same recipe..new ingredients

Yes, we are  referring to our trading strategy at this moment.   Basically, during the earning season, what else are you going to play besides the earning plays?    The key for us here, is to recognize a good earning play right AFTER they announce the earning.  There are many beating, raising and the masses chase the gap and then churn all day like an IVAC in a .70 cent range...Boring!...  Here, we try to recognize more upside short term ...gap or no gap...same day or within days.   It's easy to get sucked in by a pretty EPS number, many did with IIG today at $23,24.  It's not that easy to recognize what will work, headline chasers get whipped and it only takes one bad entry to leave you marked and bruised!.   Of course, initial earning reaction within minutes may not be the best indicator and that's why we usually get in a small starter position right away in a selective one and monitor the progress of the action through out the day to determine the playability of a particular report.    Unless of course, we have this special "gut feeling" that the earning report is sooo good and we just have to buy it with a decent size no matter what.     As we all have experienced before, strong earning play don't last just a day.   If an earning report is very good, it sometimes takes days if not weeks to really sink into people's mind.    It means that there's plenty of time to buy even after the strong "gap up" reaction of a stellar earning report.    Also, believe us, not all institution can buy all of the shares off the earning report in one day.    Here are some new ingredients...and what was cooking!

MDCI, this one hit our radar in pre market but we had no clue how the street is going to react despite the fact we liked the report.   So, we get a starter position and wait.  This stock was alerted in the low $35 and it finished up about 3 bucks from that point on.  Of course, we added to that starter and hopefully you did too.  We have to say that the performance of the stock is definitely more impressive than the earning itself.    The split is also coming up so we think that's also an added factor as well going into the close.    The stock will trade on split adjusted basis on the 9th and we have been trading this one very aggressively today. MDCI reported .38 beating two estimates by .08, revenues 67mln vs 59mln.

EML, well, we got lucky and unlucky. The co' had a release the other day saying earning release was the 8th but then we got this early move to $24 and sold the majority of our alert from Monday.  Looks like one wire had the results, but most didn't till about 10:30.  Luckily, we were still watching the action and jumped on the surge still not really knowing what the heck was going on...but hey, you go with the flow!.  Something had to be up and it had to be good!.  How else do you explain the rush of volume into a quiet stock?.   If there's only one downside to the earning reaction is that it did not close nearly as good as MDCI.   Is this something to get worried?   Well, unless you feel their earning report will get reaudited down the road, we feel that there's absolutely nothing to be concerned about today's close.  In fact, it still closed pretty well and given the thinness of the stock, this one can climb up with some meaningful percentage in no time.   Again, valuation looks even more attractive with EML compared to CCF and we have a gut feeling that this one will trade better than CCF, less choppy that is.  This is just an example of a thinster being discovered, we like to think we did that last Q as these numbers were somewhat in the cards.;).   Don't forget why we got in Monday...Jefferies picked up 54k shares from the co'.  That was the look into the keyhole of EML and todays report..The Eastern Company reports Q4 EPS $0.96 vs $0.23 in 4Q05, revs +76% to $49.7 mln :"2006 was a very good year. We set records in Sales and Earnings and our backlogs have increased. Notwithstanding the positive impact of $19 million dollars of shipments toward fulfilling a military contract, the Company's "core" sales increased 10% for the year and 17% in the fourth quarter, the 17th consecutive quarter of improved year to year sales. We are optimistic that trend will continue into 2007... The military contract to deliver door latching components to be used in retro-fitting the up-armored military Humvees will continue into 2007.  These activities will be positive factors toward sustaining.  http://djmarkets.squarespace.com/journal/2006/10/2/eml.html

CGX, this one we did not alert but feel that it also came out with a very good report.  We think we had enough today and don't want our readers to get confused with 3 similar alerts.  There's something about these "expensive" stock that we like since they just tend to be less volatile than the "cheaper" stocks once they report a similar strong earning report.   We added this one to the top of our watch list also. We have seen this trade well off reports before and think it has some legs after this jump.

