Financial Tides is adding Aloy Inc - ALOY to its VMNHI Marketocracy portfolio as a highly speculative issue. ALOY is a multi-channel media company and direct marketer providing community, content and commerce to Generation Y, the approximately 58 million boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 24.

The stock came up on my BarChart screener of stocks hitting new highs with 15 new highs in the last 20 trading sessions and is 4 for 5 recently. The stock has had a 27% price appreciation in the last 65 days.

This issue is not followed regularly by Wall Street and is in our list only for technical reasons. The BarChart technical indicators have 13 out of 13 buy signals for a 100% buy.

The only analyst that follows the stock looks for a 24.9% sales growth next year.

On other site Motley Fool CAPS members rate the stock 35 to 7 to out perform the market but the All Star members are more positive with a 9 to 1 rating.

Recommendation : adding ALOY to VMNHI portfolio around 8 with a protective stop loss not lower that 6.50. This is a highly speculative recommendation and should have protective stop losses if you add it to your portfolio.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com.

Disclosure : I do not hold a position in ALOY at the time of publication

Comments: View Comments |  Monday November 30, 2009

Financial Tides is adding Kimberly Clark - KMB - to the VMNHI portfolio. KMB is one of the leading consumer products companies. Its global tissue, personal care and health care brands include Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex, Depend, Kleenex, Scott, Kimberly-Clark, Safeskin, Tecnol, Kimwipes and Wypall. Other brands well known outside the U.S. include Andrex, Scottex, Page, Popee and Kimbies. Kimberly-Clark also is a major producer of premium business, correspondence and technical papers.

The stock came up on my BarChart screener because it has hit 14 new highs in the last 20 trading sessions and is 4 for 5 recently. There has been a 15% price appreciation in the last 65 days. BarChart's technical indicators rate 12 of 13 buys with 1 hold for a 96% buy rating.

There are 14 analyst following this stock and 5 give it a buy. Consensus for sales growth is 5.9% and EPS growth of 13.1% is expected.

I always look for other votes of confidence and over on Motely Fool CAPS the members vote 633 to 44 that the stock will out perform the market. The All Star members rate it 216 to 5 and the Wall Street rating is 16 to 0.

This stock has what I look for:

1 - Hitting new highs
2 - Positive Wall Street press
3 - Confirmation from other rating sites.

Recommendation - Adding KMB to VMNHI around 65.50 with a protective stop loss no lower than 62.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes about financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com

Disclosure: I do not hold a position in KMB at time of publication

Comments: View Comments |  Monday November 30, 2009

On Financial Tides I feel it's important to have a portfolio of stocks that continue to hit new highs to keep your portfolio growing. Agrium -- AGU is just such a stock. Agrium Inc is a leading global producer and marketer of fertilizer and a major retail supplier of agricultural products and services in both North America and Argentina. They produce and market four primary groups of fertilizers: nitrogen, phosphate, potash and sulphur. Their strategy is to grow through incremental expansion of their existing operations and acquisitions as well as the development, commercialization and marketing of new products and international opportunities.

The buzz is on this stock with positive press almost every day. The analysts consensus is a 9.3% sales growth for next year and an unheard of 94% earnings per share growth projection. There are now 6 buy recommendations out there.

The stock came to my attention when a BarChart screening for stocks hitting new highs showed AGU has hit 13 new highs in the last 20 trading sessions and has hit 5 out of 5 recently. A new high was set today and at this time it's only 1.11% off that 260 day new high. Price appreciation in the last 65 days has been a respectable 19.54%. BarChart's technical indicators have 12 buy signals out of 13 for a 96% buy rating.

On other sites Wall Street Survivor Mark's checklist has a Survivor Sentiment rating of 5/5 and a fundamental rating of 4/5. On Motey Fool the CAPS members think it will out perform the market with a vote of 1651 to 40 with the All Star members giving it a 417 to 9 vote. The Wall Street consensus vote is 7 to 1.

This stock has the analysts giving positive buy ratings, a BarChart buy rating of 96% and positive confirmation from other opinion polls.

If you buy around 58 put in a protective stop loss of not less than 53.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com

Disclosure: I hold no positions in AGU at the time of publication.

