Barron’s 400 v IBD50 v Zacks #1. Also Treble Double Superpicks (?) FLT, GMCR

15 Jun


Last week on Stocktwits I saw a comment relating to our methodology and the Barron’s 400 list.  I thought it might be an interesting exercise so I ran today’s B400 list against today’s IBD50 and today’s list of Zacks #1 rated stocks.  The following list is those stocks that appear on all three watchlists.  BTW, those in bold are also Paladin Superpicks so they also appear on the Stocktwits50.  I call these Treble Double Superpicks.  (My little joke).

I am not going to do this every week unless I launch it on a modest subscription basis, based on the attention this gets.  I would encourage folk to go to the Zacks site to view their excellent research and also, if you have a longer holding perspective, Zacks #2 ranked stocks. I am a lifetime Zacks Ultimate customer — I paid market for it by the way — and I consider it money very well spent.

B400_1

These are the stocks that appeared on both the B400 and the IBD5o, sorted by a combination of B400 rating and IBD50 composite:

B400_IBD

These are the stocks that are both B400 stocks and Zacks #1 picks ranked by age as a Zacks #1 pick:

B400_Z1


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IBD 50Top-10 portfolio updated

15 Jun

Check portfolio performance and updates HERE

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Superpicks: KORS out, FLT in.

15 Jun

results

The IntersectionX and Superpicks watchlists are up to date HERE.

The leading stocks led the broader markets this week.  IBD T-10 has it for the week; Superpicks for the YTD.

KORS was a one-week wonder in the Superpicks and is replaced with FLT.  I am not sorry to see KORS go, although I have made money off it in the past, but over quite a holding period and quite a bit of volatility.  It reminds me in many ways of RGR, another stock that as soon as it passed my fixed selection criteria, lost money.  FLT has had quite a long run already, but, like GMCR, we will see what it has left.

The IBD 50n is missing from the IBD website today.  I do not know if they have done this deliberately or if it is just a short term omission.  I had to dig it out of the Leaderboard section.

 

 

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Q1 2013 IntersectionX, IBD and Stocktwits results.

31 Mar

results

The IntersectionX and Superpicks watchlists are up to date HERE.  For the year, the full IBD50 and Stocktwits50 watchlists, compounded weekly and with results calculated Friday close to Friday close, have gained 15.48% and 12.78% respectively.

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Whither LQDT? $25?

16 Mar

On July 4th last year, I wrote a fairly lengthy piece about Liquidity Services Inc (LQDT).  That piece is still worth reading as background, as most of my comments still apply.  In that piece I wrote:

Pricing on LQDT?  Clearly if I had the definitive answer to that I would not make my closing disclosure.  The current Fibonacci retracement it is sitting on is quite a strong one that is roughly at an area that offered previous resistance.  We may see the stock hold around this ~$40 level for a while.  While some analysts continue to shamelessly pimp $60 and $70 targets I would be surprised to see the stock overcome its recent sellfest to that extent.  If it does recover, I would expect significant resistance at around $45.  To the downside, if $40 doesn’t hold then next stop looks like $33-$35 with a 52-week low of about $20 as an absolute worst-case (I would be amazed to see that price but who knows?).

This quote from a former employee on Glassdoor.com in 2011 still  rings loud: ” Company is a one trick pony, and that one trick can easily be made obsolete.”  Actually, not so much since the GoIndustry acquisition, but the integration of that isn’t done yet.

Well, I guess the pricing comments were fairly prescient:

lqdt

I have followed LQDT from its IPO.  I have found it to follow Fibonacci retracements and projections very reliably, and its price has an affinity for round $5 numbers.  It is currently ranked #4 at Zacks, underperform, sell.  Marketclub has it at three red triangles, -90.  It closed at $30.19 on Friday off its low for the day.  The shape of Friday’s candle shows that maybe it will put up a struggle at the $30 mark.  I don’t think things look good though.  Money flow hasn’t hit prior lows, it’s running away from its 10day-SMA and MACD looks to be rolling over to the negative again.  I am not calling this a short but $25 looks like a distinct possibility.  Historically, LQDT’s options have been expensive, but just now the June contract in-the-money $40 and $35 or close-to-the-money $30 could reward those with a speculative bent, if the fight at $30 fails — which I think it has a good chance of doing.  I believe the real support was at $33 with next at $25.

