Post your Best Long-Term Stock Chart

The original name of this thread was "Obvious Stock Trades". And while the goal was to post trades that were more/less obvious that's a pretty arrogant title for a thread. No stock trade is obvious, except in hindsight. There are always two parties to a trade, a buyer and a seller so everytime you make a trade, someone else has the opposing viewpoint.

In anycase, this thread has basically just morphed into a trading journal where I post charts I find interesting and post my portfolio from time to time so that others can see that i'm eating my own cooking. Others are welcome to share, but If you don't like breakouts or are uncomfortable buying a stock at a new all-time hight, i'm guessing you won't find this thread very interesting.

This thread is basically:

1. The best trades you're seeing right now.
2. Good risk/reward trades.
3. Preferably long-term trades (>3mo holding period)
4. Preferably weekly charts but I still look at the daily chart too.

For posterity's sake, here's what the Original Post said...:
Let's post trades here that are so obvious even a cave man could do it.

I guess i should go first but I have nothing that qualifies as good enough to post here.... I have had a bunch to drink so how about Long CERN Short CPB.

CERN to me looks like it will keep sliding down to a $45-$50 range....I see it has earnings out May 5...& I see it will ramp up IVR a bit into the earnings, so you might do a cheap calendar, except it has only monthlies, so the Apr expiry options don't get you too close to the 5/5 ER...anyway, you could do the Apr/May $60 calls calendar for 18c....prolly won't get there by Apr, but you'll be in the $60 long May calls 18c + comms in the hole & maybe catch a bullish pop on the ER.
.....in the calendar P/L below I take it to the Apr opex with a 10% iv increase, prolly won't get that much until the week of the ER....

idk, maybe 1/2 the time when I think something is "obvious" - it turns out way different than what it seemed - anyway, something pretty obvious to me is the impending volatility inducing event that is the Brexit referendum on 6/23. Actually, I think volatility will start ramping up into the Brexit referendum date, prolly a month or more in advance. The June FOMC (6/15) and the Brexit referendum are only a week apart. Throw in a US political scene shaping up for Summer volatility (RNC convention mid-July) and it really looks like a good one to "sell in May, go away" - so I am looking for equities to top out by early May. I am buying wide Jun UVXY and VXX call flys of various stripes. Also a variety of other VXX, UVXY, and SVXY spreads that I have shown elsewhere.

of course, Brexit referendum comes/goes and UK is still in the EU, FTSE will pop, something like EWU calls might be a good bet, will wait to see if I can get in July $16's for <25c, they could easily 10-bag

also look at the biggest City banks - HSBC, RBS, BCS, etc......they are grinding down but could rebound pdq if/when the Brexit referendum fails.....

I like it. A guy at my office has been touting the anti-Brexit trades. Calls or call spreads on EWU could turn out quite well.

I was thinking about CERN a little more long-term. The company is in a growth segment of the healthcare biz and is trading at probably its lowest forward PE in quite some time. Near-term earnings could shake out a little lower as some of the optimism gets rung out of the stock, but i like the company longer term. I'd throw in a few more positives. CEO/Founder (who already owns about $1bn of the stock) just bought another 400k shares about a month ago. Granted that's not hugely significant since he already own 22.9m shares, but I like the vote of confidence. Growth & Cashflow continues to look pretty good ($2.9bn revenue in 2013, $3.4bn 2014, $4.4bn last year, and projections for over $5bn in 2016).

From a technical standpoint, I think you wait to see if it holds $50 and can use that as a nice place to get long with a fairly skinny stop loss. Or you can give it more room. But i'm thinking more like a year+ holding period on that, not a quick hit in the options market (not that I have anything against quick money makers!!). If anything i'd probably be looking at call spreads in 2017 (buy the $50 strike, sell the $70 strike).

EDIT: One negative i just noticed is the CEO just announced he has cancer, so that's never good...

One I did recently fits a pattern I am on the lookout for - the megaspike followed by fast (if only partial) backslide. That were GWPH, one spike $37 to near $92 (3/11), slid back to near $70 2 days later. With it trading around $86 on the spike day I bought Apr $70/55 bear puts vertical for 2 bucks, 2 days later those were worth $5+. Woohoo. Sad story 2 days later I was laying in sickbed with flu, had a $6 gtc on it, never got out, that trade is now 50c underwater. Say la vee.

But the pharma stocks are good places to look for the big spikes - they don't always immediately slide back, so options plays on those spikes are pretty dicey...

Aside from the individual company names, there are four or five underlyings I like to trade on a regular basis because they have decent levels, and I don't get overwhelmed with the charting a thousand different names: they are FXE (the Euro proxy), GLD/GDX/GDXJ/GG (gold ETF's), and XOP/OIH (oil and gas etf's). I don't play silver much, but it's closely correlated to gold, so if GLD's too pricey for you, you can also look at SLV as an alternative.

With FXE, look for similar levels as are present in EURUSD:

I've been shorting on strength only at or around 112-112.50 (basically, EURUSD 1.14 or so):



With GLD, I'm looking to add short positions around 120-121, since it appears to be hesitant to break higher through the long-term .236 Fib from the 2011 high to the 2015 low:



If GLD is too pricey for you, look at GDX, GDXJ, or GG; their trajectory is similar, as is that of SLV (the silver ETF).

XOP is the oil and gas exploration ETF. I've only been initiating a long position at price extremes. The problem lately, however, is that it (and oil) recently made a new low, and the pricing of oil is subject to "a bit" of speculation. My thinking there is that, rather than "call a bottom," look to go small with several positions, so that your cost basis in the net position is something that has a reasonable shot at profitabllity on one of these upmoves ... .

