What’s Hot! What’s Not.

• Whole Foods (WFMI) – grrrr! missed buying puts. This was an easy call. Look out below!
• Infosonic (IFO) – lot of manipulating going on before earnings, then day after, stock fell back to where it started. When this happens, usually the support is broken in the next few days.
• Dover Downs (DDE) – still waiting for this stock to crumble to single digits
• Amazon.com (AMZN) – got hit hard, and still is overpriced! Heading to teens.
• Rackable Systems (RACK)- I’m not a fan of one-trick companies. Rack’s trick was Google. They depended so much on Google, now they don’t know how to manage their own company… pathetic.
• Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) – a victim of profit taking. Expect ISRG to sell off heavily when the market is down.

What’s Hot

• Apple (AAPL) – had some follow through upgrades to fuel the rally. Now trading closer to $70. Not to late to take a bite of this Apple!
• Titanium Metals (TIE) – titanum demand in Asia + great earnings + Harold buying a few million worth of shares again = rally monkey. I’m holding on to some shorts for a short term correction though.
• AT&T (T)- this giant company is actually doing good. I haven’t seen this stock move in a long time.
• Merck (MRK)- a good sign for biotechs and pharmaceuticals. Merck knows how to deal with generics… just price lower than them! Look at them fly now.
• General Motors (GM) – a classic American turnaround story.

Super Hot

• SimpleTech (STEC) – raised forecast, stock now on fire!
• Akamai (AKAM) – a rare survivor of momentum stocks this year. They have great customers.
• Leading Brands (LBIX) – up over 700% YTD, and still not heavily covered. They have a newsletter that pumps up investors. Made investor-friendly moves last week. Released a new blueberry drink. I still don’t know where to buy this crap.
• ICON plc (ICLR)- this Ireland pharmaceutical company is under heavy accumulation, before and after their great earnings report. Hot!
• Ilumnia Inc (ILMN) – breakout again!
• DXP Enterprise (DXPE) – a former high flying momentum stock that got waaaaay oversold. Now it’s flying again.

Angry Bull Reversals

• Headwaters (HW) – extremely oversold; just got an upgrade. Next stop, $25.
• China Medical Tech (CMED) – triple bottom formed just above $18. Next stop $26.
• Underarmour (UARM) – challenging Nike, doing a great job.
• Intel (INTC) – new revolutionary processors coming out. BTW, Intel historically is a super buy under $19.

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I’ve been getting my butt kicked in my day trades. I’ve been getting to excited with big drops and big bounces, and ignoring my strategy… not good.

Anyway, today is August, a historically junk month in the market. I’ve been checking screens, and reading all types of market indicators and charts. All of that got me no where. I’m more confused, but that should be expected in this choppy market. Anyway, this will be a big week on the street since next week we have that highly anticipated FOMC meeting. For now, earnings and a little bit of Hezbollah news will drive the market. Stay tuned.

Blog-Roll for August 1

• Kirk’s notes– we are now overbought [Kirk Report]
• End of the month wrap up, [MSN Money]
• Bloggers are even more bearish this week! Add me to that list. [Ticker Sense]
• Broad Index Charts– Nasdaq is at key 2100 resistance, S&P at key 1280 resistance. Will we break through? [TraderMike]
• One of the best watch lists out there [uglychart]
• Trade hot sectors, like telecom (no lie!) and utilities [uglychart]
• First hurricane? I’ll come up with some ‘hurricane stox’ later [crameralerts]
• Stock in Focus– go long! [technicator]
• Using position sizing to manage risk by scaling trades [FickleTrader]

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I created a homemade chart for Hansen (HANS) with events so you can see the effect (if any) that the news had on the stock. It’s a big chart, so click on image to enlarge:

Some notable highlights:

