MeetMe Inc. (MEET)

MeetMe, Inc. is a social media technology company that owns and operates the MeetMe mobile applications and meetme.com. The Company is a location-based social network for meeting new people both on the Web and on mobile platforms, including on iPhone, Android, iPad and other tablets that facilitate interactions among users. The Company provides users with access to a menu of resources that promote social interaction, information sharing and other topics of interest. The Company offers online marketing capabilities, which enable marketers to display their advertisements in different formats and in different locations. (google finance)

The stock price is in an accelerating bullish movement well above the 200 day moving average. The price plunged after some director’s offloaded shares in august. This may indicate that the Q3 earnings report will not be as positive as the Q2:

However if the Q3 report is surprisingly positive I am looking forward on buying at 8,20$. 4 analysts have rated the stock as a “buy” and none as “sell” or “underperform”.

Incyte Corporation (INCY)

Incyte Corporation is a biopharmaceutical company. The Company is focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of therapeutics to treat medical needs, primarily in oncology. Forbes listed the company to it´s "Most innovative companies" list. Now the market capitalization is significantly smaller than the other medical giants, but aren´t we looking for growing companies? The company showed this quarter again some really good numbers:

I do not usually follow this kind of patterns, but when the fundamentals and other aspects of my strategy are right, why should I ignore a beautiful trend channel like this. The buy zone starts around 94$ and the first target would be 133$. Of course there is always the chance that the bears might push the stock down so that the channel is broken. Someone might recognize this as a bearish flag.

Update on Sabre Corp. (SABR) 6.9.2016

The stocks price has made a new low and is rising again towards the all-time-high. I am predicting volume increase at levels between 29,66 and 30,60. Buy signal if the price manages to close above 30,60.  

Weekly chart:

Sabre released some solid numbers on the 2nd of August: Quarter over quarter earnings growth 113%, ROE (ttm) 84%, Sales quarter over quarter 19,50%. Despite that the stocks price reacted bearish. Overall the stock is in a bullish cycle.

Daily chart:

Sabre Corporation (SABR)

Sabre is a solution provider in technology for the global travel and tourism industry. The software that the company provides is used by hundreds of airline and hotel companies around the world. Sabre is showing strong earnings, the EPS (quarter over quarter) has grown 85% and annual EPS by 110,40%. Also the sales are up 21%. The ROE is up 93,30% during the trailing twelve months and the stock is also supported by institutions: TBG Group Holdings holds 16,55%, Silver Lake Group 10,83% and Vanguard Group 5,24% etc. The stock is also technically showing a promising pattern (see picture). The stock is recovering  from the previous lows and is near the all-time high about to break through a 1-2-3 pattern. I am excited about the earnings report tomorrow before the market open.

Stock of the week

I am slowly moving away from day trading to swing trading or trend trading, since my daily job does not allow me to follow positions throughout the day. That is why I am working on a strategy which requires me to take a look at the positions after the closing bell. I am not moving away from technical analysis though, but I am increasing the significance of fundamental data. The strategy will follow William O´neill´s strategy and Michael Voigt´s represented "market technique". From this point on I will try to find an interesting stock every week and maybe trade it. I will write a short blog entry about it so that I can in the future look back how my recommended stocks performed. The markets are not good at the moment so I doubt they perform in the near future well.

Dycom Industries Inc. (DY)

Dycom’s business primarily benefits from increased demand for network bandwidth and mobile broadband, given the proliferation of smart phones. The company has been continuously benefiting from extensive deployment of 1-Gigabyte wireline networks by major customers. Most of the telecommunication companies are deploying fiber-to-the-home and fiber-to-the-node technologies to enable video offerings and 1-gigabit high-speed connections, thereby opening up significant opportunities for Dycom. As the picture below shows, the company´s  quarterly and annual numbers look promising. The stock has also a 89% institutional ownership and it´s stock is ranked number one among the competitors according to IBD ( Investors Business Daily).

 The only problem my strategy is facing with this stock is the risk/ reward ratio. Assuming the stock would increase in value by 50% and having a price of 94,98$ the stop order at 46,61$ we get a ratio of 54%. Also considering the order costs, I am risking 46% more than my theoretical profit could be. A good ratio would be above 100%. That is why I am only watching this stock. Maybe the price will form a new bottom soon, so could set the sell stop order on a more reasonable level.

My recent position trades

 Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn) on a 4 hour chart. Buy @ 16,640 because crossover point 2. Sell via trailing stop.

Hochtief (HOTG) on a 4 hour chart. Buy @ 72,393 sell at 75,527. Buy because of crossover point 2. Trailing stop exit. 

