWAY Cut
CWTR Cut

Keepers(for now)
VSEA Give it the benefit of the doubt until it breaks down
RIMM Hold 'til earnings, at least
COH This actually has 3 green arrows right now
AAPL Apple rolls out a bright iFuture
CTSH Just ranked 15th in the Businessweek 50 best performing companies. Setting up for a new batch of green arrows.

So how does that strike you? Please let me know if this assessment of things is agreeable or if you see certain stocks differently than I and would like to take different action. Once we agree on the stocks to get rid of, we can begin to find replacements. We still have over a week until our next meeting, but perhaps we can get some ideas flowing between now and then. If you respond with ideas, I'll try to respond and include charts. If you want to mock up a chart with what you're seeing, I'd be happy to post that too on that blog.

F$#%&@& ININ, spread orders, Technical Analysis

Double Sigh. (See earlier ININ post "Whipsawed" for the first one)

With two confirmed candle patterns testing the new support, the bull flag was broken yesterday for a very good entry signal. Apparently the rest of the world saw that too. But I didn't trade it.
Another case for the lesson about watching a stock deliberately and taking the signals that are there, even if you got stopped out for a loss already. In fairness, I have been hesitant to take on aggressive positions in this holiday time when the volume in the market is so low, but there sure was nice volume here on this one. Granted, the stock has almost doubled in under 3 months. But with all that volume backing it up, who are we to say that it's tired?
(Click on the picture to make it grow.)


In hindsight, I realize that my mistake was setting a stop loss order too tight for a volatile stock like this. I assumed the old resistance would provide new support when I should have sized for a stop under the old support and kept a mental stop below the new expected support to allow for intraday noise like we saw on the big hammer day. 3% below support is different on a stock like this than on a steadier big cap stock. To see the other posts with the story of this ININ play, click on the ININ link at the bottom of this post.

After my post yesterday, I watched BHI for the Harami pattern to be confirmed with an up day. It was looking stronger earlier in the day, but even with some selling toward the end of day, it was still an up day. Because of my distrust for the market at the moment, I decided to play it a bit more conservative and do a bull put spread. This way, it doesn't have to make the big potential move I see. All it has to do is close above 75 at Jan expiration. Jan 70/75 bull put spread. I actually placed it in two accounts.

Let's talk limit orders and negotiating. With options and especially spread trades, we very rarely want to place an order at the natural bid or ask. There is usually room to negotiate.
The spread was 1.25 at the bid, 1.45 at the ask. I placed the orders for each account for a limit of $1.35 at 3:07 PM. They sat there. I decided to negotiate a bit. I moved one of them to a limit of 1.33. It sat. Seconds before 3:15 I moved the limit to 1.30 and it filled in exactly one second while the stock was at 75.57. I let the other order for 1.35 sit. At 3:29, 22 minutes after it was placed, the order filled for $1.35 when the stock was at 75.48.
To my knowledge, the bid/ask on the spread did not change in that whole time as the stock moved in a relatively tight range. Whether it was the difference of .09 in the stock price or just antsy market makers, I got the fill I wanted by waiting and still did better than the natural bid on the order that I did bring down my ask.
The moral of the story is that we must not forget that this is a market place and therefore a place for negotiating our price. Sometimes we have very little room to negotiate, but other times we have more. With the bid ask spread in options chains and the resulting spread in a combination of two options in one order, there is often room to negotiate, even on more heavily traded options chains. In a very heavily traded stock and options chain, the market will be tight, yet there will be a spread. Depending on the stock price the theoretical price of an option or spread position will always be right about at the mid of the bid/ask spread. We will rarely fill right at the mid since the market makers need something of an edge to want to play. But we can most often negotiate somewhere between the natural(bid in this case since we're selling a spread) and the mid. Notice on this options chain (after hours) that because the stock is very heavily traded, the options have quite high open interest. High liquidity makes a tight market. A tight market shows the bid and ask straddling the theoretical price. That's what we want to be aiming for.
Options markets are super efficient and any talk of market maker manipulating your position is nonsense, particularly if it is a liquid market.

Note that the shorter term in-the-money option has a slightly wider spread. It's hard to count on after hours prices as exactly accurate, but I'd read this as bullish. The ITM option has more intrinsic value and less time value to burn. Therefore, the seller of this Jan 70 option is taking on quite a bit of risk, more so than the ATM and OTM options with all time value, and widens the spread (the their cut of the action) to compensate for upside risk.

Now look at the chain for the Vertical spreads. The bid/ask spread is wider than for a single option on almost every spread. Yet the theoretical price is just about exactly in the middle. Because there are two individual sides to the trade the market can fill them individually or together. Whatever the case, we don't care, as long as we get the combination filled for our price somewhere near the theoretical.

