Archive for the ‘Stocks’ Category

Well-Priced Stocks Will Ride Out These Market Swings

Posted 21 Feb 2012 — by Covestor
Category Investing, Market News, Stocks, Trading

By Dan Plettner

Market VolatilityIs it time for the market to step back and digest the recent ascent, or time for investors to step up and realize the balance of risks remains skewed to the upside?

As I discussed last month, 2011 had a frustrating feel. The volatility and tendency for managers to be challenged in outperforming indices was noteworthy even in the presence of extraordinarily attractive valuations.

In 2012, the market has rewarded some already, and bewildered others. Those who have eschewed all but Treasuries and dividend growth stalwarts have significantly underperformed the rally.

There is a lesson: price matters. When securities are priced well, they tend to outperform for some period. But “when” tends to be the market’s painful tease. What we have been seeing is usually what the masses focus on in making investment decisions, rather than what logic objectively suggests should occur. Essentially, the masses are constantly focused on the rear-view mirror. Read More

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Playing This Trending, Overbought Market

Posted 21 Feb 2012 — by Covestor
Category ACOM, CASC, ETFs, EWZ, Investing, IYT, Market News, QQQ, Stocks, Trading, XLK

By CJ Brott

Trending, Overbought MarketBoth of our investing models, ETF Only and Macro Plus Income, have adjusted portfolio holdings and trading strategies as the market has evolved.

Since the October bottom of last year, market volatility has declined and the markets have trended higher. As measured by the decline in the CBOE VIX to the rise in the Average Directional Index (ADX) price trends have surfaced which enable breakout buying and other momentum strategies to be successful.  Because of this we have diversified the ETF model from four holdings concentrated in food, energy and mid cap U.S. equities into more momentum driven ETF’s including PowerShares QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ), SPDR Select Sector Technology Fund (NYSEARCA:XLK) and iShares MSCI Brazil Index (NYSEARCA:EWZ). Read More

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Accumulating Cheap Stocks On This Market Rally

Posted 21 Feb 2012 — by Covestor
Category CCIH, CJES, CRZO, FWLT, GFA, Investing, LNC, Market News, MTW, MWW, Natural Gas, SHLD, SODA, Stocks, SVNT, TEX, Trading

By Mark Holder

stock market - rallyAfter a difficult performance in 2011, the Opportunistic Arbitrage model delivered a 25% gain in January easily outperforming the 4.4% advance for the S&P 500. We spent most of the month accumulating cheap stocks in order to take advantage of the market rallying against the proverbial ‘wall of worry’.

January was an interesting month with stocks rising even in the face of what appeared like continued negative news out of Europe. With the continued focus on Greece, most investors stayed out of the stock market and missed that yields on Italian and Spanish bonds saw dramatic declines. The ability to isolate the problems to Greece and Portugal were a big relief to markets that had priced in a European blowup in December.

The decline in emerging markets inflation was also a big plus. Specifically fast growing countries like China and India saw multi- year lows in inflation rates allowing monetary policy to pause and potentially ease as 2012 progresses. Read More

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Microcap Mobile Index Off To Fast Start In 2012: AUGT, ETAK, GLUU, MITK, VELT

Posted 20 Feb 2012 — by Mobile Guru
Category AUGT, ETAK, GLUU, Investing, Market News, MITK, Stocks, Technology, Trading, VELT

By Mobile Guru

Microcap Mobile IndexIn early January, I created a Microcap Mobile Index consisting of stocks that have market capitalizations under $1B and a price over $1 that covered the companies below. Let’s take a look at how the group has performed year to date versus the NASDAQ composite. Impressively, the Mobile index racked up a 32% year to date gain compared to the NASDAQ which is up 13% year to date. Here is a short recap of some specific news items of relevance to the companies that comprise the index.

Stock Dec. 30 2011 Close Current Price Percentage Gain/Loss

  • AUGT          $1.34     $1.94       44.78%
  • ETAK           $2.65    $2.50        -5.66%
  • GLUU          $3.14    $3.76        19.75%
  • MITK           $7.25    $11.20      54.48%
  • VELT           $6.80    $10.09      48.38%
  • NASDAQ     2605      2951         13.28%
  • Index Average          32.35%

Augme Technologies Inc. (OTC:AUGT)

• On February 16th Augme Technologies announced new features and functionality of its AD LIFE mobile marketing and advertising platform. The powerful SaaS-based platform is further optimized for customer ease-of-use while adding a number of key updates to Mobile SiteBuilder and the mobile couponing module. Read More

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Market Astrology: About that Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) Collapse…Again?

