Energize your portfolio

There was a little room in the Van Meerten/BarChart New High portfolio --VMNHI so as always I used BarChart to screen for the stocks trading above 100K shares a day that were hitting new highs with the highest frequency. After additional screening EXCO Resources -- XCO was my favorite.

EXCO Resources, Inc. is an independent oil and natural gas company engaged in the acquisition, development and exploitation of onshore North American oil and natural gas properties. EXCO targets acquisitions of onshore, North American oil and natural gas properties, with particular emphasis on Appalachia, Eastern and Western Texas, Mid Continent and the Rocky Mountain regions. The Company's primary goal is to build value for our shareholders by acquiring quality properties and to enhance the value of assets through control of operations, property development and reduction of costs. A US energy play sounds good to me.

On BarChart the stock has hit 17 price advances in the last 20 trading sessions and is 5 for 5 recently. I like the 47.08% price appreciation in the last 65 days. Of BarChart's 13 technical indicators there is a buy on 12 with the other a hold for a 96% overall buy rating.

There are 13 Wall Street brokerage firms with recommendations on this stock and they have 10 buy and 3 hold recommendations out.

On other sites Motley Fool members think this stock will outperform the market by a vote of 388 to 18 with the All Stars voting 85 to 2. The Wall Street columnists have 9 buys to 1 sell but the only sell was Jim Cramer on March 2006 and he hasn't revisited that recommendation lately. The stock is up 79.26% since he last looked at it. Wall Street Survivor has a Survivor Sentiment of 5/5, a fundamental rating of 5/5 and a technical rating of 5/5.

This stock has everything I like for the short run:

• BarChart rating of better than 80% and hitting new highs more than 50% of the recent sessions
• If Wall Street brokerages are following - no trash talking
• Confirmation of my research on other sites.

Recommendation: Adding EXCO Resources -- XCO to Van Meerten/BarChart New High model portfolio -- VMNHI at around 21.96 with a protective stop loss at not less than 18.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on financial matters. Please leave a comment below or email JimVanMeerten@gmail.com

Disclosure: No positions in XCO at the time of publication.