Notice the odd fill I got for each individual side of the bull put spread. Someone out there in the market is willing to negotiate in odd prices. It's also possible that each side was filled in different places. Regardless, I got my fill for 1.30, better than the natural of 1.25.


I hope that was helpful. However, I want to make sure to distinguish between this kind of negotiating that with a normal stock purchase. Most stocks trade with a far smaller spread and this will not be nearly as much a consideration as it is with options. If you want to get filled on a stock order and don't want to wait around hoping for a dip and miss the boat(which I've done too many times...and then chased it like an idiot - don't chase it like an idiot), buy with a limit order on the ask price.

In other news, KBH looks read for a break of this flag and some upward movement. Ideal entry on the break of this line. Good reports from homes sales today and yesterday could mean a touch of enthusiasm for home builders.



Finally, if this chart of ISE doesn't convince you that technical analysis can be very useful in observing what's going on and being in sync with the market, I don't know what will. Do you think other people are drawing lines on this same chart too?

Some strength in the list

I won't go through them all, but we do have some strong ones in our midst.

The $SOX index has been struggling a bit lately. It broke both diagonal and short term horizontal support and has been drifting since. It's still above the 200 MA, though, and hanging onto the 50. So I'm not counting it out yet, but it's looking kinda ugly.


In contrast, however, our own VSEA has been very impressive. We're all so proud! Breakout on big volume. The news isn't obvious to me as to why, but the volume doesn't lie. It's a bit extended right now for an entry, but it's definitely one to watch for an entry point, particularly if the SOX and the Nasdaq get their act together. I wrote about the Semis in this post. Don't forget about the increased money for buy backs.



CRDN broke above a bull flag pattern I mentioned in Scrolling Through the List. I think it is probably debatable where to draw the flag pole, but the theory is that once the Flag (The area of consolidation between two lines) is broken to the upside, the stock should continue the distance equal to the height of the pole. Since late November showed consolidation after a big move up off the 41 area, it was a bit of a flag pattern too. I'll place the pole of the most recent flag from the low of Nov. 30 at 51.78. The high of Dec. 5 is 57.15. In round figures, the height of the pole is $5. Taken from the place where the flag was broken, about 55.80, the target would be 60.80. I almost took this trade on Tuesday, but chickened out because I don't trust the low volume in the market during this holiday season and the volume on this one was very low on the bullish candle. Regardless, resistance is at 62.50



Looking at it more closely, I think the move off 41 in November could be seen as a flag pattern with a pole that is about 13 pts. long. It was a big move on earnings and kicked off with major volume. From the breakout on 12/05 above 54, the target would be 67. The breakout was on more than 150% average volume and the subsequent pullback and successful test of new support was on average volume, a bullish sign.
It may seem a lofty target, 67. But looking at the 5 year chart, it doesn't look so absurd. They just announced a follow up order from the Army for 133 million bucks, the largest single order it has ever received. The PEG on the stock is under 1. The 67 area just may be in the cards.



With a positive New Homes Sales report out, the Housing sector looked strong today. KBH looks to be ready to move higher. There are many resistance points along the way, so an options trade will be trickier. Profit targets would be good. Otherwise, a stock position would be ideal.


Crude oil has been week in recent days.


Yet the $OIX confirmed a bullish Harmai pattern today by closing higher than the two day pattern.



Our UNT did form a bullish engulfing pattern today at support, but I'm not in love with the technical picture on the chart and I'm sure there are other oil stocks out there that are stronger.

Like the OIX, the Oil Services Index shows some good bounce potential with a bullish engulfing pattern right at the 50 and 200 MAs for support. The index is just below the support line I'd have liked to see hold, as well as the 200 MA, but it's not yet a convincing break.



From that sector, our very own BHI looks very promising. The harami formation today needs a higher close tomorrow for confirmation. The stock is poised on horizontal support and the 200 MA with the 20 rising through it. Very bullish potential. Low risk entry here with upside to the order of 7 or even 12 points.
Remember that this one trades at a discount to its group and has a PEG of about .50. Very low. Very good.


That's all for now.

Scrolling through the list

As the Nasdaq is looking ever more questionable and the SOX has definitely broken its uptrend support line, AAPL seems to have broken down in perhaps a very significant way. It has Definitively lost the horizontal and diagonal support and now it looks like the 50 MA too. That makes three strikes. Next likely support is at 78. The 200 MA is all the way at 70.

(Click images to see them larger.)



BHI is holding above 74.50 support and the 200 MA. Yesterday's inverted hammer made a bullish Harami.



The continued strength from COH warranted a mention from Mike Coval in Wednesday's Market Commentary.



