3 Top PowerRatings Upgrades for Traders
The broad-based sell-off on Wednesday has helped put a number of strong stocks into pull back mode, right where traders who like to buy low and sell high want them.
For many stock traders, those of us who look forward to market sell-offs must seem like people who would cheer a rained-out parade. Everyone was having so much fun with the market moving higher, goes the thinking, only traders selling stocks short want to see stocks come down.
But from our perspective, a perspective supported by more than a decade of historical backtesting and analysis, some of the best opportunities to buy stocks occur after stocks have moved lower–not higher. And the easiest way to sell high, over time, is to buy low.
It may be a cliché, but after studying millions and millions of simulated stock trades, we believe it is true: the best way to trade stocks in the short term is buy them after they have pulled back rather than after they have broken out. We insist that the stocks we buy on these dips be strong stocks, stocks that are trading above their 200-day moving averages. And we want stocks that pull back to truly pull back deeply, to the point of becoming as oversold as possible.
But the discipline that has allowed us to create trading methods with high win rates (more than 70% for longs, more than 60% for shorts) in model-driven testing since 1995 remains the same: buy strong stocks as they pull back, and sell them as they rally. Sell short weak stocks as they bounce, and cover (buy them back) as they resume their declines.
Our Short Term PowerRatings are the product of this research into short term stock behavior and dovetail nicely with our approach to buying low and selling high. Stocks with our lowest Short Term PowerRatings, for example, tend to be the sort of weak stocks that we look to avoid or sell short as they move higher and become overpriced. On the other hand, stocks with our highest Short Term PowerRatings tend to be the sort of strong stocks that we look to buy as they pull back and become cheaper.
All the stocks in today’s report have Short Term PowerRatings of 8–among the highest ratings possible for a stock. Our research indicates that stocks with Short Term PowerRatings of 8 have outperformed the average stock by a margin of more than 8 to 1 after five days.
I have also included the 2-period Relative Strength Index (RSI) values for each stock. We consider a 2-period RSI of less than 10 to be oversold, with readings under 2 representing extremely oversold conditions.
Knight Capital Group
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PowerRating) Short Term PowerRating 8. RSI(2): 4.09
Ariba Inc.
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PowerRating) Short Term PowerRating 8. RSI(2): 8.75
Badger Meter Inc.
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PowerRating) Short Term PowerRating 8. RSI(2): 3.39
There are five things that every successful short term stock trader knows about trading markets like these. We have published all five in a new, special report called “5 Secrets to Short Term Stock Trading Success” now available for free. Learn what key factors are involved in turning mediocre speculators into professional-grade, short-term stock traders–and how our Short Term PowerRatings can play a part.