New Leadership Scan

Ticker	Price as a % of 52 Wk H-L Range	EPS growth past 5 years	Return on Equity	50-Day Simple Moving Average	200-Day Simple Moving Average	20 day v/ms	X
CMG	96.34	0.32	0.23	0.03	0.11	14.97	0.08
BWLD	91.63	0.33	0.17	0.06	0.1	21.88	0.04
QCOR	87.92	0.42	0.38	0	0.45	18.04	0.45
PRGO	86.84	0.38	0.25	0.02	0.08	22.79	0.06
HITK	83.99	0.32	0.29	0.05	0.3	24.68	0.25
ULTA	76.86	0.79	0.24	-0.06	0.07	17.85	0.13
MELI	66.56	1.31	0.39	-0.02	0.04	20.65	0.06
BIG	58.19	0.83	0.26	-0.02	0.04	18.62	0.06
GPOR	54.58	0.26	0.27	-0.08	-0.01	17.86	0.07
EBIX	52.85	0.58	0.27	0.17	0.27	15.06	0.1

Once again I have 4 stocks qualifying for the leadership list (the top 4 above), but had to lower the standards pretty dramatically to get 10, once again emphasizing the lack of clear leadership in the market. I will be tracking these daily over the next week.

I have the relative strength and industry spreadsheets updated. I have verified nothing from the earnings list reported this week, so there is no earnings summary, and instead of growth charts tomorrow I will have the quarterly update to the earnings list. The spreadsheet will most likely be uploaded on Monday.

Relative Strength By Industry

Here are the top 30 industries in percentage of stocks in the relative strength range this week. I will be concentrating on the groups with 4 or more categories highlighted.

Relative Strength Scans

Here are the results of this week's relative strength scan. There are about 750 stocks in the top 25% of their 52 week price ranges, which I believe is a slight increase over last week. From left to right, the first 4 columns are the stocks from last week retained this week, the 5th column is the new stocks this week, and the 6th column is the stocks dropping off this week's list.

The spreadsheet will be uploaded later today.

Retained				New	Off
ACHN	FL	OCR	TLEO	AAPL	ADS
AEO	FTK	OIS	TMK	ACAT	CYAN
AKRX	GEOI	ONXX	TOL	CYS	DISH
ALK	GPI	OXM	ULTA	EDR	DMAN
APOL	HEK	PCYC	URI	GLNG	ECL
AREX	HITK	PDLI	UVV	GRMN	GNC
ARIA	HMSY	PIR	VICL	IACI	GTLS
BEBE	HSNI	PKT	VPHM	NR	HOS
BWLD	IDIX	PLCE	WCG	NUAN	HSTM
CALL	INT	PNRA	WEN	PSMT	JCP
CBST	JWN	PPS	WMB	PXP	KSU
CFX	KLAC	PRGO	WPRT	SAFM	MBI
CLR	KOG	PVH	ZOLL	SAM	PZZA
CMG	LAD	QCOR	ZUMZ	WYN	RPTP
COG	LEN	RATE
CONN	LF	RAX
CTAS	LIZ	SAH
DHI	LOW	SCSS
DLTR	LQDT	SFD
DPZ	LZB	SIMO
DY	M	SLXP
EAT	MDVN	SNDK
ETH	MIND	SPPI
FIRE	NNN	STX

Leader Charts

You could say it was a bad week on the leadership list, with only two gainers, but there really wasn't much movement, with none gaining or declining more than 5%. HITK was the biggest gainer. This has been one I have been watching for the phenomena I have seen numerous times in the market: a stock in an up trend that takes an earnings hit sells off for about 10 days, then resumes the up trend. This turned in 8 days, but really did not move up much after that, but that is probably due to the fact that the market has been weak.  If we get a rally early next month, this one will very likely lead it, I have mentioned several times that this one is on the list of Chinese reverse mergers, several of which have been accused (and in some cases it was true) of fraud. I have heard nothing about this one, but one accusation will likely send it crashing.

CMG was the second biggest gainer. A long term holder here would have made very little in the last 6 months, but a nimble trader would have made a bundle trading the various moves up and down.  Price relative is essentially flat for the last few months, so while it is not being sold off in droves, it isn't really leading anymore, either. It has been in a monster up trend for 3 years now, and is in the late stages of a bull move, so this may be very close to topping out.