Comments: View Comments |  Monday November 23, 2009

Last month the sector that had the best overall price appreciation was the Medical - HMO sector with an average price increase of 38% for the month. A very good return considering the market as measured by the S&P 500 was up only about 1.15%. The member of the sector with the highest BarChart rating was Health Net (HNT) with an 96% buy rating.

What I found interesting about the sector was that although the sector as a whole had a great price appreciation HNT was the only standout in BarCharts technical indicators.

There are 6 analysts closely following this stock and 5 have upped their earning per share estimate in the last 30 days.

My personal view is that the investing public is like a deer in the headlights about the whole health care industry. Many are worried that Obama administration programs will take the profits from this industry and make anything related to health care either government price controlled or even worse nonprofit.

I think those fears are unfounded. Even in countries that we consider to have socialized medicine there is a great need for private health care insurance and private hospitals. Those with large disposable incomes will always get great health care, housing and education for their families.

Back to BarCharts rating of HNT. The stock has 12 out of 13 technical indicators signaling buy with just one hold. The stock has hit 9 new highs in the last 20 trading sessions and is just 1.28% off its 260 day high just hit recently on 11/18/2009.

As always I like to see what other sites rate the stock and over on Wall Street Survivor Mark's checklist has a 5/5 Survivor Sentiment with 4/5 on the fundamentals and 5/5 on his technical rating. Motley Fool CAPS members vote 102 to 24 that the stock will out perform the market and their All Star members vote 49 to 9 on out performance also.

I like the stock but can't add it to my portfolio because I'm fully invested at this time and can't see selling something just because I may have found something better. If you have some money to invest this might be a good play for your health care position.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes about financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com

Disclosure: I do not hold a position in HNT at the time of publication.

Comments: View Comments |  Monday November 23, 2009

On Financial Tides I always try to give a weekly analysis of the status of the stock market. Sometimes the press about the market reminds me of an impressionist painting. You can stand too close and all you see are brush strokes and patches of color. It's hard to tell what the painting is about. You've got to back up and view the painting from a wider perspective and then all those brush strokes and patches of color start to make sense and your mind now translates the chaos into a wonderful image you can appreciate.

The market reports were like that this week. Market up and down, gold, oil and the dollar sometimes going up together then reversing sometimes traveling independently and all the time the headlines on different news sites interpreting things differently. There were times when the headlines in different articles on the same page had the market going in different directions.

Let's step back across the room and try to make sense of all the different brush strokes, textures and blotches of color. As always I go to BarChart to find my data and start with the Value Line Index. I use that index because it contains 1700 stocks not just the 30 of the Dow or the 500 of the S&P 500.

Value Line Index -- 1700 stocks -- down .65% for the week but still up 4.38% month to date.

1 - BarChart's 13 technical indicators have the Index rated 5 buys, 3 holds and 5 sells for an overall rating of hold
2 - The Index closed on Friday above it's 20, 50 & 100 day moving averages

Weekly market momentum -- 6000 stocks -- the percentage of stocks closing above their Daily Moving Averages

1- 20 DMA -- 55.67% closed above
2 - 50 DMA -- 46.77% closed above
3- 100 DMA -- 68.77% closed above

Ratio of stocks hitting new highs to those hitting new lows for various time periods -- above 1.01 bullish, 1.00 neutral, below .99 bearish

1 - 20 day new high/new low ratio -- 313/599 = .52
2 - 65 day new high/new low ratio -- 164/323 = .51
3 - 100 day new high/new low ratio -- 144/162 = .89

Summary: The market did not advance this week; there are signs for caution but not for panic. This week if some of the stocks in my portfolio start tanking below their 50 DMA I might do some culling but I'd like to see the ratio of new highs to new lows improve before I'd be ready to say the market is safe again -- what am I saying: the market is never safe. Always have protective stop loses on your major positions.

Wall Street Survivor results -- the contributors to Top Stocks who make stock recommendations place those recommendations in a model portfolio for a little friendly competition. For the month so far the S&P 500 is up 5.33 and 4 of the 8 contestants have beaten that benchmark. The leader is Anthony Mirhaydan with 26.92% and then Vad Yazvinski at 9.10% with me a distant 3rd with 7.89%. Next week is another week.