 Osram Licht (OSRn) on a 4 hour chart. Buy at 50,813 sell at 53,890. Signal was given by market crossing over point 2. Trailing stop exit.

Understanding (technical) market structure

Let us start with the picture above. We have three types of bullish trends: the accelerating bullish trend A, the regular bullish trend B and the decelerating bullish trend C. In an accelerating bullish trend the price makes higher highs and lows alternately making a "convex" slope. The trend is considered to be stronger than the trends B and C. The trend C again is losing momentum and is drawing a more "concave" pattern.

 We can find some theoretical "support" points and draw trend lines (yellow with trend A, orange with trend B and grey with trend C). In the trends A and B, one has to draw multiple lines, because the trends momentum is increasing/ decreasing. In trend B the trader is satisfied to draw only one line, which runs through all lows of the price slope.

One can find very effective entry points at the price level where the price embarks through the previous highs level (E). Adding a volume  indicator or looking at the order book at these levels, usually shows some significant order flow. This is where market technique oriented traders (private and institutional) traders enter their position. A trend following trader could set his/ her stop orders at the previous lows level. E.g. Entry at point E1. After the entry the trader wants to protect his/ her position and puts a stop order to the level S1 (only after the price has significantly risen through E1!)

A bullish trend makes alternately higher highs and lows. To exit the train at the right stop we have to understand when the trend has been broken and when it is reversing. Point B1 is the first lower low to appear ( its level is below the previous low). Many traders might hesitate and close their position now, where the trend might as well continue in the initial direction. However the price does another peak B2 which is a lower high. The price continues to drop below the previous lows level B3. Now the trend is considered to be reversed ( bearish) This is the last point where one should get rid of the position. Here the price usually makes rapid movements, since traders have set their stops here and some of them are changing from optimist to pessimist and reversing their position. This causes strong volume on the sell side.

This concept can be used from tick-time frames to weekly charts, but one has to keep in mind that the superior time frames set the major "winds" of the market: it is recommended to trade a bullish trend on the shorter time frames, when the trend is also bullish on the longer time frames.

December

I have recently been busy writing my thesis, and now that it has been graded and published I would like to do a short review about the subject. 

The quantitative research was carried out by first introducing concepts of technical analysis and by studying historical price data from a five-year time frame. The price data of the instruments was selected randomly from four different samples of asset classes. These segments included then 18 different derivative instruments. The price charts were then studied form a market technique- based strategy’s viewpoint: The strategy aims to find spots in the market, where movement will appear probably. The periods, through which the prices were studied, were also selected randomly from a 20-year timeframe. These fictitious order executions were obtained by entering the buying and selling signals into a table.  From these prices could then be the instruments behavior describing statistics derived.

 The results of the different instruments can be seen in the following pictures.

 In the first two columns we can see how many bullish, bearish and neutral periods each instrument had. Then we have columns with the signals given by the tested strategy,

Where the yellow highlighted cells represent numbers that are sums and the grey areas averages.

The quantitative results of the research showed that technical analysis can be used to some extent to gain continuously positive returns. As the research showed that instruments behave differently, the measure of profitability depends highly on the perspective from which the results are examined. Altogether, the scope of this study was to investigate, analyze and develop the field of technical analysis. As we can see in the tables, the commodities and index derivatives were clearly the most profitable instruments on average. The presented strategy represents a simple trend detection method that can easily be enhanced by adding terms and conditions.

Buy gold now?

EUROSTOXX and SMI open with a gap down

Some successful trades I made this week

Although my bachelors thesis will be written about a market technical strategy, I haven´t had much time to monitor the markets. Still I managed to pull of some positive returns with FTSEMIB and IBEX 35. Since the week started looking bearish on those indices, I was positioned bearish myself.
Despite we do not have definite sings of a trend  reversal on the weekly chart with these indices, the daily chart is starting to look like a bear market.
                                                             
                                                                    IBEX 35 H1

FTSEMIB H1

Always look at the big picture

Like you should not have a long position on the S&P 500 at the same time as you are short on the Dow Jones, you should apply the same rule to different time frames. A trader should always remember to look first  at the "general weather situation" before moving on to smaller time frames. One can see a trend reversal on a 15 minute chart but when looking at the daily chart, it appears only to be a correction of a bullish trend. The "the trend is your friend" rule applies also here.

Here is one example of a well constructed position:

Picture 1. We start the trading session by looking at the daily EUROSTOXX chart. We are                   now at breaking point 2 and see that this could be used as a trend confirmation.

Picture 2. Next we move to a samaller timeframe, for example the hourly chart. We can now identify a formation here and place our order. The direction of the position is now the same as the direction of the main trend.

Picture 3. to give you a hint what it would look like on the 15 min chart.

