A relatively flat week for the U.S. stock market after the French election turned out as expected and concerns over a French exit from the EU were quelled. Most stocks were quiet, with the exception of retail stocks, which fell dramatically as institutional investors sold them off on surprisingly poor earnings reports throughout the sector. They are continuing to lose business to online sources like Amazon and operating costs of their brick-and-mortar locations remain too high (which they are closing in record numbers).
Many of our stocks remained steady – with longs rising and shorts falling. Retail stocks were the exception, as mentioned above, with all of them falling significantly – good for our already-short positions but causing losses for those we recently bought as the institutions did.
Between our new less-sensitive analytics and a generally uneventful week, not many trades this weekend. A decidedly mixed market as we have nearly equal numbers of new weekly highs as new weekly lows.
Highlights: 5 new weekly highs in long positions. 7 stocks with double-digit long gains:
BZH +16% FRPT +26% EVH +32% FIVN +47% NEFF +73%
TRUE +14% LPSN +40%
5 new weekly lows among short positions. 2 stocks with double-digit short gains:
FTK +14% NGL +28%
Locking in short gain of +24% in NPTN (11 weeks).