The biopharma space is a tough nut. A company can implode on one product's clinical trial failure or explode on the same news; which therapies/drugs have not only promise but "profitable promise" is a total craphshoot. But here's a couple to keep an eye on:



It's been brutalized since the beginning of the year and the last earnings announcement was more disappointing than expected. If you look at the weekly, you'll notice that there's not only room for an explosion to the upside, but also total implosion, a la VRX, which is the other one to watch:



That bounce at the end looks suspiciously like a dead cat bounce, so there could be further weakness ahead (which is why I'm not yet diving into that pool).

Yeah the names are getting spikes alla time - most of the time these are names that don't even hardly have tradeable options, so I don't bother. However, once a week or so I will go to the FinViz screener and screen everything by weekly/monthly performance - whether you look at big spikes or big drops, about 1/2 the time at least I'd guess the big movers are pharma or biotech....was just scanning now, looking at MDVN....

CERN worked out well. How about another...

$AHS - AMN Healthcare Services:

Meant to upload this yesterday - $SRI

Hammer/Pinbar @ $17. Can play w/ a relatively tight stop:

This one will gap up Monday (potentially) following a positive article in Barron's. Might be worth taking a shot on if you believe agriculture prices can ever rebound..

By the way this thread title is pretty dumb. Very few trades are obvious except in retrospect... Someone should have called out the thread starter on this a while ago. Yes, I know, i started this thread. And of course this is a forex site, so who cares about what's in the stocks & commodities section anyway. LOL

Hope everyone had a good weekend -- GL trading.

Posted this in another thread but for those of you trading Stocks & Commodities, this is a pretty cool site: tradingviews.com

I grabbed a screenshot for you all to see. Can do some pretty cool stuff on here...Some useful features are hidden behind a bit of a paywall (like all the alert functionality and some of the better data -- it uses free data from BATS and serves a few ads here and there). That said, the charts look nice and the drawing tools seem to sync across computers and save over time (i.e. come back a week later and that silly trend-line you drew is still there). Anyway, just my initial take...seems good.

Attached a screenshot. Same info seen is available on Forex, Futures, Digital Currencies, Indexes, and of course Stocks.

Hello InfinitySL, please allow me to ask you what strategy do you have?
Also, please allow me to attache the best 3 trading books, or at least some of the best trading books for those who want to learn.

Regards!

I can only attach 10MB so for the 3rd book I give a link:

http://www.trading-software-collecti...ge%20Breakout/

Good to have you here. I trade a few different strategies. My usual are breakouts and pullbacks to support/resistance zones. Generally, though, I prefer to have the fundamentals aligned with my view. I let the chart do most of the work, but i tend to not invest in high-flying over priced stocks. I prefer small to mid-caps that are less well known and don't show up in the media for fear that my opinion might be swayed by whatever the talking heads might say. I also have a stable of "blue-chips" that I trade in/out of, but plan to hold for longer periods of time to collect dividends, etc.

For instance, this is one where the fundamentals have swung somewhat negatively but I think is a good longer-term play: In this case, i'm playing that they $100 level will hold up as support. Also this is probably about as big-cap as I'll go, so not the BEST example, but what can ya do...

Let us track Apple Inc.
So, Apple Incorporated. We shall track it here for some time, because we shall not get bored, looking at AAPL.
So, what will wait us in the future ? Everyone could say here:"Future is unpredictable and not available for the mortals". Yes. Let us take a look.

What do we see here ? Long high move up, with beginning - wave 1, the middle - wave 3 and the end - wave 5. Note, how nicely wave 4 divides all move into the golden ratio - the lowest is 0.382 of the whole move and the highest is 0.618 of the whole move. Even this chart is enough to say:"The move up since early 2000 is over". There will not be Apple's rise beyond its present top in the near future. Why ? Because five waves - 1-2-3-4-5 put together complete wave, wave up is over, now move down is unfolding. Right now we can say the target for Apple's fall - first big stop down, it is the end of wave 4. Price may reach this level, may stops above it, may overshoot it shortly, all variants are valid, we shall say more precisely later, when the next fall will start.
Now next chart.

First move down - the same five waves. Wave 1 - the beginning, its correction - wave 2(expanded flat), decisive wave 3 - the middle, its correction - wave 4, and final thrust down - wave 5. These five waves compose first step down, marked with "A". Every step needs a rest, after every drop follows arise, and now Apple is rising. This arise is just a break before the next drop and we can place a good SELL position at the end of this break.
Now move up - the break after fall.It consists of three waves as every correction does - waves a-b-c(blue labels), but this form is called expanded flat correction. Look - first wave "a" has three waves, then goes wave b with the same three waves form and now runs wave c up. The same view has wave 2 in first move down. Note, how wave "b" falls beyond the start of wave "a", forming expanded flat surface. Wave "c" in expanded flat corrections tries to exceed wave "a" end, so will do currently running wave "c" up. Currently unfolding wave "c" will try to go beyond wave "a" end - above 123.82 or so. The end of wave "c" will be a good place to open SELL position on AAPL shares with a very low price target. Let us look at wave "c".
The same chart above, wave "c" is a final wave of wave "B"(blue labels), subwaves are marked with green. Wave "c" is a usual, clearly visible five waves impulse as it should be in flat corrections. We see wave 1 as a start, wave 3 as a middle and perhaps we can already see wave 5 - the last wave of wave "c". Note, we can divide wave 3 into subwaves, because it is the strongest part of wave "c". So, we shall track wave 5 of wave "c" to open a good SELL position. Follow our updates here.