MO Watch

Tobacco company Altria Group Inc. (MO), one of my Watch stocks (and a holding), has developed a late-day bear phase on Person's Proprietary Signal. Earnings will be announced on Wednesday before the open, so this is skedaddle time if skedaddle we must.

	h-a trend	sto	sto zone	pps	psar	macd	macd trend	ma20	ma200
MO $24.65

Other major technical tools remain in bull phase.

At this point I'm going to stay in my position, although I can make a good case for getting out.

My stay-put case:

• There's no news to account for the price drop.
• The percentage drop is only about half that of the S&P 500.
• The decline began in the middle of the day, without news.
• This is a blue-sky stock. This week's high is the highest ever. There's no resistance hindering a fruther rise.
  

All in all, it looks like random drift to me, as MO picks up on the general malaise of the markets.

My skedaddle case is:

• There's a major bear signal.
• Stay put?
  
• What are you thinking!?!
• Why watch signals if they are to be ignored???

All very good points. If earnings are disappointing, I'll jackrabbit Wednesday morning, taking the loss.

My last post about MO was on Oct. 5.

Disclaimer

Tim Bovee, Private Trader tracks the trades of a private trader for his own accounts. Nothing in this blog constitutes a recommendation to buy or sell stocks, options or any other financial instrument. The only purpose of this blog is to provide education and entertainment. No trader is ever 100 percent successful in his or her trades. Trading in the stock and option markets is risky and uncertain. Each trader must make trading decision decisions for his or her own account, and take responsibility for the consequences.

Abbreviations:

• h-a trend - Heikin-Ashi trend.
• pps - Person's Proprietary Signal.
• psar - Parabolic Stop and Reverse
• ma20 - 20-day moving average
• ma200 - 200-day moving average
• macd - Moving Average Convergence-Divergence
• sto - Fast Stochastic

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

• h-a trend: Determined by the Heikin-Ashi candlestick, green for up, red for down. Heikin-Ashi averages six days for high, low and close, signalling uptrend if the close is in the upper half of the range and downtrend if it is in the lower half.
• sto: green for bull, red for bear.
• sto zone: green for overbought (80+), red for oversold (20-), yellow for neutral zone
• psar, pps, macd: green for bull mode, red for bear.
• macd trend: green for rising, yellow for sideways, red for falling.
neutral.
• ma20, ma200: green for above the average by more than 1%, red for below the average by more than 1%, yellow for within 1% either side of the average.