7 Questions
Stockscores.com Perspectives for the week ending December 26, 2010
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In this week's issue:
Best wishes for the holidays to all the users of Stockscores.com!
It is sometimes difficult to know where to begin when deciding whether a stock is worth purchasing or not. Here are 7 questions that I think everyone should ask before buying a stock, as well as what I look for when answering the questions.
1. Are conditions right for this stock to go up?
Stocks go up because investors are optimistic about the future for the company. This is shown on a stock chart in a number of ways. The most important and easiest way is to look for whether the bottoms on the stock chart are rising. That means that the buyers are in control of the market, making the stock more likely to go higher than lower.
However, it can also happen that conditions are right for a stock to go up if the tops are falling if investors are motivated by fear. When investors are afraid of prices going lower they will sell with emotion and accept too low of a price. When stock's in this situation find a catalyst for emotional change, they often bounce back quickly.
It is more difficult to identify stocks that are likely to bounce back from oversold conditions so it is best for most investors to simply look for stocks that have rising bottoms on the stock chart. At Stockscores, we have developed the Sentiment Stockscore to also help with answering this question. If the Sentiment Stockscore is above 60, investors are likely optimistic about the company.
2. Do investors perceive significant fundamental change may be likely in the future?
It is important to realize that stocks do not go up because of what happened in the past. They go up because of what will happen in the future. We also need to accept that the stock market is not fair and that some people have better access to information than others. These investors will create abnormal trading activity in a stock when they expect significant fundamental change in the future. To beat the market, we have to leverage this break down in market efficiency and focus on stocks that are showing abnormal trading activity. At Stockscores, we use the Signal Stockscore and a break above 80 of this indicator as a signal that the stock may be trading with abnormal price or volume behavior.
3. Is the probability of the stock going higher strong enough to justify the trade?
While the market may be showing optimism, as evidenced by rising bottoms on the stock chart, we also need to know that the probability that the optimism will continue is good enough to justify entering the stock. The best way to determine this is by using chart pattern recognition. Patterns like ascending triangles, pennants, flags and cup and handles are predictive so it is essential to learn how to recognize them. Often, investors will buy a stock that is well in to an upward trend because the stock is showing a lot of optimism. However, because stocks that have been trending higher don't usually have good chart patterns any longer, they may not be worth entering. We want to find stocks that are starting upward trends so that we can maximize the probability of success. Understanding chart patterns is taught in the Stockscores StockSchool Pro course.
4. Does the reward potential of the trade justify the risk?
All signs may indicate that the stock is likely to go up but if there is a limit to how high it can go then we should evaluate whether the reward potential is significant enough to justify the trade. Stock's will often stall at historic ceiling prices which chart readers call resistance. We should exit a trade if the stock falls below its historic floor price, which chart readers call support. If resistance is not twice as far away from your entry price as support is, the trade is probably not worth taking.
5. Can you, the investor, handle the risk of the trade?
The greatest enemy of any trader is emotion. Emotion causes us to avoid taking losses when the market tells us the stock is likely to go lower. It causes us to sell our strong stocks to early. Emotion is at the root of almost every break down in our trading discipline and it is the reason most people fail to beat the stock market. If you take more risk than you are comfortable with on any trade you will likely make emotional mistakes. Therefore, it is essential that you are comfortable with the risk of every trade you make. To be successful, you must not care about the money.
6. Is the overall market condition right for your trade?
Every stock has some correlation to the overall market. No matter how good your analysis or disciplined your trading, you will do better if you go with that thing that is out of your control. Trade with the mood of the overall market and buy stocks aggressively when the overall market is going up. Play conservatively when the overall market is going down.
7. Does the stock have enough liquidity to justify the trade?
The public listing of a stock does not mean it will be easy to buy and sell. A stock needs buyers and sellers to create the liquidity of the investment. Stock's that trade with little volume or not on a regular basis are best avoided simply because the costs of entry and exit are too high.
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Day traders should look at 2 minute charts, swing traders at 15 or 60 minute charts. Position traders consider daily charts and investors should do their analysis with weekly charts. The analysis of the chart is pretty much the same, you just change the time frame for the hold period that is appropriate for you.
As you lengthen the time frame, you also shorten the time commitment you need to make to manage your portfolio. Day trading takes 8 hours a day, investing takes 15 minutes a week.
This week, I did my analysis on weekly charts. This means the time horizon for these trades should be measured in months or years. The charts that I found are breaking out from good chart patterns on the weekly chart and showed some abnormal activity recently.
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1. T.NOA
T.NOA (trading in the US as NOA) has been in a sideways trading range through most of this year but broke to two year highs to finish the year. With an improving Energy sector, this stock should do well provided support is not broken at $10.
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2. T.YM
You can see weekly charts at Tradescores.com, the chart for T.YM (trading in the US as YMI) shows a break through $2 resistance that has held up August of 2009. Through that period, there have been rising bottoms building, a sign of investor optimism. Support at $1.90.
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References
Get the Stockscore on any of over 20,000 North American stocks.
Background on the theories used by Stockscores.
Strategies that can help you find new opportunities.
Scan the market using extensive filter criteria.
Build a portfolio of stocks and view a slide show of their charts.
See which sectors are leading the market, and their components.
Disclaimer
This is not an investment advisory, and should not be used to make
investment decisions. Information in Stockscores Perspectives is often
opinionated and should be considered for information purposes only. No
stock exchange anywhere has approved or disapproved of the information
contained herein. There is no express or implied solicitation to buy or
sell securities. The writers and editors of Perspectives may have positions
in the stocks discussed above and may trade in the stocks mentioned. Don't
consider buying or selling any stock without conducting your own due diligence.
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