Disclosure: I do not hold any positions in any of the stocks in my model portfolio.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com

Comments: View Comments |  Saturday November 21, 2009

I know there is a lot of caution in the commercial real estate market but as the population ages long-term care facilities should be a growth market. As always on Financial Tides I try to place my recommendations into one of my simulation portfolios for accountability of my recommendations. For that reason I'm adding Omega Health Care Investors - OHI - to my UpDown portfolio. The portfolio has an annual return on 120%.

Omega Healthcare Investors is a self-administered real estate investment trust which invests in income producing health care facilities, principally long--term care facilities, with the objective of profitable growth and further diversification of the investment portfolio. Investments are located primarily in the United States.

OHI came up on my BarChart screener when I was looking for companies trading over 100K shares a day that have hit new highs in over 50% of the last trading sessions. OHI has hit 14 new highs in the last 20 sessions and is 5 for 5 recently. There has been a 29.75% price appreciation in the last 65 days. Barchart's technical indicators have 12 out of 13 buy signals with only one sell for an 88% buy rating and the sell was a long term indicator and a review of the price chart leads me to believe that the sell signal will turn by the end of the week.

Recently analysts from UBS and JMP have upgraded this stock and they estimate a 7.3% increase in revenues and a 13.1% increase in earnings per share. This is what you'd expect from a quality REIT.

Other sites have positive ratings also. Over on Wall Street Survivor Mark's checklist has Survivor Sentiment at 5/5, Technicals at 5/5 and Motley Fool at 4/5. Further Motley Fool's members' rating by their out or under perform vote 179 to 9 to out perform with the All Stars rating it 48 to 1 to outperform the market.

This stock has 3 qualities I look for:

1 -- BarChart showing that the stock has hit new highs in at least 50% of the last 20 trading sessions
2 -- No negative news from the analyst -- we don't want the brokerage firms trashing the stock we just bought with sell calls to their customers
3 -- Confirmation from other reliable sites that their members are also positive on this stock

Recommendation: I'm buying Omega Healthcare Investors -- OHI -- for my UpDown portfolio around 18.50 with a protective stop loss of not less than 16.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com

Disclosure: I do not own OHI at the time of publication

Comments: View Comments |  Wednesday November 18, 2009

To be accountable for the recommendations I make on Financial Tides I always place my recommendations into one of my simulated portfolios to see how the stocks actually perform. BDX is being added to my portfolio on UpDown.com. That particular portfolio has a 120% annual rate of return.

The health care industry goes through a lot of supplies and one of the biggest providers of supplies is Becton Dickinson -- BDX -- NYSE. BDX is engaged principally in the manufacture and sale of a broad line of supplies, devices and systems used by health care professionals, medical research institutions and the general public. BDX's operations consist of three worldwide business segments: Medical Systems, Biosciences, and Preanalytical Solutions.

Don't expect spectacular rates of return but most analyst feel it will out perform the market. There are 11 analyst following this stock and only 1 feels it will under perform the market.

I found the stock by screening on BarChart for stocks trading over 100K shares a day that have hit new highs in at least 50% of the last 20 trading sessions. BDX has hit 12 new highs in the last 20 sessions and is recently 5 for 5. There has been a steady 12.36% price appreciation in the last 65 days. BarChart's technical analysis indicators have 12 buy signals out of 13 indicators with only 1 hold for a 96% Buy rating.

Although I have found BarChart to be dependable I always look to see what other sites think. Over on Wall Street Survivor Mark's checklist has Survivor Sentiment 5/5, Fundamentals 4/5, Technical 5/5 and Motley Fool at 5/4 for a 93% rating.

Over on Motley Fool they have 3 out/under perform ratios with the following results: All Members 654/14, All-Star Members 225/12 and their Wall Street ratio 14/0.

This stock has 3 things I look for in any stock recommendation:

The stock is hitting new highs in at least 50% of the last 20 trading sessions and has at least an 80% buy rating on BarChart
Has news buzz created by analysts from Wall Street and brokerage firms and do not have major negative outlooks
Has confirmation of my choice from other sites -- If there is disagreement I always take a second look for why.
Recommendation: I'm buying Becton Dickinson BDX for my UpDown portfolio around 73.50 with a protective stop loss not less than 69.50.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com.

