6/14 Top Prospects

This is the kind of market we're in today: The beasts who were grazing peacefully on the river banks, beyond the boundaries of the 55-day price channel, were spooked, and with a flurry of terrified cries have plunged back into the water and are paddling as quickly as they can toward the center.

So, no strong-trend breakouts today among the 600+ stocks and exchange trade funds that I screened, and only two breakouts picked up from yesterday.

Sometimes, as the great Canadian philosopher Avril Lavigne put it, "Life's like this."

As I posted yesterday, I've changed the rules of my scan around a bit, with the net effect of doubling the number of stocks and exchange-traded funds scanned, but reducing the number that qualified for the Top Prospects list.

Strong-trend Breakouts

sym	phase	adx	bday	blevel	stop	atr	atr%
GRM		26	jun13	$23.25	$24.99	0.63	2.7%
MCP		27	jun13	$51.00	$54.58	3.58	7.0%

Exchange-traded funds are marked with a plus sign (+) after the ticker symbol. My holdings are marked with an asterisk (*).


Key

• phase: Green for a bull-phase breakout, red for a bear phase.
• adx: Average direction index location, indicating the strength, or the temperature, of the trend. Orange for 40 or greater, aqua (light blue) for 25 and up but below 40, magenta (light purple) for 20 and up but below 25, and brown for anything below 20. (Mnemonic: Orange for the overhead sun, blue for the surrounding sky, magenta for sunset on the horizon and brown for the earth.)
• bday: Breakout day, the day the price broke through the upper or lower 55-day price line.
• blevel: Breakout level, the price level of the line that was broken through.
• bstop: The stop/loss price calculated on breakout days as the 14-day average true range below the breakout-day low for a bull phase and above thre breakout-day high for a bear phase.
• atr: The 14-day average true range, in the same currency as the price.
• atr%: The average true range as a percentage of the breakout level, an indicator of volatility that is comparable for all potential trades.

About channel analysis

Read a detailed explanation of my channel analysis method, including trading rules.