CRDN is in a bull flag and holding above the 20 MA.



CTSH has a trend that looks a little long in the tooth and might be ready to break its Uptrend support and the 50 MA in one shot.



CWTR doesn't look very pretty and just bounced off the underside of the 200 MA. Chart shows a couple bearish divergences with the MACD in the last year. Interesting to see how common these are and how powerful a signal they seem. Here's an article on the subject.



HWAY looks to be warming up to breakthrough the 200 MA with the help of the 20 MA and support just below at 46.50.


ISE looks more likely to test the 200 than climb back up to the 50. The intermediate uptrend is coming in jeapordy with a test of the latest low.
A few posts back, I suggested a 50/45 bull put. I paper traded it and on the break of the support line closed it for a small loss.



KBH seems to be respecting the 200 MA and looks inclined to use it as support now. There is decreasing volume on the pullback from the recent high.



NTAP is right a the crux of testing horizontal and diagonal support and shows a potential double top with a bearish divergence on the MACD. Volume spikes recently have been on buying days.



RIMM had earnings today after close. There are a lot of writers pointing out overvaluation. The stock has more than double since August. But with earnings coming in at a penny more than the analysts' expectation, the stock was up over 5% after hours. Here's a good summary of the announcement.
With a fresh bounce off the 50 MA, if Friday closes up above 141, this could be a nice bullish entry for further upside movement. A Bull Put spread might be a nice conservative approach.
Implied volatility on RIMM ran up above 55% into this announcement. Perhaps there will still be a nice level of it to sell tomorrow.



UNT still has a longer term downward bias, but may find support at 48.80 and its 50 MA.



VSEA broke out big today, 5.7% on a day when the SOX is down 1.3%. Only news I could find was of a live webcast for their coming earnings announcement in January.



WCC looks to be having trouble. Continued selling today on big volume. 56.50 is likely support. Peter R. at Shadow Trader always says that volatility contraction leads to volatilitiy expansion. Notice the three Moving Averages coming together over the past few months. With the price now below the 200 with the others likely to follow, could this be the beginning of a more meaningful move down?
Perhaps a bounce a bounce off the 56.50 area support level could be played with a bull put spread for a bounce with the intention of buying back the short on continued breakdown.




ZMH wants to go higher though couldn't quite make it beyond resistance today and formed a shooting star which technically still needs confirmation, though the past few weeks have shown a number of bearish candle patterns.



It's interesting to look through the list and find that I'm still bullish in the short term for 10 of the 15 stocks. However, some of those "bullish" stances could easily change very soon: NTAP, CTSH, CRDN

Indexes and some of our list.

I hope everyone had a good weekend. I'll be going to an Advanced Technical Analysis workshop in near D.C. this week, so postings will probably be on the less frequent side. However, I've put together a pretty lengthy post here which should give you plenty to chew on for a while.

Don't forget to check for the key economic events for the week ahead. You can find key events, earnings announcements and splits for the coming week in the "Week Ahead" page found in the left column on the "Strategies" page on the the Investools site. Otherwise, for a simple view of economic events, click here. There you can click on each event for a link to more info.

Taking a quick look at the major indexes, the SPX looks quite strong, continuing its trend with higher highs and higher lows. One potential bit of caution is Friday's shooting star which would be validated as a potential reversal point or resistance level with a gap and close down or big black candle for monday. This would be consistent with the current channel resistance.

(Click images to see them larger)


The VIX index has been very volatile since breaking the downward resistance line. Now it's back to lows and has used it as support on friday. Until this index makes a meaningful move above the 13 area, I won't get too excited about prolonged bearish action in the market.



I don't usually pay too close attention to the Dow or place a lot of weight on it as an indicator of market direction. Regardless, it is interesting to note that while it did break horizontal resistance to a new high this week, the old trend channel support may now act as potential resistance. There is also a shooting star of sorts, though not quite the ideal with its upper shadow less than twice the length of the body.


As for the Nasdaq, though not in the most convincing way, it did close above the recent lower high and the pennant formation. It doesn't seem to have great momentum at this point, but the bias remains up.



The Market Forecasters shows the intermediate lines on both charts moving up in the upper reversal area, so these are read as bullish. Regardless with the market trends still clearly in tact, this stochastic indicator is not yet quite ideal for these conditions.

From our list:

AAPL is in a good position for a low risk entry ( i.e. near support). However, "Apple Computer Inc. said Friday it has delayed filing its annual report with the Securities and Exchange Commission due to its ongoing investigation into stock option grants." So it wouldn't surprise me if investors were a bit lukewarm on the stock following this news.