Disclosure: I do not hold any actual position in this stock at the time of publication.

Comments: View Comments |  Wednesday November 18, 2009

Financial Tides portfolio additions:

VMSLO is a model portfolio I have on Marketocracy. These are stocks that trade under 100K per day, have hit new highs in at least 50% of the last 20 trading sessions and have positive price action today and the last 5 days. BarChart is used as my screener and these stock have a buy signal of at least 80% on BarChart.

CATM -- Cardtronics
MSPD -- Mindspeed Technologies
NTRI -- NutriSystems
KVU -- Structured Products Trust
ACV -- Alberto-Culver
MGLN -- Magellan Health Service
This fund is a continuation of the fund I used to win the Strategy Lab Open sponsored by Investor Place Media and MSN Money Central.

Recently the 12 month return on this fund was 47.65%vs, the S&P 500's return of 28.43%; it beat the index by 19.22% . Since the fund's inception on 1/3/2008 the fund has returned 59.26% vs. the S&P 500 negative 17.11%; beating the index by 76.37%

The public page of this fund on Marketocracy is VMSLO.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com

Disclosure: I hold no position in any of these stocks at the time of publication

Comments: View Comments |  Tuesday November 17, 2009

On Financial Tides I will give you investing ideas. Occasionally, very occasionally a stock will come up on my screeners that I'd like to share with you for technical reasons alone. It may have spiked in volume, hit new highs consistently and is interesting for its speculative value.

If you are an investor or even a day trader stay away from anything that is under $5 and traded on the OTCBB. These stocks are not for you. They may lose their following, turn illiquid or have a tremendous price gyration for reasons that are beyond comprehension.

My highly speculative stocks are not stocks I'm promoting, just stocks I find interesting. I'll try to flag these stocks as highly speculative but if you are not a seasoned investor, willing to take a small flyer, please stay away from these.

CLHR -- Clear-Lite Holdings (OTCBB) trading recently at 1.34 and NXTH -- NXT Nutritionals Holdings (OTCBB) recently trading at 1.20 were 2 such stocks. They were covered because they had recent positive price appreciation, had hit new highs in at least 50% of the last 20 trading sessions, had volume of at least 100K per day and also had recent press coverage that made them visible.

They were not investments, they were fliers -- lotto tickets.

I'll give you the same advise the old Sarge gave on Hill Street Blue: "Be careful out there"

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com.

Disclosure: I do not hold positions in CLRH or NXTH at the time of publication

Comments: View Comments |  Tuesday November 17, 2009

The buzz on renewable fuel just won't go away. Brazil uses soybeans and we use corn. Green Plains Renewable Energy -- GPRE -- press release states they are North America's fourth largest ethanol producer, operating six ethanol plants in Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska and Tennessee with a combined expected operating capacity of 480 million gallons of ethanol per year. GPRE also operates an independent third-party ethanol marketing service that currently provides marketing services to its affiliated plants as well as three third-party ethanol producers with expected operating capacity of 305 million gallons per year. Green Plains owns 51% of Blendstar, LLC, a Houston-based biofuel terminal operator with six facilities in five states. Green Plains' agribusiness segment operates grain storage facilities and complementary agronomy, feed, and fuel businesses in northern Iowa and southern Minnesota.

On a fundamental analysis bases analysts give the stock a strong buy rating and expect a 20.7 revenue growth with a price target of 15 which is 35% higher than its present price of around 11.

The stock came up on my BarChart filtering of the stocks hitting the most frequent new high with 13 new highs in the last 20 trading session and 5 for 5 recently. There has been a price appreciation of 70.62% in the last 65 days. BarChart's technical analysis indicators give it a 13 out of 13 buy signal for a 100% buy rating.

Additional positive ratings come from Wall Street Survivor where Mark's checklist has a Survivor Sentiment at 5/5 and Louis Navellier's Portfolio Grader has it a buy with a B rating overall and an A quantitative rating. I'm glad that more people than just me have noticed it.

