The Stock/ETF/Commodity Pinbar Thread

Figure I'll post today since today gave us some interesting price action. Maybe stocks will go down (although i wouldn't count on it given the run we've seen). Here are some stocks printing bearish pins (I didn't look at them all so forgive me if a few are not true pins...):

Sorted Largest Company to smallest...
Ticker Name
MSFT - MICROSOFT CORP
QCOM - QUALCOMM INC
AMAT - APPLIED MATERIALS INC
AXP - AMERICAN EXPRESS CO
DHI - DR HORTON INC
JBLU - JETBLUE AIRWAYS CORP
STT - STATE STREET CORP
HTZ - HERTZ GLOBAL HOLDINGS INC
NYT - NEW YORK TIMES CO -CL A
TCB - TCF FINANCIAL CORP
DCT - DCT INDUSTRIAL TRUST INC
CZZ - COSAN LTD-CLASS A SHARES
BMRN - BIOMARIN PHARMACEUTICAL INC
BYI - BALLY TECHNOLOGIES INC
CLS - CELESTICA INC
SUSQ - SUSQUEHANNA BANCSHARES INC
FMBI - FIRST MIDWEST BANCORP INC/IL
VRSK - VERISK ANALYTICS INC-CLASS A
SOHU - SOHU.COM INC
NWBI - NORTHWEST BANCSHARES INC
HLIT - HARMONIC INC
NM - NAVIOS MARITIME HOLDINGS INC
PRSP - PROSPERITY BANCSHARES INC
FFBC - FIRST FINANCIAL BANCORP
FSC - FIFTH STREET FINANCE CORP
MTH - MERITAGE HOMES CORP
GMT - GATX CORP
EQY - EQUITY ONE INC
MKSI - MKS INSTRUMENTS INC
ZGEN - ZYMOGENETICS INC
SUNH - SUN HEALTHCARE GROUP INC
MDAS - MEDASSETS INC
KND - KINDRED HEALTHCARE INC
CVVT - CHINA VALVES TECHNOLOGY INC
N - NETSUITE INC
DMAN - DEMANDTEC INC
NILE - BLUE NILE INC
CFSG - CHINA FIRE & SECURITY GROUP
RDEN - ELIZABETH ARDEN INC
ISLE - ISLE OF CAPRI CASINOS
WTFC - WINTRUST FINANCIAL CORP
MEND - MICRUS ENDOVASCULAR CORP


And of course there is a bullish stock out there:
SIG - Signet Jewelers...

Wow...Signet Jewlers...the diamond in the rough so to speak...

Anyway, here are the weekly's that caught my eye...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stocks

Bearish:
ALTR - ALTERA CORPORATION
AYR - AIRCASTLE LTD
BEXP - BRIGHAM EXPLORATION CO
BKS - BARNES & NOBLE INC
CMA - COMERICA INC
CRR - CARBO CERAMICS INC
FMBI - FIRST MIDWEST BANCORP INC/IL
MDZ - MDS INC
MR - MINDRAY MEDICAL INTL LTD-ADR
MRVL - MARVELL TECHNOLOGY GROUP LTD
OMG - OM GROUP INC
OMI - OWENS & MINOR INC
PFE - PFIZER INC
PODD - INSULET CORP
STX - SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY
TC - THOMPSON CREEK METALS CO INC
TSO - TESORO CORP
WCRX - WARNER CHILCOTT PLC-CLASS A

Bullish:
ETR - ENTERGY CORP
SONC - SONIC CORP

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Commodities

Bullish:
GOLD
Lumber

Bearish:
Pork Bellies -- (Looking good BillyRay...Feeling Good Lewis!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ETFs

Bearish:
KRE - Regional Bank ETF
ILF - Latin American 40
IYZ - Telecom ETF
BRF - Brazil Small Cap
XBI - Biotech ETF

Bullish:
GXC - S&P China ETF
TAO - Chinal Smallcap

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Have a great week!

A few to mull over this evening:

Bullish:
HLS - HealthSouth Corp
PEG - PSE&G

Bearish:
EGOV - NIC Inc
FDP - Fresh Del Monte
JDAS - JDA Software
SLG - SL Green

Awesome thread, some great calls.

Do any of you use CANSLIM analysis for your picks?

Infinity what stock screener are you using?

I do use CANSLIM, but not specifically to come up with these picks.

The Screener is a home-made one using AnalyzerXL and downloading the data from Yahoo (Open, High, Low, Close, 30day High, 30day Low).

Thanks for the compliment. I think as you can probably tell, the most important "call" one can make is the general trend of the market. I'd be willing to wager that the best calls published in this thread were bullish, the worst were bearish given the non-stop bull-run we've had...

So regarding CANSLIM, an easy way to get the general trend right might just be to use the IBD market direction call. It's pretty straight forward and published everyday on their front page...

Anyhow thanks for reading.

http://i432.photobucket.com/albums/qq42/pizdun/chbt.jpg

This is a good idea InfinitySL! Yep! Have you taken options on a stock or ETF if the set up was an A++ set up?

