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One of the best ways to trade a recent IPO is to wait for it to form a green line top (a horizontal line drawn on a monthly chart at a peak price after it has not been exceeded for at least 3 months) and then buy it after it finally closes above that green line, hopefully, on above average trading volume. As soon as I draw the green line, I set an alert on TC2000 to tell me when the stock trades above that line. The alert stays active for one year. The idea is that there is often a lot of euphoria and hype surrounding an IPO when the public may drive the stock to high levels, providing insiders a nice profit. The buying subsides and the stock may then decline and consolidate for months. The time for me to buy is when the stock finally trades above the green line peak at an all time high (a GLB or green line break-out). For example, the monthly chart of Facebook shows it came public in May, 2012 at 42.05. It rose that month to  45.00 when Joe public unfortunately bought it thinking FB must go higher. However, by September, 2012, FB had declined 61% to a low of 17.55 (where Joe public likely gave up and sold it). In September, 2013, 17 months after its IPO, FB traded at a new all-time high (ATH). That was the time I buy. If one bought before the GLB, there was no way of knowing if FB would ever withstand the selling of the persons who had bought earlier at higher prices and then swore that they would sell as soon as they could recoup their losses. When a stock can overcome this overhead barrage of selling and trade at a new ATH, it is providing evidence of huge buying pressure. Trend traders react after the buy signal has triggered, not before.  Buying early, in anticipation of a break-out, can kill you. Note in this monthly chart that FB has had 4 GLBs. I like to only purchase stocks trading above their last green line top.

Of course, not every GLB succeeds and some fail or even re-test their break-out before moving up. If I buy a GLB I must sell it if the stock CLOSES any day below its green line. Often times a stock will trade intraday back below its green line only to close above it. To avoid being shaken out on a false move down, I therefore use a mental stop rather than a hard stop loss below the GLB. If I miss the GLB or want to add more to my position, I have found that a promising signal is my WGB (weekly green bar) signal. A WGB is drawn on a weekly chart if by the end of the week, a stock has traded below its 4 wk average and  retaken its rising 4 wk average, is higher than the prior week’s close,  and its 4wk>10wk>30wk average. Such a situation has just occurred for PGNY. I like PGNY because it is projected to become profitable and it has estimates of growing future earnings, a la MarketSmith. PGNY had a WGB last week, indicating, for me. a possible place to buy, since I did not buy at its GLB 3 weeks ago. If I did buy PGNY on Monday, I would place a stop to sell it if the stock trades below the low of the WGB. I would then keep my stop there until another WGB occurs and then raise the stop to that bar’s weekly low. I have noticed that placing stops at the low of each  WGB can help me catch most of the advance. When the stock trades below the WGB and I am sold out I may buy it back  after the next WGB. Take a look at PGNY’s weekly chart below. The red dotted line is the 4wk average. A strong rising stock will repeatedly close the week above its 4 week average.

I  have marked with arrows the 6 (of 8) WGBs, after a GLB where one could have successfully bought and retained TSLA placing stops according to the above strategy. There is clearly a reason why Bill O’Neil relied mainly on weekly charts to make his fortune.

The GMI remains Green and registers 6 (of 6). The GMI keeps me on the right side of the market. All of my indicators remain positive, so the short and longer term trends remain up. Note we have also completed day 35 (U-35) of the current QQQ short term up-trend. Some of these short term up-trends have lasted as long as 80+ days.

As I get closer to retirement and  to withdrawing funds from my trading accounts to live on, I have been reluctant to buy individual growth stocks because of their potential volatility when bad news or earnings are released. But I cannot remain in money market funds because of their dismal returns. So what to do? As ETFs have become more popular, many now concentrate on narrow sectors rather than representing an entire general market index, like the SPY or QQQ. Recently, I have begun experimenting with scans to find the most outperforming ETFs and have found that there are some that have even doubled over the past year. Not too shabby for a basket of stocks. When I looked at the ETFs  yielded by my scans I was amazed to find how clear a picture they paint of the best sectors of the market where the big money is flowing to. These ETFS contained multiple stocks and were less volatile than individual stocks, which results in smaller draw downs.

For example, this weekend I ran this scan of all ETFs listed in TC2000: Hit a 50 week high last week; Volume last week was ge 2×50 week average volume;  closed higher last week than prior week; closed gt $20. I then sorted the results by current close/price a year ago to find out how much the ETF advanced since a year ago. These filters yielded 12 ETFs that have advanced 190% or more: PBW QCLN CNRG PBD SMOG ICLN LIT IPO ARKQ CHIQ ARKF XBUY. The amazing thing to me was what I discovered when I looked at the focus of each of these stellar ETFs. Seven of the 12 were involved with clean energy or environment. The rest were involved with China or online retail or IPOs. (Just beyond these were ETFs on electric vehicles.) Remember, all of these ETFs hit a yearly high last week on more than twice their average weekly volume. Here is where the big money managers are placing their bets. When Jesse Livermore would buy a steel stock, he felt more confident of his judgment if other steel stocks were acting strong. A strong ETF like these implies that similar stocks were also acting right.

When I next looked at the weekly charts of these ETFs, I found they had great technical patterns, all having 4wk>10wk>30wk averages. All held their 10 week averages for long periods. Such ETFs are where I am now willing to invest for the long haul with much less risk than holding individual stocks. I accumulate each ETF in stages. Each purchase must be at a higher price than the previous purchase. When will an up-trend end? No  one knows. But a weekly close below the 10 week average would signal rare weakness and lead me to exit. A close below the 4 week average would make me cautious and a WGB (weekly green bar–bounce up off of the 4wk) might induce me to add to my position. Here are some weekly charts of a few of these ETFs. Note the recent high volume buys and the WGB signals. My students would understand all to be in “yellow band” patterns–the pattern of monster stocks, and now ETFs.

Meanwhile, the GMI remains Green with all components positive. Nice to be swimming in the direction of a rising tide.