Recommendation: I'm adding this to my Marketocracy New High portfolio and if you have room in your portfolio for a renewable energy company then buy GPRE - Green Plains Renewable Energy around 11 with a protective stop loss no lower than 9.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com

Comments: View Comments |  Monday November 16, 2009

Each weekend on Financial Tides I review the previous week by using a BarChart analysis of the Value Line Index and the market as a whole. I use the Value Line Index because it contains 1700 stocks which make it a much broader index than the Dow 30 or the S&P 500. The Index was up for the second week in a row by 1.65% and 5.06% for the month. That's only 4.26% off its previous high made on 10/18/01. Each month I also include the Conference Board's Index of Leading Economic indicators which will be published this month on 11/19/01.

Value Line Index -- contains 1700 stocks -- Index up

BarChart's technical analysis indicators rate the Index a 32% buy with 7 buys, 3 holds and 3 sells -- not great but better than last week
The Index is tracking above its 20, 50 and 100 day moving averages - a sign the market is trending upward
BarChart's Market Momentum -- contains approximately 6000 stocks -- percentage of stocks trading above or below their daily moving averages -- momentum up

20DMA -- 53.79% trading above
50DMA -- 51.21& trading above
100DMA -- 71.44% trading above
Ratio of stocks making new highs to stocks making new lows for various time periods -- above 1.01 bullish, 1.00 neutral, below .99 bearish -- this week we have a long term bull with 2 short term bears

20 day new high/new low ratio -- 422/611 = .69
65 day new high/new low ratio -- 225/302 = .84
100 day new high/new low ratio -- 230/199 = 1.20
Summary -- The market appears to be back into an upward trend but the new high/new low ratios shows we have a way to go before we can give a full blown bull signal. Don't be afraid to either stay invested or get back into the market.

Wall Street Survivor results -- On Top Stocks the contributors that mention stocks place those recommendations is a fantasy portfolio for a little friendly competition. For the week my portfolio was up 2.15% vs. the S&P gain of .57% and for the month I'm up 9.22% vs 5.33 for the S&P. I beat the market but that wasn't good enough to beat our leader Anthony Mirhaydan for both the week and month to date. His return is a fantastic 11.61% for the week and 29.58% month to date.

Disclosure: I do not hold any positions in the stock of my Wall Street Survivor portfolio at the time of publication.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please place a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com

Comments: View Comments |  Saturday November 14, 2009

On Financial Tides I always try to pick the best of the breed whenever I have some room in my portfolios. Today I had some room in my ETF portfolio so I went to BarChart to screen for the ETFs with the best 14 day relative strength. The first 6 were all gold ETF's and since my portfolio already contained DGL I didn't want to be too heavily weighted in gold and the number 7 ETF was ECH the Chile ETF I added yesterday. Number 8 on the list was HHH - the First Trust Dow Jones Internet Holder.

BarChart rated HHH a 100% buy with 13 of 13 technical indicators a buy. HHH has hit 8 new highs in the last 20 trading sessions and 5 for 5 recently. In the last 65 days there has been a 31.49% price appreciation in the last 65 days.

On Wall Street Survivor Mark's checklist has the Survivor Sentiment rating a 5/5 and the technical rating also 5/5. Over on Motley Fool the all member rating was 27 to 4 and their All Stars rated it 5 to 1. Pretty good consensus all round

I checked the news to see if there was any negative news about the Internet sector and luckily Don Dion of the Street.com had analyzed the components of the Internet holder and gave the holder a thumbs up.

Recommendation: Buy the Internet Holder HHH around 57.75 with a protective stop loss no higher than 52.

Disclosure: I hold no positions in HHH at the time of publication.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes about financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com

Comments: View Comments |  Wednesday November 11, 2009

On Financial Tides ETF's are mainly found by using the technical analysis tools from BarChart. This week BarChart has pointed to the IShare Chile ETF (ECH). Emerging markets are growing far faster than the US economy and Chile has one of the fastest recovering economies anywhere.

All 13 of BarChart's technical indicators say buy for a 100% buy rating. ECH has hit new highs in 9 of the last 20 trading sessions and is presently 5 for 5 in the last week. Its has had a 28.47 price appreciation in the last 65 days and isn't skipping a beat.

