National Presto Industries - Chart of the Day

National Presto Industries (NPK) is the Barchart Chart of the Day.  The industrial goods company has a Trend Spotter buy signal, a Weighted Alpha of 52.70+ and gained 52.45% in the last year.

The Chart of the Day belongs to National Presto Industries (NPK).  I found the industrial goods stock by using Barchart to sort the Russell 3000 Index stocks first for the highest Weighted Alpha then for technical buy signals of 80% or better.  Since the Trend Spotter signaled a buy on 9/8 the stock gained 7.71%.

National Presto Industries manufactures and distributes small electrical appliances and housewares, including comfort appliances, pressure cookers and canners, private label and premium sales products. Electrical appliances and housewares sold by the company include pressure cookers and canners; the Presto Control Master heat control single thermostatic control line of fry pans in several sizes, griddles and combination griddle/warmers and multi-purpose cookers; deep fryers of various sizes; can openers, slicer/shredders; electric heaters; corn poppers.

The status of Barchart's Opinion trading systems are listed below.  Please note that the Barchart Opinion indicators are updated live during the session every 10 minutes and can therefore change during the day as the market fluctuates.  The indicator numbers shown below therefore may not match what you see live on the Barchart.com web site when you read this report.

Barchart technical indicators:

• 100% Barchart technical buy signals
• 52.70+ Weighted Alpha
• Trend Spotter buy signal
• Above its 20, 50 and 100 day moving averages
• 8 new highs and up 7.17% in the last month
• Relative Strength Index 62.39%
• Barchart computes a technical support level at 88.14
• Recently traded at 89.29 with a 50 day moving average of 83.24

Fundamental factors:

• Market Cap $618.78 million
• Dividend yield 1.13%
• Wall Street analysts do not follow or give projection on this stock
• The individual investors on Motley Fool voted 479 to 12 for the stock to beat the market

The 50 Day Parabolic Time/Price has been the most effective technical trading strategy for this stock.

3 Great Small Caps

Today I sorted the S&P 600 Small Cap Index stocks to find the 3 with the best Barchart technical indicators and near the top of the list was Parkway Properties (PKY), PDC Energy (PDCE) and National Presto Industries (NPK):

Parkway Properties (PKY)

Barchart technical indicators:

• 100% Barchart technical buy signal
• Trend Spotter buy signal
• Above its 20, 50 and 100 day moving average
• 14 new highs and up 21.08% in the last month
• Relative Strength Index 80.47%
• Barchart computes a technical support level at 13.48
• Recenlty traded at 14.07 with a 50 day moving average of 12.11

PDC Energy (PDCE)

Barchart technical indicators:

• 96% Barchart technical buy signal
• Trend Spotter buy signal
• Above its 20, 50 and 100 day moving averages
• 3 new highs and up 6.21% in the last month
• Relative Strength Index 67.70%
• Barchart computes a technical support level at 32.20
• Recently traded at 33.99 with a 50 day moving average of 29.42

National Presto Industries (NPK)

Barchart technical indicators:

• 100% Barchart technical buy signal
• Trend Spotter buy signal
• Above its 20, 50 and 100 day moving averages
• 10 new highs and up 10.64% in the last month
• Relative Strength Index 71.79%
• Barchart computes a technical support level at 79.30
• Recently traded at 81.42 with a 50 day moving average of 73.35

Cooing up with Presto

I needed a stock for my more speculative Financial Tides/BarChart model portfolio VMSLO on Marketocracy so I used BarChart to screen for stocks hitting the most new highs trading under 100K shares per day. After doing some screening National Presto Industries -- NPK came up as my pick.

National Presto Industries manufactures and distributes small electrical appliances and housewares, including comfort appliances, pressure cookers and canners, private label and premium sales products. Electrical appliances and housewares sold by the company include pressure cookers and canners; the Presto Control Master heat control single thermostatic control line of fry pans in several sizes, griddles and combination griddle/warmers and multi-purpose cookers; deep fryers of various sizes; can openers, slicer/shredders; electric heaters; corn poppers. I don't know about you but over the years I've acquired several of their gadgets.

On BarChart NPK has had price appreciation in 14 of the last 20 trading sessions and more recently 5 of the last 5. It has enjoyed a 30.58% price appreciation in the last 65 days. BarChart's technical indicators have 13 of 13 buy signals for a 100% buy rating.

Only one Wall Street brokerage firm has a recommendation on the stock and they have a strong buy recommendation. They estimate a 11.3% increase in sales and a 6.4% increase in EPS. By the way 2 other analysts have raised their EPS estimates in the last 30 days.

Both Wall Street Survivor and Motley Fool's members agree with my research. On Wall Street Survivor Mark's checklist has a Survivor rating of 5/5, a fundamental rating of 5.5, a technical rating of of 4/5 for an overall rating of 85%. Motley Fool members think the stock will out perform the market by a vote of 215 to 6 with the All Stars in agreement 81 to 3.

The stock meets my criteria:

• Hitting new highs better than 50% of the recent trading sessions
• If Wall Street brokerages are following it -- no trash talking
• Confirmation of the BarChart ratings on other sites.

Recommendation: I'm adding National Presto Industries -- NPK to my Financial Tides/BarChart model portfolio VMSLO around 98.37 with a protective stop loss no lower than 92.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com.

Disclosure: no positions in NPK at the time of publication.