Financial Tides -- A Stock Market Investing Newsletter by Jim Van Meerten

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Aeration Station Lawncare rated F-

Rating F-

Aeration Station Lawncare
Owner: Don Brindle
5307 Tompkins Road
Mint Hill
Charlotte, NC 28277-7627
Phone 704 547-1789

Aeration Station Lawncare and owner Don Brindle continue to receive our F- rating. They have outstanding customer complaints with both the Charlotte Better Business Bureau and Angie's List.

They are also in the Penalty Box on Angie's List for failure to address any customer complaints made through Angie's List.

The last time we heard from the company was the day our check cleared the bank. Our calls to Don Brindle have not been answered since September.

Our demand for a refund due to shoddy workmanship have not gotten a response.

I will never use this company again !!!!!

Active Power -- ACPW -- Sell signals

This morning I deleted Active Power (ACPW) from the Barchart Van Meerten Speculative portfolio for negative price trends:

40% Barchart short term technical sell signal
Trend Spotter (tm) sell signal
Trading below its 20 and 50 day moving averages
23.21% off its recent high
Relative Strength Index 39.70% and falling

Jim Van Meerten is a professional investor with over 40 year experience in investing in stocks, mutual funds and ETFs. He shares his knowledge on Barchart in his daily blogs -- Barchart Portfolio Blogs.

Through Marketocracy Capital Management you can have a Separately Managed Account that mirrors his Barchart Van Meerten New High portfolio.

Belden - BDC - Sell Signals

This morning I deleted Belden (BDC) from the Barchart Van Meerten New High Portfolio for negative price trends:

60% Barchart short term technical sell signal
Trend Spotter (tm) sell signal
Trading below its 20 and 50 day moving averages
10.53% off its recent high
Relative Strength Index 43.05% and falling

Through Marketocracy Capital Management you can have a Separately Managed Account that mirrors his Barchart Van Meerten New High portfolio.

Ameron International -- AMN - deleted

This morning I deleted Ameron International - (AMN) from the Barchart Van Meerten New High portfolio for negative price trends:

60% Barchart short term technical sell signal
Trend Spotter (tm) sell signal
Trading below its 20, 50 and 100 day moving average
Trading 18.77% off its recent high
Relative Strength Index 34.68% and falling

Through Marketocracy Capital Management you can have a Separately Managed Account that mirrors his Barchart Van Meerten New High portfolio.

Enzo Biochem -- ENZ -- deleted

This morning I deleted Enzo Biochem (ENZ) from the Barchart Van Meerten Speculative portfolio for negative price trends:

40% Barchart short term technical sell signal
Trading below its 20 and 50 day moving average
Lost 14.48% in the last 30 days
Relative Strength Index 41.28% and falling

Through Marketocracy Capital Management you can have a Separately Managed Account that mirrors his Barchart Van Meerten New High portfolio.

Cameco -- CCJ -- Chart of the Day

Barchart.com's

Chart of the Day - Comeco Corp (CCJ)

Barchart Research Team - Barchart.com - Mon Jan 31, 7:41PM CST

Related Stocks

CCJ - Cameco Corporation

Sym	Last	Chg	Pct
CCJ	41.47	+1.68	+4.22%

The "Chart of the Day" is Comeco Corp (CCJ), which showed up on Monday's list of stocks that had a new "Buy" signal from the Barchart "TrendSpotter" trading system. Cameco on Monday rallied by 4.22% and posted a new 2-1/2 year high. Cameco was boosted by uranium prices, which rose 4.3% last week to reach the highest level in nearly 3 years. In recent news on the stock, Macquarie on Jan 18 upgraded Cameco to Outperform from Neutral. Cameco Corp, with a market cap of $15.7 billion, is the world's largest publicly traded uranium company and a growing gold producer.

ccj_700

How we found the Chart of the Day:
We found the "Chart of the Day" by scanning the Barchart "Trading Signals" page. That page provides a summary of changes in the Barchart signals. We then clicked on the TrendSpotter "Buy" category to obtain a list of all the stocks for which the Barchart TrendSpotter trading system has just turned to a buy. We then clicked on the "Today's Opinion" column header in order to sort the list with the strongest stocks on top. Further information is available at Barchart Signals Guide help page and at TrendSpotter help page.
Barchart's Opinion trading systems are all a Buy and Barchart's daily TrendSpotter trading system is a "Buy." 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.

