Screens, Barometer, and Trade in QQQQ

Just updated the market barometer, the stock screens, and made a descent/okay trade in QQQQ today. To start, the stock screens that I updated were the bottom five on our Stock Screens home page, and a few things jump out at me: of the industries that have the most representation, Oil Equipment and Services still maintain their edge, though it seems to be diminishing in recent weeks, while bio-tech seems to be popping up a little more frequently in our screens. Another notable, is the Defensive stock screen, has diminished quite a bit in recent weeks. This could be one of two things: 1) the defensive play’s share prices have been hammered in recent weeks from the recent selling, or 2) the long-term trend that the market has been on since early March has made a lot of these defensive stocks too pricey for our screens. I’m not sure as to which one it is.

I’ve also updated our Market Barometer which I was late in doing due to being on vacation. But the market attitude has changed only slightly from being modestly “Bearish” to middle-of-the-road “Neutral”.

Finally, I made one day-trade and it was in “oldie but goodie” QQQQ. We got a nice sell-off in the beginning on very low volume, and the ETF formed a very bullish-looking hammer, not to mention a very narrow range body. So we took the trade, and while it could be argued that I got out too early with the profits that I had, I would argue otherwise, that the evening star formation was a strong signal to button down the hatches and take my gains where I could. I made about $111 or .09/share – the max profit opportunity was much more.

Here’s the QQQQ chart…