ABT Watch

The maker of pharmaceuticals and other health-care products, Abbott Laboratories (ABT), is showing a parabolic sar bear signal today. It marks continuation of downward trend in place since January following a three-day bull whipsaw.

	trend	adx	psar	pps	macd	macd trend	sto	sto trend
ABT $50.01

At 1:54 p.m. Eastern

By my rules, ABT qualifies as a trending stock: The average directional index is 32, and it has made a series of lower highs and lower lows.

However, on the near-term three-month chart, this is the fifth phase change on the psar, never a good sign for the whipsaw-adverse.

And on the longer term five-year chart, the price can be seen direcribing a gigantic sideways move.

So I give little credence to this trend.

Reversal Levels

• $53.25, +6.5%
• $51.59, +3.2%
• $50.01 <== You are here
• $49.41, -1.2%
• $49.29, -1.4%
• $45.80, -8.4%
• $44.72, -10.6%

Some congestion in the support and resistance pattern, side surprising given the sideways nature of the stock's price movement over time.

I'll add it to the Watchlist, but not with any great hope of the signal being a success.

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Abbreviations:
psar - Parabolic Stop and Reverse
adx - Average Directional Index
pps - Person's Proprietary Signal
ma20 - 20-day moving average
macd - Moving Average Convergence-Divergence
mfi - Money Flow Index
sto - Fast Stochastic

About the glance: The colors indicate the state of each signal.

• trend: Determined by the 5-day moving average, green for up, red for down, yellow for sideways
• adx: orange for above 30-up, blue for 20-down, purple for in the middle. Red is most prone to whipsaws
• psar, pps, macd: green for bull mode, red for bear
• sto: green for overbought, red for oversold, yellow for the neutral zone.

Today on Private Trader

• Today's Scan
• ABT Watch
• Forex
• Morningline: Stocks and Bonds
• Morningline: Other Indicators
• Morningline: Holdings
• Almanac

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