USAP/CNS, basically even the strongest stocks need to rest when they had such a good run-up since their report.   Just look at their chart, neither stock has closed below 9 ema ever since they came out with their report.   Things are still looking very much intact with these two but we feel we all should be paying more attention to the newer earning play.  Basically, we're still eating up the reports, it's just not same restaurant every day.  But considering these are two of our core plays this Q, we're surely to be back buying in size soon.

Watching MFW early tomorrow with a chance of adding..hunch

HXM has had a nice few days, CCOI had a very nice day

The bottom line is that nobody needs to be stuck on an out of favour play.   With the earning season, you are almost guaranteed that there'd be something new and fresh coming around the corner.   There's really no need to be afraid to play a new stock because no matter how unfamiliar you are with a company, the trading of that stock should always be familiar to you.    We are looking forward to tomorrow.

cheers, 

Untrustworthy

That's what we think of the index move today.   Of course, if you listened to CNBC all day, this is nothing but another rosy day for this market.    If this is an actual rally, why do we find lack of opportuntities to trade?    Trust our eyes, instead of our ears!    You can trade deaf, but you can't trade blind!   Ok, enough of this corny wisecracks! lol   The truth is, we aren't finding many opportunities to trade today,  so we sat mostly on our hands.  There might not be a load to play, but there sure have some nice points in ONXX BW and CENX the last 2 days here.  Selective is the name of the game, now!  A few things that looked interesting today besides these names..

CENX USAP,   CENX obviously got some bid early on b/c of the Alcoa news, but hey Alcoa was the reason we picked this as the Aluminum play over ERS in small cap land.   Anyway, this is very natural b/c this is how the sympathy plays work and hope some of you played it off the alert, if you already don't have it as a hold.   Last week in the forum, we wondered why CENX was lagging the sec. at $44 off the upgrades of the big aluminum plays.  Today all this paid off as it spiked to $49 in the first 10 minutes.  A day like this sure gets CENX's name out there as a sec play, even though there may be absolutely no chance for CENX to get any kind of benefit from a potential Alcoa takeover.   Ride it while the effect lasts!     USAP may also benefitted a little from the AA news,  so it's not a surprise.  What we're glad to see is that USAP held its 9 ema convincingly.   Lets just cross our fingers and hopefully it gets some good trading from this point on.

OEH, our lux lodging play into EPS put it's first close in over $49 NCH and VE, put its first close over $72 while here at DJIM. Guess, it pays to have some NYSE stocks to follow in the middle of the takeover, record share repurchase blab about the Dow.

EML SYNL, not much to say about these two and we are hoping these can turn into a flag pattern.

CGX, this one really showed what we like and that is immediate strength after it gave up some of the early gains following earning.

Basically, we are biting our time with this market.   It doesn't mean that we are going hibernation but we are simply waiting for something to happen.    Knowing this game, something will always happen sooner or later and they come at a time when you are least expected.

Expectation!

We are almost two months into the new year and many of us have been asking the same question.   Is this the kind of market we have been expecting?   The truth is, nobody can really answer this question.    Just like an individual stock, the overall market would spend most of its time in the consolidation mode.    It seems we have been stuck in this mode for the longest time.    Unfortunately, there's really not much we can do about this and we can only do our best to cope with this situation.     Today it started off as if the market wants to go down hard but it ended up in a meaningless way.    Our DJIM stocks have fared better than most in this market environment and this is the exact sort of things we liked to see to end our trading day.      Here are some highlights...

FSLR TSL JASO, even though we are grouping these three together since they are all solar plays, we do have to point out that FSLR is the only one that we have considered as an earning plays.    Solar plays are hot and there's no doubt about that.   We think these three represent the best in the solar trading world where both the liquidity and technical signs are top rated.

CSV, this little funeral service stock broke out today on pretty convincing volume.   We didn't think those insider buying was meaningless so we added then and again some today.    It's hard to speculate how high the institutions will take this one up to but one thing we can all agree about its business is that "it's just a proven business".