TrendSpotter: Buy
Short-Term Indicators: 100% Buy
Medium-Term Indicators: 100% Buy
Long-Term Indicators: 100% Buy
Overall Average 100% Buy

Barchart links for further information:

Quotes and Charts
Quote
Detailed Quote
Chart

Technical Analysis
Technicals Summary
Trader's Cheat Sheet™

Barchart Opinions
Barchart Opinion
Barchart Snapshot
Trading Strategies

Company Info
Company Profile
Key Statistics
Ratios
Income Statement-Quarterly
Income Statement-Annual
Balance Sheet-Current
Balance Sheet-Annual

Chart of the Day Archive
View Past Chart of the Day Reports

Monday, January 31, 2011

Under Armour - UA - Chart of the Day

Barchart.com's Chart of the Day - Under Armour (UA)

Barchart Research Team - Barchart.com - Sat Jan 29, 10:01PM CST

Related Stocks

UA - Under Armour Inc.

Sym	Last	Chg	Pct
UA	59.75	-0.04	-0.07%

The "Chart of the Day" is Under Armour (UA), which showed up on last Friday's list of stocks that had a new "Buy" signal from the Barchart "TrendSpotter" trading system. Under Amour last Friday extended last Thursday's sharp rally and posted a new 3-1/4 year high but then faded with the sell-off in the broad market and closed slightly lower by -0.07%. Under Armour last Thursday reported Q4 EPS of 44 cents, which was substantially above the analyst consensus of 37 cents. The company provided 2011 operating income guidance of $143-147 million, up 27-31% y/y. Under Armour, with a market cap of $2.8 billion, sells branded performance products for men, women and youth.

ua_700

TrendSpotter: Buy
Short-Term Indicators: 100% Buy
Medium-Term Indicators: 100% Buy
Long-Term Indicators: 100% Buy
Overall Average 100% Buy

Chart of the Day Archive
View Past Chart of the Day Reports

Saturday, January 29, 2011

These 3 stocks have it all!

I was listening to a song by Queen and the lyrics of "I want it all, I want it all, I want it all and I want it now" struck a cord for this post. I decided to find three stocks that have it all and they have it now. And what might that be you may ask?

What I want is:

A stock that has Wall Street brokerage analysts publishing buy recommendations based on double digit sales and earnings growth projections
A stock that has a wide, popular and positive investor following
And the I want it NOW component recent and consistent price appreciation

Let's look at 3 stocks that fit that criteria:

FDS -- Facset Research -- supplies global economic and financial data to analysts, investment bankers and other financial professionals. The company combines databases from multiple suppliers into a single online source of information and analytics, including fundamental data on tens of thousands of American and international companies and securities. The company obtains financial information from several database vendors and when possible, seeks to maintain contractual relationships with a minimum of two database providers for each type of financial data. are on a flat or royalty basis.

Wall Street brokerage analysts have 2 buy and 6 hold recommendations published
Sales are projected to increase by 12.00% this year and 11.90% next year
Earnings are estimated to increase by 14.10% this year, 13.40% next year and continue by 14.85% annually for the next 5
Investor sentiment as measured on Motley Fool is positive with the CAPS members voting 372 to 15 that the stock will beat the market and the All Stars agree 164 to 4
Barchart 100% technical buy signal with all 13 of Barchart's technical indicators signalling a buy
7 new highs and up 4.83% in the last month
Relative Strength Index is 69.64% and climbing
Trades around 99.66 well above its 50 day moving average of 93.87

CRR -- Carbo Ceramics -- the world's largest producer and supplier of ceramic proppants for use in the hydraulic fracturing of natural gas and oil wells. Demand for ceramic proppants depends primarily upon the demand for natural gas and oil and on the number of natural gas and oil wells drilled, completed or recompleted worldwides that are hydraulically fractured to stimulate production.

Wall Street brokerage analysts have 4 buy and 5 hold recommendations published
Sales are projected to increase by 13.40% this year and 19.80% next year
Earnings are projected to increase by 20.90% this year, 22.10% next year and continue by 11.20% annually for the next 5 years
Investor sentiment as measured on Motley fool is positive with the CAPS members voting 273 to 15 that the stock will beat the market and the All Stars are in agreement by a vote of 109 to 5
Barchart 100% technical buy signal with all 13 of Barchart's technical indicators signalling a buy
4 new highs and up 11.41% in the last month
Relative Strength Index of 73.23% and rising
Trades around 113.61 which is well above its 50 day moving average of 100.37

PLCM -- Polycom -- develops, manufactures and markets a full range of high-quality, media-rich communication tools and network solutions. The company's broadband communication solutions enable business users to immediately realize the benefits of video, voice and data over rapidly growing converged networks. The company is the leading video conferencing and voice conferencing product provider and have recently entered the DSL access market, particularly in the area of integrated voice appliances and broadband access devices.

Wall Street brokerages have 11 buy and 7 hold recommendations published
Sales are projected to increase by 10.84% this year and 19.80% next year
Earnings are estimated to increase by 37.30% this year, 25.20% next year and continue by 17.56% annually for the next 5 years
Investor sentiment as measured by Motley Fool is positive with the CAPS members voting 172 to 18 that the stock will beat the market and the All Stars agree by 69 to 7
Barchart 96% technical buy signal with 12 of the 13 Barchart technical indicators signalling a buy
9 new highs and up 10.84% in the last month
Relative Strength Index of 61.32%
Trades around 43.45 which is well above its 50 day moving average of 39.37.

