An invaluable post to study: The table below shows how the 6 stocks I posted about on 8/17 have performed since then. One half are up 11% to 14% and half are down 1% to 5%. I explain how I found them among stocks hitting ATHs and why buying stocks at ATHs can be a winning trading strategy. Note: GMI=2

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These are the 6 stocks I said had reached an ATH on Friday, August 14. They were all stocks from Oil & GAS Equipment & Service industries. Every night I use TC2000 to scan more than 6,500 US stocks to find those that had reached an ATH that day. I then sort the list by industry and look for those where multiple stocks had reached an ATH. On August 14, these 6 caught my attention. I published the list and have noted that on subsequent days, even today, multiple stocks in the Oil & GAS Equipment & Service industry have reached an ATH. I recall that during the April and May strong tech market, many Semiconductor stocks were hitting ATHs. Stocks being bid up to ATHS are showing incredible relative strength because fewer than 1% of all stocks do so on any trading day. You may think that buying stocks at an ATH is too late to get on board but that is what the great Nicolas Darvas and William O’neil did. See my webinars tab on my blog to view the TraderLion presentations I have done in which I presented the evidence. So how well have the 6 stocks I wrote about done since August 14 through Wednesday?

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The second column shows the percentage change from 8/14 to 9/9. Three of the six are up 12%-14% while three declined 1%-5%, the percentages are rounded. During this same period SPY and QQQ declined about 2%. Most traders estimate that about 50% of their trades are profitable, so that is expected here. I noticed that the 3 trades that were profitable were the most expensive stocks. Buy high and sell higher works! To push expensive stocks to ATHs may take a lot of money and we want the deep pocketed funds to be buying. Small traders are probably afraid to buy high priced stocks but a high price and an ATH shows a lot of buying. You can access my blog post for August 16 on my blog. Today was a very weak day, and only 15 stocks reached an ATH, but more than one half (8) were again OIL & GAS Equipment & Service. See the list below.

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With the current events in the middle east and the rising oil price, it is obvious why a majority of the few rare stocks trading at an ATH are connected to oil. But my point is that the behavior of multiple oil stocks repeatedly hitting ATHs is probably all we need to know, just as it was for semiconductors in April and May.  I am not saying someone should go out and just buy any of these stocks now. One must first look at their earnings trends and develop technical setups that control risk before buying these high flyers. I use my  GLB and Blue Dot setups to buy stocks trading at ATHs, to be discussed at another time. Also, the GMI=2 and there were more new yearly lows than highs today, signs of significant market weakness. The GMI could flash Red tomorrow. I am mainly in cash in my trading accounts but hold some Oil & Gas and Shipping related stocks, which all rose today.

 

 

 

 

Blog: Day 24 of $QQQ short term up-trend; once again, Oil & Gas (7) and Shipping & Ports (4) Industries had the most stocks reaching an ATH on Tuesday, see list.

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The last column shows current price divided by their prices 250 days ago. EDRY  is 5x its price a year ago. Note the estimated earnings release date is in the third column. I focus on stocks reaching an ATH. In April and May it was semiconductors.

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Strange day Monday: More new yearly lows than highs for first time since March 30 and lowest number of ATHs, 13, since 12 last March 31; That is when the February to March decline ended, see daily chart of SPY. See my blog for my attempt to explain this rare occurrence. Meanwhile, 6 of the 13 ATHs today were oil & gas related stocks, see the list on my blog.

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Here are the six stocks that traded at an ATH (all-time high) on Monday. All of them, but CQP, closed 1.9X or more above their price a year ago, shown in last column.

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As you know, I focus on buying stocks at or near their ATH. Usually there are only a small number each day that do so. For example, last week, Monday through Friday, the totals were: 43,41, 28, 28, 20. Thus, each day  <1% of the 6,500+ US stocks in TC200’s database traded at an ATH. I like to buy stocks trading at an ATH because they are exhibiting incredible relative strength, beating 99% of all other stocks. The last time that there were so few ATHs and there were more stocks reaching a 52 week low than high occurred late last March just before the markets bottomed and took off on a nice sustained tradable rise. But back then my moving averages had declined to multi-week lows. That is not the situation now. So, I am not ready to say that this low number of ATHs indicates a bottom but something else may be  happening. This daily chart of SPY shows no decline currently like we experienced in late March. So what does this all mean? I suggest that market makers and other traders can no longer push many stocks to ATHs. Maybe these statistics are saying the market is really overbought and near a major top?  I remain mainly in TBIL in my trading account and have a few very small positions of individual stocks. As a recent retiree, I am a chicken and have one foot out the door….

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