StockCharts Blogs - Don't Ignore This Chart!

PPD Finally Breaks Out

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We discussed PPD and its long struggle with the 50-day MA in a previous post.  Looks like things have finally changed!  Should be fun to watch during the next couple of days.

Getting Beat Down Legally (PPD)

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Help!  Police!  Pre-Paid Legal Services (PPD) is getting beat down by its 50-day Moving Average! Again!

This is the third time this year that PPD has failed to penetrate the 50-day MA (blue line).  Things were looking promising too - this stock showed up on a Bullish MACD scan yesterday (see the MACD Histogram going positive?) after a strong up day with good volume.  Still, this chart deserves to be watched closely as increased volume may lead (eventually) to a strong upside breakout.

One of These Charts is Not Like the Others (Dow Stocks)

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OK - I apologize for the size of the image above, but it's worth the extra time needed to download I promise!

These are 6-month candlestick charts of the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  As the old "Sesame Street" song goes, one of these things is not like the others.  Can you spot it?

All of these charts look... well... terrible.  But if you look closely, you'll see that one has its moving average lines reversed(!).  Instead of the red 50-day MA on top (a bearish signal), one of these stocks has the blue 20-day MA on top.  Can't spot it yet?  OK, one more hint - look at the direction of the red 50-day MA lines on all these charts - on every chart except one, the red line is headed down.

Relatively speaking, IBM has been doing much better than its Dow brothers over the past 4 months and it shows in the position of its 20-day and 50-day MAs.  (MRK was doing pretty good also until very recently.)  Doing group chart analysis like this can help you spot "outliers" like IBM that may deserve closer scrutiny.

(BTW, only one Dow stock has a rising 20-day MA right now and it's not IBM.  Can you spot it?)

Bollinger Band "Topo Map" ($INDU)

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Based on the statistical concept of Standard Deviations, Bollinger Bands graphically illustrate how "far away" prices are from their "average" value.  Traditionally, 2.0 standard deviations are used to determine where the upper and lower bands should appear.  In the chart above, I've layered 6 different Bollinger Bands on top of each other going from 2.0 deviations to 3.0 deviations forming two "bands of Bands."  The "deeper" prices go into either band, the more likely things will "snap back" towards the dashed average line.  That's good news since the Dow plunged deep into the lower band today.

DROOY - Bullish CMF Signal Confirmed by Long-Term Crossover

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Durban Roodeport Deep (DROOY) is a major gold mining company in South Africa.  Their stock jumped in late November generating a "buy" signal from the standard 20-day Chaiken Money Flow (CMF) in early December.  The longer term moving averages for DROOY crossed today providing a major technical "buy" signal for the stock.

NetFlix (NFLX) has a Powerful MA Crossover

The 50-day Simple Moving Average for NetFlix moved above the 200-day Simple Moving Average today in a very convincing manner confirming the stock's gains over the past couple of days.  No other heavily traded Nasdaq stock has a similarly bullish signal right now.