Van Meerten's picks

That's really the only way to describe the market action this week -- Sideways. Not a lot of bad news but nothing to write home about either. Let's look at the 3 yardsticks I use each week with the data I mine from Barchttp://www.barchart.comhart to get an objective view of what happened. I use 3 because no single indicator tells it all.

Value Line Index - contains 1700 stocks so its more representative of the market than the narrower S&P 500 or very narrow Dow 30. What can I say -- sideways

1 - Index down .23% for the week but up 7.77% for the month
2 - Up on Monday and Friday-- down on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
3 - 40% Barchart short term buy
4 - 16% Barchart overall buy - 6 of the 13 indicators are buy
5 - Trend Spotter (tm) buy
6 - Closed on Friday at 2394.84 just above its 50 day moving average of 2339.01

Barchart Market Momentum -- Contains approximately 6000 stocks -- Percentage of stocks that closed above their Daily Moving Averages for various time frames -- above 50% always good -- slightly weaker than last week but better than last month

1 - Friday 79.12% closed above their 20 DMA, 72.29% above their 50 DMA, and 52.26% closed above their 100 DMA
2 - Last Week 82.14% closed above their 20 DMA, 68.69% closed above their 50 DMA, and only 49.88% closed above their 100 DMA
3 - Last month only 25.16% closed above their 20 DMA, only 23.60% closed above their 50 DMA and only 28.58% closed above their 100 DMA

Ratio of stocks hitting new highs/hitting new lows for various time frames -- 1.0+ bullish, 1.0 neutral. below .99 bearish -- We have a bright spot here

1 month new highs/new lows -- 1147/262 = 4.38
3 month new highs/new lows -- 498/161 = 3.09
6 month new highs/new lows -- 381/104 = 3.66

Summary and Investment Strategy -- Although we had a good month the week ended a little flat. I'm not looking for anything magical to happen next week but at this time we are fully invested but will cull anything that turns south. We had a caution on FLIR and it closed above its 50 DMA and still has a Trend Spotter (tm) buy. The other caution ANH although closing below its 50 DMA still has a Trend Spotter (tm) hold.

Portfolio results:

Barchart Van Meerten New High portfolio was up 2.36% for the week -- up for the last 12 months by 36.92% vs the S&P 500 up by 15.28% -- We're still ahead of the benchmark by 21.63%

Barchart Van Meerten Speculative portfolio was up 6.70% for the week -- up 27.20% for the last 12 months vs the S&P 500 up 15.28% -- We're still ahead of the benchmark by 11.92%

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on investing here and on Barchart Portfolio Blogs. Please leave a comment below or email JimVanMeerten@gmail.com.

Comments: View Comments |  Friday July 30, 2010