BHI has broken decisively above the 75 resistance area. All those who bought in under that level have been validated and are now sitting pretty. Getting in now near the 75 area would be ideal on a test of support in coming days. The P/E of 11.3 shows a discount to the Group's P/E of 22.4. With growth expected at 23%, that gives us a PEG of about .5. Seemingly too good to be true. From what I can tell, there seems little reason this stock shouldn't revisit its high and likely go further. Very good also to see the group moving quickly up the Big Chart in the past few weeks.



Our other oil stock, UNT hasn't quite broken the longer term downtrend convincingly, so it's still in the dog house with me. There is also a bearish divergence between the higher high in price and the lower high on the MACD.



CRDN looks to have support at 55 and some potential resistance 56.30 or so, but nothing blatant until the high around 62.50.



COH appears to be easing its momentum a bit in keeping with its group rank on the big chart. However, it is still in a nice, healthy uptrend after breaking two significant resitance levels with volume. As it move into its uptrending support line and the 30 MA, this might be a very good place to look for a bounce entry to ride a run up in anticipation of its earnings announcement on Jan. 22. This could be a good time to look at buying options too as the Implied Volatility is at a low point and it will likely start to rise approaching the earnings announcement. This will inflate the premium in the options.



ISE somehow doesn't quite look like it's going to break through this ceiling. It's strangely back below the high from back in March and the big volume jump to a new high with volume on 10/25 after earnings didn't quite set off a new move. 55 remains as resistance. All that said, the uptrend is still in tact and we have just made a successful bounce off the support line. Good entry point using Friday's open as a support line and the trend line as an exit signal. Makes for a risk reward of 1/5. VERY GOOD. Also, a Jan 45/50 bull put spread for roughly $1.55 credit could be very successful using the same lines as an exit.


KBH will be a difficult one to play, I think. The homebuilders do seem to have put in a bottom for the time being and have pulled above that area with an accompanying rise up the big chart. However, Friday's Big Chart rank did show a slight pullback as there is considerable overhead supply with lots of potential resistence every step of the way. KBH may see the nice round number 50 as support now, but there seems resistance at about every $5 incriment as we go up. That's not necessarily a bad thing as long as we can get in near support levels and get out at each target. For now, I'll leave this alone and expect a more sideways bias.



NTAP broke back above 40 on Friday with considerable volume(see 11/21 for a "fake out"). Perhaps it will now hold as support. We've now got three fresh green arrows with recent volume spikes being buying days.



It will be interesting to see what happens with RIMM after its earnings announcement on Thursday. It's in a strong uptrend about to receive a third green arrow on the MACD.
This article makes for a case of overvaluation which seems quite believable seeing as the P/E is twice that of its group and it has a PEG of around 3. (Here's a good link for an explanation of P/E and PEG.) Perhaps we can watch this for a bearish play if it breaks the uptrend support.


Okay then. I think that's enough for now. I would love to see some comments on all this, if nothing else, just to let me know people are in fact reading, thinking about and questioning this all and not just glancing at it.
Have a great monday! :-)

Oil play

I just traded emails with Jane talking about UNT. I thought I should do a post on oil and oil stocks.
The simple way to look at how Crude oil is doing is USO. It's an ETF that tracks it directly, though I don't know exactly where the actual dollar value of it comes from, as it's not a very obvious relationship to the actual price of Crude oil.
(Click chart to see it larger)

For a more direct look at Crude you can use this Gallery View of the Continuous Crude Contracts at Stockcharts.com. Prophet.net also has a good page for looking at futures.
Anyway, looking at the daily and weekly charts, we can see that the downward movement has subsided, though it's not quite taken off to the upside just yet.
As we noted in our recent meeting, our two oil stocks BHP and UNT have been decidedly down for the past 6 months or so. But they're trying to make a come back.
UNT is certainly in a short term uptrend, though it is not facing the longer term downtrending resistance line. As there is a good amount of "overhead supply" supply from over the last year, barring a drastic move in oil, I don't know if we should expect this chart to revisit the highs without some further consolidation. It is up 20% in just over two months. 48.75 should provide support below us.



BHI is very similar, though it has broken its longer term downtrend and with above average volume. There are still some issues of overhead supply, but the most obvious issue would be the 75 level which looks to be likely resistance.


It's worth considering where the strength is, though, in oil stocks. Doing a comparison of the three industry groups, the Oil Integrated stocks are showing relative strength over the last 6 months.

This relative strength is also reflected in the latest number on the big chart.
Look at the $OIX oil index versus the $OSX oil services and it'll be pretty clear.
So do a bit of drilling down in the oil integrated group for something to watch. Strangely, that's the one group of the three that we don't have represented on our list.
PBR has potential with support in the 95/94 area. XOM looks to be bouncing off 75 support today.