BW OEH VTRU HURC TRT CGX,  again we are grouping these together b/c these are familiar names that always seem to outperform the rest of the market.    Steady as she goes!    It's nice to have a 20%+ mover in your portfolio but it's the steadiness of some of our stocks that make our portfolio really shine.  All these have been early earning buys this Q at DJIM and OEH, is a sec play on other hotel earnings plays that came out with nice reports.  Now, it gets some takeover speculation with the CEO departure. We thought this speculation was already underway due to industry conditions and company internals, today Bear Stearns added some fuel to it.

CENX survived earning with a NCH to boot and shows this aluminum play is looking for its 52 wk highs down the road.  A couple of recent faves CCF, HMIN are now over 9ema and back on close watch.

Things are definitely looking pretty rosy at this moment and we have seen no shortage of leaders among the stocks on our watchlist on a daily basis.    Does this mean that we are committing heavily into this market?    At this point, we feel we are committing more capital but only on a selective basis.    Things can get out of hand when you add too many positions and it's easy to lose track of things.     A good strategy is to limit our portfolio to a certain number of positions.     For example, when we get to near the close of the trading day, we always ask ourselves a question, "are we going to be holding the best 10 stocks on my screen overnight?"   If things do check out then we can end the day happy but if one or two stocks seem like a laggard then we just cut them lose or replace them as in a CXW yesterday.    This is of course assuming the market is still in a pretty good stand and there are stocks on our watchlist that are outperforming.     Basically the point is that we are always extremely picky about what we hold in our portfolio and this means ...yep, we'll say it again thanks to MFW finance biz...no holding into earning. 

DJIM #9 2007

What was a 4 day shortened week felt anything but as trading seemed to have come to a stall by weeks close.  The week definitely got started on a bang but by weeks end the buyers seemed exhausted and/or just not interested.   So what do you do?.   Well, if you can't buy anything with potential it gives you time to evaluate your holds and maybe sell some into the 'Green'.  It is not the time to get nutty and turn away from what has been working by chasing something just to make a trade.  It is always better to draw down you positions into the green then having to hastily sell if this lacklustre tone continues and we really have an exhaustion day when the selling hits hard.   What the week provided was for some orderly profit taking and by looking at performance of some DJIM's closely followed in the past 5 trading days, so it was not such bad thing or idea to scale down or add to a strong one or two like CSV.

KRSL 28% SYNL 13%  ONXX 12.1  CSV 8.7  TRT 7.3  BW 6.5  CGX 5.9  USAP 4.0 CCOI 4.2 OEH 3.4 GLDN 3.1..and HURC at its highs was up 15% since alert buy in.  Taking into consideration the last few days, these returns at the end of 5 days of trading is nothing to sneeze at.   The week was not all pairing down positions,  there was some buying and adding to these percentage gains in the likes of KBW and to a lesser extend HDNG.   The only one that got away was CYNO, it looks the Directors got a hold of the hacked version IBD too and decided to sell in bunches this week.   Actually this looks like planned selling again and it has never stopped CYNO before from moving upwards, so we expect this to be a hiccup as well.  You could plug your nose and hold your breath till it goes away or you could just sell when a stock is feeling pressure such as this.  We prefer to sell and not feel the pressure possibly take down a stock of ours.  The stocks above are the primary hit/ hold list for DJIM, we might have reduced exposure in some like BW after a big run but these are also the first we'd be looking to throw money back at in the upcoming trading week.

What probably got us through the week was the continuation of the solar plays. Right now, JASO FSLR TSL are providing more than ample opportunity to swing a trade. The good thing is seemingly there is always one moving, so at this point we are hitching a ride here and there and not asking for names.  VTRU VARI , we are waiting on patiently to make a drive for new highs and jump in with some enthusiasm.  The problem is the techs just don't want to lead this NASD to higher ground. 

So...despite the selling in most sectors for 3 out of the 4 days, the NASD and Russell finshed the week up about 1 %.  The Bull/ Bear fight in full force, except the fighting ain't that strong in either direction.  Hope this week is a little more interesting and some conviction comes back.  In the meantime, DJIM will be stay in its own ring and will be after new earning stocks to punch out some profits with.