Well - there's 3 stocks that have it all. Put them on your watch lists and see if this analysis is valid.

Through Marketocracy Capital Management you can have a Separately Managed Account that mirrors his Barchart Van Meerten New High portfolio.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Book Review - The Little Book of Sideways Markets by Vitaliy Katsenelson

I don't do a lot of book reviews because I seem to love books that agree with me and hate books that have a different opinion than mine. Since I am a Momentum Investor who use Barchart I usually don't like books that dwell on fundamentals but The Little Book of Sideways Markets: How to make money in markets that go nowhere by Vitaliy N. Katsenelson published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc is one that I really can recommend whole heatedly. By the way, Wiley is the publisher of all the "Dummies" books and has a really great series "The Little Book Profits Series" that I'm going to start on soon. Don't hold it against me that my book case is filled with "Dummies" books, I'll admit to being a cult member.

Some of the books I've been asked to review I just had to decline because they were either so badly written or so convoluted and complicated that I saw no use of the book by the average reader. One series of books and DVDs sent to me by a penny stock promoter were so poorly produced and contained so many wild proposals that I thought new investors would loose a bundle following bad advice.

Although now I consider myself a Momentum Investor, I started out my career in Public Accounting after completing a degree in Accounting and Business Administration at Berry College. As an accountant I loved reading annual reports and looking at fundamentals. I soon noticed most of my fellow CPAs so over analyzed companies that they never made any money investing themselves. Most of the mutual funds had highly educated and highly paid analysts that had all the data and computer tools available but still couldn't beat the markets.

I have been a Value Line subscriber for many years and before that poured over issues at the library. One of the screens that always fascinated me was the Highest Growth Stocks screen. As Value Line puts it "To be included, a company's annual growth of sales, cash flow, earnings, dividends and book value must together averaged 10% or more for the past 10 years and be expected to average at least 10% in the coming 3-5 years.". This seemed to be the only list of stocks I would ever need.

What fascinated me about the list is that my head told me these are the stocks I should own but it seemed as many of the stocks were going down as were going up. What was the difference?

Well, Vitaliy explains the missing component in his book: Price Earnings Ratios. His analysis of why price earnings compression is so important is worth the price of this book.

The Chapter 12 -- "Applying Darwinism to the sales process" is some of the best 14 pages you will ever read.

His ideas on Total Return with the combination of price increases and dividends is an idea missed by most technical analysis followers.

He goes into detail about the risks associated with the opportunity costs of staying in cash; another point missed by most of the mutual fund portfolio managers.

There are several things you will have a much better understanding of after reading this book:

How do I evaluate the P/E ratios of the economy, the industrial sector and the individual stock?
How do I tell if the stock is a bargain or is about to run out of steam?
When should I sell and protect my profits?
Once I sell should I jump back in the market or sit on the side?

Best of all this is not your typical fundamental analysis book that is so full of formulas and equations that you need a degree in math or economics to even understand it. His parable "Tevye was a rich man" should be a classic on how to value any business proposal.

This is a book you can understand and have fun with no matter what level of experience you have. Even advanced investors have to refresh themselves in the basics once in awhile.

Read it and let me know what you think.

I found this video clip where Tadas Viskanta of Abnormal Returns interviews Vitaliy N. Katsenelson about his new book "The Little Book of Sideways Markets: How to Make Money in Markets that Go Nowhere. Enjoy!

Through Marketocracy Capital Management you can have a Separately Managed Account that mirrors his Barchart Van Meerten New High portfolio.

Gold is falling -- DGP -- deleted

This morning I placed a sell order in my Barchart Van Meerten New High portfolio for the
Gold Double Long ETN (DGP) for very negative price trends. One of the last things I do before I push the sell button is to run a 60 minute chart that shows the price against the 20, 50 and 100 hour moving average. There is nothing worse then selling a stock because all the technical indicators are negative and not realizing that the stock is recovering from a temporary set back. This last step doesn't prevent it in all situations but it helps.

You can see by the chart that it was time to cut this one loose. The technical indicators I used to identify the potential sell were:

100% Barchart short term technical sell signal
Trend Spotter (tm) sell signal
Trading below its 20, 50 and 100 daily moving averages
10 new lows and a loss of 11.07% in the last month
Relative Strength Index of 30.71% and falling
Trading at 36.16 well below its 50 day moving average of 40.21.

Through Marketocracy Capital Management you can have a Separately Managed Account that mirrors his Barchart Van Meerten New High portfolio.