On other sites Mark's checklist on Wall Street Survivor has a Survivor Sentiment on 5/5 and on Motely Fool the all member rating is 88 to 2 with their All Stars rating it 26 to 1.

I'm adding this to my EFT portfolio on Marketocracy.

Recommendation: Buy IShares Chile ETF -- ECH around 52 with a protective stop loss no higher than 48.

Disclosure: I do not own ECH at the time of this publication.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who write on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please make a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com

Comments: View Comments |  Tuesday November 10, 2009

We all get a lot of junk electronic advertising and this week at AD:tech New York Acxiom Corp (ACXM) showcased many of their new products that make electronic advertising more targeted. ACXM warrants being today's addition to my Wall Street Survivor portfolio. ACXM integrates data, services and technology to create and deliver customer and information management solutions for many of the largest, most respected companies in the world. The core components of Acxiom's innovative solutions are Customer Data Integration technology, data, database services, IT outsourcing, consulting and analytics, and privacy leadership. Acxiom integrates data, services and technology to create innovative, real-time solutions that improve customer relationships and grow the bottom line. In a complicated IT world, they make it simple.

The fundamentals on this company look good. Both Todd Van Fleet of First Analysis and Daniel Leben of Robert W. Baird & Co. give the stock high marks. The analysts consensus is that although there may be modest growth in revenue of 3.7% year over year a positive earnings growth of 38.8% plus a more generous P/E growth as the market recovers should show good price appreciation. There have also been several positive articles recently on BusinessWire to create more buzz.

The stock came up on my BarChart screener with 13 new highs in the last 20 trading sessions and it is 5 for 5 lately. 12 of 13 of BarChart's technical indicators rate it a 96% buy with the other indicator having a rising hold. There has been price appreciation of 40.35% in the last 65 days so it will be coming up on a lot of buy lists.

On Wall Street Survivor Mark's checklist has the Survivor Sentiment as 5/5 and the technicals 5/5 also.

I'm buying Acxiom Corp (ACXM) for my Wall Street Survivor portfolio at around 12.10 with a protective stop loss around 10.00

Disclosure: I do not have any positions in this stock at the time of publication

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes about financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTIdes@gmail.com

Comments: View Comments |  Tuesday November 10, 2009

On Financial Tides we realize there many 2 reasons to buy ETF's. You can make plays on the economy, the underlining fundamentals of a particular industry or country or just plain technical analysis.

DGL the Proshares double Gold ETF is just such a technical play. Gold has been rising and this ETF gives you leverage.

Right now DGL is within .33% of its recent high and has seen 4 new highs in the last 5 days and 6 new highs in the last 20. It's had an 18.41% price appreciation in the last 65 days.

BarChart's technical analysis indicators have a buy signal on 13 out of 13 indicators for a 100% buy signal. Over on Motely Fool the CAPS rating by their readers is 105 to 10 in favor of a further price increase.

Recommendation: If you think gold will go up and the dollar will continue to weaken then DGL the Proshres double Gold ETF is a buy at 40 with a protective stop loss no higher than 37.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com

Disclosure: I hold no positions in DGL at the time of this publication

Comments: View Comments |  Monday November 9, 2009

On Financial Tides although I like to flow with the tides sometimes there are opportunities in the opposite direction. At Alnylam Paharmaceuticals things appear to be going badly. Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc., is a biopharmaceutical company, and engages in the development and commercialization of novel therapeutics based on RNA interference (RNAi). The company's lead RNAi therapeutic program includes ALN-RSV01, a phase II clinical trial product for the treatment of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection. It develops RNAi therapeutics for the treatment of liver cancers, hypercholesterolemia, Huntington's disease, and transthyretin amyloidosis.

Although the company sounds like its poised in the right place, administratively it's a mess. Administrative cost are out of control and the 2 acquisitions that analyst counted on are going badly. The only press the company has had recently are larger projected losses. The analyst are estimating a 10.9% revenue increase but an earnings per share shrinkage of 5.6%. 4 of the 9 analyst following this stock have lowered their EPS forecast in the last 30 days. Not good.