EUR/RUB about to breakout

The crisis between Ukraine and Russia has been affecting the EUR/RUB currency pair so that it is now in a steady bullish trend. A market technical entry at 50.820 will most definitely work. There is also a probability for a small correction movement just before the breakout. Pay attention to the volume to avoid  false entry.

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What about gold?

XAUUSD with Simple Moving Averages 200 and 50

As we know gold as the safe haven for investors, we may have some potential to buy in the near future .

Last week major stock indexes declined and as soon as they start to trend down we know there is a lot "air" for gold. On the other hand, blue chip companies have had a great year and therefore ivestors are holding on the stocks to receive generous dividends. Moreover there is  a rumor about gold that the Indian government would loosen their tight regulation regarding importing gold.

From the technical perspective, we had almost a breakout of the downtrend last week at 1.268, but it turned out to be a testing of the resistance or false breakout. As soon as we have some 1,2,3 formations and a breakout over the 2, I would buy. A turbo-long certificate would be the suitable. A drop below 1.180 would mean, that it is still a bearish climate.

Trailing stop by Michael Voigt

I recently read a book written by Michael Voigt that deals with breakout strategies. It also puts forth a trailing stop strategy for break out traders. The pros of the stop are, that it works in every market and on every time frame. The cons are that it does not work with highly volatile instruments that oscillate a lot.

The basic idea of the trailing stop is to "trail" the price. The stop is basically moved  to the closing price of the previous period. However there are some enhancements added to it.

The most important one, is observing the price movements that show signs of oscillation. Always when the price opens and closes within the area of the previous period, we are talking about an "inside bar". The inside bar has nothing to do with candlestick formations. Often when there is an "inside bar" the price tends to oscillate within the next periods. So the stop should be dragged to the close of the period before the previous.

So here is the OMX Helsinki 25 Index on the daily timeframe. As you can see the stop works well when the market is in a trend and continues to make higher highs and lows.

Potential trade for the year 2014?

Investors celebrated the year 2013 taking home some big profits. The stock index that rose the most was the Venezuelan IBC Index. With 2706,38 points and 474,1 percent it was the ultimate outperformer. After that came the DFM-General index with 99,9 percent. As third came the Argentinian index Merval. The Japanese Nikkei 225 index landed as fourth with 52,7 percent in performance. The Finnish HEX performed 23,1 percent and was 17th.

As it remains a little uncertain whether these indices keep rising, we can take a look elsewhere, e.g. the weekly chart of EUR/PLN spot price.  Massive triangle formation. I am not saying this will happen, but there is a probability. And that is what trading is based on: Probabilities.

Stocks for 2014

As Gold´s price keeps declining, investors move more and more their money into stocks. That is why it is a good time to make some stock picks for 2014.

Since AAPL suffered the biggest price decline in 2012 it seems that it is now in a steady trend making higher highs and lows.  Analyst speculate it to climb to 700 in the next 12 to 18 months. There is also a rumor that the company will be launching "wearable technology", something similar to Samsungs products. 

At the beginning of November Wall Marts (WMT) Stock price broke out of a bullish flag formation reaching an all-time high of 81,37. After that the stock consolidated to 77,80 which is significant and offers a great point to place the stop. So now we are waiting for a breakout over the A-TH.

Let´s wait that Nokia´s (NOK1V) stock will break over 6,0. Analysts are estimating Nokia to give out a dividend of 0,4 euros. 

Observing A Trend From A Market Technicians Viewpoint

There are many books about technical analysis out there, that are full of chart setups and candle stick analyses, but what they usually don´t have, is the explanation of traders behavior in a specific market situation. A successful daytrader, knows where the majority of traders have placed their stop orders and limit orders. That information is enough to make a successful trade, since where the orders are placed there will usually emerge a larger movement.

Lets have a look at the SP500 daily chart.

The blue dotline indicates the way of the trend. In general, trendfollowers usually set their stops above or below the last high or low, depending on the position of course. So if we look at the first 1,2,3 formation, we can see that when the price hits the significant high 2 the price breaks out. So the price reached above the last high and triggered stop orders from those who were positioned short. So short sellers have to buy the security and sometimes they even turn their position, which means they have to buy twice as much. And also many traders have their buy orders placed above the line.That is why often, but definitely not always, there comes movement into the market when crossing a significant high or low.  

That explains also why a breakout of a triangle formation has so much volume. The price oscillates up and down, but not making higher highs or lower lows. As the range of the movement gets smaller and smaller, eventually the price breaks out of the formation skyrocketing or falling. The traders move their sell and buy orders outside of the triangle and when the price breaks the formation, it triggers the bundle of orders.