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The market came under pressure yesterday due to political reasons, the Dow Jones was off 370 points, volatility spiked 46%.  Without getting too much into politics, we can assume that the market will be under some pressure until we get a little more clarity. That clarity might come next week if FBI Director James Comey decides to accept the Senate panel invitation to tell his side of the story.Recently we have had a streak of down Friday's, 7 out of the last 9 Friday's the SP500 has closed lower. The reason and or justification for this has been that investors [...]

The indices have been holding up well, we can talk about how 1-month and 3-month new lows are expanding, but that's all irrelevant until we start seeing some price deterioration on the actual indices.$CAI, $PI, $COOL, $SCSS, $DY, $MSG, $CCCR are the stocks on my trading watchlist today. I have an interest in these stocks on the long side if and only if they go through yesterday's high plus .10-cents. This single criterion will narrow down the list and get you involved only in the stocks that are on the move. The primary drivers of stocks in the short term is momentum [...]

I’m always intrigued by huge bases, typically a prolonged period of contraction leads to a prolonged period of expansion, hence the term; the bigger the base, the higher into space it goes.  We’ve pointed out a few bases over the last year that have made huge moves after we flagged them.  We pointed out $QSII on 7/10/2013 it ran 18% in a few weeks, $PVA on 7/17/13 at $5 and a few months later at its peak it was up 250%, on 9/13/2013 we highlighted $HZNP at $2.75 at its peak 6 months later it was up 481%. These huge bases don’t show up on a [...]

There's very old saying on Wall Street; "Sell In May and Go Away," like everything else, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. The market has hit a short-term peak in the month of May enough times to respect the saying.Here's the SP500 average return in the past 10-years and during post-election year; peak in May, low in June, retest in the fall. This could be used as a guideline.LPL Research chartThe great Urban Carmel from Fat-Pitch.blogspot.com pointed out that the average intra-year decline when the SP500 has been positive January and February is roughly -7 to -9%.The reason why Urban is highlighting only [...]

We had big earnings reports from AMZN, GOOGL, WDC, all three acted well in the after hours and are higher in the pre-market. Microsoft, Starbucks, and Intel are not fairing as well.  Amazon and Google are extended in the short-term and putting new money behind them today is probably not a great idea, both stocks especially Amazon are in the "it's never going down camp".I have quite a few names on my list today, a lot of small biotechs, they have been acting well.I have an interest in these stocks on the long side if and only if they go [...]

Today is the mother of earnings day; GOOGL, AMZN, INTC, MSFT, and KLAC are the biggest names reporting today after the close, all big names with possible short-term influence on the price action of the market. How these companies will react after they report no one knows.Here's my watchlist today; $LJPC, ESPR, TTPH, KEM.I have an interest in these stocks on the long side if and only if they go through yesterday's high plus .10-cents. This single criterion will narrow down the list and get you involved only in the stocks that are on the move. The primary drivers of stocks [...]

There's a big difference between the best-performing stocks and the best growth stocks, many times one has nothing to do with the other especially in the short-term.So far 85% of this year's best-performing stocks started the year under $10 and most if not all are unknown and without any great fundamental characteristics.  This was the case last year, the year before, and probably will be the case next year. Here is a post from 2013 talking about this very same thing; LINKYou can narrow down the stock universe in many different ways; by market cap, price, fundamentals, PE ratio, above [...]

The market had a great day yesterday. However, some possible stiff resistance sits right on top of us. The Small Caps led yesterday's rally, but in the grand scheme of things, it is still trading in a range that is now 85-days long.Follow through has been an issue lately, in other words, it has not paid to chase gains.Trading is a numbers game, it should be done within a portfolio of passive core index ETF holdings. Because stocks move in short-term bursts, they can be timed, in the short-term momentum and mean reversion is why most stocks move.  Scans can be [...]

One of Raymond James's Chief Market Technician Andrew Adams is out with a note today talking about the bear market that has happened underneath the surface while the SP500 has held up well and masked all the weakness underneath the surface. These negative breadth divergences have been discussed ad nauseam on fintwit. I’ve used this stat before, but it still astounds me that during 2015 if you had put all your capital into the largest ten companies in the U.S. stock market, you would have ended up making about 20% on the year, yet if you had held the other 490 [...]

The SP500 gapped higher yesterday and peaked at 10:00 am, this has been a recurring theme over the last couple of days.Energy and the metals took on the chin with the miners (GDX) ending the day -3.63% and Energy (XLE) was down -1.47%.I have a few stocks on my watchlist today.I have an interest in these stocks on the long side if and only if they go through yesterday's high plus .10-cents. This single criterion will narrow down the list and get you involved only in the stocks that are on the move. The main drivers of stocks in the short [...]