Everyone just keeps waiting for the market to back down a bit but it just doesn’t want to. Every time we think today is going to be that day, in comes a new wave of demand. I’m not complaining but enough time hasn’t yet passed since the crash this past winter that ...

These picks are from a scan looking for stocks making new highs on heavier volume: China Bak Battery (CBAK) managed a picture perfect consolidation breakout Wednesday but has run into a little follow through trouble early Thursday. A successful measured move could see this push $4.50 but the breakout gap around $2.45 might be a too enticing as a pull down. I am siding with a fall and have set a YourCall stop at early day highs. <img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 176px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWGUfU1tOjI/SjEXI4FOm-I/AAAAAAAAA6Q/yPXBTJGOwXA/s320/CBAKJun11.png" border="0"[More...]

I haven't had to much to post during the past few days. With the market range-bound and seemingly tired, yet unwilling to selloff, few charts seem truly inspiring either long or short. In my account, I continue to hold many of the same short positions I've had for several weeks, focused on insurers, some financial stocks, retailers, etc. I've had mixed results on the shorts, but will continue to hold since I think we'll trade lower than the current level at some point reasonably soon. Looking the other direction, I am holding high cash levels, with long positions primarily in commodity areas and semiconductor stocks. Here's a look at some current holdings in the trading account: Long: ZEUS, NFG, EGO, NVLS, KLAC, NGD, OCNF, DRYS, CRTX, XING Short: OFG, FDML, PRSC, DTG, AFL, BXP, AET, CTAS, AZO The retirement account has a larger number of holdings, including some that I am giving a longer leash (for[More...]

As S&P 500 earnings have started their collapse (see articles here and here), there has been a debate about whether this market constitutes good value. From a bottom up basis, however, I am seeing values that I haven’t seen in a long time. Screening on net-net working capital Using the free data from the Yahoo! finance website, I wrote a program that screened an investment universe that is roughly equivalent to the Russell 3000 members. The test is: stocks that trade below net-net working capital (current assets less all liabilities and preferred) and has positive trailing 12 month earnings. The net-net working capital requirement is a classic[More...]

Everybody knows that Obama is now taking all measures to put immediately the economic stimulus outside. Based on that fact, there no better time than now to know which is suppose to be the main beneficiares of this stimulus package. These companies will beneficit from President-elect Barack Obama’s plans to boost ...