• Hansen was a stock recommended by Cramer back in November 2005. When Cramer recommends successful momentum stocks, I usually look at the price of the stock when he recommended it as a solid support since a lot of new investors rush in. On 11/9/2005, stock spiked up and closed at a split-adjusted $16.05. Sorry, that event is not on my chart.
• …however, what is on my chart is when Cramer said to “ring the register” 6/7/2006
• In the midst of heavy insider selling, Nathan Parmelee from the Motley Fool, in July 19, 2006, wrote a very bearish article entitled “Hansen’s Unnatural Valuation.”
• There was a bunch of insider selling in May and June. It’s pretty normal for insiders to sell stock, but a bear flag is raised when the selling occurred after the great Q1 earnings report and the news of the Anheuser-Busch deal in May 9, 2006 To me, this obviously looked like profit-taking since the stock spiked so high after the conference call; reminded me a bit of Google in December and January. You can decide that for yourself.
• Finally, one thing I noticed is that HANS was “inflation-news proof.” In other words, stock never took a hit after Bernanke’s famous May 10 day that sent the markets into a correction. With that said, HANS has no routine gaps to fill up. The only gap-ups occurred after the profit-taking by insider selling.

Well, just wanted to share my point of view. As you can see, I’m leaning more towards the bearish side on this one. At the same time, I do respect HANS for taking out short-sellers by just selling drinks. On the other hand, profit-taking is a powerful force. With everything I’ve seen, it’s different this time around for HANS. At this moment, it’s a tough place to be for the longs. Expect a volatile run-up before earnings, but after that, hmmmmmmmmmm.

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Head Start is a post I’ll be doing every Sunday night. It’s basically your “week ahead” update, and an update to things I’m doing on the site.

• Sentiment: Monday & Tuesdsay = bearish, the rest = ?; Tensions in Iraq are growing, and there wasn’t much positive news over the weekend to fuel the rally on Friday.

• S&P Extremes (by Ticker Sense) – I found a great table by Ticker Sense that gives us a snapshot of S&P stocks that are moving unusual in either direction. As always, look out for a break in the pattern first. Also, the S&P was on fire last week, so look for some correction in the winners in a drop in the S&P.
• Click [HERE] for 5-day quotes:
• Short term break downs: DTE, ETR, ED

• Swing Trades- I updated the “Momentum Meter” page. I posted charts and placed visuals to see where I made my bullish/bearish calls. My best call was Apple (AAPL). My worst was Pacific Ethanol (PEIX). Problem was I put money on PEIX, and not AAPL! I will be changing the name of that page to “Swing Trades”, or something like that, soon. I also will be doing a new list for the month of August. So far here’s what I got: TIE, AAPL, HANS, VPRT, ICLR, LBIX, ETR. Remember, stocks on the Momentum Meter page are the ones I track the most.

• Under Construction- in an attempt to make my site more useful, I’ll be adding more watch-lists, and other indicators. So far I am working on three pages- 1) blog sentiment, a page that tracks how other bloggers feel about the market. 2) Trade Cramer, a page that tracks the performance of Cramer’s recommendations through different intervals (I’m mostly doing back-testing). 3) Stock Picks, a page that lists stocks picked by other investors, such as Kirk, Motley Fool (I have a Rule Breaker subscription), Cramer, Bull Trader, and picks from me and my team. I’ll try to keep most posts as simple as possible.

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Techs have been one of the worst performing sectors this past few months. I’m looking to go long and strong with this oversold group, pending another FED meeting in August. On the other hand, energy stocks are approaching overbought territory; now that the big oil companies have reported huge earnings, we may see some ‘sell on the news’ action the next few days.

This weekend I’m going to redo my blogsite- change some of the pages, and try to offer better tools.

Laters,
Gio

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I have two companies that are just screaming at me in many of my screens. Both are in a very powerful rally mode. Usually when this happens to these small caps or micro caps, then there is something going up. Anyway, I’ll post some charts this weekend.

• ICON plc (ICLR) – very strong earnings reported July 26. I’ll have to read the transcript later. On the technical side, this stock is doing very well. In the past week there was a ton of buying. Could it be insider purchasing, or hedge funds? I would like to short this stock on any sign of profit-taking, but it’s a little tough to make a move yet.

• Leading Grands (LBIX) – this beverage company is doing very well. It is already up over 745%YTD. Especially in the past two months the stock rallied big time. My guess is a lot of shareholder/insider transaction. Here’s a bullish article that basically manifests shareholders’ desire to keep the company operating on its own, rather than being bought out. I also want to short this stock, but have yet to see any real break downs in the chart this past week. I’ll have to take a look deeper.

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