Tuesday's Prospects: Quill pen edition

I've headlined this post "Tuesday's Prospects", but it's not my normal sort of prospects list.

My data provider remains in the midst of a technological wreck, sort of like the Contra Concordia cruise ship grounded off the coast of Italy.

Without data, I'm tossed back to the Dark Ages of parchment and quill pens, with nothing for the speedy analytical programs I've written to chew on.

But technological disaster can keep no true trader from his or her obsession.

Before the opening bell on Tuesday, I visually screened 119 stocks and 36 exchange-traded funds, all having average volume of 5 million shares a day or more, and the stocks all with market capitalizations of $10 billion or greater.

That's 155 symbols altogether, a far cry from this week's analytical universe of  2,339 symbols, but it will have to do.

I found four stocks that broke beyond their 20-day price channels: BMY, ABT, CVS and WMT, all to the upside.

I also found four ETFs that broke beyond their channels: SPY, XLF and XLP to the upside, and FAZ to the downside.

In normal times, after analyzing the price-channel breakouts I screen initially for these factors:

• even odds or greater of a successful trades in the direction of the breakout since the present uptrend began on the S&P 500 weekly chart, on Oct. 4, 2011,
• a yield adjusted by those odds of 5% or greater,
• and absence of an earnings announcement within the next 30 days. 

Without the data, I can't do batch screening for the odds and yield. Those two items will become part of my later work in selecting what to analyze, the phase 2 analysis. I did, however, exclude stocks that have earnings announcements within 30 days.

References

My trading rules can be read here. And the classic Turtle Trading rules on which my rules are based can be read here.

Disclaimer

Tim Bovee, Private Trader tracks the analysis and 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.