PRGO was the biggest decliner. It appears to be setting itself up in a nice pullback, but the price relative line is going the wrong way. That volume spike a couple of weeks ago makes the volume pattern hard to read, but it is also what probably put this on the leadership list to begin with, and this will probably drop off as soon as we get 20 days away from it.

GPOR was the second biggest decliner. This has the same problem: a bullish looking pattern (a cup and badly flawed handle), but the price relative line is going the wrong way. This looks like it is going to have a lot of trouble with the 50dma and i wouldn't even entertain a position here unless it could get back above it.

Friday New Highs

There were 113 new highs today, here is the list.

These are the top 10 industries in percentage of stocks making new highs:

Name	Stocks	NH	Pct
Diversified Utilities	30	12	40
Oil & Gas Pipelines	37	12	32.43
REIT - Healthcare Facilities	11	3	27.27
Electric Utilities	49	12	24.49
Cleaning Products	5	1	20
Conglomerates	16	3	18.75
Gas Utilities	33	6	18.18
Auto Dealerships	12	2	16.67
Lumber, Wood Production	6	1	16.67
Gaming Activities	7	1	14.29

We had all of two high volume stocks on the relative strength list:

Ticker	Relative Volume	Change
CYAN	3.21	-8.79%
DISH	1.82	0.21%

I will probably have a fairly normal posting schedule this weekend. I don't think there will be an earnings summary, but I will have the earnings list update. The price relative scan will be posted wither Sunday night or Monday.

Friday Weekly Charts

I think I am going to take a little time off this afternoon, so I am keeping this post short. To culminate a blah year in the market, the last day came in as just as blah, and we actually closed out the year at nearly exactly the same place we started II believe the SPX is actually fractionally negative for the year), although you can see by the candle there really wasn't a lot of movement today, and I'll bet the computers went nuts trying to find orders to front run. It is not looking good going into the first week in January, which has me believing we will have a rally to start the month before the big calamity. Of course, that is just a guess and there is no way in hell I will trade on that. Ultimately I believe the market will succumb to some pretty serious downward pressure, but i have no idea on the timing.

I wanted to get at least one weekly chart, as this is the last day that the pivot points for this year are valid. All I can say is "wow". The R1 and S1 levels almost perfectly marked the tops and bottoms for this year. In the standard pivot point calculation, the middle pivot is not the mid point between upper and lower pivots (stockharts' chart school page has the details of how it is calculated), but my system does put in directly in the middle, which is where I drew the horizontal line. That line seems to be closer to the actual "bull/bear" line seperating the early rally from the late correction. One thing I note about this pattern: it looks eerily similar to late 2007.

I will have the new highs update shortly.

This Week's Industry Performance

Here are the top 25 industries in percentage of stocks advancing for the last 5 trading days (not including today). Notable is the strength of utilities. I will re run this scan this weekend with the new relative strength data.

Market Leader Performance

Ticker	Performance (Week)	Relative Volume	Change
CMG	2.01%	0.24	-0.32%
SYNA	1.36%	0.17	0.49%
BWLD	1.34%	0.23	-0.26%
GPOR	0.40%	0.21	0.37%
BIG	-0.05%	0.13	-0.29%
HITK	-1.52%	0.64	0.98%
MELI	-1.76%	0.65	-0.46%
ULTA	-1.82%	0.84	0.25%
QCOR	-2.88%	0.43	0.07%
PRGO	-3.35%	0.29	-1.00%

Here is the performance for the leadership list for the last 5 days (not including today), along with today's relative volume and change. Since this is a 4 day week, this goes back to last Thursday, and will probably change quite a bit tomorrow.

Early Industry Leaders

Name	Stocks	NH	Pct
Diversified Utilities	30	12	40
REIT - Healthcare Facilities	11	3	27.27
Electric Utilities	49	12	24.49
Oil & Gas Pipelines	37	8	21.62
Cleaning Products	5	1	20
Gas Utilities	33	5	15.15
Gaming Activities	7	1	14.29
Conglomerates	16	2	12.5
Drug Manufacturers - Major	35	3	8.57
Auto Dealerships	12	1	8.33
Food - Major Diversified	13	1	7.69
Insurance Brokers	13	1	7.69
REIT - Residential	26	2	7.69
Lodging	17	1	5.88
Beverages - Soft Drinks	19	1	5.26
Aerospace/Defense Products & Services	41	2	4.88
Telecom Services - Domestic	21	1	4.76
Trucking	22	1	4.55
Shipping	50	2	4
Rental & Leasing Services	26	1	3.85
Regional - Southwest Banks	28	1	3.57
Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing	31	1	3.23
Diversified Communication Services	34	1	2.94
Credit Services	35	1	2.86
Education & Training Services	37	1	2.7

Here are the early industry leaders in percentage of stocks making new highs.