Barchart rates this stock a 96% sell with 12 of 13 technical indicators a sell and only 1 hold. The stock has had 16 new lows in the last 20 days and lost 23.5% of its price in the last 65 days. The chart is a disaster.

Recommendation : If you own ALNY sell it, if you don't, sell it short above 16 with a buy stop to cover at not more than 18.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com

Disclosure: I hold no position in ALNY at the time of this publication.

Comments: View Comments |  Monday November 9, 2009

On Financial Tides at the end of each week after all the smoke clears and the analyst go home I like to take an objective view of what the market really did and how it stands in relationship to the big picture. This week the market had to overcome the big news of a 10.2% unemployment rate, a rate that though still climbing is not climbing as fast as before. Remember the unemployment rate is a lagging economic indicator.

I use BarChart for my technical analysis data. I like the Value Line Index instead of the Dow 30 or S&P 500 because it contains 1700 stocks making it a much broader indicator.

Value Line Index - improving but not back all the way

The Index was up 3.35% for the week but is still off its previous high by 6.08%
BarChart's 13 technical indicators still have the index a sell with 4 buys, 4 holds and 5 sells although the sells are weakening and the holds are to the bullish side
The Index is plotting below the 20 & 50 day moving average but is still above the 100 DMA
BarChart Market Momentum -- the percentage of stocks trading above or below their Daily Moving Averages -- 6000 stocks -- support at the 100 DMA

20 DMA -- 64% trading below
50 DMA -- 53% trading below
100 DMA -- 72% trading above
The ratio of stocks hitting new highs to new lows for various periods - bullish above 1.01, neutral 1.00, bearish below .99 - the ratios this week are getting better

20 day new high/new low ratio -- 414/456 = .91
65 day new high/new low ratio -- 276/203 = 1.36
100 day new high/ new low ratio -- 257/111 = 2.32
Summary -- a week of a little bit of recovery but not a full blown bear market yet. I'll cautiously add a few stocks to my Wall Street Survivor portfolio but only if they meet all my buy criteria.

I did fine on my Wall Street Survivor portfolio with a gain of 6.92% for the week, better than the 3.35% for the Value Line Index. That was good enough for 3rd place but not as good as Anthony Miraydan who beat us all with a 16.09% return

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com

Disclosure: I do not hold any actual positions in any of stocks in my Wall Street Survivor portfolio at the time of publication

Comments: View Comments |  Saturday November 7, 2009

This past weekend I watched a movie starring Ashton Kutcher called The Butterfly Effect. The main character finds that he can go back in time and by changing just one moment he can rewrite all the history from that point in time to the present. I started thinking what moment in time I would change to rewrite the history of this recession. I think the moment I would pick would be that moment when some analyst at Standard and Poor's decided to rate the toxic assets as AAA - Investment Grade instead of the B or C speculative grade it deserved.

That moment in time is when securities firms had the green light to begin selling all this junk to pension funds, trust companies, widows and orphans as sure thing investments and not bets at the crap tables. The floodgates were now open and Wall Street had access to billions if not trillions of dollars of conservative foundation, retirement, banking and insurance company assets that would not have been used to purchase this junk if they were rated as speculative instead of investment grade.

I'm still having a hard time figuring out if the ratings firms were just totally incompetent or an accomplice in the most massive fraud ever perpetrated on the American public. Bernie Madoff and Allan Standford are getting all the headlines and their prosecution makes a few people feel good but when does the investigation of these rating agencies start? The big fraud couldn't have happened without their investment grade ratings.

With all of the federal rules and regulations that have been broken, ignored or bended I think it's ironic that the only one who seems to care is Andrew Cuomo, the Attorney General of the State of New York. I was promised change and transparency if there was a new administration but it looks like Eric Holder our US Attorney General is still asleep at the wheel. Why isn't he taking the lead on investigating what happened and why?

I need answers and so do you. Were the rating agencies negligent or were they a part of the conspiracy. The real big question is why are we still letting them continue to rate investments after they gave us all such bad advice?

What moment in time would you change or do you think that it would have happened anyway?

Jim Van Meerten is an investor how writes on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com

Comments: View Comments |  Monday November 2, 2009