Also a question to the people on the thread about position size, if a person was trading a 10k account,and using 3:1 leverage,giving you 30k to trade,what would your position size be on ETFs and stocks?

That's an interesting question. For me, it depends on how wide my stop-loss has to be. So for instance if you have a $50 stock, and you can place your stop just behind $48 (-$2) and you have a $10,000 account, for me, I'd risk $100 per trade and so I could only trade 50 shares of that stock b/c if I get stopped out, I lose $2 x 50 or $100. Now, if you could do the same trade and somehow get a 25c stop, then you could afford $100/.25 -- 400 shares of the same stock.

To me, it's all about the underlying volatility of the stock -- Your stop on IEF (7-10yr treasury bonds) will be very different than your stop on the 2x Inverse ETF on Nasdaq (QID, i think...).

And obviously this math changes considerably if you have a higher risk tolerance than me. If you risk 3%/trade or more, than your numbers look alot different...

Why not... For old time's sake:

Bearish:
BBBB - BLACKBOARD INC
CEL - CELLCOM ISRAEL LTD
FTO - FRONTIER OIL CORP
GFI - GOLD FIELDS LTD-SPONS ADR
HMY - HARMONY GOLD MNG-SPON ADR
MU - MICRON TECHNOLOGY INC
RCII - RENT-A-CENTER INC
TSLA - TESLA MOTORS INC

Bullish:
AZK - AURIZON MINES LTD
PWR - QUANTA SERVICES INC
SYA - SYMETRA FINANCIAL CORP

[/quote]

So you would look at the ATR of the stock,rather than using the pinbar?thats pretty good.

I had also been pondering using 2x or even 3x ETFs as a tool for short term trades. With options you can either have a straddle type strategy or you take a no retreat,no surrender type of an approach.With a 2x ETF you would still get solid leverage for your trade,but you could adjust your stop to be more forgiving,if the trade went against you.

Also thnx for the weekly pins

I've toyed around with the ATR indicator but I don't use it per-se. I might use it to spot check my stop placement to make sure I don't run the risk of getting stopped out by a normal market move but I don't use it mechanically.

Generally I'm not a huge fan of the 2x and 3x ETFs. Too much embedded risk in those for my taste. Take this example:

You buy a 3x long ETF at 100 (based off an imaginary index that starts at 100).
Index Goes down 5%. Index is now at 95, your 3x ETF is now at 85.
Next day, the Index recoups its loss and goes +5 on 95 (+5.26%), so back to 100 on the Index. Your 3x ETF Goes up 15.78% or +$13.4 to $98.4...

So the Index is unchanged and you are down 1.5%... If I want 3x the exposure, I can just make my position 3x as big using margin. These double/triple etfs have huge tracking error over longer periods of time.

Anyway, yeah, if you have huge conviction in a play (say you have a strong fundamental bias and another confluence) options are a great way to play for the home-run.

Just looking over the basic materials sector,and there are a lot of gold stocks forming great pin bars,this one seemed to be the most "classic" of the bunch.

HMY daily chart

The only thing that bothers me about that stock is the weekly chart...

Good spot on the weekly pin,I overlooked that b/c the daily was in a nice upward channel,and looking like it would continue well. Good market momentum with gold too , but a big conflict technically.

I like these two on the daily charts,HA looks really ripe!

Ha was a blow-out,but Hmy was good. Too bad, i thought that Ha looked really good. ( Tpc never really broke out of the chanell it was in)

InfinitySL, i was noticing you have a preference for weekly bars,are you aiming to hold for a longer period and potentially a bigger return,or is it a case of weekly bars summarising more information,and therefore being more reliable? I was assuming if you are trading weekly pin bars,you might hold a pin bar trade for over one or two weeks?

I was also wondering about DHLC DLHC pairs in stocks and ETFs,have you played with these much?

A combination of both to be honest... I try to hold them for longer periods and I find that they are slightly more reliable. That being said, you need wider stop-losses and so your position sizes need to be smaller, but you can always scale-up if it starts going your way or you're presented with an acceptable re-entry.

Not sure what those are -- are these two bars that together form a bullish or bearish 2-week pinbar? I.e. the Open of Bar #1 is the same as the close of Bar 2? Yeah, I would use those, but I don't really have a scan that can select them so it's more about when I see them, not something systematic that can find them for me...

If you don't mind, what do you use to scan for pinbars? I've looked all over, and spent a lot of time, but still can't figure it out. Have no problems with beobs or any other pattern.

It's not a "program" per-se. It's a spreadsheet containing whatever stocks you want to scan and then you have some sort of plug-in that grabs H/L/O/C data, typically from a free-service like Yahoo! or the like (if you have a paid service that will give you this data, all the better b/c yahoo is kinda slow). Anyway, you take that data and calculate the shape of the bar and compare that to the recent range of the stock (52wk hi/low or 13/26wk hi/low would work well for this).

There's a lot of guess work involved - your definition of a significant pin could be different than mine. Is the size right, is it at the right location, is there an explainable reason why it formed, is it at support, is it a company you know, etc etc. Another variable is market volatility - if every stock traded with a huge range for a given day/week you may want to make your qualifications a little more stringent...

Anyway, hope that helps.