Today's Pivot Points

Floor		Woodie's		Camarilla		Demark
R3	1281.58	R2	1273.62	R4	1270.6	High	1270.18
R2	1272.56	R1	1269.92	R3	1266.81	Low	1256.39
R1	1267.79	P	1259.83	R2	1265.55
P	1258.77	S1	1256.13	R1	1264.28
S1	1254	S2	1246.04	S1	1261.76
S2	1244.98			S2	1260.49
S3	1240.21			S3	1259.23
				S4	1255.44

Friday Morning Update

There is not much change from yesterday, and there probably won;t be much change today. We have a resistance level at 1267-1269 which I don't think will get tested today, a support level at 1248 which is also not likely to be tested, and a middle level of 1259, which is about a point or two from where we are now, Volume will be so low today I'm going to have to load up on no-doz. XLE and XLB  are leading this morning,  XLF and XLP are lagging. The Nasdaq and Russell 2000 are about even. Oil and gold are up, treasury yields down.

I have 71 new highs so far, with no breakouts that I can see. There is nothing to report on the earnings front.

Price Relative Scans

Here is the price relative scan for Thursday: 5 100 day breakouts (Finviz screen here), 1 50 day breakout
(here), and 9 20 day breakouts (here).

Thursday New Highs

There were 116 new highs today, here is the list.

These are the top 10 industries in percentage of stocks making new highs:

Name	Stocks	NH	Pct
Cleaning Products	5	2	40
Diversified Utilities	30	11	36.67
Gas Utilities	33	9	27.27
Specialty Eateries	4	1	25
Electric Utilities	49	12	24.49
Oil & Gas Pipelines	37	9	24.32
Confectioners	5	1	20
REIT - Healthcare Facilities	11	2	18.18
Auto Dealerships	12	2	16.67
Lumber, Wood Production	6	1	16.67
Sporting Activities	6	1	16.67

This is the one high volume stock from the relative strength list:

Ticker	Relative Volume	Change
CYAN	3.25	-14.38%

One More Day And 2011 Is Done

TPTB apparently are determined to get the SPX positive for the year, because we agot a near mirror image of yesterday today. Nothing technical has changed, and judging by the technical indicators we are headed down soon, but probably not this week. Volume is so low right now that the market is going to be pretty easily moved in whatever direction suits the boys.

Geez, the Nasdaq 100 looks terrible in comparison. This latest move up was incredibly weak, and has already run out of momentum. I would be tempted top short this come next Tuesday, but I imagine there are a lot of others doing the same, and they will probably be squeezed out before this drops.

The Russell 2000 has been holding up quite well. We may get to see if a rally can be sustained on the strength of the Russell, without the Nasdaq behind it. That is, if we rally.

Accordiug, to the percentage of stocks on the NYSE above the 50dma we just might get a rally. After a brief dip below 55, it got back above and is headed up, which is quite bullish. One thing I don't like is that it did not get above the previous high before pulling back, and that might be a warning sign of problems to come.

The same indicator in the Nasdaq failed to get into bullish territory before the pullback, which I don't think I have seen before,and is very likely a sign of problems here. It is now moving up again, but if it can't get above 50, this is going to be in real trouble.

One more day left to this year, and as tempted as I am to take the day off, I will be on it. It will very likely not be an exciting day, but there is always Youtube.

I will have the new highs update shortly.

CHKM

It looks like we are going through another phase of weak stocks breaking out. CHKM, even with today's breakout, is nowhere near where it was 6 months ago in price relative. One thing to be noted is a high increase in average daily volume since October (which is hard to see thanks to the volume spike), and the steadily increasing CMF. Despite that, this still looks like a pretty weak chart.