What I said last July is still true: I do not presently hold any long or short stock or options positions in LQDT nor do I currently plan to make any.  I have not held any long or short stock or option position in LQDT since early May 2012.


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Tech ETFs: VGT, RYT, IYW, XLK. The Apple question.

10 Mar

I subscribe to several for-pay services.  Some I like more than others.  Ones that consistently rank high with me are Marketclub/INO,  Zacks and Bespoke Investment Group (“BIG”).  BIG is rather different to the other two.  If you like data-driven analysis, you’ll like BIG.  BIG is invariable professional.  You may see them frequently quoted in the financial press.  They recently reported the results of their first voluntary members’ survey, which is what piqued the impetus for this article.  The survey covered both individual and institutional investors.  Self-serving it may be, but I happen to think the paying customers of BIG are smarter than the average bear.  Key point for this article is that both the individual and institutional investors liked Technology as the best sector for the next six months.

As an investor with my own money, I tend to using ETFs, although I will take individual equity positions.  It depends on the term and portfolio I’m investing in.  I considered four broad-based technology ETFs to play a possible positive ride in the technology sector (click on the chart to enlarge):

techs

tech etfs

The Rydex equal-weight ETF has romped away from the others, due largely, one supposes, because it has way less exposure to that laggard du jour, AAPL.  The AAPL percentages, BTW, are at 3/8/13 for RYT and 12/31/12 for the other ETFs.  The latter percentages may have changed some since 12/31 due to AAPL’s sell off and and increase in other portfolio stocks.  Be that as it may, some folk might think that with AAPL changing hands at a P/E of about 9, that as it hovers at a price somewhat above $400 it may be worth considering.  In which case, depending on your loving or loathing for all things AAPL, you may wish to consider which tech ETF best suits your purpose.  If you think AAPL will continue to be a loser then RYT is the way to go despite a healthy expense ratio of 0.5%.  Were I to want some AAPL exposure I would probably lean to VGT.  An alternative approach, trading costs be damned, might be to blend the two ETFs depending on how you love or loathe AAPL.  Your intended holding period would impact your decision, too.

The BIG members offered pretty mixed insight.  AAPL was the biggest long position in the portfolio of by far the most respondents.  On the other hand, it was also the stock that by far the most respondents were most bearish on.  Go figure. But, that probably sums up market sentiment on AAPL too.  You can check out free stuff (and there’s a lot of it) from BIG HERE.


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IBD market calls. How effective are they versus buy and hold? Using VTI, +71%.

9 Mar

On February 10th this year, we wrote a piece that graphically represented IBD’s market calls (“uptrend” and “correction” only, “under pressure” omitted) against the equity graph of our IBD50 Top-10 model portfolio.  Based on that review, I concluded that in that application these market timing signals might not be the best signals to enter or leave the market.

In the real world I am still favoring a system that uses trailing stops of 7% or 8% set on individual stocks for exits, but using market calls to determine if replacements will be made.

That said, last week I took a list of IBD market calls beginning with the “market resumes uptrend” call on 1/26/11 (after close) and purchased Vanguard’s total stock market ETF VTI. I held the ETF until the next “market in correction” call and sold at the open the next day. Positions were replaced at the open following the next “uptrend” call, and so on. I ran the model through to the last “market in correction” call on February 25th this year.

The period was 761 days long.  The model would have held VTI for 494 days or 65% of the time.  The longest holding period was 106 days (+13.6%), the shortest 1 day (-2.0%) with an average of 45 days.

The best profit was +13.6%, the worst loss -2.8% with the average result being a gain of 2.2%.  Given this period covered some significant down periods, I like the way downsides were limited.

There were 11 holding periods.  7 resulted in a profit, which is 64% of the time.

Compounding the results for each of the periods the total gain obtained was 25.6%.  Buy and hold for the same period would have yielded 15%.  So, the strategy beat buy and hold by 71%.  Not shabby.  FYI, for the same period, SPX, COMPEX and RUT returned 14.8%, 13.8% and 12.9% respectively.

CONCLUSION: IBD’s market timers can be used as a market timing guide, and, based on the results we obtained, can beat a buy and hold strategy.  Using different instruments will return different results.


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