Posted 19 Feb 2012 — by Karen Starich
Category Investing, Market News, NFLX, Stocks, Trading

By Karen Starich

Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX)Last September my interest in Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) was peaked when suddenly the stock slid more than 50% in 2 months. I checked the Astrology chart for the company when Jeff Pierce mentioned the stock had hit support and was a potential “buy.”  What I found did not look promising, in fact it looked like the rip cord was about to be pulled on the stock!  I wrote my original article here titled “Market Astrology: About  that Netflix Collapse”

Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) - technical analysis

In September the planet Neptune (rules movies and the internet) was making hard aspects that would not be helpful for a company in the business of renting movies over the internet. I wrote that the company would take another drop on September 26th that would continue into October where the stock could potentially fill the gap between $52 – $60.50. Looking back now, those declines happened however the price target between $52-$62.50 did not happen. Since the decline, the company made improvements with their U.S. customer base and signed a multi-year deal with MGM Studios to exclusively stream it’s first run movies in the UK and Ireland. Read More

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I Believe We’ll See Recovery, Not Recession

Posted 19 Feb 2012 — by Covestor
Category Economy, Investing, Market News, Stocks

By Gerald Gehman

Gerald Gehman

Gehman Capital’s Undervalued Growth Companies model is a small cap portfolio that is designed to maximize rates of return over an extended period of time. I do not market time to avoid losses, or take profits in the short term. I choose to invest in companies that I think have a product, or products, that will generate long term profits and have the financial resources to withstand the stresses of start-up companies. For all of 2011, the account was down 41.4%. In 2012, the account is up 17.8% as of early February.

I believe that certain U.S. equities are underpriced and, more broadly, there is a lot of money currently available for investment in the global economy and markets.

Most every central bank in the world in trying to force money into the world economy. The money has allowed the U.S. to avoid an extreme disaster, and will continue to stimulate a recovery – it may be slow – but I believe it will be a recovery – not a recession. Read More

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Trade Setup: Questcor Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:QCOR)

Posted 17 Feb 2012 — by Jeff Pierce
Category Biotechnology and Drugs, Healthcare, Market News, QCOR, Stocks, Technical Analysis, Trading

By Jeff Pierce
Questcor Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:QCOR)
Long trade in the 31.20 – 30.65 area.

Stop on a close below weekly bollinger band.

Questcor Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:QCOR) – Daily Chart

Questcor Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOR)

Earnings could be next catalyst for the uptrend to resume. Read More

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Trimming Bonds, Redeploying to Equities

Posted 17 Feb 2012 — by Covestor
Category Bonds, Commodities, Currency, Economy, Gold, Investing, Market News, Sectors, Stocks, Trading

By Tom Yorke

Tom Yorke

Tom Yorke

While on vacation with my family, I ran across a New York Times story entitled “Greek Wealth Everywhere except Tax Forms.” It should have hit me harder, but perhaps the sun was baking my brain that day or perhaps I just needed to turn off for a while… but it all comes back to me now

Salient observations by the Times: Just 324 Greeks admitted owning a swimming pool, despite an actual count of almost 17,000. Thirty four doctors in a “trendy” Athens neighborhood claimed income of less than $13,300, a figure which exempts them from paying any taxes at all, period. Apparently Greeks with tax problems, according to the Times, have found that the way to solve those problems was to use, say, a third of their obligation to actually pay the government, a third to bribe the tax collector, and keep the other third in their pockets. (We’re sure it’s much different nowadays.) Read More

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Manufacturing Illusions on the Election Trail

Posted 17 Feb 2012 — by Robert Reich
Category Economy, Employment, GM, Government, Market News, Politics, Sectors, Stocks

By Robert Reich

Robert Reich

Robert Reich

Suddenly, manufacturing is back – at least on the election trail. But don’t be fooled. The real issue isn’t how to get manufacturing back. It’s how to get good jobs and good wages back. They aren’t at all the same thing.

Republicans have become born-again champions of American manufacturing. This may have something to do with crucial primaries occurring next week in Michigan and the following week in Ohio, both of them former arsenals of American manufacturing.

Mitt Romney says he’ll “work to bring manufacturing back” to America by being tough on China, which he describes as “stealing jobs” by keeping value of its currency artificially low and thereby making its exports cheaper. Read More

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How to Lower Correlation with the Broader Market

Posted 16 Feb 2012 — by Covestor
Category AMZ, Investing, Market News, OKE, Trading, WMB

By James Roberts

James Roberts

On February 6th, Barron’s published its semi-annual Barron’s-Zacks ranking of Wall Street broker’s focus lists. It was not a pretty picture, with only one research firm achieving noteworthy results.

The most significant thing in the article with respect to my investment strategy was the fact that the Charles Schwab’s Stock Equity Ranking System ranked ninth for the six months surveyed with a return of -12.13%. The Schwab Equity Ranking continues to be a significant component of the fundamentally based strategy I use and its poor performance in 2011 offers support for my decision to decrease the relative importance of the Stock Equity Ranking System by adding three more inputs.

Those three inputs are the Starmine system offered through Fidelity, the monitored list by Dines Theory Forecast, and a ranking that I devised which rewards stocks with lower volatility. The result will be a less volatile portfolio which may produce lower overall returns. Read More

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