LOV

LOV has a stronger price relative line, but is very thinly traded. CMF is very positive, but that is easily skewed by low volume, so I would not put much weight on that. This does have a recent big increase in average daily volume, and is probably getting someone's attention, but appears to be a long way from really being a viable trading opportunity.

Today's Leading Industry

Here are the industreis with 90% or more of their stock advancing today.

Here are the industries with 15% or more of their stocks making new highs.

Cleaning products is another defensive industry that has, bu default, become a leading industry. The main problem is that is is only 5 stocks, so it makes big percentage moves. 3 of the 5 stocks have pretty strong charts, but I don't expect any of them to become leaders if the market turns bullish, but they hav e done quite well during this last rally.

Market Leadership

Ticker	50-Day Simple Moving Average	52-Week High	Relative Strength Index (14)	Change	Change from Open	Gap	Relative Volume
MELI	-0.06%	-15.61%	46.53	0.12%	0.22%	-0.10%	0.83
QCOR	1.16%	-8.86%	45.93	0.60%	0.89%	-0.29%	0.56
CMG	4.23%	-2.05%	59.84	0.20%	0.24%	-0.04%	0.47
HITK	4.86%	-12.79%	51.41	1.75%	1.33%	0.42%	0.4
PRGO	4.00%	-5.50%	54.18	0.04%	0.18%	-0.14%	0.34
BWLD	8.15%	-2.33%	62.49	0.92%	0.07%	0.85%	0.31
GPOR	-7.42%	-22.29%	46.59	1.89%	1.34%	0.55%	0.31
SYNA	-5.93%	-13.74%	39.94	0.87%	0.47%	0.40%	0.29
ULTA	-6.64%	-14.49%	42.54	1.00%	0.37%	0.62%	0.24
BIG	-0.45%	-14.18%	53.14	0.87%	0.39%	0.48%	0.21

Well, here we go again, a whole lot of nothing going on here. Here is a link to the charts.

Market Watch Game

I don't do a whole lot of real trading, especially with the market being as sucky as it has been the last few months, but I would like to do some "what if" type paper trading, where I act as if I have a position in the stock and track it. The only problem with it is it gets boring and I don't stick to it very long. Market Watch has a virtual stock market game, and I thought it would be a good idea to start a game there where I could try trading that I would normally not do in my real account. I have just opened up a game here.
You can join it now if  you have a Market Watch account (free, and relatively painless to get), but acutal trading won't start until Tuesday, and I have it set to end at the end of December of next year. You have $100,000, and can use margin. I set it up as an advanced game to enable short selling, limit orders, and stop loss orders, and I set the minimum price to 1 cent, so just about any stock in the market can be traded. Hopefully it will be entertaining during those periods of market boredom.

Early Industry Leaders

Name	Stocks	NH	Pct
Diversified Utilities	30	11	36.67
Specialty Eateries	4	1	25
Cleaning Products	5	1	20
Confectioners	5	1	20
Electric Utilities	49	9	18.37
Lumber, Wood Production	6	1	16.67
Sporting Activities	6	1	16.67
Oil & Gas Pipelines	37	6	16.22
Cigarettes	7	1	14.29
General Entertainment	8	1	12.5
Meat Products	8	1	12.5
Gas Utilities	33	4	12.12
Beverages - Brewers	9	1	11.11
Drug Stores	9	1	11.11
REIT - Healthcare Facilities	11	1	9.09
Auto Dealerships	12	1	8.33
Discount, Variety Stores	12	1	8.33
REIT - Residential	26	2	7.69
Conglomerates	16	1	6.25
Personal Products	18	1	5.56
REIT - Office	19	1	5.26
General Building Materials	24	1	4.17
Regional - Midwest Banks	53	2	3.77
Money Center Banks	29	1	3.45
Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing	31	1	3.23
Diversified Investments	39	1	2.56
Processed & Packaged Goods	39	1	2.56
Regional - Southeast Banks	41	1	2.44
Semiconductor Equipment & Materials	45	1	2.22
Regional - Northeast Banks	93	2	2.15
Restaurants	51	1	1.96
Business Services	104	2	1.92
Asset Management	57	1	1.75
Property & Casualty Insurance	80	1	1.25
Independent Oil & Gas	109	1	0.92

Here are the early industry leaders in percentage of stocks making new highs.